The wrecks were located by Turkish expert Selcuk Kolay, who used German wartime archives and communication with survivors to establish where he might find the sunken U-boats of Germany's 30th Flotilla.
One of the subs has been dived by Kolay and his team in 24m of water, two miles offshore, and confirmed as the wreck of U20.
The two other sites, clearly submarines from survey images, are expected to be U23, lying three miles off Agva in 50m of water, and U19, lying very deep at 500m, three miles off Zonguldak. Kolay will dive the shallower wreck in the spring.
Six submarines of the 30th Flotilla were transported some 2000 miles by river and, partially dismantled, by road from Kiel to the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta, to prey on Russian shipping.
From 1942, the U-boats wreaked havoc, sinking many ships but losing half of their own number to Russian defences. U19, U20 and U23 were the Flotilla's three remaining subs when, in August 1944, Romania changed its allegiance and joined the Allies, declaring war on Germany.
The subs could not get out through the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus, due to Turkey's neutrality. Their crews had no choice but to scuttle their vessels, before attempting to make their way back to Germany overland. They were all captured and interned by the Turkish military.
Undamaged due to the nature of their sinking, the U-boats promise to be well-preserved examples of their genre. With no loss of life, there will be no moral question over any decision to enter the wrecks.
If an ROV exploration package ever comes to fruition, even the deepest wreck should be penetrable by cable-camera, as its scuttling will have meant that it went to the bottom with all hatches open.
Selcuk Kolay presents an account of the project's achievements so far at this Saturday's International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth, Devon. |
