Qualla: German Submarine U-20 (1936)

German Submarine U-20 (1936): Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. At some point in 1942, German submarine U-20 was cut into sections and loaded onto barges. The North Sea was too dangerous — British air and naval power had made the Gibraltar route effectively impassable — and so the Kriegsmarine chose the rivers instead. U-20 traveled in pieces along the Danube to the Romanian port of Galați, where Romanian shipyard workers reassembled her and put her back in the water. She had been built in Kiel, fought off Scotland, and now she would fight in a landlocked sea. It was one of the stranger logistics operations of the Second World War, and it worked.

Image: not identified. "Official photograph" | Public domain

German Submarine U-20 (1936): A Boat Built for Coastal Waters

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. U-20 was a Type IIB submarine — a design intended for coastal patrol and minelaying rather than the long-range Atlantic campaigns associated with the larger Type VII and Type IX boats. Her keel was laid down at Germaniawerft in Kiel on 1 August 1935, and she was commissioned on 1...

Image: not identified. "Official photograph" | Public domain

German Submarine U-20 (1936): The North Sea Years

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. U-20's first three patrols in 1939 and early 1940 took her to the North Sea and the British east coast, laying mines and observing enemy movements. On her fourth patrol, she sank the vessel Magnus approximately 40 nautical miles east-northeast of Peterhead, Scotland. The ship wen...

Image: not identified. "Official photograph" | Public domain

German Submarine U-20 (1936): Down the Danube in Pieces

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. Moving a submarine overland — or rather, over river — required dismantling it. U-20 was cut into sections that could be loaded onto river barges and floated from Germany down through occupied Europe to Romania. At the Galați shipyard on the Danube, Romanian engineers reassembled ...

Image: not identified. "Official photograph" | Public domain

German Submarine U-20 (1936): Patrols Between Constanța and Sevastopol

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. U-20's Black Sea patrols, numbered ninth through sixteenth in her overall war record, were a mixed experience. Her first patrol in the new theater nearly ended in disaster when she attacked a Soviet submarine chaser and the vessel responded with eight depth charges; U-20 stayed s...

Image: not identified. "Official photograph" | Public domain

German Submarine U-20 (1936): Scuttled and Found

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. On 10 September 1944, as Soviet forces swept through Romania and the strategic situation collapsed, U-20 was scuttled off the Turkish coast of the Black Sea. Her crew survived. The boat settled in roughly 80 feet of water — shallow enough, as it turned out, to be found. For decad...

Image: not identified. "Official photograph" | Public domain