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Wreck of U-248

Portugal / Acores / Lagoa /
 Second World War 1939-1945, navy, shipwreck, submarine
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Unterseeboot 248 was a Type VIIC U-Boat laid down at the F. Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel in December 1942 and commissioned into the Kriegsmarine in November 1943.

Operating on two training and shakedown cruises on her journey from her shipyard at Kiel to her base at Bergen, the U-248 departed on her first war patrol on August 3rd, 1944 and spent the next 58 days unsuccessfully hunting Allied merchant shipping in the Iceland/UK gap before returning to Trondheim in October. Following a month's refit which saw the addition of weather reporting gear to the boat, she sailed again on her second war patrol on December 3rd, 1944 bound for the waters North of the Azores.

On her 45th day on patrol, the U-248 surfaced at night to recharge her batteries and take weather observations to radio back to U-Boat Command, as was the norm for much of her patrol. Unbeknownst to the crew of U-248 as dawn neared on January 16th, her radar signature had been picked up on the radar screens of the USS Hubbard (DE-211), USS Hayter (DE-190), USS Otter (DE-210) and USS Varian (DE-798), Destroyer Escorts assigned to a Submarine Hunter-Killer Task force. All five of the US ships quickly converged on the U-248, but alert lookouts on the sub spotted the onrushing ships and the U-248 went into a crash dive to deep waters where she ran silent to elude her attackers.

The American ships began concentrated sonar sweeps of the ocean and launched sporadic depth charge volleys towards the U-248 for the next two hours, each time drawing slightly closer to the U-boat's position. Finally at approximately 0800hrs, the U-248 was rocked by a close quarters depth charge explosion, which caused enough onboard noise to tip off the US ships to her position. A savage rain of depth charges from all five ships soon followed, and soon a telltale mass of air bubbles, debris and an oil slick indicated that the U-248 had been sunk with all hands at this location on January 16th, 1945.

uboat.net/boats/u248.htm
Coordinates:   47°42'59"N   26°37'0"W
This article was last modified 11 years ago