SM UB-4

Coordinates: 52°43′N 2°18′E / 52.717°N 2.300°E / 52.717; 2.300
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UB-4 sometime in 1915
UB-4 sometime in 1915
History
German Empire
NameUB-4
Ordered15 November 1914[2]
Builder
Germaniawerft, Kiel[4]
Yard number242[2]
Laid down3 November 1914[2]
LaunchedMarch 1915[1]
Commissioned23 March 1915[2]
FateSunk by British Q-ship, 15 August 1915[3]
General characteristics [5]
Class and typeGerman Type UB I submarine
Displacement
  • 127 t (125 long tons) surfaced
  • 142 t (140 long tons) submerged
Length28.10 m (92 ft 2 in) (
o/a
)
Beam3.15 m (10 ft 4 in)
Draught3.03 m (9 ft 11 in)
Propulsion
Speed
  • 6.47 knots (11.98 km/h; 7.45 mph) surfaced
  • 5.51 knots (10.20 km/h; 6.34 mph) submerged
Range
  • 1,650 nmi (3,060 km; 1,900 mi) at 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph) surfaced
  • 45 nmi (83 km; 52 mi) at 4 knots (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph)
Test depth50 metres (160 ft)
Complement14
Armament
Notes33-second diving time
Service record
Part of:
Commanders:
  • Oblt. Karl Gross[2][Note 1]
  • 23 March – 15 August 1915
Operations: 14 patrols[2]
Victories: 4 merchant ships sunk
(10,942 GRT)[2]

Seiner Majestät

German Imperial Navy (German: Kaiserliche Marine) during World War I. She was sunk by a British Q-ship disguised as a fishing smack
in August 1915.

UB-4 was ordered in October 1914 and was

commissioned as SM UB-4 in March 1915.[Note 2]

UB-4 conducted the first sortie of the

Flanders Flotilla in April, during which she sank the Belgian Relief ship Harpalyce, the first ship credited to the flotilla. She sank three more ships from mid-April to mid-August. On 15 August, UB-4 surfaced near the British Q-ship Inverlyon
and was sunk by gunfire from the sailing vessel. None of UB-4's 14 crewmen survived the attack.

Design and construction

After the

Germaniawerft of Kiel, just shy of two months after planning for the class began.[7][9]

UB-4 was

propeller shaft. Her top speeds were 6.47 knots (11.98 km/h; 7.45 mph), surfaced, and 5.51 knots (10.20 km/h; 6.34 mph), submerged.[4] At more moderate speeds, she could sail up to 1,650 nautical miles
(3,060 km; 1,900 mi) on the surface before refueling, and up to 45 nautical miles (83 km; 52 mi) submerged before recharging her batteries. Like all boats of the class, UB-4 was rated to a diving depth of 50 metres (160 ft), and could completely submerge in 33 seconds.

UB-4 was armed with two 45-centimeter (17.7 in) torpedoes in two bow torpedo tubes. She was also outfitted for a single 8-millimeter (0.31 in) machine gun on deck. UB-4's standard complement consisted of one officer and thirteen enlisted men.[10]

After work on UB-4 was complete at the Germaniwerft yard, UB-4 was readied for rail shipment. The process of shipping a UB I boat involved breaking the submarine down into what was essentially a

launched sometime in March,[1] she was loaded on a barge and taken through canals to Bruges where she underwent trials.[10]

Service career

The submarine was

Flanders Flotilla (German: U-boote des Marinekorps U-Flotille Flandern), which had been organized on 29 March.[10] When UB-4 joined the flotilla, Germany was in the midst of its first submarine offensive, begun in February. During this campaign, enemy vessels in the German-defined war zone (German: Kriegsgebiet), which encompassed all waters around the United Kingdom (including the English Channel), were to be sunk. Vessels of neutral countries were not to be attacked unless they definitively could be identified as enemy vessels operating under a false flag.[12]

UB-4 kicked off operations for the new flotilla when she departed on her first patrol on 9 April. The following day, she sank the first ship credited to the Flanders Flotilla. The 5,940 GRT British-flagged

master and 14 others from the 44-man crew died in the attack.[14] Harpalyce was the largest ship sunk by UB-4 during her career.[16]

UB-4's followed up the sinking of Harpalyce by sinking the Greek ship Ellispontos, a steamer of 2,989 gross register tons (GRT). Ellispontos was en route to Montevideo from Amsterdam when sunk by Gross and UB-4 on 17 April.[17] Although German U-boats sank over 100,000 tons of shipping in each of May and June,[18][19] UB-4 did not contribute to those totals.[16] She did add one ship to the 98,000-ton tally for July when she sank the Belgian ship Princesse Marie Jose and her load of coal on 29 July.[19][20] The 1,954 GRT steamer had sailed from Dunston and was headed to Bordeaux when sunk 1.5 nautical miles (2.8 km; 1.7 mi) from the Shipwash Lightship off Harwich.[20]

Sinking

Action of 15 August 1915
Part of
U-boat Campaign of World War I
DateAugust 15, 1915
Location
Off the coast of Great Yarmouth, England
52°42′N 2°18′E / 52.700°N 2.300°E / 52.700; 2.300
Result British victory
Belligerents
 Imperial German Navy  Royal Navy
Commanders and leaders
Karl Gross  Ernest Martin Jehan
Strength
UB-4, 14 crewmembers Inverlyon, unknown number of crew
Casualties and losses
14 KIA, UB-4 sunk none

On 14 August, the 59 GRT British

east-northeast of Lowestoft.[21] According to the website Uboat.net, this attack was likely by UB-4, because she was operating in the area on her fourteenth patrol.[22] Regardless of the identity of Bona Fide's attacker, UB-4 did approach a group of smacks in the vicinity the next day, but unbeknownst to UB-4's commander, Gross, one of the fishing vessels was actually a British decoy ship.[14][Note 5]

The decoy or

point blank range. All the while small arms fire from Inverlyon's crew peppered the submarine. The U-boat began going down by the bow, becoming nearly vertical before disappearing below the surface. A member of Inverlyon's crew attempted the rescue of one crewman from UB-4, but was unable to reach him before he went under, meeting the same fate as the other thirteen crewmen.[14]

As UB-4 went down, her hulk fouled the Inverlyon's nets—which had been deployed to keep up the appearance of a real fishing boat—essentially anchoring Inverlyon in place. The Q-ship's crew, not having a

Summary of raiding history

Ships sunk or damaged by SM UB-4[16]
Date Name Nationality Tonnage[Note 7] Fate
10 April 1915 Harpalyce  United Kingdom 5,940 Sunk
17 April 1915 Ellispontos  Greece 2,989 Sunk
29 July 1915 Princesse Marie Jose  Belgium 1,954 Sunk
14 August 1915 Bona Fide  United Kingdom 59 Sunk
Total: 10,942

Notes

  1. ^ a b Karl Gross' name is also spelled as Karl Groß in some sources.
  2. ^ "SM" stands for "Seiner Majestät" (English: His Majesty's) and combined with the U for Unterseeboot would be translated as His Majesty's Submarine.
  3. mine chutes but changing little else—evolved into the Type UC I coastal minelaying
    submarine. See: Miller, p. 458.
  4. ^ Gross was in the Navy's April 1905 cadet class with 36 other future U-boat captains, including Hermann von Fischel, Carl-Siegfried Ritter von Georg, Kurt Hartwig, and Hans von Mellenthin. See: Helgason, Guðmundur. "WWI Officer Crews: Crew 4/05". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  5. ^ Perkins reports the date of the encounter as Sunday, 16 August 1915, but 16 August 1915 was actually a Monday. Messimer (p. 129), Gibson and Prendergast (pp. 50–51), and Uboat.net (Helgason, Guðmundur. "WWI U-boats: UB 4". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 19 February 2009.) all report the date of the encounter as 15 August 1915.
  6. ^ There is no mention of the amount of the bounty for sinking UB-4, but the Admiralty bounties were typically £5 per crewman on the submarine, or £70 in the case of UB-4. See: Messimer, pp. 158, 170, 222, for examples of the £5 per capita bounty.
  7. gross register tons

References

  1. ^ a b "UB-4 (6104975)". Miramar Ship Index. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Helgason, Guðmundur. "WWI U-boats: UB 4". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 19 February 2009.
  3. ^ a b Messimer, p. 129
  4. ^ a b Tarrant, p. 172.
  5. ^ Gröner, pp. 22-23.
  6. ^ German: "His Majesty's"
  7. ^ a b c Miller, pp. 46–47.
  8. ^ a b Karau, p. 48.
  9. ^ Williamson, p. 12.
  10. ^ a b c d Karau, p. 49.
  11. ^ Helgason, Guðmundur. "WWI U-boat commanders: Karl Groß". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  12. ^ Tarrant, p. 14.
  13. ^ Helgason, Guðmundur. "Ships hit during WWI: Harpalyce". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  14. ^
    OCLC 60621086. Retrieved 5 March 2009. [dead link
    ]
  15. ^ a b "Relief flag flying as Harpalyce sunk" (PDF). The New York Times. 12 April 1915. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  16. ^ a b c Helgason, Guðmundur. "Ships hit by UB 4". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  17. ^ Helgason, Guðmundur. "Ships hit during WWI: Ellispontos". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  18. ^ Tarrant, p. 18.
  19. ^ a b Tarrant, p. 21.
  20. ^ a b Helgason, Guðmundur. "Ships hit during WWI: Princesse Marie Jose". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
  21. His Majesty's Stationery Office
    . 1919.
  22. ^ Helgason, Guðmundur. "Ships hit during WWI: Bona Fide". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net. Retrieved 5 March 2009.

Bibliography