Baltic Midget Submarines ahoy!
This thing is downright cute
So there is this privately owned U-boat in Germany built as part of the Euronaut project and honestly its kinda bad-ass. Its 53-feet long, 32-tons in displacement, capable of diving to 250m (500m crush depth), able to submerge for a week. Powered by a 190hp Diesel on the surface that enables it to make a blistering 8-knots for 250nm or as long as its 250 gallons of diesel let her. Submerged, 107 batteries power a 55hp electric motor allowing her to make 5 knots under the waves.
Check out the plans for this. Somewhere in North Korea a naval engineer is salivating…
She comes complete with a wet/dry chamber to lock out divers which is always handy in a tiny sub. She was built by German engineer Carsten Standfuss over a 12 year period. She can carry 3-8 crew/divers.
So far they have used it to find the wrecks of the HMS Seahorse, HMS E-16, SMS Wacht, S.M. UC-71, an unidentified small cargo ship, a RAF Lancaster bomber, and an East German Air Force Mig-17.
Blowing!
There seems to be some sort of civilian midget submarine arms race in the Baltic. Besides the Euronaut boat, in nearby Denmark the 59-foot ‘Art project” UC-3 Nautilus, built for $200,000 and manned by former Royal Danish Navy submariners, has been called (tongue in cheek) the world’s smallest ballistic missile submarine for her recent work in launching offshore sub-orbital rockets.
Yes, that’s a rocket, the 36-foot long HEAT 1X Tycho Brahe on a platform (called Sputnik) pushed by the Danish art-project submarine UC3
The Danish UC-3 Nautilus.
Either of these craft are likely still far and away better than those operated by the DPRK and Iran.