Qualla: SM U-27

SM U-27: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the morning of 18 October 1914, between the river Ems and the island of Borkum, a U-boat commander named Bernd Wegener watched something that should not have been there. An object the shape of a buoy, in water with no buoy. He dived, closed the distance, surfaced just enough to look through his periscope, and made out the number 83 painted on a small conning tower. A British submarine, HMS E3, on patrol from Harwich. Wegener tracked her for two hours, manoeuvring patiently to attack from the sun-side where her lookouts could not easily see him. At three hundred metres he fired two G6 torpedoes. Twelve seconds later, the explosion took E3 down with all twenty-eight of her crew. It was the first time in history that one submarine had sunk another.

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SM U-27: A New Kind of War

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The killing of E3 was a marker. Submarines had existed in some form for decades, but they had been thought of as coastal nuisances - useful for harbour defence, perhaps for the occasional raid on shipping. Nobody had quite worked out what would happen when two of them met. Wegene...

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SM U-27: The U-27 War Patrol

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Through the autumn and winter, U-27 continued to make a name for herself. On 31 October 1914, she sank the seaplane carrier HMS Hermes in the Straits of Dover. In March 1915 she took the armed merchant cruiser HMS Bayano off the coast of Stranraer. In May she sank two merchantmen...

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SM U-27: Baralong, Off the Old Head

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 19 August 1915, the same day a different U-boat sank the White Star liner SS Arabic, U-27 surfaced near a small steamer in the Western Approaches. The steamer was flying the neutral American flag. She was not what she appeared. She was HMS Baralong, a Royal Navy Q-ship - a hea...

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SM U-27: The Killing in the Water

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Twelve German sailors survived the sinking. They swam toward Baralong looking for rescue. They did not find it. Baralong's commanding officer Godfrey Herbert - operating under what an internal British inquiry described only as unofficial advice from two Admiralty Secret Service o...

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SM U-27: What Was Left

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The wreck of U-27 lies somewhere in the Western Approaches, west of the Old Head of Kinsale, sixty-four nautical miles or so from the coast. She has never been definitively located. Her crew - the men killed by torpedo and shellfire, and the twelve killed in the water - rest with...

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