More than sixty years have passed since the end of
World War-II but reminders of the turbulent period refuse to go away with new incidents surfacing every now and then. Recently a part of Hitler''''s fleet of U
boats has been found in the Black
Sea off the coast of Turkey. During the world war these U boats wreaked havoc on allied shipping by sinking dozens of ships. The hulls of
submarines U19, U20 and U23 have been found by a team of researchers who located the submarines through research in German Archives and through sonar readings of the seabed. A Turkish marine engineer by the name of Seluk Kolay who led the the team says that to get to Black sea these submarines had to be taken over land and once there they had no way out. The submarines were carried 2000 miles over land to attack Russian ships during the war but were scuttled as the war came to a close. The vessels formed a part of a flotilla of six submarines which were taken by road and river across Nazi occupied Europe from germany''''s Baltic
port of Kiel to Constanta the Romanian Black sea port. In two years the fleet sank dozens of ships and lost three of their number to enemy action. But in August 1944 as romania switched sides and declared war on Germany the three submarines were left stranded. They had no base and could not sail home as Bosphorus and Dardenelles were closed to them due to turkish neutrality. The end of the war provided a way out of the dilemma as the captains of these boats were ordered to scuttle them before sailing ashore to try and return. However all german crews were caught by the turks and history remained buried for ever.
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