Nazi Sunken Sub

Beneath the cold and brackish waters of the baltic

lies one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of word war ii.

This is what we came here for.

It's only the wreck that tells the last line of the story.

Nobody knew that it existed.

I could actually see the u-boat lying on its side,

and I was looking at it like wow.

With all hope for victory fading fast the Nazi's

are desperate to turn the tide of the war.

Their last-ditch efforts in the baltic may today be at the bottom of the sea.

Those guys don't know what hit them.

After more than a decade of searching,

a Finnish dive team hopes to make history,

and reveal the secrets behind the Nazi sunken sub.

March 10th, 1945 the frozen body of a u-boat commandant

is found on the island of föglö.

His submarine and crew are presumed lost.

I received the scan of the original police report from the,

the police constable who went to examine the body.

And it was found out that it was a German Navy officer in, in uniform

and a flotation jacket,

and with his dog tags so he could absolutely positively be identified as

kapitanleutnant Wilhelm Von trotha, the commander of the u-745.

It was suspected that since the body was washed to the shores of åland islands

that the submarine had actually must be also somewhere very close to that area.

Yet the wreck is never found.

The members of badawanne, a skilled dive team,

hope to finally locate the u-745.

It needs to be done, it's no use to go out there to the sea spend enormous amount of

diesel fuel just searching for wrong place.

They believe that if you're looking for u-boats in the baltic

you first look where the minefields were laid.

One of the Finland's most dangerous minefields was vantaa three laid by the

Finnish minelayer louhi in January 1945 in the Gulf of Finland.

The louhi was laying in the minefield and their guys were on board

really executing the operation.

They were first-timers none of them had been laying a minefield before.

Then there were of course officers saying ok you do this and don't think don't do

anything else but just do this.

And then someone with stopwatch saying it's, now it's time and now it's time.

And guys were able to accomplish.

Today the members of badewane are searching the very minefield

louhi laid that day.

They believe they have located a sunken u-boat.

They make the leap of faith and descend to the ocean bottom,

hoping that this is the u-745.

The lost u-boat of captain lieutenant Wilhelm Von trotha.

If they are right they will be the first people to see the sub since the 48 men inside

sank to their deaths in 1945.

The problem with that wreck actually has been at the visibility.

Close to the bottom it's often really poor.

It's getting milkier and milkier and some kind of Clay particles are here and there

and hey where is it and then suddenly you see this whole bow of the u-boat coming at

you and it's beautiful, it's just unreal amazing site.

This is the gold standard for world war ii shipwrecks.

The frigid temperatures and low salinity of the baltic have kept the wooden deck in

remarkably good condition.

I still remember like it was yesterday.

We were going down, jussi was in front of me

because he had the lights and on that dive also the visibility was fairly good.

And I could actually see the u-boat lying on its side

and this incredible mushroom type

or a funnel type, if you like, conning tower

construction and I was looking at it like wow!

What kind of a sub is this that after all because the conning tower,

it looked like it would be like one size too big.

It was a big platform with closed railing in the front

and double the amount of anti-aircraft warfare.

There was two twin two-centimeter automatic guns and two single

barrel 37 mil guns.

Because of the depth of the wreck the divers time on the bottom is limited.

After only 15 minutes on the bottom the team must begin the process of decompression,

which allows the body to eliminate gases accumulated during the dive.

It's kind of important to check your watch

because anyway exceeding bottom time by one or two minutes,

means we have a lot more decompression to do.

If a diver ascends without proper decompression,

they run the risk of serious illness or even death.

Every single minute that you're low at the bottom

it increases the total depth compression application by significant amounts.

The first thing that actually came to my mind is that I had seen a line

drawing of this design in one of the books.

I said "hey that's the one that's supposedly never built."

The design of this u-boat was strange.

Why would the Germans take one of their sleekest and most technically advanced

naval vessels and build such a large and awkward

conning tower configuration on top of it?

It's like tying a bathtub to the back of a shark.

This kind of design was thought to be good for escorting the submarines

leaving the submarine base and heading for the patrol area and this anti-aircraft

weaponry on board was thought to be efficient to cover the submarine convoys.

This one of a kind design would seem to make identifying this u-boat easy,

but it turns out not to be so simple.

In the late stages of the war a lot of modifications were carried out in

the naval ports in the shipyards according to the skipper's wishes

or somebody just wanted to experiment.

This is typical for late war.

Things developed so quickly nobody made any records or there is no documentation.

You just built this thing and went out with it.

Even though it's not the u-boat they're looking for,

it's a spectacular find.

It was so unique that it wasn't supposed to, to have been built at all.

Nobody knew that it existed.

I wanted to, to know what the differences of those boats would be,

because uh they didn't have numbers on the conning towers.

This was the so called turimbow seven, the conning tower model seven,

which was presumably not built at all or if it was built,

probably built in a different formation.

So I mean that was a great amazing discovery.

When we found it and of course it also made this 3-d modeling

a little bit more challenging.

There were just some sketches available.

It's the only known submarine with this, this kind of a tower configuration

where you have around the normal tower here,

you have this kind of bathtub like structure.

And then on top of that there's four anti-aircraft guns.

The whole boat was just kind of a prototype and many books and references claims that

this was never taken into use but obviously if there's one in the

Gulf of Finland, it was used.

From this dive,

the members of badewanne believe

the mystery u-boat is a variation of a type vii,

but there are no official records of its identity to

be found in Germany.

We actually found one document of the kind of logbook entry there was

drawings this, of this conning tower type and number u-676.

The sketch in a submarine guest book signed by the crew confirms that this

sub is the u-676.

The location of the u-745 remains a mystery.

In 1940 German u-boats are on a killing spree in the Atlantic

wreaking havoc on an enemy that is unprepared for this new threat.

In just seven months u-boats attacking in wolf packs sink hundreds of ships

carrying vital supplies to britain.

They are so effective Winston Churchill declares u-boats

the greatest threat to the allied forces.

When you look at the kreigsmarine submarines of the second world war,

they already were fairly high tech.

They would have gyro compasses,

they would have different kinds of radio equipment

to communicate with their headquarters.

Their weapon systems already were,

like they had electric torpedoes,

higher acoustically homing torpedoes and stuff like that.

The treaty of versailles prohibited Germans from possessing submarines,

but it did not stop them from secretly developing them.

Throughout the 20's and 30's the Germans evolve and test their designs across the

baltic in the Netherlands.

By the start of the war the Germans design a sub that is both sea-worthy and

economical to build.

It will become known as the type vii,

the workhorse of the Atlantic.

Over 700 will be rushed into service.

The Southern baltic was used as a training site for the

submarine captains who are heading towards Atlantic.

So first you go into bathtub and do a little training there,

then you go to the real sea.

Right, you train your little boats there, then you go into big business.

U-boats are built in bremen then sailed

in the baltic for several months.

The idea is to train the 44-man crew to operate as one,

before sending them to the Atlantic,

but not all subs are sent to fight the British and Americans.

Some u-boats are kept in the baltic to fight the Russians.

The baltic sea for the, for the Germany.

It was very, very important to keep it enemy free.

As the Gulf of Finland is the only sea route

going to St. Petersburg that is,

strategically it's the key for the success of Russia.

Also during the second world war,

it was essential for Russians to get their

submarine fleet from St. Petersburg to operate on the baltic.

The baltic sea was important to the Germans for various reasons.

One it was the iron ore that they were getting from Sweden.

It was important and essential for the war machine.

The Soviets also knew very well that if they can block this iron ore

shipments from all the way out to Germany,

that Germans won't be able to make any more tanks.

If you don't have steel you can't make more tanks.

If you don't have tanks, the situation on the eastern front is changing completely!

The struggle for the control of the baltic is fought between submarines

and naval mines.

The two leave behind a trail of wrecks.

When you start looking for submarines the basic nature of that

branch of military service is stealth.

Nobody knows where they are you might have a, have a rough idea.

The only way you may know that one is lost is that after a certain date it never reports

back to headquarters it never returns.

Because the baltic is shallow with little or no tides

it's well suited for mine warfare.

The use of these crude devices reached a peak during world war ii

and over 200,000 would be laid defensively.

A marine mine is a relatively cheap weapon

so what happened was that over 60,000 mines were laid in the Gulf of Finland.

There are at least 46 different types of mines used

with as many as ten different triggering mechanisms.

Fins were laying mines, Germans were laying mines here,

Russians were laying mines here and because the water depth which is only about

100 meters at its deepest at its maximum.

Maximum.

Its kind of very favorable.