In the days when the Second World War was going on at full speed, Adolf Hitler, who turned Europe into a place of fire, turned his eyes to the east, then to the USSR or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. On June 22, 1941, approximately three million German soldiers attacked the USSR. On this front, the target was rich natural resources, especially oil. In this operation, which was called Barbarossa, Adolf Hitler was made to believe that he would bring the Russians to heel with only the attack of ground troops.
The Germans occupied the Black Sea coast with a rapid advance and advanced as far as Taupse. But there was no German naval force in the Black Sea that could control the coast and protect the supply routes.
Turkey did not use the straits
The entrance to the Black Sea was closed and the pass was in the hands of Turkey, which was neutral in the Second World War. According to the Montreux Convention, Turkey had closed the Dardanelles and Istanbul Straits, which are the only means of access to the Black Sea, to military ships. He had laid magnetic lines under the water to prevent the secret passage of submarines that were moving silently and deeply. The German government asked Turkey to open the straits to submarine passage first. Turkey's answer was negative.
This time, the Germans wanted to buy their own Turkish submarines Atılay, Saldıray and Yıldıray. The Turkish government, determined to stay out of the war, also turned down this request, which would cast a shadow on its neutrality.
Adolft Hitler planned to bring submarines to the Black Sea from a distance of 3 thousand 500 kilometers!
Options for the Germans were running low. Desperate, the Germans decided to implement a crazy plan. Submarines were to be transported by land from the North Sea to the Black Sea. The route from the naval base Kiel to the port of Constanta in Allied Romania meant a total distance of 3 kilometers using European rivers. Six submarines were to be dismantled and transported piece by piece!
For this extraordinary journey, the Germans chose the Type 2, one of the navy's smallest and lightest submarines. First of all, 2 type 6 B class submarines were selected for this special mission. The transport of the U-30, 9, 18, 19, 20 and 23 submarines, called the 24th Submarine Flotilla, required a complex series of operations that required engineering knowledge. Although the ships were small in size, they could not be transported in one piece. That's why the Germans decided to dismantle the submarines in the first place. The dismantled parts were placed on specially prepared barges to be pulled by tugboats. This whole process took 11 months!
The submarines were first brought from Hamburg to Dresden over the Kaiser-Wilhelm canal and the Elbe River, and were transported from here to Ingolstadt using the highway, from here to Graz and Constanta, over the Danube and lowered into the Black Sea.
In the spring of 1942, the first group of 3 submarines was transported using parts of the submarine, the rivers Elbe and Danube. In the 300-kilometer distance between the two rivers, the submarines were advanced by land. The transport of 6 German submarines to the Romanian port of Constanta took 11 months.
German Submarines sank 26 Soviet ships in the Black Sea
The reassembled submarines sailed into the perilous raging waters of the Black Sea from October 1942. German submarines conducted 1 operations in a year and a half and sank 56 Soviet ships, totaling 45 tons. 426 of these submarines were rendered unusable, and 26 of them were stuck in the Black Sea.
Although the successes of the submarines ended the Russian dominance in the Black Sea, it was a belated success. The annihilation of the German forces on land had begun, and the war had long since been lost. In the summer of 1944, Romania switched sides in the war. The Soviet army entered Constanta, the only base of submarines, and destroyed three of the 6 submarines, the U9,18, 24 and XNUMX.
3 submarines, U19, 20 and 23, were left without a port and without support. Rudolf Arendt, the Commander of U23, one of the submarines trapped in the Black Sea, compared their situation to cats in a sack.
Blue Passion met with U23's Commander, Rudolf Arendt. The Germans again contacted the Turkish government to prevent the submarines from falling into the hands of the Soviets. This time they wanted to deliver their submarines in exchange for the return of the personnel. Response of Turkey, which is sensitive about impartiality, was again negative.
The order to sink the submarines has come!
Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who had risen to command the navy, understood that he had no other choice. He sent orders to submarine commanders to sink and land in Turkey. According to the order, the soldiers would go south on Anatolian lands and contact the German ships in the Aegean.
3 Submarines met on 9 September 1944 near the Turkish coast. The commanders determined the points where they would sink their submarines. U19 Karadeniz Ereğli, U20 Sakarya was sunk off Karasu. The spot that Rudolf Arendt chose for U23 was the openings of Ağva.
Landing German Soldiers were soon captured
The real difficulty for the German sailors would begin after that. The sailors had landed in a country they had never known. It didn't take long to spot the blond, blue-eyed, and short-pants soldiers, who were divided into groups. They were caught the day after they landed.
Turkey took care of its ally German soldiers in the First World War. The Germans were hosted for 2 years in a special camp first in Beyşehir and then in Isparta. The soldiers, who stayed in Beyşehir for 8 months and were paid monthly by Kızılay, also contributed to daily life. Some were working as doctors in hospitals, some were producing shoes, and some were repairing machines that broke down in factories and workshops.
The war that turned the world into a bloodbath ended in September 1945. German submarines, along with other soldiers interned in Turkey, were sent to Izmir by train in July 1946, and then to Italy by ship. The soldiers, who were handed over to the Americans under the peace agreement, returned to their homes in September 1946 after being interrogated at the Dachau prison camp near Munich, Germany.
U20 Submarine found in 1994
The silent witnesses of this story, submarines lie in unknown spots off the coasts of Zonguldak Ereğli, Sakarya Karasu and Kocaeli Bağırganlı. The first to break this silence would be the U20 Submarine. The U20 was found in 2 by the Turkish Navy's search and rescue ship TCG Kurtaran, 1994 miles off the Karasu district of Sakarya. The identity of the ship was also determined by researcher Selçuk Kolay. The submarine lies at a depth of 26 meters as a silent witness of the war.
U23 was the last submarine to reach the Black Sea. She sank 1943 ships in the 1944-month period from June 15, when she started her duty, to September 7, when she was sunk. She performed patrol duties in the Sevastopol, Batumi and Novorosisk regions. TCG Akın made an important note in world history with this discovery 2 years ago. The discovery of U20 after U23 brought one of the most extraordinary stories of the Second World War to the agenda.
U19 Submarine waiting to be discovered
U3, one of the 19 submarines lying on the Turkish coast, is waiting to be discovered somewhere off the coast of Zonguldak Ereğli.
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