Operation Deadlight
 

After the war the Unterseeboots were almost universally dumped off shore in the atlantic and scuttled. Why in the world would they waste all that metal? Why would they sink all those XXI's instead of using them as they were more advanced than any sub in the English navy.

Anyways would it have made more sense to scrap them then to just throw them away like that.

Probably was out of a desire to keep that many surplus subs from ending up on the market and then in the hands of minor navies. After fighting a long drawn out war against the much dreaded and maligned U-Boats it probably would have been a major PR problem for the Allied navies if they had tried to incorporate them into their own navies. However, France and Norway did end up operating a few.

Speaking of salvage, in the late nineties an approach was made to the British Ministry of Defence for salvage rights on the Operation Deadlight U-boats by a firm who planned to raise up to a hundred of them. Because the wrecks were constructed in the pre-atomic age, they contain metals which are not radioactively tainted and which are therefore valuable for certain research purposes. No salvage award was made due to objections from Russia and the USA, and it is now probable that the U-boats will remain under the sea.

Many of the boats had suffered damage and were worn out from war patrols. It would also have been costly to keep them in service as there was no supply chain of spare parts.

They did do testing of new ASW weapons on the subs and various results were obtained

well, they could have recycle all those scrap metals instead of rotting them. I guess the order was just being spiteful against Allied from taking them like they did after WW1.

Operation deadlight was a British operation to scuttle the captured German submarine fleet. It was not the Germans who sunk them but the British! Would not all that metal be put to better use rebuilding England?

Why bother? England had no lack of old WWI battleships to scrap for metal. I think the old "R" class quickly found themselves at the breakers not long after the shooting ended. Not mention the all the scrap metal at hand from a fleet far larger than she could still afford. Britian's shortages in the immediate postwar era were mostly food and finances.

Probably would have made sense to scrap the Prinz Eugen too. But with all the surplus warships in the world she ended up at a A-bomb test.

The US and Soviets reverse engineered the ones they had and used that knowledge to integrate into their own submarine designs.

I wrote a mission for this a while back (GWX2.1 I think)....I'll post a few pics later.

A few links (the bottom one covers the 'clean steel' issue)

http://www.periscopepublishing.com/i...exhibition.htm

http://www.uboat.net/fates/deadlight_hist.htm

http://news.webshots.com/album/91659251UldFNI

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/ind...ationDeadlight

For the life of me, I can't figure out what objections the US and Russia can possibly have to raising them and cutting them into scrap.

What possible objection could they have? These are not war graves, and I can't think of any possible environmental or safety issues. Weren't they stripped before being towed out to sea and sunk?

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/762...4045607qb5.jpg

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7...4052887lh4.jpg

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6...adlightyk1.jpg

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/591...4065190lb5.jpg

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/759...0757821cp0.jpg

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/481...4083414oy4.jpg

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/332...1016811lb4.jpg

One of these U boats is not like the others, One of these U boats is not the same. One of these U boats is not like the others, Now its time to play our game.
(Sesame street)

Is that a type XXIII!

Is that in the game?

Jimbuna's pics are sunken AI subs, you can't play as them.






Yet....

There is a playable Type XXIII in NYGM. There have also been several playable XXIII mods before, I believe.

I read intersting book abt Scapa Flow history and how almost all WWI German Grand Fleet was picked up from the water one by one for scrap.
;)

Polish Navy helped British - ORP Blyskawica sunk first u-boot in operation because she dropped first depth-charges against German u-boot in WWII. :up:
Below some pictures from Operation Deadlight taken by Polish crew :
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/176...ic41frogg3.jpg
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/7391/...ic41frocq0.jpg
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6621/...omorpbljf2.jpg
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/304...5viic41qo2.jpg
http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/3...akowiakkx4.jpg
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8902/viic41no4.jpg

BTW - Jimbuna nice screenshots - I remember one of these won in screenshots competition !