U-boats in the Kiel Canal
 

I was wondering, did U-boats actually use the Kiel canal when travelling from the Baltic to the North Sea? After all, the canal is rather shallow, meaning that diving wasn't an option in case aircraft attacked, and early on in the war formations of British bombers had been operating over nearby Heligoland, while the Skaggerak route provided waters deep enough to safely dive.

A good question, and one I don't know the answer to. A quick search brought up a book that tells of a newly-commissioned boat using the Canal to get from Kiel to its Atlantic base as late as December 1941.
https://books.google.com/books?id=0t...0canal&f=false

They rarely I live near Kiel and basically all ubosts we got are in Eckernförde or Wilhelmshaven.
When they go into north so they usually drive around
Since the 212A got a new design with specific cells that uboat is made for long sneaky missions (max kn:20) but when they surfaced the max speed drop to about 7-10

Edit: obviously you meant in the second world war. im sorry then:oops::doh:

Update for anyone wondering the same question; it looks very likely that U-75 went through the canal on her April 10th - May 12th 1941 patrol. She departed from Kiel and, according to uboat.net, was in the position shown in the first attachment three days into her patrol. But for U-96’s first patrol in December 1940, she went to the Atlantic through the Baltic route.

So, it seems that u-boats went through the canal at certain periods, and through the Baltic route in others.

some information
 

he "Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal", as it was officially named until 1948, has a length of 98,637 km and a depth of 11 m.


As far as I know U-boats didn't use the canal very often, for they had their training centers in the Baltic and went to operation by way of Kattegatt, Skagerrak and Norway. Of course every sub built in Hamburg, Bremen etc. had to travel through the canal to reach the Baltic.
Source:- https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=134294



https://forum.axishistory.com/downlo....php?id=468493