Deep Wreck Mysteries

Stealth Sub (2x1)

Uitzenddatum: Feb 23, 2009

In August 1944, during the 2nd World War, four Allied ships are mysteriously destroyed without warning off the coast of Southern England. Sixty years later, in the English Channel, 20 kilometres south west of the Isle of Wight, 55 metres down, the sea reveals a 2nd World War German submarine unlike any found before. Using revolutionary investigative techniques, a team of underwater detectives discover a story of invention and heroism, and a secret stealth technology. Identified as U-480, it was the first U-boat to go into successful action with a special coating that made it invisible to sonar. But not even this could save the submarine from a fatal trap set by the Allies. The most effective submarine detection device the wartime Allied Navy develops is ASDIC. It sends out pulses of sound and listens for echoes from the thick steel hull of U-boats. As the war progressed, this and other techniques meant that U-boats from being the hunters became the hunted and the Germans began to lose the submarine war. To regain the upper hand, in August 1944, the Germans dispatch a very special submarine U-480 to lie in wait under the main shipping lanes that cross the English Channel. 4 ships, totalling 14,000 tonnes and including the Canadian warship, HMCS Alberni and the British minesweeper HMS Loyalty were sunk without warning. But how in one of the most heavily-patrolled sectors of the English Channel was the submarine able to make its fatal attacks completely undetected? Dives down to the submarine 60 years later reveal it is covered in a strange rubber coating. Is this responsible for the submarine remaining undetected? Remarkably a crewmember of the U-480 survived the war and talks about life in the submarine and what he thought was the secret of its success. But the Allies had a plan to deal with these troublesome submarines. Only now do previously Top Secret files reveal the devious traps they laid and how they enticed the Germans to fall into them. Close examinat