“Decommissioned Submarine U17 Attracts Crowds During Transport on the Rhine”

The pushed convoy with the decommissioned submarine U17 left Mainz on Tuesday morning for Mannheim. In the Rhineland-Palatinate state capital, the submarine attracted many interested people on Monday.

The pushed convoy left Mainz on Tuesday morning as planned and is now driving on to Mannheim. On Wednesday we go to the landing stage in Speyer. From there the submarine is to cross the street into May 21st Technology Museum Speyer be brought, where various work is done before U17 to its final destination in Technology Museum Sinsheim is transported.

Many people on the banks of the Rhine in Mainz because of the submarine

The submarine docked in front of the Mainz customs port at Rhine kilometer 500 early Monday evening and attracted many interested parties. The pushed convoy was very close to the bank and was illuminated all night, said Simone Lingner from the Technik Museum Sinsheim when asked by SWR. Interested parties could take a close look at the U17s.

Lingner was enthusiastic about the fact that so many people want to see the ship: “Everything is great, even the weather is playing along. It’s really nice.” Live tracking from the Technikmuseum Speyer shows exactly where the boat is at the moment.

Viewers have many questions about the submarine

The Technik Museum team answered many of the viewers’ questions. One of the most frequently asked questions was why the boat doesn’t travel along the Rhine itself. The answer: Since it has been demilitarized, it can no longer swim because the diving chambers have been destroyed. In addition, the boat has a draft of four meters and this does not allow the journey on the Rhine, as the draft there is only two meters in places.

Crowds also flocked to the submarine in Lahnstein

U17 had already caused a lot of interest on Sunday evening on the banks of the Rhine in Oberlahnstein. The submarine took its anchorage near the mouth of the Lahn – at the roadstead at the so-called Hafenköppchen. Even when it was already dark, more and more people came to see the illuminated submarine in the water.

Transport from Kiel to Sinsheim

U17 was loaded onto a pontoon at the ThyssenKrupp Marine System shipyard in Kiel at the end of April. The submarine had been demilitarized there in the past few weeks. The old submarine has been on its way to Speyer since April 28th.

According to the President of the Sinsheim Speyer Museum of Technology, Hermann Layher, the large-scale transport of the decommissioned submarine is a huge logistical challenge.

When announcing the project, he said that the transport would be carried out with a pontoon suitable for the high seas and rivers – from Kiel via the Kiel Canal, the North Sea and the Rhine. “This will be a transport on the border of what is feasible,” says Layher literally.

New life as a museum submarine in Sinsheim

According to the information, U17 had been in use since 1973 and was retired in December 2010 in Eckernförde. The special thing about this example is that it was the first post-war submarine to cross the Atlantic during a training program.

After being decommissioned, U17 was in a naval arsenal in Wilhelmshaven for eleven years until the boat set sail for the last time in July 2021. From there it was towed to Kiel.