U-534, the last U-Boot to be sunk in WW2

[Feuer Frei!]

Hi all, firstly if this has been posted before, i apologize, thought this was quiet a interesting read about the U-534:

"The U534 was raised from the sea because people thought it contained gold. Being the last uboat to leave Germany at the end of WW2, it was considered to be full of nazi gold.

It wasn't."

"On the 3rd May 1945 approaching Allied Forces made it necessary to flee her homeland. She was the last U-boat to leave Germany.

She headed northwards together with 3 Type XXI U-boats when on 5th May they were given the order to surrender. Nollau, who at 26 was the oldest man onboard, decided he and the rest of his 51 crew were not going to surrender and they continued onward with brave determination.

The Type XXIs also continued on their way. Three Liberators from 86 Squadron were immediately dispatched from Tain, Scotland to intercept the errant U-boats. On finding their prey Liberator G for George targeted the surfaced U534 with depth charges.

The bombardier, Neville Baker, during the second low level attack ruptured the U-boat’s hull allowing seawater to pour in. Realising his boat was doomed Nollau gave the order to abandon her.

Forty-nine out of the 52 crew survived and were later picked up by German ships and taken as POWs. Nollau was amongst the survivors but tragically he committed suicide a couple of years later. The 3 type XXIs were quicker boats and they successfully crept away to Norway where later they too were captured.

On discovering the wreck over 40 years later, rumours began circulating that as U534 had been the last U-boat to leave Germany she possibly had Nazi leaders secretly hidden onboard.

At very least the boat was surely loaded up with gold or other precious cargo. A wealthy Danish publisher, Karsten Ree, decided to get involved with U534 and he mounted a project to raise the U-boat from the ocean depths".

Here: a Photo of her under attack from Liberators, dropping depth charges, set at 10 feet explosion depth.
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"The crew managed to shoot one bomber down, and nine depth charges of the bombing runs missed, but then the boat received a direct hit. U-534 began to take on water as a result of the damage to her aft section by the engine rooms, and sank north-west of Elsinore, in position / The shot down B-24 must have come down nearby, but all crew on board the plane were lost. U-534 had a crew of 52 men, all of whom escaped and 49 survived. Five were trapped in the torpedo room as she began to sink but escaped through the torpedo tubes just in time. One of these crewmen, 17-year old radio operator Josef Neudorfer, failed to breathe out as he was surfacing from depth and died from damage to his lungs. The other two deaths were caused by exposure".



Transported to Birknhead, England, in 1996, the vessel formed part of the Warship Preservation Trust's collection at Birkenhead Docks until the museum closed on 5 February 2006. On 27 June 2007, the Merseytravel transit authority announced that it had acquired the submarine to display at the Woodside Ferry Terminal.
For technical reasons and to facilitate economical transportation to its new site, the vessel was cut into four sections. It will be displayed in this form to allow visitors better access and visibility. Merseytravel said that preserving the hull intact would have created prohibitive transport costs. Engineers began a month-long operation to break up U-534 using a diamond wire cutter on 6 February 2008. Beginning on 10 March 2008, the sections, each weighing up to 240 tonnes, were transported by floating crane over a number of days".


Here, some photos of her at "rest":
I must say, what a beautiful sub she is though, and huge too!






The above before the move and the "makeover", and below the way she looks now in her final resting place.



A T-11 Zaunkonig forefront.

To this day mystery still surrounds the refusal to surrender after the final announcement from Admiral Doenitz.