Guide to German U-Boat Tours

Have you ever been inside a vintage World War II German U-Boat? Without having had to put on diving gear, I mean!?

By the end of The Second World War, the German U-Boat fleet had suffered extremely heavy casualties, of course, and a staggering 743 U-Boats had been lost. Many of the remaining submarines had been either captured or were confiscated and even later used by the Allies themselves after the war. Only a very few of these vessels managed to remain in Germany.

A handful of these exceptional survivors can be viewed in Germany today, however, and they offer a fascinating insight into that extremely deadly U-Bootwaffe technology so feared by the Allies during Word War II.

In the Deutsches Schiffarhtsmusem in Bremerhaven, for instance, the Wilhelm Bauer (U-2540) is on display. Constructed in 1945, the Wilhelm Bauer is the last remaining example of the then super-modern U-Boat type Class XXI. Attacked by a British fighter during a training exercise on May 4th, 1945, U-2540 was scuttled the following day. After its recovery and renaming in 1957 (Wilhelm Bauer was the first German submarine builder - way back in 1851), it was brought back into service in 1960, primarily used for testing, and taken out of active duty in 1982. It has been on display in Bremerhaven since 1984. This revolutionary submarine introduced a new snorkel technology, robust batteries and was able to dive much deeper than its predecessors could (220 meters). These new "Electro-Boats" were also faster (18 knots) and with 15,500 miles they had a much wider operating radius than the ships built before them. Its modern and sleek design even served as a model for many of the Allied submarines built during the early Cold War period.

Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum
Hans-Scharoun-Platz 1
27568 Bremerhaven
www.dsm.de

U-995 at the Naval Memorial in Laboe near Kiel was heaved into its exhibition pedestals on the beach in the early seventies. A Class VII C U-Boat, it was constructed by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg and went into active service in 1943. Confiscated after the war, it served in the Royal Norwegian Navy and was renamed the "Kaura" (NATO Submarine 309) in 1952, where it served in coastal defense missions and as a Naval training ship. As a sign of reconciliation, Norway gave the submarine back to Germany in 1965 at which point it was given a general overhaul in Kiel and then later placed on display before the German Naval Memorial in Laboe in 1972. Roughly 350,000 visitors come to see U-995 every year. This "living" historical-technical museum is one you can touch, feel and even walk through, although crouch through is probably the better term for it. It offers an extraordinary perspective into the technology of its age and into the very difficult conditions under which the submariners had to live.

Marine Ehrenmal
Technisches Museum
Sandstrße 92
24235 Laboe
http://www.deutscher-marinebund.de/u995

And if the Cold War era is more of interest to you, don't hesitate to visit U-461 at the Maritime Museum in Pennemuende. The Soviet-built U-461 of the Juliett Class was once a part of the Baltic Red Flag Fleet and was specifically designed to attack US aircraft carriers. This diesel-powered submarine once carried 4 Inter-Continental Balastic Missiles (ICBMs). The Juliett Class submarines were taken out of active service in the eighties, though they served in a reserve capacity up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Just a short 3 hour drive from Berlin, the Maritime Museum in Peenemünde lies on the Island of Usedom and also offers its visitors the Technical History Museum, also called the Rocket Museum. It was of course here that Wernher von Braun helped develop the deadly V1 and V2 rockets.

Maritim Museum Pennemuende
Haupthafen
17449 Pennemuende
www.u-461.de