Qualla: German Submarine U-133 (1941)

German Submarine U-133 (1941): Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The water off Aegina island looks peaceful from the surface. The Saronic Gulf is blue and familiar, the sort of sea that appears in travel photographs. Seventy-eight metres below, in the cold and permanent dark, the hull of U-133 has rested since 14 March 1942. Everyone who was aboard her when she struck a mine that evening went down with the boat. The sea gave no warning and offered no survivors.

German Submarine U-133 (1941): Built for War

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-133 was a Type VIIC submarine, the workhorse of the German Kriegsmarine's submarine fleet during the Second World War. She was laid down at Vegesacker Werft in Bremen-Vegesack on 21 August 1940, launched on 28 April 1941, and commissioned into service on 5 July 1941. The Type V...

German Submarine U-133 (1941): 14 March 1942

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Saronic Gulf, the body of water that curves around Athens and its surrounding coast, was heavily mined during the Second World War. Mines were laid by multiple parties — German, Greek, and Allied forces all seeded these waters. U-133 encountered one of these mines on 14 March...

German Submarine U-133 (1941): Lost, Then Found

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For more than four decades, U-133 lay unrecorded on the seabed. In 1986, two professional divers — Efstathios "Stathis" Baramatis and Theofilos Klimis — came across a submarine wreck by chance at a depth of 78 metres. They identified it as an unknown German submarine but could no...

German Submarine U-133 (1941): What Remains

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Saronic Gulf does not memorialize U-133. There is no marker above the water, no ceremony, no monument on the shore of Aegina to record what happened there in March 1942. The men who died were German sailors fighting for a regime that had invaded the country beneath whose wate...