German U-boat may be at bottom of Labrador river ...

CBC News
An important piece of history from the Second World War may be at the bottom of the Churchill River.


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.




German U-boat may be at bottom of Labrador river | Sympatico.ca News

 

Be nice if authenticated.

 

Very interesting, if true.

German U-boat wreck may be at bottom of Churchill River in Labrador - thestar.com

 

Another article here: German U-boat may be at bottom of Labrador river - Nfld. & Labrador - CBC News

A few years ago I read "Battle of the St. Lawrence", which detailed German U-Boat operations in the area. It said nothing about an unaccounted for U-Boat -- and I don't even think it made a reference to the Churchill River.

Here is a link to the area in question: Happy Valley, Goose Bay, NL, Canada - Google Maps

The only item of interest in the area is the former USAAF Goose Bay air base -- a major stop on the transatlantic aircraft ferry route. Looking at satellite images, the Churchill River appears to be very shallow, and the area where the "U-Boat" is located is at the bottom of a waterfall. After looking at some pictures, I doubt you could sail a 100 foot boat up there, let alone a U-Boat. The article says the river used to be deeper and "may well have been deep enough to allow the Germans" to travel it, but I think that is pushing it. How much deeper could it have been? A few meters? That would still make it uncomfortable shallow for any type of large submarine operations. These fellows are so confident that it is a U-Boat, but they aren't adamant that it was physically possible for it to get there? Something is wrong.

Onto another question: What commander would risk the safety of his boat by sailing up the shallow river surfaced or barely submerged (right past a major air force installation) to a dead-end, and then have to turn around and go past the air force installation again? If their intention was to do a recon of the base, they could have done so from the bay -- I don't think the added risks to the boat would be balanced out by any additional insight they might have gained by sailing up the river. If their mission was to drop of agents, why not send out rafts or drop them somewhere more accessible?

As far as I can tell, these fellows think the Germans just sailed it up the river, and it sank due to unknown circumstances. My bigger problem is this: what makes these fellows so sure its a U-Boat? Why not a normal submarine? There were many submarines besides U-Boats around "150 feet long". It sounds good in the press, and will surely get them a lot of attention. Bottom line: this is not a U-Boat.

I'll happily eat my words if it does turn out to be a U-Boat, but this sounds too much like those old "U-Boat wreck below the Hoover Dam" and "U-Boat tried to blow up the Poughkeepsie, NY railway bridge" stories for me to take it seriously.

 

The same story is posted here: http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/56507-u-boat-river-labrador-canada.html Can you merge the two threads Gordon?

 

The only rational I can think of is that they didn't plan on going back. If the boat were to heavily damaged or short on supplies to make it back to Germany or perhaps at the end of the war they simply sailed up the river and scuttled the abandoned boat. Still a real stretch. Over on the Axis history forum someone found info that made it look like the feature was too small to be a uboat in any case.
Unfortunatly at this point I think the odds are against it being a U-boat much as I would like it to be.
Could the WWI uboats make it that far?

 

Can you post a link to the thread on the Axis History Forum? I'd like to see what they have to say.

I think that if it is a U-Boat, it would have been scuttled by the Allies after the war ended (like Operation Deadlight). But that would raise the question "why here"? As for the WW1 U-Boats, I don't think that they could. The Deutschland made her famous voyage to NYC, but that wasn't under combat conditions and she wasn't even close to a standard U-Boat.

Another thought: the video from the CBC says the U-Boat has schnorkels on the front -- weren't schnorkels mounted on the conning tower, and wasn't there typically just 1 schnorkel per boat?

 

Sorry George, not got enough stripes to do that.

 

Very interesting!

German U-boat may be at bottom of Labrador river - Nfld. & Labrador - CBC News

 

Busy story!

 

If anyone is interested, here's an update:

Sub hunter determined to find U-boat in Labrador - thestar.com

To summarize, their recent search found nothing, but they suspect that it is U-Boat "buried". This story was printed in September, and since there hasn't been anything news since, I guess that they have given up on it.