Thursday 18 July 2013

Did German U-Boats ever come to Swansea?

Well yes, they did but not during the war. They arrived (5 or so of them) for break-up at Swansea after the end of the war. As part of the Armistice agreement the Germans had to surrender numerous surface vessels and U-Boats to the Allied powers.

The U-Boats were estimated to have a scrap value of a few thousand pounds. The German High Seas Fleet (battleships, cruisers etc.) was accepted into the British base at Scapa Flow and, as discussions regarding its fate continued, the German sailors took the initiative and scuttled them, rather than have them fall into Allied hands.

The U-Boats were simply surrendered and  then broken up. They had played an important role in German naval strategy and, at one point, it looked as if their success in sinking Allied shipping might force Britain to the negotiating table before the country was starved into submission...one of the aims of the British Passchendaele Offensive in 1917 had been to clear the Belgian coast of Germans so preventing German submarines from operating against the shipping lines.

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