Qualla: German submarine U-23 (1936)

German submarine U-23 (1936): Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. Three miles off the village of Ağva, in about 160 feet of Black Sea water, a German submarine has been lying on the seabed since September 1944. It went down not in combat but by the deliberate decision of its own crew, who opened the sea cocks to keep the boat from falling into Soviet hands as the Eastern Front collapsed around them. Finding it took another sixty-four years. The story of U-23 — a Type IIB boat barely 42 meters long — spans the Atlantic and the Black Sea, the beginning of the war and its end, and the lives of merchant sailors, naval crews, and civilians on every side of a conflict that cost tens of millions of lives.

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

German submarine U-23 (1936): Built for the Atlantic

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. U-23 was laid down at Germaniawerft in Kiel on 11 April 1936 and commissioned on 24 September of the same year. She was a Type IIB — an enlarged version of Germany's earliest U-boat designs, compact and suited to coastal and North Sea operations rather than the open ocean. At 279...

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

German submarine U-23 (1936): The Patrols and the People They Affected

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. Over sixteen patrols, U-23 sank seven ships. Numbers like these are easy to recite and easy to process abstractly; they are less easy to hold alongside the reality they represent. On 4 October 1939 — just a month into the war — U-23 torpedoed and sank the British merchant vessel ...

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

German submarine U-23 (1936): Dismantled, Shipped, Reassembled: The Road to the Black Sea

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. After active service in the Atlantic with the 1st U-boat Flotilla, U-23 shifted to training duties with the 21st U-boat Flotilla from July 1940 until September 1942. Then came a journey unlike almost anything else in naval history. Germany needed submarine capability in the Black...

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

German submarine U-23 (1936): Scuttled Off the Turkish Coast

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. By the late summer of 1944, the war in the east had turned decisively against Germany. Romania switched sides on 23 August 1944, and Soviet forces were advancing rapidly. The German and Romanian naval units in the Black Sea faced capture. On 10 September 1944, the crew of U-23 sc...

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

German submarine U-23 (1936): Discovery and What Remains

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit not identified. "Official photograph", Public domain. For sixty-four years, U-23 lay undisturbed on the Black Sea floor. On 3 February 2008, The Daily Telegraph reported that Turkish marine engineer Selçuk Kolay had located the wreck in approximately 160 feet of water, three miles from the town of Ağva — a small Black Sea coastal vi...

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