Watch the documentary about the mysterious U864 trying to escape in the hay days of the German reich, which still posses a threat to the environment today. There is just to much to tell about this wreck
Best thing about this documentary, they didn't spend 45 minutes showing the research vessel searching for their target. That's something that bugs me about a lot of documentaries; so much of the modern day footage is the team searching for the target and finding a lot of wrong areas and then only showing them finding it near the last part of the documentary. I love the history portions, but with the modern day stuff, just skip right to when the team finds the target....the way this documentary was done.
Launders was not, "unaware of U864's evasive action". Thats exactly why he fired a salvo. He figured out exactly where that sub was going, and knew it would turn and dive. U864 steered right Into its own death, predicted by Launders. That was no accident. He planned that salvo to the T, and hit on the last shot for which it was intended. The man was a true tactician, a legend amongst his peers.
I think “unaware” was a bit too strong a word, he was aware of the course plotted by the sub thus far, and, as the documentary states, used that to make a prediction as to where to fire. It’s not that he was unaware, but that he could not be certain as to what maneuvers the sub might take in response. Yet he still made the best decision he could given the information available to him. IMO the documentary does a good job explaining Launders’ tactical and mathematical genius while balancing the tension of uncertainty in a maritime engagement.
Much like the HMS Adventurers torpedo mans comment about the short cheer then reflection on the deaths, I was on-board the Falklands carrier & flagship HMS Hermes when the Argentine cruiser Belgrano.was sunk, we to had a cheer that ended with everyone deep in reflection of the dead & dying.
My father and his shipmates aboard a US Tin Can ( Destroyer) sank 3 German Uboats in the N.Atlantic in 1942. No survivors. I asked him how he and his fellow ship mates felt about that? His answer was no surprise to me..he said quote " If you think we were happy about 50+ German Uboat crew members were now dead..you are wrong. This was nothing to be "Happy" about..we were only releived that we got our enemy before they got us, and not jubilant that these Germans had just been killed" Exactly the answer I expected from my now deceased father.
@AndiKoehn Yes I don't doubt that, you know I think your Opa, my father and everyone else much rather would have preferred to be home with their families rather then being out to sea trying to kill each other.
......."To those, I fight, I do not hate....To those, I serve, I do not love"...(Epitat: U-864)...They were men of duty. They were soldiers ready to die for each other and their country & far better men than most of us.... RIP - All of them.
@@floydburney6060 WW2 death tolls, Russia-18.8 million. China toughly 20 million, mostly civilians. Germany lost some where between 6.6 and 8 million. Germany finishes a distant third.
@@searun2471 ......Stalin killed a lot more of his own before he was done than those numbers you cite. He made Hitler look like a piker. The Soviet Union wasn't divided up for 3 generations like Germany
@Lib Censorship ...Non-Euros? If you mean Muslims for example, yes. Theirs is a culture of death & it's in the book of their faith. One of the greatest tragedies of WW2 was that they were all Christian-based nations (Germans, Italians, English, American, French & even the Russians, etc...) killing each other for the 2nd time. The rank & file knew the folly of it all. They were paying the price for what old men were doing with their lives. Remember the spontaneous soldier 1914 Christmas cease-fire of WW1? Probably the most poignant moment/human act/story in all of modern war. They knew they were dying for the benefit of other men's glory who saw them as "expendable"....The soldiers saw their enemy as themselves. The words I lifted in my original post came from a British soldier's diary who didn't live to see the end of the war.
There are many horrible ways to die, this much is true. Knowing that you are sinking in a submarine, your coffin, with no chance to reach the surface is right there amongst them. My respects to the sailors, on all sides. To those that made it and those who did not.
@@tigtrager6923 ...it takes a particular kind of person to want to do something like THAT- but I understand that there was never any shortage of volunteers for service on the U-boats-!
@@daleburrell6273 yeah, I'm no stranger to military service and the hazard pay from combat zones. We are volunteers, yes, but the pay still amounts to a nickel to take your chance. Especially for enlisted. I hope the explanation helps you to understand what was meant.
@@MWcrazyhorse Ancient Astronaut theorists say a lot of shit as fact, that is the problem I have with them. If they would just propose it as "we cant prove it or debunk it 100%" it would look better.
I think the most amazing part of this engagement is that it is the only time in history that one submarine successfully torpedoed another while both were submerged
@@xr7speed There has been no sub vs sub attack since ww2. Since WW2, the first nuclear sub to sink a ship, was in the Falkland wars, when Light cruiser General Belgrano was sunk by HMS Conqueror in 1982. AT least that is the only one "officially". But no sub vs sub.
46:09 that ending gives me chills all the time. May the 30,000 German submariners find peace wherever they are. They’re sacrifices shaped our world and their country today. May they all find peace. 🙏🏻💐🇩🇪
Hmm not a single word for those of other countries who died fighting the Uboats because we had to ? Well someone has to buy all those SS daggers and underwear I suppose
@@securityrobot dude get some respect, out of the all German war branches (kriegsmarine, wehrmacht, luftwaffe) the U-Boot arm of Kriegsmarine was the least fanatic, there isnt a lot of emblems with the angled cross (some yes, but some for recognition purposes in indian waters) The U-Boot men fought a very gentlemen-ish war, For example The Laconia (except U-852 we dont talk about that) I am not a n@zi sympathyzer or some shit, I am just saying that not all men that fought with the n@zis were bad
Brave? What's crave about hiding under the sea to take out shipping lanes during "happy time". To hell with those Nazi assholes. Not like they knew they had been hit anyways. Everyone onboard probably died instantly, if not within seconds.
40,000 Men went too war in the UBoats less than 10,000 Returned they were once our enemy's they were also the bravest of the Brave May they all rest in peace forever entomb in their Iron Coffins
@@cadaverdog1424 They were not all NAZIs they were men serving their country. The leaders of Germany were the Nazi. I have a friend who's grandfather was a U-boat captain who was lost in 1944.
@@gazzas123 exactly, the U-Boat men fought a gentlemanish war (Laconia etc etc.) not all emblems were Angled cross (indian waters for recognition, some just cause and so on)
They did not mention that U0864 had been equipped with a snorkle. You can not run diesel engines submerged unless you have a snorkle and then you had to stay a periscope depth. I think this was a big issue they should have mentioned in this video. The U-864, commanded by Wolfram, left Kiel on 5 December 1944, arriving at Horten Naval Base, Norway four days later. Before leaving Germany, U-864 had been refitted with a snorkel mast. Several messages found in the Ultra archives show that there were problems with the snorkel, which needed repairs before the U-864 put to sea for her voyage to Japan. All Schnorkel trials and training were conducted at Horten near Oslo. U-864 would have needed to be certified ready to sail at Horten before proceeding to Bergen. Wikipedia
Likely saw that. Would imagine that the engine trouble they got was maybe due to the snorkel as well. Maybe the head valve on the snorkel was defect and had some sea water entering the engine.
U639 was the boat that my uncle, aged 20, died in. A very inexperienced L/Zs aged just 24 was in charge, and had the boat on the surface on the Kara sea. Hans was also an obergefreiter mechaniker. and the boat was also on it's first voyage and had sunk nothing. A hapless soviet commander, who frequently missed targets, found this one, it was too easy. Lost with all hands. He left a sister (my mother), girlfriend and family. Lots of talk is about losing a person, but for those left behind, the loss lasts forever, and in my case, my whole life was radically changed, not to one I would have chosen.
Sad yes, We have to remember that German U-boats wolf gang had huge success in the beginning of the war and sunk many ships killing a lot of people but the tide turned on them as the war progressed, the Hunter became the hunted, but I can not imagine the stress felt being inside one on either side when you are the target.
Something not quite right here, if the U boat is running submerged on the engines, then it has to be using the snorkel, which means it's easily and constantly visible. It's more likely they were running on the motors and using the periscope occasionally to avoid dection.
Personally I think The captain must’ve had another problem because he had six minutes from the first torpedo passing the sub to the last torpedo that struck the sub which would have given The captain enough time to dive deep and avoid the torpedoes.
@@timneaves519 hypothetically, if he had been running on batteries, they were quite possibly depleted enough that evasion wasn't a proper option. The crash dive could have been an absolute last ditch effort made on fading battery power to avoid the torpedos.
@@timneaves519 Four torpedoes fired at 17 second intervals equals 68 seconds or one minute and eight seconds from the firing of the first torpedo to the fourth torpedo. The German U-boat would have barely begun it's evasive manuvers when it was fatally struck. The documentary however took longer to tell us the story.
Very hard to believe this story. First of all how did the british captain knew he’s deal with a german sub? The schnorkel of coarse, but that means the german sub was all the time in the british sight. That explains also why the germans wasn’t able to detect via hydrophone their followers - too much noise from their own diesel engines. That means the so called “predicted depth” was actually the german periscope depth easy to find in any manual. All in all the difficulty of torpedoing such a target is no bigger than hitting a zig - zagging surface merchant ship ( assuming she was zig - zagging ) but I wouldn’t take their word for it since they show the so called eyewitness - the Norwegian 12 years old at the time- which allegedly saw the scene of a submarine exploding! Min 42:02 Everything in this story is farfetched, shame on the narrators and I’m talking about the Official narrators, the Historians of this event, not this documentary in particular.
As an ex Australian Navy and Army Veteran who have my father and uncles fought in the ww2 and great uncles served and died in ww1 its still sad on both sides, bloody politicians, as an Australia Veteran with German heritage and Irish and Scottish and Spanish and English l say R.I.P to all those very brave people. ❤
I love how they're underwater, the commander risks using his periscope, he says "go to 40 metres", then "half ahead", and they show the engine room with the diesels running :P I think the internal shots are in the VIIC set used for "The Boat". The gauges wouldn't have been backlit.
It probably would have been better if they had missed. By that point in the war there was nothing Japan could have done to slow the Americans down. The war was lost. Now the sea is permanently polluted with mercury. They should have known but back then the environment was not a concern.
Even if they'd gotten there, it wouldn't have helped. Those Jumo 004s were unreliable due to not having the high-grade alloys needed to build them. The Japanese wouldn't have been in any better position.
Commentary “........Lancaster bombers” they then show what looks like a Blenheim being started followed by a flight of B17’s. When the commentator goes on to refer to the “Tally boy “ bomb this programme lost all credibility as far as I was concerned and I gave up. Honestly; and this is the History channel?
How hard is it to dig up footage of a Lancaster bomber dropping a Tall Boy? Not very hard going by a number of other docos on RU-vid. I would have thought that trying to find footage of a Blenheim bomber in flight was harder. Film people really!
I wonder why they used a U-boat when the Japanese had larger and more capable long-range submarines? The Japanese had submarines that could carry aircraft in a watertight hangar.
Because the Type IX D2 submarine which the U864 was, had the most range of any class of submarine by any nation under WW2. Simply it had the range to reach Japan and return. It also had 115 nmi range under water @4 knots compared to 60 nmi @ 3 knots for the AM type submarine you are talking about.
Knight Owl, it would have also taken at least twice the time for a Japanese sub to reach Germany and make a return trip to Japan with the cargo than to send a German boat to Japan. This would also double the risk of detection and destruction.
@ 18:40 damn it was creepy plugging the 60degree 47', 004degree 26' coordinates into google maps and being snapped to the North Sea not too far Northwest of Bergen in Norway. It really helps to kinda put you there. Also if you hit satellite view you can see the topography of the ocean floor, and it's a lot easier to see how a sub could accidentally bottom out in seas like that...
The British submarine crew are true seamen after they killed the U-boat they donned their hats and had a moment of silence for that German crew because both sides were submariners
The majority of German sailors on the Uboats also had similar feelings after they'd achieved a 'successful kill' - the moment of elation was really a moment of "Thank God - that could have bee us'". Followed by feelings of intense melancholy.
I wish that when they show stock footage of jet engines they wouldn't show a Walter rocket motor from the ME163 Komet or when they show Lancaster bombers they show Blenhiems or B17s. Come on. Do just a little bit of dillagence. Use the correct images. For us people who are familiar with the topic, it just makes the program look amateurish.
Young men fight and die for old mens choices.... sad really .... He could of had a good life..... rest in peace all those brave soldiers from both sides.....
We go to War when we had enough of being attacked. People also go to War for personal gain and do so because they either had to and were willing to draw first blood. Some love it most are afraid of it. For some what we view as an atrocity but to others it's merely a means to an end. We also go to war because we can and our moral compass turns to payback time. One can keep going with it or we can realize people are just people that follow our own code of ethics and just don't love their neighbors as they love themselves.
@@Elwinator3 We are saying the same thing really.... We went to war because of old mens choices (hitler, the nazi leadership)... Korea.... the communist threat.... vietnam ... the same... my answer is a bit convoluted
I'm pleased I scrolled through the comments before making the same statement! Poor production indeed. Ironically, my mother's boyfriend was killed on HMS Barham.
....My father was in the Pacific theater & he didn't talk much about it either until the end of his life. Japan was actually worse than Germany with the war atrocities & he had the pictures to prove it.
@@floydburney6060 My grandpa was in MacArthur's honor guard (I found that out on my own). He rarely spoke of the war and he never spoke of what he did, he only said, "You don't ever want to go to war." Then he would stare away for a second. As a kid my mom told me not to talk about it and not to ask, I didn't. I knew he saw things he didn't want me to know about, how horribly a man can treat another man. He always hated the Japanese for the way they treated American POW's. I didn't understand as a kid, I do know. I wish I could see him once more and tell him how proud of him I am, and maybe hear a few more of his war jokes.
you people have NO IDEA what a skill shot this is, those are unguided torpedos fired at a target that's submerged and taking evasive maneuvers. there's a reason this has only ever happened ONCE. it's so unbelievable. this right here is the single most impressive shot fired by any weapon, ever.
15:13: that's HMS Barham exploding after being torpedoed by the German submarine U331. I suggest a little bit more care when selecting war footage to use.
Yeah. I just posted a comment about that as well. Only mine was regarding the beginning of the show when they showed a Walter rocket instead of a Jumo jet and Blenhiems and B17s instead of Lancasters.
I don't think the eye witness story complies at all with the story told in this video, as he clearly sais he saw an uboat, which must have been on the surface I guess, getting hit and than slowly sinking down, while the video story describes the german uboat in the middle of an evasive maneuver diving like hell after the first missing torpedos, so what's the actual true now???
Not just that, the British claim to have heard the badly running diesel engine, which would be clearly impossible while submerged unless they had a snorkel, no snorkel is visible on the wreck nor was one mentioned in the statements and it would have been clearly visible and negated the fear over using the periscope. I propose the the sub was in fact on the surface, didnt have a badly running engine and was caught unawares while looking for its meeting point. This fits the eye witness account. No idea why the British sailors are lying but their story is full of inconsistencies. I've since checked Uboat.net and have confirmed the fact that this boat didnt have a snorkel fitted. Something very fishy about this. Why are the British sailors still lying after all these years? What are they hiding and why lie to the families of those dead sailors. Very wrong.
@@thhseeking my friend I was wrong, thus boat was retro fitted with a snorkel while in Bremen, probably for this mission. I was only aware of type C boats having them up until now. So I stand corrected and knowing this now puts the rest of the story in line. They really should have mentioned it in the documentary tho as it did leave a bit of a question mark.
@@martcon6757 quite possible the uboat had been surfaced or running shallow then. Had they had a badly running engine at snorkel depth whilst trying to recharge depleted batteries, the moments taken to rig for emergency dive could have allowed at least one of the torpedos to pass below. Then, whilst in an attempt to crash dive, they inadvertently passed into the path of the torpedo whilst still running shallow enough that the explosion brought parts of the vessel to the surface for the eyewitness to see. Have you any knowledge of British torpedos at the time? I was under the impression that they weren't really riggable to attack an under water target such as another submarine, meaning they would have had to have been running fairly shallow
You gotta admire WW2 Germany as far as their military strategy, weaponry and fighting. It took the entire western world united against them to finally defeat them in the end and it still took 3 years after the U.S. got involved.
The Third Pin: Their war plan was wrong. They had no long range bombers, no aircraft carriers, and had they NOT declared war on the US, who knows? It to AMERICA two years to build up an invasion force AND the equipment to get them there. After we had that, we poured precious blood to defeat them...... IN VERY SHORT ORDER! Hitler and his inner circle were foolish. They allowed nazi-ism to supersede military genius. They had good generals who were not listened to. Doomed to failure. Thank God.
@@TERoss-jk9ny You are right, Nazism overshadowed the better judgment of experienced german generals. Of course Nazism was evil and had to be eradicated otherwise it would eradicate the allies. German history is overall cool. It's sad, how Europe destroyed themselves in two unnecessary world wars. The eastern front and the bombing campaigns by the United States helped deplete Germany's industry when the war had turned against Germany (1943-1945). There were many amazing German inventors, musicians and so on through out their history. The history of German politics I would say was not one of their strengths. Then again many eastern European countries also fell under the horrors of Soviet communism.
No entiendo or que la mujer llora... Es que no sabía a qué fué su padre? No sabía que él también ovasionó muerte y tristeza en otra gente? Así es la guerra, por desgracia
At 13.07 they refer to a 'tally boy' dropped by Lancasters whilst showing Blenheim's taking off. It's actually a 'tall boy' bomb. Two severe inaccuracies within a few seconds left me wondering about the level of research in this documentary.
Just surprised they did not go deep deep. Don't know if they could control the down angle or up angle of the Torpedoes' back then. I don't think back then a sub could tell the depth of their targets. Not like the Modern Subs can, like the hunter subs they have, which hunts other subs.
I admire older people in that they Knew Love, faithfulness, all that is necessary to have a functional relationship unlike today where it could begin and end depending on what your facebook "friends"' think
It may just be me, I may have something wrong with me, but I don’t feel sry for the ppl in the other sub. If it’s war it’s war and we know what happens in war. If it bothers u don’t join. It just has never bothered me to take another’s life.
If U 864 was operating submerged how could it be operating it's diesel engines as shown in the video, a snorkel is the only way . It must of been some something else that was making a loud noise for for the British sub to hear
Records confirm that U-864 was indeed fitted with a snorkel system. It was damaged during the allied attack on the base at Bergen and part of the time required to make U-864 serviceable after the attack was for repairs to the snorkel system. Probably the the makers of the animated part of the video (with subs submerged) didn’t know of the technical point, or just didn’t want to go into such detail for a shot that is entirely artificial and only intended to add drama.
It’s hard for me to sympathize with the loss of a WWII submarine, these were warships and crews who’s primary mission was to hunt and sink defenseless merchant ships, sinking them and scurrying away like cockroaches while their victims that survived the initial attack were left to drowned. The need to cripple an enemy’s means of production is obvious, but I see this type of interdiction as the epitome of cowardice. A solider found to have deliberately targeted civilians and then intentionally left the wounded to die an agonizing death would be found guilty of war crimes, but it somehow raised these submariners to the level of hero’s.
@@redcat9436 this might come as a shock but occasionally what’s legal and what is right and honorable are completely separate things. As I said in my comment, I understand the importance of disrupting the enemy’s production capabilities, but killing or refusing aid to a wounded combatant is also illegal, immoral and dishonorable.
@@DreamsAreLies who the fuck do u thinks gonna protect ur skinny arse if war brakes out, u twat, ill tell u my son in the Navy.. so go back in your bedroom n fuck of... or D M ME WHEN U GET TO MCR
Good for him protecting us and the noobs that run the country. The same people that make the rules up as they go. The same people that make them self's richer while we all suffer. Thank your son.
Oh,.. I thought this was the story about how the Americans grabbed the heavy water meant for Japan off the Uboat,.. and used it for their own nuclear bombings of Japan.
Jako Polak nie czuję litości dla Niemców - wywołali dwie, straszne wojny o zasięgu światowym i ponieśli zasłużoną karę. Jednak żal mi tej starej Niemki, w niczym nie zawiniła a cierpi straszliwie do dziś... Bardzo smutne.
The main observation....if he was submerged and running diesel engines.that means the snorkel would have had to been extended...so maybe they tracked that's ..not the periscope...
His engine is misfiring and making enough noise to be heard. So how is he running on diesels anyway without a snorkel? Submerged subs run on electric motors via batteries in WW2. I don't understand what they are on about here.
My father was a telegraphist on the Venturer, I only found out when sifting through his belongings after he died. He was a member of the Venturers old boys association and there was a lot of correspondence between shipmates who had settled down after the war some as far away as Canada and Australia. Quite a few of his fellow crewmen called in to see him and stopped over as we lived in Portsmouth,handy for HMS Dolphin. It is all a mix of typed and handwritten from a time when email and mobile phones were yet to be invented. He never,ever,talked about his war service as a submariner but remained a submariner until leaving in the 60s.
If they can raise the Kursk then they can raise the sub, if there are any bones left they can be buried at the Uboat memorial ? but if the mercury is leaking from corroded containers, its a difficult choice as salvage would mean spreading any leaked mercury.
Snorkels were standard on U-Boats from 1943. Surfacing to recharge batteries was lethal from 1943 and the boats were much faster running with snorkels.
@@allangibson2408 Top speed for snorkel cruise was 8 knots, the same as normal submerged top speed with e-motors, any faster and the snorkel would be torn off.
@Ben Jones I thought submarines were called boats because before nuclear power, a submarine would spend most of its Patrol on the surface and with only dive during an attack or to escape
Correct, the History Channel took a lot of artistic license here. Sub was just under the surface with the diesel engines running through snorkels; it couldn't shut down the engines and dive that quickly. It could try to turn and avoid the torpedoes, but the British captain launched a spread to increase his chances of at least one hitting.
Am I hearing things did he say the crew were worried about the noise of the diesels wile submerged??? electric motors only underwater unless you use a snorkel & if you are worried about showing your periscope you most certainly would not use one of them. No disrespect to the crew just wondering about the commentary.
@Bob Pelham it’s a documentary, so a factual account of what happened. “U-864 was safely out of range of the Venturer when its diesel engine began noisily misfiring, hampering acoustic stealth and threatening to break down entirely.” The Germans were unaware that Enigma codes had been broken, and the Captain certainly wasn’t expecting to be ambushed.
The like & dislike buttons are there so YT will or won't recommend similar videos. It appears you think the comment section is there for people to post like bait :D
