The Last German WW1 U-Boat Still To Be Seen - Anywhere?
UB 122
TQ 8305 7340
Lying in the evening sunshine of Humble Bee Creek, River Medway on her keel with her bow cut off and askew; her hull ripped open to retrieve valuable components and her Diesel engines and conning tower long gone, this is UB 122 a German Type 3 small coastal U-Boat from the First World War. She was towed here in 1919 and left for salvage but alas the job was never fully done and she lies here still after nearly 100 years of neglect.
She should be salvaged and she belongs in a museum for all to see but would anyone be willing to pay the costs involved?
She should be salvaged and she belongs in a museum for all to see but would anyone be willing to pay the costs involved?
Above: UB122 at Humble Bee Creek over the years, left to right; 1940, 2003, 2007 and 2013
The U118 beached at Hastings in 1919. What a sight this must have been? Under tow in the channel she broke loose and spent many weeks adrift until finally ending up at Hastings. Her deck gun was kept as a momento on the promenade for many years but strangely vanished before over due restoration. The U118 was broken up for scrap.
Below are photographs of the UB121; the sister boat to the UB122 and exactly the same in size and build. They were both constructed towards the end of the war at the A.G.Weser Shipyard in Bremen. The UB121 ended up beached below Haven Brow of the Seven Sisters, East Sussex coast where she was broken up for scrap in 1920.
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The U110 gives us a unique insight into what life on board one of these claustrophobic coastal submarines was like. On July 19th 1918, the twin-screw U-boat 110 was engaging a merchant vessel convoy in the North Sea off the town of Hartlepool when she was forced to the surface by Allied depth charges. She was then rammed and sunk by H.M.S. Garry, a torpedo boat destroyer. Later that year she was salvaged and placed in the Wallsend dry docks of Swan Hunter Wigham Richardson Ltd. in England, with orders to restore her to working condition.
The following photos of her cramped and complex interior were taken before the armistice of November 11th 1918, after which she was dismantled and sold as scrap.
The following photos of her cramped and complex interior were taken before the armistice of November 11th 1918, after which she was dismantled and sold as scrap.
Take a trip through the U110 with our slide show above and wonder just how awful it must have been being at sea in one of these tiny submarines ?
Sources: Kent Messenger Newspapers. Hastings Museum. U-Boat Historical Archives.
Copyright Steve Sullivan, November 2020
