Qualla: SM U-20 (Germany)

SM U-20 (Germany): Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger was peering through his periscope on the afternoon of 7 May 1915 when he spotted a vessel with four funnels and two masts approaching through the haze off the southern coast of Ireland. He noted the silhouette, identified it as a passenger liner, and fired a single torpedo. Eighteen minutes later, the RMS Lusitania lay on the seabed with 1,197 souls, and the submarine that killed her -- SM U-20 -- had set in motion a chain of events that would reshape the First World War. Today the rusted conning tower of that U-boat sits on a museum lawn in Thorsminde, Denmark, a monument to a single afternoon that changed the trajectory of nations.

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SM U-20 (Germany): One Torpedo, Two Explosions

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-20 was a Type U 19 submarine, launched on 18 December 1912 in Danzig and commissioned into the Imperial German Navy on 5 August 1913. She was a capable boat, but it was a single patrol in May 1915 that made her infamous. Three months before that fateful afternoon, Germany had d...

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SM U-20 (Germany): A Kaiser's Scribbled Fury

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Before Schwieger could dock at Wilhelmshaven for refueling, the United States had lodged a formal protest in Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm II, reading the American note, scrawled in its margins: "Utterly impertinent," "outrageous," and "this is the most insolent thing in tone and bearin...

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SM U-20 (Germany): Stranded on the Jutland Shore

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-20's war ended not in battle but in mechanical failure. On 4 November 1916, her engines gave out and she ran aground on the Danish coast south of the village of Vrist, just north of Thorsminde. Her crew tried to scuttle her the following day, detonating explosives that damaged ...

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SM U-20 (Germany): Ghosts Beneath the Sand

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1984, the American adventure novelist Clive Cussler and his National Underwater and Marine Agency claimed to have located U-20's submerged remains a short distance offshore. The find added another layer to a story that has never stopped generating debate. Was the Lusitania arm...

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