The Norwegian K-Class

De: John Peterson

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The German Kriegsmarine commissioned more than 1100 U-boats over the course of the Second World War. Almost 800 of these boats were destroyed by the Allies during the war while more than 200 of the boats that remained were destroyed by their crews in the closing days of the conflict to prevent them from being captured by the enemy. This left a total of 156 U-boats that were eventually captured by the Allies. While thirty of them were divided up as war prizes between the UK, the USA and Russia, the vast majority were gathered together and destroyed during Operation Deadlight when they were towed out and sunk in the deep waters around the coast of Northern Ireland. Of the small number of U-boats that were saved from immediate destruction at the end of the war, most were destroyed shortly afterwards and within a few years of the end of the Second World War there were barely any U-boats left in the world. This is the story of four of those few remaining U-boats. It is the story of how they were built and launched into a world at war, it is the story of their commanders and their crew and of their varying careers including war patrols in the Atlantic, the Baltic and around the coast of Britain. This is the story of how four Second World War U-boats escaped from the destruction of the war and went to become a completely new class of submarine, serving in a different country and under a different flag. This is the story of the German U-boats that became the Norwegian K-Class, and of how they became some of the last operational U-boats of the post-war world.