"Ok, Who's the U-Boat Commander?"
Posted on 07/27/2012 8:01:04 AM PDT by JerseyanExile
An important piece of history from the Second World War may be sitting in a river in Labrador.
Searchers believe they've found a German U-boat buried in the sand on the bottom of the Churchill River. The discovery has yet to be authenticated.
Two years ago, searchers scoured the bottom of the Churchill River with side-scanning sonar. They were looking for three men lost over Muskrat Falls.
When they reviewed the footage from that search, they made an unexpected discovery.
"We were looking for something completely different, not a submarine, not a U-boat — I mean, no one would ever believe that was possible," Brian Corbin told CBC News.
"It was a great feeling when we found it."
At first glance, it can be hard to spot the submarine on the sonar image of the riverbed. When you put it next to a drawing of the boat, some of the features become a lot clearer.
The length is about 30 metres, or "exactly what our side-scan sonar shows," Corbin said.
"So we're pretty sure it is, and we've filed this with receiverships and wrecks, and I think they're confirming that it is possibly a U-boat."
It's unclear how the sub may have ended up that far inland, more than 100 kilometres from the ocean.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
"Ok, Who's the U-Boat Commander?"
How deep can the river be at that point? Not very, I’d think. Barely enough to conceal a submerged sub. Probably barely enough to float a sub running on the surface.
Probably one of those sub toys for the bathtub.
I wonder if there were any POW camps in the immediate area housing German POW’s? The article also makes mention of the separate discovery of a battery powered weather monitor apparently left by a U-boat on Canadian soil. Could this U-boat have been “making a delivery?”
Reminds of a Canadian movie during the war (don’t recall name). The story is of a U-boat landing in Hudson Bay and how the crew is chased across Canada, ending up near Calgary. Banff was also in there I think.
Truth stranger than fiction.
From Wiki:
“It is rumored that in 1944 the crew of German submarine had beached it at the falls when they decided to withdraw from World War II. The rumour inspired a novel written in the 1990’s, but was thought to be unsupported. In 2010, divers searching for three men who died after being carried over Muskrat Falls found a 30-metre long object on the bottom of the Churchill River, believed by diver Brian Corbin to be the missing U-boat [1].”
I like the irony that the German U-boat foundered in the CHURCHILL River.
We definitely grab the boat!
"You've lost ANOTHER submarine?"
Great Movie. Sometimes you just gotta say WTF!
You weren’t thinking of “The MacKenzie Break” by any chance? It’s the first thing I thought of. Kinda far fetched. U-boats wouldn’t have had a lot of space for freed POW’s.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066064/
Chock full of the only “good” socialists that can conceivably exist.
The Germans kept very detailed records.This should be a”piece of cake”?
Sounds like the opening of a Clive Cussler novel.
Interesting and VERY STRANGE for a location. The Churchill River (formerly the Hamilton River) is on the mainland portion of Newfoundland (mouth abt. 54N 57W) and empties into the Labrador Sea which is the arm of the Atlantic between Canada and Greenland.
The article mentions 2 potential reasons for an U-Boat to be up there during WW2. The first is the past and current presence of Goose Bay air base which was used by Allied Air Forces in WW2. The other possibility was to operate a weather station for German naval operations in the North Atlantic. The shipping lanes that the U-Boats hunted were far to the southeast and the water temps would have been quite chilly in the best of conditions during deep summer (the season of tough sledding).
Maybe a Clive Cussler-type novel in the making.
It hasn’t been found. Misleading headline. A couple years ago someone saw some sonar images that made him think it could be a submarine. Now, some scientists are going to do another search to see what they can discover. So, no, it hasn’t been “found”.
They just wanted some maple syrup and back bacon.
You and I read the same kind of stuff apparently. I have to say I haven't found any of his work to exceed his "Raise the Titanic" novel and the last ones have left me cold.
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