A malfunctioning high-tech toilet forces a German U-boat to the surface off the coast of Scotland, where it is promptly attacked by a British aircraft.
Anyone who’s been on a small boat knows how problematic the flush-plumbing can be. Still, it beats the old days of using a bucket, or just letting go over the side.
Over the side is not usually an option on a submarine.
U-1206, sailing out of Kristiansand, Norway, was cruising at a depth of roughly two hundred feet when the commander, Kapitänleutnant Karl-Adolf Schlitt, decided to answer a call of nature. The submarine was a late-war type VIIC, carrying a new kind of toilet designed for use at greater depths. The techno-toilet was just a little buggy. Schlitt (no, we did not make that name up) had trouble operating it. When he called an engineer for help, the man opened the wrong valve, allowing seawater to enter. The water reached the batteries under the toilet, and the submarine began filling with chlorine gas, forcing Schlitt to order U-1206 surfaced. Unfortunately for the Germans, the vessel was only ten miles off the Scottish coast, and it was quickly spotted by the British.
The crew was still blowing clean air into their U-boat when an aircraft appeared and attacked, killing four men on deck and damaging the U-boat so badly that it couldn’t dive. Schlitt, seeing the game was up, gave the order to scuttle and abandon ship.
It was an ignominious end to Schlitt’s only combat patrol of the war as a commander. The wreck of the U-1206 remained undisturbed until the mid-1970s, when workers laying an oil pipeline came across the hulk sprawled on the seabed at 230 feet.—TL