THE 'SEEHUND' RECOVERY
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- Опубліковано 1 січ 2025
- Towards the end of World War II, a German two-man submarine of the Seehund Seal Class with two live torpedoes grounded on the Dutch coast near Egmond aan Zee. The sea and the sand did their work and it dissapeared from sight, subsequently to be completely forgotten until a classic North Sea winter storm partly exposed the hull. The Dutch Navy ordered recovery of the sub so the torpedos could be safely disarmed.
April 2002, complying with strict regulations, SVITZER Salvage and partner Woud Wormer sank a cofferdam around the still partly sunken sub. Carefully sand was removed and even more careful handling exposed the torpedoes which were disarmed by specialists.
Despite the submarine had broken, it is hoped nonetheless that it will find a place in a local museum to serve as a reminder of past time.
I lived in Holland in 1996/7 and how these people could do with water,what they needed to accomplish/to complete whatever they needed, never ceased to astound me....and they live below sea level, thanks to their own ingenuity!👍
This mini sub now rests at it’s final place in a museum. Bunkermuseum in IJmuiden. They rescued the mini sub from the because it was going to scraped etc. They even had contact with the former captain and have quite a lot of info about this mini sub.
Ive learned much from my bro-in-law a retired EOD Specialist...who has trained with all EOD people of other countries years ago involved with NATO. These guys in this clip are "guttsy" . Im told they train, train, train and learn...to avoid getting hurt. Hats off to such a gifted bunch who help protect us all.!!!
thank you very much for uploading the video with so many detailes of the recvovery!. i am very sure, that i had been smimming and walking there several times in the 80ies and early nienties at holiday with my parents. memories to eastern vaccation now.
Nice video and explanation on why it was done this way. Glad everyone was safe.
These mini subs sinking 100,000 tons of shipping in the latter years of the war is astounding. That’s a lot of tonnage given the times and the small size of the mini submarines. A very interesting video, thank you.
History continues seventy years later!!! Great video!!!
@Bill Williams You say that like the "world'" had nothing do do with it.
17:00 That's a masive plume of water! I lived in Saint-Nazaire, and we regularily got EOD teams at work in town and at the beach because of all the german activities and allied bombing during ww2.
Really, And what was the size of the triggering charge?
And people are complaining about fishes dying....Where do they think they can explode these on land safely?
My grandfather Commander Tom Boyd took part in the St Nazaire raid and won the DSO.
The Seehund was a 2 man mini submarine. The crew sat behind each other in canvas chairs. It carried two torpedoes externally
To those who ask "Why didn't they just blow the torpedo’s in place and save all the money ?" The answer is it would have spread all the other recoverable pollutants all over the place and cleaned up nothing. That is the lead from the internal batteries, the copper and brass from the wardhead casing which after 70 odd years 'still shined'. The wiring, other brass fittings, oil from the engine, alloys and so the list goes on, all would have been spread far and wide, and not cleaned away.
Not if covered with blast pads.
The true reason is they have unlimited budget paid from Germany
Yes lead does not come from the earth.
Greta said not to
@@philiphorner31 pissant question. Oil also comes from the ground. You want me to spread a 55 gal drum of used oil all over your living space???? Same with lead, especially lead oxide that is found in acid filled batteries. Now do you get the message??
Nerves of steel working so close to those torpedoes , you would find me one mile down from those things!
yeah, must be made for jobs like these.
but the human psyche has normally a protective "device". the more time you spend at a danergerous situation(explosives, fire, speed, on a roof or at clibing, parachuting ...) the more you loose the fear in it. only respect and carefulnes remains (if the people were clever and not addicted in adrenalin)...but a little tiny risk still remains, as seen in göttingen in 2013 as 3 very experienced war material removers were killed while prepreparings for a dismantling of a 500kg bomb with an acidic detonator..
Man! Those torpedos still had alot of kick left in them! Good thing they had pros handle them.
These men are amazing with their most danger work environment wow what courage these men have.
The contractors having plenty of experience in moving sand, is an understatement for the Dutch.
The British Royal Navy museum has a nice working example of a German Bieber mini submarine .
Look up the episode of Salvage Squad on here.
Was this one a Bieber? Does not seem to be a Seehund.
Awesome video. I enjoyed it. Thank you.
I was there in that pit next to the Seehund to do a inviromental survey of the seefloor,very nice to find this video after al these years
I really like these salvage videos from Svitzer - are there any plans to make some newer ones of more recent work done? Thanks!
Six years ago, any updates?
The remains are on display at the Bunker Museum Ijmuiden (NL) bunkermuseum.nl/expo-atlantic-wall-2/
does seem like a major project for what is being done
True, but worth it if it cleans of the explosives from your swimming/living area by time :)
Absolutely, Sam. One has to admire the skills and efficiency of the Dutch salvors. Real pros
@Dragomir Ronilac What's your solution? Let kids find it after a storm and blow up?
The lag in the camera footage is so choppy, they need a faster speed SD card :P
It's like watching American NTSC footage in NZ (converted to PAL).. that appears to drop a frame every 15 or so (a couple a second) just enough to make action look oh so frustrating.
Luckily Movies at the time were obviously better quality but I still see it sometimes even on SKY digital... (I found an excellent app for android and made an NZ Sky remote that I put in my channel but I don't know if anyone has (or can) try it..
A lot of their videos are like that. May be a conversion issue as mentioned.
Great video, thanks for recording such event. History is important
This type of work, which I thought was called “cofferdam” (an enclosure built within a body of water to allow the enclosed area to be pumped out) seems so complicated. Yet, it has been used for centuries. Good work. Music background? … well, it ain’t that bad.
Interesting, I did not even know about this type of German U boat.
Eine wirklich gute und informative Dokumentation. Sowas bekommt man im deutschen Fernsehen leider nicht zu sehen.
guck mal richtig ...;)
Did they send the disposal bill to Germany?
Quit smoking grass, dude...
Amazing that those live torpedoes sat there for so long ready to blow. Lucky nothing triggered them with a beach full of people....
So. how much of that explosion was actual torpedo and how much of it was the charge used to set it off ?
So drlling offshore creates greater shock waves than the surf zone during a storm?
Framerate? Which framerate?
No mention of what the cost of the operation was with men, materials and equipment - what ever it was - it wasn't cheap!
About €1.000.000 at that time.
excellent , interesting video. Thank you.
Why are These SVITZER vides always so jerky? The audio is smooth, but not the video?
....and the CSS Hunley which sank in 1864, is in far better shape, while it's being restored in a museum in Charleston, South Carolina.
WOW what a Nice recovery and very Professionally Removed!! Top of the Line Recovery by WEISMULLER SALVAGE and everybody was SAFE !! WEISMULLER SALVAGE UR THE BEST !!
i like when the one guy says "everytime we do this there's something special" like they recover submarines everyday.
+Glen Collins -- The Dutch salvage firm Mammoet recovered the sunken Russian submarine Kursk, so perhaps they don't recover submarines every day, but surprisingly often.
+Kevin Byrne ok
They kinda do. They are professional salvers.
Speaking of blowing things up, I can't imagine why they don't attempt to safely detonate the torpedoes, and if that fails, they can perhaps work more quickly and at much less risk and expense to salvage or just get rid of the danger. It's only sand, why so much care taken?
Please explain to me why this old ordnance was not detonated in place. An ariel launched smart bomb or well placed tnt would have done it. Then fill in the hole.
yea lets throw an aerial smart bomb through 6 meters of sand and hope it works first time around. without showering the houses behind the dunes with shrapnel... >_> If you could solve everything by bombing it ignorant comments like these would be a thing of the past.....
@@EdHunter55 they said the area was not populated.....
Merle Morrison
The explosive experts and locals say there are homes on the other side of the sand dunes at the site. People narrating these videos are wrong in what they say more often than not.
Because scattering sharp frags all over a public beach is less than brilliant...
If I were Danish, I would have to ask why? I think drill holes around the sub, put in a few tons of TNT, get everyone out of there, and just blow up the sub and the torpedoes into smaller pieces. Cost? A lot less than what was spent.
Why Danish?
Deaf too?
Was the Seehund preserved and restored to static display condition?
Its a pretty deteriorated and rusty bit of mangled metal.
Oh my dear lord thank god no one was hurt ! A great job ! A privilege to see this excavation! How dangerous,
Holland just let it sit on the beach for 50 years with live torpedoes under it????
The submarine is just one of the tens of thousands of tons of unexploded munitions in the Netherlands. There has been a clean-up effort ongoing since the end of WW2 and they are STILL busy. The submarine was stable and away from a populated area. The chance of anyone getting hurt was extremely low and the cost of removal was fairly high.
and they could have spent the money on making new weapons?
roderick fysh
Why would they do that?
I'm not so sure it's that easy to cause a torpedo to detonate, especially after being UNDER a beach for decades. But then, it's German ordinance, I don't know what type of detonator it used and the only expert I know on the subject died in a stupid auto accident 50 years after the war was over. Unbelievable that he survived so much in WW2 and died because some young, drunken fool wanted his side of the road too.
just in case.
Should of restored it for history
Who encoded this? My eyes hurt.
One guy with a fucking excavator and a 3 man blasting crew would have got that done for so many millions of dollars less..
why risk it by taking on board ship/ why not blow it up in the dingey.
I know it's part of history, but there is nothing left!
Absolutely incredible job. I wonder how much it cost.
Around €1.000.000 at that time
@@Gremriel - And where did that money come from...?
@@pedrolistacarey4880 The recovery was ordered by the navy (because of the torpedos).
@@Gremriel - So, according to your answer, I grab it that the money came from the Navy's budget.
no minisubs where hurt in the recording of this documentary.
Okay, but the videos is giving me a nervous tick.
Funny what beautiful things are possible with stop motion filming. This Lego movie looks so real it's amazing.
Finally, our brothers in Europa have realized there is life after wearing banana hammock for swim wear! 😂
it seem like a long approach to a short problem. . it's out in the open, nothing around. why not set charges and blow the tubes right there. thats the way they do world wide to get rid of explosives found. oh well it's done.
there is a village right behind the dunes you see in the video, it woul have broken a lot off windows! 500 kgm off high explosives going off is no joke...
Thank goodness for the experts commenting, where would we be without them?
Hard to imagine that 2 men were in this mini sub.. They have to be nuts to do want to sail in that..
Imagine when Truk lagoon finally goes off.....
if you see the welding at 4.50 you know why it collapsed
Excellent video, thank you very much. Too bad the sub was in such bad shape, hopefully something can be done to it to make it look like a sub again. JT
Did das boat end up being displayed/preserved?
facebook.com/bunkermuseumijm/photos/a.1542860612593987/2045394409007269/?type=3&theater
How much $$$$ did this project cost
how many fish were stunned?
Wow ! Still deadly after all these years....
Dutch engineering is just amazing.
How much sea life was lost due to the detonations?
fewer than the Batteries and Tropedos would kill if there left it there
What about the MILLIONS of explosions of torpedoes and depth charges thrown all over the oceans during the 6 years of WW2...?
No mention of the souls on board?
Fancy leaving it there all those years!
No
Can you tell me what the final cost of this operation was ? Oh BTW, the propellors from the torpedoes -They were no where to be found, correct me if I am wrong. Bedankt
Of course not, someone sold it to a foundry right after the craft was beached.
they where stil on the remains after the "salvage". (in fact y have seen them just 2 days after the recovery.)
@Dragomir Ronilac Great answer. You should be a politician.
That was one heck of a bang at around 17 minutes in.
WIJSMULLER? Is that the same tug/salvage company which produced TOM WYSMULLER, the late former NASA meteorologist?
Why would a land mine or shell cases be around the sub?
Because vast areas of beaches in Western Europe were mined in preperation for the Allied invasion.
I wanted to see how they took the screws off the detonator.
I thought the documentary was interesting. The video quality far as the lag or choppiness really hindered watching the video. Made me a bit nauseous.
It won't start?
how many fish were killed?
It's been over four years how's the restoration of the sub coming along or cleaning
They where still live ! That explosion 💥 was huge!
Yeah but that was only a tiny section of the explosive force those torpedoes can unleash.
Pretty good charge for an old bomb.
4:51 I don’t comment often. However that precise weld looks like hammerd dog sh$t. Any welder worth his salt knows you don’t weld down hill, you can only see it for a second but it literally looks like someone stuck bubble gum all over. I understand it’s temporary but it is supposed to potentially hold back a lot of water and sand.
4:49 that weld looks just terrible.
I'm a welder myself and thought the same. That worker has no experience in doing vertical welds.
How much would it cost to salvage theRICHARD MONTGOMERY by this method? Unbelievable wast of money
Ernests Auzins That’s the worst weld I have ever seen I don’t weld much but it never looks like that fuck it’s blobs of steel!!
@@colinwalsh6447 I think the risk out-weighs the reward with the Richard Montgomery. The torps had about 500kg of explosive, but the RM has 1500 tons, so goodbye to all the windows in Sheerness if they make a mistake salvaging that wreck. Still when a project (like the Esturary airport) comes along that will be profitable enough they'll find a way to remove it. Until then the Government and the MOD doesn't really care how many injuries or how much ecological damage will be caused if it goes off, just as long as they don't have to find the money to deal with it.
You guys crack me up. I was scanning for the comments about the welding and wasn't disappointed.->grind it out and start again
. @@chapiit08
Weismoller job?
Great video. It's a shame it was in such bad shape. It looked worse off than the Hunley when it was recovered.
Actually the Hunley was in great shape considering the time buried.
i wonder if the germans want it back
I miss my VHS PLAYER
Good lesson on how government wastes money...
"The notorious west coast of Holland". As opposed to the east coast you mean?
Seriously? All that effort, money, and danger to the workers?
Just find the right depth, dig a hole, put some explosives in and blow the whole shit out of the sand. Problem solved.
Much faster, much safer, much cheaper.
Oh, the batteries will pollute the environment!!
I'm pretty sure the smoke, oil leaks and gases produced by all those machines on the beach did much more damage to the environment as the poor batteries would ever be able to do (if they hadn't already done it).
Looks like someone was just up for some big bucks.
Did it find a place in a museum where it´s possible to see it when wisiting?
I want to see it, if so.
I saw it ending up for scrap some years ago. It was just to far gone..
I have pictures of it, dumped in a container to go to the smelter....
In Germany there are several in excellent conditions.
It is in the "Bunkermuseum" in IJmuiden.
Seehund is the nickname of type of sub it was, the XXVII midget sub. the one they are digging up is the u-5095.
I wonder who is the legal owner of the sub. I doubt it was donated by the Germans except perhaps the torpedoes were meant as gifts. Why was it not removed ages ago? It would have made a nifty and unusual family cruiser, with some mods, of course.
It wasn't removed ages ago, because nobody knew it was there. A fierce storm resulted in the remains becoming visible.
Mensch, da habe ich immer Urlaub gemacht!
Sure the marine life was well happy about the 20m depth
Maybe I'm dumber than a sack of hammers, but, wouldn't it have been a lot safer and cheaper just to place a huge explosive charge on top of the thing and blow it to kingdom come?
The sailors who were inside did a clever job beaching it and so saving numerous lives and theirs!!!!!We all can be proud of them nomatter what nationality we are.
Y they dident just dig whole blow the torpedo would of ben efective and cheaper
I do love the fact the reason they did this was because they "were afraid off shore drilling causing tremors" (unproven by the way) but all that heavy equipment and supplies moving around the beach and then driving all those sheet piles were not going to set them off?
And the sub could only be reached during a low tide with a easterly wind in a unpopulated area. so even if they did go off it most likely would have been under feet of water and them more feet of sand. Should have just left them
Last, they transfer the ready to go off warheads from the zodiac to the ship while they both were underway at a good speed. Did they need the extra challenge or were they not worried about it going off if it banged into the ship?
nope, they where inpact detonators, still really stable afte all that time under water/sand.
drilling for oil doesn't cause the tremors it's the removal of oil or gas that does. therefor working around it with heavy machines is not the issue. Tremors like the province of Groningen has from time to time due to gas extraction with tremors in excess of 3.0 on the Richter scale could in a worst-case scenario.
awesome video
We really dont need the 'music'
I would like to see this on a non Big Tech platform.
Please.
my eyes are burning from the corrupt framerate of the video
Never underestimate the power of Mother Nature.
While my father was stationed on Guam the EOD (explosive ordinance disposal)Team would come in every year to the schools and show us how and what happens to those who handle or manipulate ordinance.
NEVER HANDLE ORDINANCE!!!
CALL POLICE OR MILITARY!!!
Every year there are reports of people in the Netherlands dying of ordnance explotions in sheds by idiots using grinders. They deserve it...