DEFECTIVE U-BOAT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 6 August 1945, Page 5

DEFECTIVE U-BOAT

PREFABRICATED CLASS LOSS HASTENED END OF WAR But for the accidental sinking of U-boat No. 1063 in a fiord near Bergan last February, the war with Germany might have been prolonged, i states the naval correspondent of the | London Observer. That is the signifiI cance of a brief telegram from Swed--1 en early in March, reporting how No. 1063, on her trials, with Spilder, comj mander of the 11th U-boat flotilla, | and 21 naval and engineering experts i on board, besides a crew of 58, sub- ! merged, surfaced once, dived again, I and never came up. ! The facts may now be revealed. No. j 1063 was the first of 200 prefabricatied U-boats made in Germany last ! autumn and shipped to Norway to be assembled there. Everything was in readiness to let j loose the whole pack, when the mys- ! terious disappearance of ’No. 1063 pointed to sbme serious error common to all the boats, which were identical in construction, and the order for their completion was held up while the Germans hunted frantically to find the error. They were still hunting when the end came in Germany itself. Somewhere in Norway there are the parts of 199 U-boats, with some still undetected flaw in them, which will never go to sea. i Had this vast number of U-toats i been successfully completed and let loose, they would have been a most serious matter for the Allies, and might well have considerably prolonged the war. The know-ledge of the existence of these 200 boats explains the repeated warnings through last autumn and winter by Mr Churchill, Mr Alexander, and Admiral Cunningham that the U-boat war was not ended.