The Ghost of UB 65

it has long been theorized that ghostly manifestations are the echoes of human souls whose lives were couldn't expect to be short forever anchoring them to a fixed place but what happens when that place is a mobile instrument of war capable of traveling halfway around the world this week we bring you the ghost of ub six five [Music] at the outbreak of World War one the military mindsets of the two opposing powers could not have been further apart for the Allied nations warfare remained a somewhat gentlemanly and traditional affair where combatants lined up to expose their

might before engaging in organized and decisive encounters to the central powers superior technology and rapidly evolving battlefield tactics would be utilized to win the war by the quickest means possible it didn't take long for Great Britain and her compatriots to feel the cost of their shortsightedness as poison gas flowed over European battlefields and German Zeppelin's peppered London with incendiary fire bombs the allied generals frantically demanded urgent ideas and innovations to combat the Jim and wonder weapons and nowhere was this more evident than on the high seas Britain had entered the war with the world's mightiest

Navy unrivaled in terms of numbers and pedigree her Admirals believed that bigger was better constructing gigantic steel behemoths equipped with unstoppable firepower but her ships were aging and in some cases obsolete a point which the Imperial German Navy were keenly aware of they knew that to engage the Royal Navy in open combat would have been suicide so instead invested in a new form of naval technology the undersea boat or u-boat Germany was by no means alone in the development of submarine technology indeed the 24 operational u-boats she possessed at the opening of hostilities were divorced

by the 80 submarines of the Royal Navy but the British Admirals viewed the submarine as a cowardly and underhand weapon they constructed these vessels out of a feeling of necessity with little idea how best to operate them what followed were a series of tragically misguided attempts to adapt submarines to fight as a component of the main fleet rather than giving them the freedom to operate in isolation as the German Navy allowed the British Admiralty would stand by and watch in horror as a series of daring attacks decimated their outdated horses on the 22nd of September

1914 the seventh cruiser squadron under the command of Rear Admiral ARPA Christian encountered the German submarine u9 in the North Sea two hours later three British cruisers had sunk forever beneath the waves taking 1,450 sailors with them the following spring the cruise liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by u-20 as she approached the Irish coast claiming 1198 lives many of whom were neutral American citizens over the next six months more than a million tons of shipping would be destroyed by u-boat activity with the Royal Navy seemingly powerless to fight back at its height the

u-boat fleet consisted of a hundred and forty two operational submarines their commanders were viewed as the mavericks and aces of the german armed forces in August of 1917 you b65 join their number she was designed to operate in close proximity to coastlines with ten torpedoes to expend on her opponents before returning to resupply but even before her hull had touched the water she would gain a terrifying reputation as one of the most unlucky vessels to ever be put to sea like most of the submarine fleet you be 65 was built at the Vulcan shipyards in

Hamburg but unlike her sister ships she experienced an unusually high number of accidents during her time under construction whilst the keel was in the process of being laid to dock workers were crushed underneath a falling girder one was killed immediately whilst the other remain trapped under the huge metal component for two hours his agonized screams echoed around the ship works before he eventually succumbed to his horrific injuries another incident would occur after the boats engine had been installed and Mishelle to be tested for the first time three engineers were unaccounted for at the end of

the Working Day they were later found lying dead in the motor room having been overcome by diesel fumes leaking from a fault in the engine matters failed to improve even when the submarine did eventually leave drydock on her first test run a sudden squall manifested out of nowhere and washed one of the lookouts overboard never to be seen again alongside these tragic and unexpected deaths the vessel was also plagued with technical difficulties during another test run one of the ballast tanks malfunctioned sending the vessel crashing down onto the seabed the crew desperately spent the next

12 hours trying to coax her up from the bottom before they finally resurfaced on a subsequent sea trial a further gas leak claimed the lives of two more crewmen by their very nature sailors are a superstitious breed and the submariners assigned to sail aboard the newly commissioned boat quickly form the opinion that the vessel was cursed their young captain Martin Shella was determined however that nothing would stop UB 65 from being cleared for duty the tide of war was slowly turning against the u-boats as the Allies developed methods to counter them such as cue ships

and improved depth charges requiring the Imperial Navy to make every possible submarine operational as the German commander relentlessly drilled and trained his crew he remained quietly confident that the thrill and excitement of finally stalking the enemy would focus their minds but fate had other ideas on the eve of UB 65s maiden voyage a small party were in the process of loading the torpedoes when one of the devices detonated without explanation or warning the submarine escaped with relatively minor damage but five sailors were seriously wounded including the ship's second officer who had been in command at

the time lieutenant Richter would later died of his injuries and it would be another to frustrating weeks before the repairs were completed and replacement crew members were found finally in October of 1917 the submarine slipped her moorings and silently made her way into the North Sea her first mission proved a great success with shalour successfully sinking five enemy vessels including the british corvette HMS Arbutus for a time it seemed that the crew had been wrong in their assessment of the vessel and to the string of unnerving incidents began one evening shallow is in his cabin

poring over charts when one of the crew knocked on his door and informed him there was a situation on the submarines deck the captain made his way through the control room and up into the conning tower where he found the duty lookout carrying on the floor his anger rising Shella demanded that the sailor a man called Peterson explained himself the terrified lookout recounted that he had been up in the conning tower looking out across the waves when he had realized there was someone standing a few feet away on the ship's bow Peterson described the figure

as an officer dressed in a great coat and cap when he had called out for the officer to identify himself the man that turned to face him was none other than the deceased lieutenant Richter who then disappeared into thin air shall aberrated the sailor accusing him of everything from drunkenness to outright cowardice and Warren Peterson that if he caught him spreading rumors of ghosts to the rest of the crew there would be harsh consequences but news of the incident had already traveled throughout the boat and as he walked back to his cabin the captain could

feel his men regarding him nervously several days later the morning's peace and tranquility were broken by screaming coming from the control room the boat had been on the surface for most of the evening venting and recharging her batteries as the morning look out had clambered up into the conning tower to do one final sweep of the horizon before the ship submerged he had felt a tap on his shoulder and found Richter standing behind him smiling falling backwards down the ladder and into the control room with the shriek the lookout had managed to break his leg

as crewmembers had scrambled to help him two of them swore blind they had seen Richter staring him passively down at them from the conning tower hatch before disappearing Shella again made threats of taking disciplinary action against the men involved but this new incident had left him feeling more than a little apprehensive the hauntings continued into the submarines second sea Patrol increasing both in terms of volume and intensity to engineer stated they had been working on a piece of machinery one evening and looked up to finally tenant Richter surveying the control panel behind them before he

proceeded to walk straight through a nearby bulkhead no enemy ships had been sunk during this patrol and the captain suspected that his frightened crew were rapidly becoming incapable of carrying out their duties shelhah had been determined to keep the issue from his commanders worried it would reflect badly on his reputation but now he saw a little choice besides requesting a new crew there's a submarine headed back for their home base of Vil Helms harvin another tragedy occurred a torpedo man working in the bow compartment looked up to see the dead second officer walking past him

disappearing through the steel hall the terrified crewman screamed and fought his way through the boat even chaos and confusion in his wake before he could be detained he had clambered up the conning tower ladder and had hurled himself into the churning sea his Shella stood helplessly on the deck along with several other crewmen he turned to see rictus stood amongst the others staring back at him before fading into nothing the reaction of shellye's superiors to the young officers patrol report and the request for crew reassignments was a predictable mixture of the amusement and anger the

corroborating testimony provided by his junior officers and the rest of his crew however proved compelling enough for the commander of the Flanders submarine fleet to launch an investigation eager to make the matter go away and in order to prevent the story spreading to other ships at the base a Lutheran pastor was asked to conduct an exorcism of the boat and the majority of the crew were quietly replaced the next two patrols passed without incident but on the evening of the 10th of July 1918 the tragic tale of the Haunted submarine would come to a short

and violent conclusion just off the Cornish coast an American submarine l2 was hurrying to assist the Portuguese freighter which had been torpedoed near Padstow when she had encountered UB 65 sitting motionless on the surface as lieutenant Augustin Grant prepared to give the order to sink the unsuspecting enemy vessel he paused momentarily through his binoculars he could see that the German submarine was already listing heavily to one side in the water he could also make out the shape of a solitary officer standing up on the ship's deck apparently staring out to sea before his excited men

had even finished loading their submarines torpedo tubes grant observed you b65 suddenly shake violently as if she had been hit by a huge explosion before she sank beneath the waves for the next hour the American vessel sailed back and forth searching for survivors but there were non the haunted submarine had taken her entire crew down with her to her grave and almost ninety years would pass before she was ever seen again ub6 5's remains were discovered in 2004 by a documentary crew working for a British television company the wreck was inspected by renowned nautical historian

dr. Innes McCarthy who could find no obvious signs of damage or any indication that she had been sunk by enemy action the ship's aft hatches were open which seemed to indicate that at least some of her 37 crew members had tried but failed to escape during the sinking so was ub6 five haunted by the vengeful spirit of her deceased second officer and did his Spectre play a hand in her demise captain Shella certainly believed so which is why he took the unprecedented step of bringing the matter to the attention of his superiors perhaps unbelievably it

is not the only mysterious incident to have befallen a u-boat of the Imperial German fleet two months prior to the loss of UB 65 on the 30th of April 1918 HMS coreopsis encountered you b85 off the coast of Belfast the submarine was half flooded and sinking fast and only the arrival of the Royal Navy vessel saved the crew under interrogation her captain Gunter chrec would later a stand his interrogators by claiming that his vessel had been sunk after an encounter with the sea monster chrec explained that he had ordered the ship to surface for the

evening to recharge her batteries when something had emerged from the water and climbed up onto the decking he described the creature as possessing horns and red glowing eyes it's bull could quickly pulled the bow onto the waterline causing significant flooding through the hatches that had just been opened in order to ventilate the ship the panicked crack had called every available man to arms unable to use the deck gun as the Beast was now coiled around it the crew had opened fire on the monster with their sidearms eventually after a steady barrage of gunfire the creature

had crashed back into the water causing further damage as it went the Germans had spent the next few hours working tirelessly in an effort to slow the flooding until discovered by their eventual captors despite ridicule and accusations that he had invented the story to cover for his own shortcomings crack maintained to his dying day that it was a paranormal enemy responsible for the sinking of his boat rather than a human one the wreck of his submarine was discovered in October 2016 by a telecommunications company laying internet cables across the Irish Sea again no obvious cause

of the sinking could be determined there is also the account of Georg von frost nur commander of U 28 in 1915 having torpedoed the British steamer Iberian he and his crew had watched in amazement as a huge sea creature had been hurtled her to the sea and up into the air when the ship's engines exploded commanding a u-boat was one of the most arduous and difficult tasks across either of the two world wars confined beneath the waves in cramped unsanitary conditions for weeks on end it was immensely taxing on both the sailors physical and mental

health death was only ever an explosive detonation or leaking bulkhead away with little hope in the way of survival or rescue operating under such torturous conditions struggling from the pressures of fighting for victory whilst trying to preserve the lives of their crew could it be that the minds of the German commanders began to wonder that they bought into superstition generating some form of mass hysteria which spread throughout their ranks in the case of UB 65 this feels unlikely the men knew that by openly talking about the specter that was tormenting them they were opening themselves

up to both ridicule and abuse but it seems that this was preferable to remaining on such an unlucky and haunted vessel and the sailors who were punished or transferred off the ship for talking about the ghostly activity would ultimately end up being the lucky ones is it possible that these Maverick German commanders who were afforded the freedom to roam when and where they pleased in pursuit of their prey encountered circumstances that most other sailors never would the sea remains a vast and under explored place which almost certainly still has secrets yet to be revealed but

ships continue to disappear under mysterious circumstances even with huge advances in safety in communication systems these are occurrences that were witnessed and verified by entire crews not just individual members and it can be argued that the sailors who made these reports had nothing to gain from fabricating them they would only face ridicule examination of their wrecks seems to confirm that it was not the enemy that claimed their vessels but something altogether more mysterious we will never know if it was indeed the ghost of lieutenant Richter that the American captain witnessed in ub6 files final moments

whatever answers may have existed with regards to her fate remain sealed inside a steel coffin which now sleeps on the sea floor solitary and undisturbed her wreckage a monument to the daring and bravery of the men who once sailed within her may they rest in peace [Music] [Music] you you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]