The Boat
A brief technical history of the Type VII U-Boat U-47
After the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, a number of restrictions were imposed upon Germany. One of these restrictions was that Germany would be allowed no submarines, a limitation placed largely as a result of the havoc German U-boats had wreaked during the 1914-1918 war. The Germans managed to get around these restrictions by having designers work in a number of other countries, including Finland (whose U-boats saw success in the Baltic war against the Soviet Union) and Spain. The subterfuge was ended in 1935, when Germany tore up the Versailles terms.
The period between 1935 and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 was to see a rapid advance in German submarine technology; all of the equipment was brand new, with all of the First World War era submarines having been destroyed. Numerous experiments were carried out, and by 1939 a number of boats rolled off the production lines. Among these was the type VII, which was to become the mainstay of the U-boat arm of the German Navy, the Kriegsmarine.
Contents
- U-47: An historical overview
- U-47: Build Details and Technical Specifications
- Armaments
- Torpedoes and Mines
- The Type VII U-boat: General Features
- Type VII Variants
- U-47 Photograph Album
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