Conference turris::scandia

551.0. "German U-boat salvaged off Danish coast" by TLE::SAVAGE () Tue Aug 31 1993 17:06

    From: blinderm@pafosu1 (Blane Linderman)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: GERMAN U-BOAT
    Date: 28 Aug 93 12:24:16 GMT
    Sender: [email protected]
 
    For anyone else besides myself who is interested in  the German U-boat
    found off the Danish coast I've found out some more information.
    Yesterday (August 27, 1993), I read an article in The Washington Times
    titled "Cramped space, stench hinder removal  of U-boat's torpedoes."
    Here are some interesting  excerpts from the article.
 
    "The sub had slipped out of the German port of Kiel with Nazi treasures
    or secrets rumored to be on board."
 
    "... Then the U-boat will be towed to a shipyard in Hirtshals, western
    Denmark, for a thorough onshore inspection. 'We found a pipe, a box of
    condoms, binoculars, clothes, and gas masks,' said Mr Wardlow (the
    project spokesman).' He said historians advising  the salvage group
    confirmed that a small supply of  condoms was a standard part of the
    inventory on German submarines during the war."
 
    "Historians have speculated that the U-boat --- like some other German
    submarines seized at the end of the war --- might contain secret
    documents or valuable objects"
 
 
    Blane Linderman
    e-mail: [email protected]
 
 

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    From: [email protected] (Stefan Farestam)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: German U-boat: Safe Found
    Date: 28 Aug 1993 23:44:19 GMT
    Organization: C.E.R.F.A.C.S., Toulouse, France
 
 
    Quoted, without permission, from 
    the "International Herald Tribune", August 28/29:
 
   "COPENHAGEN Salvage workers have found a safe on a World
    War II U-boat raised off the Danish seabed.
 
      A spokesman for the salvagers, Per Kluever, confirmed
    the find on Friday, but declined to comment on the 
    contents of the safe, saying the Danish Defense Ministry
    salvage permit stipulated tight control of information 
    about finds at this stage.
 
      A Danish-Dutch consortium brought the sunken U-534 
    submarine, rumored to be carrying Nazi treasures or 
    secrets, to the surface off the Danish island of Anholt
    in the Kattegat waterway at the mouth of the Baltic on 
    Monday.
 
      The finds so far include 100 bottles of German wine,
    a gross of condoms and a soggy lump of old cheese.
 
      Mr. Kluever said a large quantity of long underwear
    was discovered along with the safe on Thursday."

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    From: [email protected] (UPI)
    Newsgroups: clari.news.interest,clari.news.europe,clari.news.trouble
    Subject: Soaked documents found in salvaged U-boat
    Date: Fri, 27 Aug 93 10:15:56 PDT
 
	BONN (UPI) -- Soggy documents were the latest discovery aboard a
German U-boat sunk in the last days of World War II and raised from its
watery grave off the Danish coast this week, a spokesman for the salvage
operation said Friday.
	But the find shed no light on speculation that the submarine, the U-
534, was carrying Adolf Hitler's secret weapons plan. Survivors have
dimissed such speculation as well as rumors that the U-boat was taking
fleeing Nazis and fabulous treasures to South America.
	The spokesman said the documents found in the U-boat will have to be
treated before they could be deciphered.
	"They are very wet," said Per Kluevel, a spokesman for Copenhagen
publisher Karsten Ree who is funding the $3.6 million salvage operation.
"Apparently the safe opened when the U-boat sank."
	"We will not be able to tell anyone what's in the documents before
the (Danish) defense ministry releases them," Kluevel said. "That's
part of the salvage permit."
	He said Danish and Dutch Navy bomb disposal experts were currently
busy defusing torpedoes and explosives aboard the U-boat, which has been
placed on a submerged barge.
	"At the moment 40 people are sitting on 6.5 tons (5.8 metric tons)
of explosives," he said.
	He said that once the weapons have been defused, the submarine will
be towed 13 miles (20 km) to Anholt Island, halfway between Sweden and
Denmark.
	Speaking by telephone from the island, Kluevel said a thorough search
of the U-534 would start once it is in dry dock.
	The U-boat was sunk by depth charges fired by British Royal Air Force
bombers May 5, 1945, four days before the surrender of Germany.
	It was sailing from Kiel on the northern coast of Germany.
	The submarine was pulled 220 feet (67 m) to the surface of the
Kattegat Sea this week.