SM UB-3 - Service Career

Service Career

The submarine was commissioned into the German Imperial Navy as SM UB-3 on 14 March under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Siegfried Schmidt, a 27-year-old, first-time U-boat skipper, and underwent trials in German home waters.

As one of the UB I boats selected for Mediterranean duty, UB-3 was readied for rail shipment. The process of shipping a UB I boat involved breaking the submarine down into what was essentially a knock down kit. Each boat was broken into approximately fifteen pieces and loaded on to eight railway flatcars. UB-3 was shipped to the port of Pola, site of ally Austria–Hungary's main naval base, on 15 April. After UB-3's parts arrived at Pola, it took about two weeks to assemble them. UB-3 joined the Pola Flotilla (German: Deutsche U-Halbflotille Pola) on 1 May.

By late May, UB-3 had made her way down the Adriatic to the Austro–Hungarian port of Cattaro, the base from which most boats of the Pola Flotilla actually operated. For her first patrol, UB-3 was loaded with ammunition for Turkish forces at İzmir, Turkey. Because of her limited range, UB-3 was towed by an Austro-Hungarian Navy destroyer through the Straits of Otranto and cast off near the island of Kérkira. UB-3's planned route was south of the Ionian Islands, around the Peloponnese, through the Cyclades, north around Khios and Karaburun, and into the Gulf of İzmir. If all went well, UB-3 would have arrived at İzmir on 28 or 29 May with about half her fuel left. The Germans received a garbled radio message from UB-3 when she was about 80 nautical miles (150 km) from İzmir, but were unable to completely understand it. No trace of UB-3 has ever been found. UB-3 was the first of the UB I boats to be lost during the war.

A postwar German study concluded that UB-3's loss was probably the result of some unexplained technical problem, because there were no minefields along UB-3's route and no record of any attacks against U-boats in the area. British records, and some sources based on them, give the particulars of UB-3's demise as being in the North Sea on 24 April 1916, which authors R. H. Gibson and Maurice Prendergast assert was actually the fate of UB-13. They also point out that UB-3 had gone missing nearly a year before UB-3's supposed sinking in the North Sea.