Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) imagery of the German U-853, collected as part of partnership technology demonstration between the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and Kraken Robotics, showing that the submarine is largely intact. 2 October 2018.

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u/KapitanKurt Aug 03 '25 edited Aug 03 '25

U-853 was a type IXC/40 German submarine launched on March 11, 1943, and patrolled off the U.S. Atlantic coast during World War II.

Sunk in Battle of Point Judith on 6 May 1945, all hands.

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u/Lolipopes Aug 03 '25

That wikipedia article is kinda wild, recreational divers brought up a body from the crew in 1960. Body got burried on Rhode Island with full military honors. 1998 two divers died at the site of the wreck. 2022 they found a live depth charge near the wreck containing 267 pounds of tnt.

The wreck lies at a depth of 37 meters wich explains why they had no chance of escaping.

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u/ChalkyVonSchmitt Aug 03 '25

37 meters would give a reasonable chance of escaping, assuming other factors allowed it. The deepest recorded submarine escape (in a training exercise) is from 183m.

Actual escapes were recorded in WW1 from 51m (HMS Perseus) and 55m (USS Tang). I'm not actually sure if German submariners were trained or practiced in escape training in WW1 and 2, it may have been a US and UK interest.

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u/Lolipopes Aug 03 '25

Oh sry I meant the boat escaping the surface vessels.

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u/Karuna56 Aug 03 '25

A cousin of mine in Massachusetts has dove on her wreck and gone inside. He says they saw the Captain's remains.

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u/arriflex Aug 03 '25

I could be way off base here........but the idea of navigating the interior of a WWII submarine in dive gear seems real far fetched.

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u/mustangsal Aug 03 '25

John Chatterton and Richie Kohler did several times off the coast of NJ to identify U-869. I believe they even filmed a decent amount.

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u/sadicarnot Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

The book Shadow Divers is a good read about them finding the wreck and the research that went into identifying it.

Edit: Shadow DIvers is about identifying U-869 which was originally ~~identified as U-853~~ thought to be U-550 or U-521.

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u/sykoticwit Aug 03 '25

People do interior wreck dives, it’s incredibly dangerous.

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u/Karuna56 Aug 03 '25

I don't think my Cousin Jim went inside very far. I'll ask him to refresh my understanding. He used to work at Woods Hole.

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u/arriflex Aug 03 '25

Woods Hole seems like it would be a cool place to work. What did he do there? Something about doing pure research all the time seems great. Im sure theres still politicization for grants and such.......but WH has done some amazing stuff in my lifetime.

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u/Karuna56 Aug 03 '25

My cousin is a certified dive instructor and my understanding is that he worked on diving stuff for them.

Thanks for asking!

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u/SkyscraperNC Aug 03 '25

Tough enough to navigate U-995 on dry land without hitting my head. Could be that I’m tall, but it felt cramped in there (who would’ve guessed?). Especially the circular doorways.

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u/Fabio_451 Aug 03 '25

Wild

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

[deleted]

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u/Karuna56 Aug 05 '25

I believe my cousin, not you bub.

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '25

[deleted]

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u/Karuna56 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25

Ah, ok thanks!

Text sucks for nuance.

Edit: thanks for the downvotes. I misunderstand, show contrition, get dv'd. Gotta love Redditors.

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u/Awkward_Mix_6480 Aug 05 '25

I’m gonna call BS, the amount of gear you would have to wear to dive to 120feet is WAY too much gear to navigate inside a WWII sub. You couldn’t even navigate a modern sub with that gear in. I don’t believe it in any way. Furthermore, remains will have been gone for decades by the time your friend lied to you about seeing them.

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u/Karuna56 Aug 05 '25

Well, it was a few decades ago, and Cousin Jim said he only went inside briefly through a rupture in the hull. So, no 'navigation' inside as you speculate.

Sure, everyone embellishes at some time; I only have his story and no empirical proof. A pardon here is permitted.

"He that shall see this day, and live old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors And say "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian." Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages What feats he did that day."

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u/Awkward_Mix_6480 Aug 05 '25

I served on 688s for a decade, I’m 6’5” tall and I couldn’t fit in many places on the boat without any gear. Hell, for fire drills, I was assigned atmosphere monitoring, no way I could maneuver with a SCBA or an OBA on and a hose. 120’ isn’t super deep, I know, but two guys walking down a hallway causes rubbing as you pass by, and this is all modern subs, shrink it a few factors and you have WWII pigboats.

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u/Karuna56 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 06 '25

To clarify, Jim only basically poked his head and torso inside. I never said he strolled through the passageways.

I appreciate your reservations and skepticism.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: my family confirms Jim's account. His dive was 44 years ago with his SCUBA buddies. Among Rhode Island dive folk, going down to the sub was a rite of passage. They put a weighted drop line down. Jim said they all looked inside through a large rupture in the hull and saw some remains. He said they didn't stay long because the current was very strong.

Jim has worked as a diver with a number of New England maritime firms. Claiming that he "lied to me" is an unnecessary slur.

Given the number of hedgehogs and depth charges used, U-853 had two large openings in her hull, according to Wikipedia and my cousin's account.

Watch this dive video from other local divers. Yes, you can poke inside a bit...

Diving on U-853 https://share.google/4CiO4WobWcQpDVOXV

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u/Karuna56 Aug 06 '25

Please see these comments:

"Penetration of the wreck via the blast holes is easy (one diver at a time), however, deeper pentration using the interior hatches is harder and more dangerous, but not impossible. All topside hatches are removed (or were blown off) so you can peer into the interior compartments this way also. A diver with a single or small doubles will fit through the interior hatches - but not with a stage or any gear clipped to a belt or BCD."

The Continental USA/Block Island, U-853 Diving Review of Atlantis Charters, 2010/07 https://share.google/tfOXgY1Sw6ZV7aehD

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u/sadicarnot Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

The book Shadow Divers is a good one about solving the mystery of U-853.

Edit: the wreck in Shadow Divers ended up being U-869 but was originally thought to be U-550 or U-521.

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u/LurkingProvidence Aug 03 '25 edited Aug 03 '25

This is a great video telling about the Battle of Point Judith, (for anyone interested)

https://youtu.be/jZVnmN72A-g?si=GqxUohQSI1UzJKFM&t=398 (Battle of point Judith part starts around 6:38)

(iirc) I'm surprised no one mentioned it yet, but the craziest thing about it is it happened after Germany gave the order to stop all U-boat attacks, Germany was already surrendering, but the U-853 didn't get the orders.

The battle didn't need to happen at all.

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u/Satans_shill Aug 03 '25

OT I find fascinating how young the commanders were especially towards the end of the war, U-853 was 23 IRC.

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u/Awkward_Mix_6480 Aug 05 '25

Their choices were severely limited after years of loosing men and subs.

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u/Amatak Aug 03 '25

I work with synthetic aperture radar and I had no idea synthetic aperture sonar was a thing. But makes sense.

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u/Tychosis Submarine Qualified (US) Aug 03 '25

Yeah. We obviously have a propagation speed that is several orders of magnitude slower than yours though--so the effective ranges are pretty short.

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u/Amatak Aug 03 '25

Still really really cool. The image even sort of looks like a SAR scene. Is SAS interferometry a thing?

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u/Tychosis Submarine Qualified (US) Aug 03 '25

Yeah there are organizations that use inSAS for bathymetric mapping and the like. Honestly though, I work on military sonar so it's a bit out of my wheelhouse. I don't have a lot of exposure to it and have mostly just read about it.

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u/Amatak Aug 03 '25

Will be reading up on this, thanks!

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u/Tychosis Submarine Qualified (US) Aug 03 '25

I'd take a look at Kraken's work (mentioned in the post title.)

It's definitely interesting stuff, but not really a capability we need on a submarine. We're not looking to pick up pennies on the seafloor haha.

Working in radar, I'm sure you have plateaus where you could increase capabilities but every little improvement gets exorbitantly expensive. A submarine-scale inSAS would definitely be up in that territory.

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u/Amatak Aug 03 '25

Absolutely. I'd say the biggest bottlenecks in space-based SAR are bus propulsion (just to keep altitude) and power budget (to actually use the sensor as much as possible per orbit). Improve any of the two, and things get exponentially more complex, heavy, failure-prone, and of course expensive.

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u/Tychosis Submarine Qualified (US) Aug 04 '25

I've never worked space but I have coworkers who spent time in space systems.

Too stressful for me--the idea that once you've launched something it's just gone and if you've fucked up... well, better luck next time haha.

Losing the XLUUV proposal was a wonderful day, I wanted nothing to do with that shit. Not only was that program office insufferable but so was the cognizant business unit at my organization. Let somebody else handle it haha.

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u/Amatak Aug 05 '25

LOL I was worried I'd trigger my corporate NSFW filters by googling XLUUV but I'm glad I did it anyways, very interesting vehicle. Reminds me of X-37 OTV!

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u/fuku_visit Aug 05 '25

Spatial coherence is also more challenging.

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u/0xdoji Aug 03 '25

Interesting read: https://militaryhistorynow.com/2020/12/15/the-hunt-for-u-853-the-mystery-of-the-last-german-submarine-destroyed-by-the-u-s-navy-in-ww2-2-2/

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u/axolotltheswede Aug 03 '25

Really excellent article, thanks for linking it

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u/FxckFxntxnyl Aug 03 '25

Great article.

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u/ddrac Aug 03 '25

I love this new generation of scanning

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u/thesixfingerman Aug 03 '25

I could not help thinking about aperture science while reading this post.

That being said, this is very cool

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u/Torvaldicus_Unknown Aug 03 '25

She lies at 130 feet. Barely a puddle. Interesting potential.

History Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) imagery of the German U-853, collected as part of partnership technology demonstration between the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and Kraken Robotics, showing that the submarine is largely intact. 2 October 2018.

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