Unterseeboot 47

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Image:Scharnhorst-8.jpg Unterseeboot 47 (U-47) was a German type VII B U-Boat (submarine). She was laid down on February 25 1937 at Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel and went into service on December 17 1938.

U-47 became famous when, on October 14 1939, under the command of Günther Prien, she entered the base of the British home fleet at Scapa Flow, and sank HMS Royal Oak.

U-47 carried out ten combat patrols and spent a total of 238 days at sea. She sank 30 enemy merchant ships (164,953 tons) and damaged eight more. She did lose a sailor, Heinrich Mantyk, overboard on September 5 1940.

U-47 had a displacement of 761 metric tons, 865 tons submerged. She was powered by two 1400 PS (1 MW) diesel engines and two 375 PS (280 kW) electric motors. Her speed was 17 knots (31 km/h) on the surface and 7.6 knots (14 km/h) submerged. Her underwater armament consisted of 4 torpedo tubes in the bow and 1 torpedo tube in the stern. The deck artillery consisted of an 88 mm gun and a 20 mm machine gun. The vessel's range was 6500 nautical miles (12,000 km).

1 Kills
- 1.1 Warships
- 1.2 Convoy Ships
2 Fate
3 Crew
4 External link

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Kills

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Warships

Confirmed kills by the U-47 included:Image:U-47atScapaFlow.jpeg

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Convoy Ships

Balmoralwood - HX48
Conch - HX90
Elmbank - HX72
La Estancia - HX79
Shirak - HX79
Wandby - HX79
Whitford Point - HX79
Bilderdijk - HX79

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Fate

Image:U47logo.gif U-47 went missing on March 7 1941 and she was once thought to have been sunk by the British destroyer HMS Wolverine west of Ireland, but it turned out that the ship attacked there was actually the U-A. To date, there is no record of what happened to the U-47 or her 45 crewmen, though a variety of possibilities exist, including mines, a mechanical failure, a victim of her own torpedoes or possibly a later attack that didn't confirm any kills - by the corvette team of HMS Camellia and HMS Arbutus.

Oddly, in September 2002, one of the torpedoes that the U-47 had fired off-course at the Royal Oak was brought to the surface from its resting place at the bottom of the sea. The unexploded torpedo, minus a warhead, gradually drifted towards the shore, where it was spotted by a crewman aboard the Norwegian tanker Petrotrym. A Royal Navy tugboat intercepted the torpedo, and after identifying it as belonging to the U-47 63 years earlier, detonated it a mile from shore.

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