All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S07E05.El.Dorado.Canyon.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

Narrator: A desert canyon
where fortunes were made

and fates were sealed.

There's not much here
besides desert and rock,

what would draw people here?

Well, in these remote
inhospitable locations

the answer is usually the same.

Money.

A mighty cliff top complex
on the island of Malta.

It was damp, it was dark,

it was like being in
a cell in many ways.

But things would have
been much worse in battle.

A rural area in Poland that
once connected the world.

A lot of the electronics
are still here,

this two megawatt transmitter
it's, I mean it's just unheard of.

That's enough to
power a small town.

And an island fortress in
Scotland with a dramatic back story.

It was armed to the teeth with
guns, canon and anti-air defence.

But all these guns were useless

against the main
threat of that time.

Decaying relics.

Ruins of lost worlds.

Sites haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting
to be revealed.

The wilds of Nevada usa,

in a hostile desert

are the haunting
remains of a settlement.

This place is only a 45
minute drive from Las Vegas

but it feels like a million
miles away from the casinos,

the bright lights
and the glamour.

I mean you can see
that there are a number

of man made structures
around, there's some large tanks,

there's bits of machinery.

Old wooden buildings are
echoes of the 19th century.

But scattered around
are remnants of the 20th.

There's this rusting
old abandoned truck,

a crashed plane.

This place looks like it's
trapped in some type of time warp.

This is a wild place.

If the climate doesn't
get you then nature will.

Humans were never designed
to live in a place like this.

The place is filled with
decaying machinery.

But what was it all for?

If you're gonna go to
somewhere so extreme,

you have to be
drawn by something

and usually in places like this

it's something to do
with what's in the ground.

This entrance had been
covered up for 80 years

but when we
popped into this thing,

there's a half a
mile of tunnel in here

that nobody had been
in for years and years.

People came here
to make their fortunes

but for some life would
turn out very differently.

There's nine
different levels in here,

there's three miles of tunnels
and it goes 600 feet deep.

Tony werly first came to
the tunnels 25 years ago.

They were dug as part of a
search for a precious mineral.

This is an extremely hard rock,

this is like a number
seven hard from one to ten,

this is a seven which
is stronger than cement.

To come here, you
need a pretty good reason

and in the most
extreme locations like this

that's usually to make money.

What they were looking for

was not only hard
but glistening white.

This is a vein, you can
see it runs from here

all the way over into here

and you see it's
running up the mountain.

The white rock here would
be the source of untold wealth.

The first person to
recognise it's value

was a man called John moss.

John moss was your
classic frontiersman,

they really should be
making movies about this guy.

He was the first non-native

to descend the Colorado
river rapids by raft.

He spent three-and-a-half
days being drenched,

ducked and pounded by the river

as he travelled through
the Grand Canyon.

Originally from utica New York,

moss was on an expedition
into western america.

He apparently had a
real gift for languages

and he spent a lot of
time travelling around

with almost two dozen
different native American tribes

which allowed him to
immerse himself in their culture.

Moss was drawn to
Nevada by rumours

about that strange white
rock in the mountains.

He suspected it was quartz,
a mineral that forms in veins

when hot magma
interacts with ground water.

Quartz is sio2, it's silica,

it's one of the most abundant
minerals on the planet,

it can occur in
certain different ways

as these veins, rich in silica

but rich in other
minerals like lead,

zinc, silver and sometimes gold.

Moss analysed the mineral
and his hunch was confirmed.

This is El dorado canyon,

home to the richest gold
deposits in southern Nevada.

Once the miners found
this white coarse vein,

they never left track of
it, they just keep it in sight,

and so they'll chase
it wherever it goes.

As you go into the mountain,
the geology changes,

maybe your vein suddenly
goes off on a different angle.

So you'd follow that

if that's where the
potential resource was.

However, following
the trail of quartz

was only the first part
of a complicated process.

It's important to note here,

they're not finding
big gold nuggets,

in this situation a lot of the gold
is small particles in the veins.

Carts filled with quartz
were pulled out of the tunnels.

But extracting gold from
it was not only expensive

but potentially deadly.

You have to crush this
rock up as fine as you can,

all the way down to
the texture of flour.

The crushed quartz was then
mixed with a very toxic chemical.

You would mix it in these
big cyanide tanks here

and the cyanide would pull
the microscopic pieces of gold

and silver out of the ore.

But with high risk
came big rewards.

El dorado was making
money hand over fist.

The gold mining that took place in
El dorado canyon is phenomenal.

About $200 million worth of gold
and silver came out of that mine.

For every tonne of quartz,
28g of gold was extracted.

But the greater challenge

was getting the
gold out of El dorado.

Everything has to be
shipped in by water,

trucked up the canyon
through the Colorado river.

In the mid 1800s,

there was only one
port in the canyon.

A small dock on the river
called Nelson's landing.

But despite the
harshness of the conditions,

despite the difficulty in
getting the supplies there,

what's being
produced is so valuable

that you actually get
pretty heavy traffic

in and out of the canyon

and Nelson's landing turns out to
be one of the busiest transition points

for supplies in
the whole region.

Cut off from law
abiding society,

El dorado eventually became
a hotbed for criminal activity.

At a time when much of
the us was under prohibition,

here there was a
thriving black market.

It's said that the alcohol
produced there for you know,

pennies was actually sold

for up to $1 a gallon
just across state lines.

Nelson's landing had
turned into a pirates bay.

Back in the late 1800s,

El dorado canyon was
one of the most violent

and lawless places in america.

Yeah it's a bad place to be,

in the 1880s not even a
killing is a good enough reason

to bring the sheriff out here.

200 miles away,

he tells them they have to
fend for themselves out here.

Local miner, John
riggs, later wrote,

"I never think there
was another place

"in proportion to the population

"where so many
murders were committed.

"And the perpetrators never bought
to justice or even apprehended."

Greed, vice and murder

made El dorado
Nevada's first sin city.

But it wasn't the arrival of the
law that eventually bought it down.

When world war ii started,

all the miners that worked
at the mine went to war.

This mine right here is
where they were when they left,

when they came
back from world war ii,

they never opened
this mine again.

It's said that $1 million in gold
was left in the El dorado mine

but nowadays it would
cost 2 million to dig it out.

The mine has been
silent for 80 years.

But the wrecks
of military vehicles

are signs that the drama here
continued in a different way.

Hollywood came to El dorado
to film '3,000 miles to Graceland'.

Big names, a big budget, car
chases and a crashed plane.

But it was a bomb.

But good film or bad film,

the legacy remains and
we see it before us now.

Hidden in plain sight on
the south east coast of Malta,

a great complex stands
guard over the shore.

Got these azure seas,
rocky Sandy beaches,

you've got these tall
cliffs rising out of the sea.

And as your eye
follows these rocky cliffs,

your eye suddenly realises

that you're not looking
at a cliff anymore.

Look at those bars
on the windows.

If I didn't know any better,

I'd think this was a
place designed to lock up

the most desperate criminals.

It has a almost
prison like quality

and yet given it's placement
right on this important coastline

that argues that
this is probably a fort.

Viewed from above, the
distinctive features confirm

that this place was
built for defence.

Here we can see
elements of a fortress

that date back years

but we also see elements
that are clearly modern.

That are clearly meant to
withstand 20th century weapons.

When you think about
all the Greek, Italian,

Spanish islands
that aren't fortified,

why is this island fortified?

It must have some real
strategic importance.

It was once preparing to
face a colossal naval assault

but who was the enemy

and did those inside
live to tell the tale?

The story here dates
back to the 19th century

when Malta was
under British rule.

Matthew balzan
is a local historian

who has made detailed
studies of the complex.

Here we are in tunnels

below the main sites
which run all the way across.

From outside, one would not
realise what lies beneath here.

Although most of what remains
above ground was built later,

the original defences
here were hidden from view.

Here we are seeing an example

of a 12.5 inch 38 tonne
rifle muzzle loading gun.

The time when it was
put in place here in 1880

was the largest example of
rifle muzzle loading technology

the British army
had at it's disposal.

Comparing it to the
size of a human being,

one can immediately realise
the sheer size of such artillery.

What's more interesting
about this example,

is that these are the last remaining
examples in the whole world

where we still see
the original gun

on it's original carriage

and platform in their
original locations.

This represents the alchemy
of gun technology at the time.

It's rifled, meaning
it can fire accurately

at a much longer range,

more penetrating power,

fires a bigger shell with
far greater accuracy.

It's purpose is to kind of spar
and jab with assaulting fleets.

But one of these guns alone
would not have been enough.

As the many openings
in the cliff suggest

half a dozen of them were
once trained upon the horizon.

One can just imagine the
sound which would be created

when a gun of this
size would be fired.

To give just a small example, a
gun powder cartridge when fired

inside the chamber of this gun

would expand in
volume 20,000 times.

And all of that has to go
out in smoke and noise.

Located just a few miles south
of the capital city of Valletta

is fort delimara.

The British, they learned
some valuable lessons

from Malta's past,

they learned for example
that it's not enough

to fortify the grand
harbour around Valletta,

you have to always fortify
the secondary harbour,

marsaxlokk at the
end of the island.

What had happened previously

is everybody had left
marsaxlokk undefended

and powers like the French
had just sailed in there,

off loaded their
amphibious forces

and taken the island
essentially through the back door.

So what you see the
British do in the 19th century

is pouring millions into
these new fortifications

in this secondary harbour,
the marsaxlokk harbour.

Once again, it was the French
who were threatening to attack

but now the fort
was ready for them.

These massive guns were put here

because this was a
desperately sensitive spot

for the royal Navy to defend.

Moats on the landward
sides protected it to the rear.

But the real key to
defeating an invasion force

was the invaluable
element of surprise.

The fortifications
are deliberately small

and almost invisible
from the sea.

They're low profile,
they're pushed up,

they're built out of the bedrock

so they blend into
the actual hill itself,

into the cliffs.

In the olden days,
you'd build tall walls

to keep people out but
in the gun powder age,

you've got to build low
walls that are hard to see

and that are thick and
backed up with earth.

This is a fortress designed to be
effective against modern assault.

This is the very model of
modern military architecture.

In the end, the invasion
force didn't come

and the guns were never
fired at French ships.

But the threat remained

and in time a new enemy
and a new threat emerged.

From the 1870s when the
British start building this fort

and start adding artillery,

they are continually
upgrading the artillery

as there's changes
in casting techniques,

metallurgy, shell construction.

Here it was the final
upgrade to the forts artillery.

The six inch breach loading gun
which was installed here in 1938

in preparation for what
would become world war ii.

The British had spent decades

preparing for an attack on Malta
and now it seemed imminent.

The main target
was this harbour.

The British military
had to be prepared

in case of enemy action,

in fact this gun would
go on to be fired in anger

during the same conflict.

In June 1940,

Italy joined the war on
the side of the axis powers

but she had ambitions that
spread well beyond Europe.

Malta emerges
early on in world war ii

as a place of, you know,
great strategic importance, why?

Because Italy and then Germany
are trying to conquer north Africa.

Under the leadership
of irwin rammel

known famously
as the desert fox,

the axis powers
invaded north Africa

as part of a plan to seize
the valuable oil fields there.

The fighting was
fierce and bloody

and the allied bases on Malta
were to be a vital importance.

If rammel, the great
German tank general

had been able to blast
through from north Africa

to take the caucuses to
meet up with German forces

in the caucuses

then the Nazi's
would have had the oil,

the resources they
needed to keep on fighting

and maybe to keep the
war going a long time,

maybe even to win world war ii.

But for the Italians and the Germans
to communicate with north Africa,

to resupply their armies,

they have to be able to
freely cross the mediterranean

and they're attacked in this
by the raf and by the royal Navy

which are based in Malta.

One of the most damaging
raids by the British

on axis communications
happens in September 1941

when the British using their
code breaking at bletchley park,

they learn of this convoy,

they put submarines
right out in it's path,

they sink two of
these big luxury liners.

And German troops
are drowned at sea.

The threat posed by Malta

was simply to great
for the axis to ignore.

An invasion plan
was quickly drawn up

and fort delimara was
suddenly in the firing line.

Hitler sees that Malta is
really a burr under the saddle,

that needs to be removed

and so he actually puts
together this thing for 1942

called operation Hercules.

Marsaxlokk harbour

would have offered
a good place to land

because it is a
very wide harbour,

therefore accommodating several
hundred of vessels at the same time,

so it would allow an easy
landing of the enemy force.

The axis planned a combined
aerial and amphibious attack.

30,000 paratroopers
would drop inland.

While 70,000 more troops would
arrive to the south on Navy ships.

Once the defences here
had been overpowered,

the plan was to march
north towards valetta.

The fort here sits at the tip,

at the entrance of
marsaxlokk harbour

therefore any attempt
at enemy invasion

would have to bypass this
location in order to gain access

therefore the fort was Paramount

to the defences of
this side of Malta.

The invasion was scheduled
to begin in the summer of 1942,

all the troops stationed
here could do was wait.

The British forces on Malta

were always expecting that
German invasion to arrive.

And at one point, they
saw a vessel on the horizon.

Everybody was bracing themselves

for the bombardment that would
surely proceed this German fleet.

In August 1942,

search lights of the
fort captured the target

just outside the harbour

and immediately guns in
place here fired against it.

But the target they had sighted
was not the feared invasion fleet.

It turned out it was an e-boat,
the equivalent of a pt-boat

that was outlaying mines
in the sea off of Malta.

And that gives you an idea
of how worried everyone was

that any minute on Malta would
be the minute before Malta fell.

But of course, Malta never fell.

Although Malta had been in the
sights of the axis for a long while,

a turn of events
on a different front

meant that they
would never capture it.

Because Hitler gets bogged
down in December 1941

at the gates of Moscow,

decides he's going to make a
turn into the caucuses in 1942

to try to take the oil fields.

Hitler simply doesn't have
enough force to deal with Malta,

so he just has to let it go.

With the invasion cancelled,

fort delimara continued to guard
the southern shores of Malta

until the very end of the war.

Twice in it's lifetime it,

had faced the threat of invasion
and had lived to tell the tale.

In 1964, the British
handed over Malta

to the local government
and fort delimara went with it.

In the Polish countryside
are the remains of a place

that history has
largely forgotten.

We're in a place called Gavin,

pretty much in the
geographical centre of Poland.

Hidden amongst the trees

is a central building
and a lattice tower.

You get the feeling when all
this was built this was open land.

Now the trees have grown up,

a young forest has covered
a lot of this hidden (indistinct).

In the tall grass are the
footprints of an engineering giant.

You can see other buildings,

you can see concrete
pads some distance away.

Clearly this was a big
operation at one time.

It's hard to believe now
but back in the 1970s,

this was a high
security location.

This was pretty
heavily trafficked,

pretty big site

and beside it all this
wreckage of this steel trusses

and girders lying in a heap.

These scattered elements
add up to a greater haul,

but one major piece
of the puzzle is missing.

Tomasz mis is part of a group
that protects and preserves the site.

We are in central
Poland in a restricted area

of high national and
military importance.

We were allowed to get in,

never the less very few
people are able to do so.

Today the building is empty,

all that remains is mould, rust and
solemn reminders of the cold war.

Oh, yes.

Political documents.

But there are signs

that it once required an
enormous amount of power.

So this site we are currently
in was extremely powerful,

even for today's standards.

One thing that's fascinating
at this site and unusual

is that a lot of the
electronics are still here.

All this stuff looks kind
of old and decrepit today

but it was state of
the art back in the '80s.

It consumed so
much electrical power

that a small city could be powered
using the thing which came in here.

Outside the main building

is a clue to what that
much needed power was for.

A concrete anchor
designed for industrial cables

is a common site at the bottom
of these very tall structures.

So this is the foundation of
one of the first level guy ropes

which held the mast
stem in vertical position.

15 of these anchor
points were scattered

across the countryside.

They were used to hold
up the Warsaw radio mast.

What we're looking
at here is the site

of what was once the most
ambitious radio transmitting tower

in the world.

It's hard to wrap your mind
around how tall this thing was,

2,100 feet,

this was once the tallest man
made structure in the world.

This tower was designed
at a time when Poles

were leaving Poland
in their thousands.

One thing that's
fascinating about Poland

is how many Polish
people don't live there.

They live in all of these
other places in the world.

By one estimate,
there are 20 million

people of Polish
descent around the world.

So after world war ii, when
the borders of Poland changed

and many Poles actually
emigrated also to the United States,

a way of communicating with
them was desperately needed.

With such a wide spread community
before the advent of the Internet,

reaching Poles around the
world was a massive challenge.

So in fact the Poles were
looking to set up a radio station

in the geographical
centre of Poland

that could reach Poles
all around Poland equally

but that was also
big enough to transmit

to these Polish communities
around the globe.

In 1970,

construction of a new
transmission tower began.

Switchboards, transformers

and guardhouses were
all vital components.

And in 1974, Polish radio
was heard around the globe

through one of the words
most powerful transmitters.

The engineer who designed
it was called yan polock,

he must have been brilliant.

It was designed in 86
sections all joined together

and then anchored to
the earth with 15 steel,

they call them ropes,

cables that would anchor it
in any kind of wind conditions.

So when the wind blew they
would correct for each other,

they would stabilise it.

The tower stood
precisely 2,120 feet tall,

it's great height was the key

to reaching the most
far away listeners.

They were long
wave radio signals

and when I say long
each, each wave,

I mean a literal wave
in the atmosphere

of electromagnetic
radiation was over 1,000m.

So why would someone want to
use those very long wavelengths

because they tend to follow
the curvature of the earth

and they can travel
very, very long distance

and still be received.

So in the right conditions
signals from this tower

could reach Africa and North
America really just about anywhere.

The broadcasts were produced in
a studio 60 miles away in Warsaw

before being sent via
an intermediary tower

to this radio
transmitter station.

They would transmit locally
to a radio receiving tower here

near the base of the transmitter

and that's the big metal structure
we see that's still standing,

I mean, it looks big but it's
puny compared to the transmitter.

This tower is approximately
nine times smaller

than the mast that was
located on the other field.

On the top,
there is still a dish

which received and
transmitted signals

between the intermediary
tower and Warsaw.

The main purpose of this
tower was to collect the signal

from the Polish radio
studios so anything music

and speech and all of it

so that it could be later
encoded and broadcasted.

Then they would take that signal
and then amplify it dramatically,

change the wavelength
to this long-wave system

and then that's the signal
that would go around the world.

This engineering giant
was Poland's crown Jewel.

But on 8 August 1991

the tallest structure in the
world came crashing down.

The mast broke down, twisted

and collapsed onto
the antenna field,

including the exact place
where we are standing.

This tower would have been
the tallest structure in the world

until the construction of
the burj khalifa in 2009.

It was 17 years old so
it wasn't that old actually

but in fact, it needed
a desperate renovation

after these 15, 16, 17
years of constant operation.

Building the tallest structure
in the communist bloc

in Eastern Europe was
a pretty dodgy proposition

considering how just poorly
things were maintained.

They were just known for
their shoddy architecture,

shoddy maintenance.

So in 1991, an attempt was
made to renovate the mast

as it was getting
older, however,

the entire process was done
with a couple of major mistakes.

A technician was
hired to carry out repairs

but he was
unqualified for the job,

he detached a major guy
rope without adequate support.

The lowest part of the mast
fell towards the helix house

destroying it as
we can see it here.

Gas lights designed
to warn off air traffic

smashed onto the
ground starting a fierce fire.

Some of the bottles
with gases exploded

as the mast fell on them

and a couple of fire brigades
needed to extinguish all of this.

All that was left of the tower
was a mass of twisted steel

and broken glass.

It was nearly impossible
to walk through this area

because it was all
covered with the material

coming from the masts.

Nobody's hurt and yet
it is a national scandal,

a couple of engineers
are jailed for it.

This place where we are
here now was left largely intact

after the catastrophe
took place so, yes,

all around we can still find
many elements of the mast.

For Poles across the world,
Polish radio had fallen silent.

An engineering masterpiece
gone before its time.

Today it is closed to visitors.

It's probably the biggest and
tallest structure on the planet

that most people
have never heard of.

A landmark in the
truest sense of the word

now hidden from view in
anonymous Polish countryside.

In Scotland near the
ancient city of Edinburgh

is a rock that helped
to defend a nation.

We're in northern climes here

and it's a island surrounded
by dark cold water

at the entrance
of a great estuary.

It's wet, it's cold,

it's not a place you want to be
spending your summer vacation.

Empty concrete buildings
provide reminders

of the former residents.

Clearly, a lot of people
used to live here,

perhaps some kind of commune
but now it's all overgrown,

the only sign of civilisation
are some chickens.

Today this island is deserted

but less than 100 years ago it
was vital for Scotland's defences.

It's heading into Edinburgh

and any place like that
has a defensive role to play.

Two miles out of Edinburgh

a ferry will take you to a place
where few people dare to tread.

The journey crosses
the firth of forth,

an estuary that leads
into the heart of Scotland.

Gordon barclay is an
expert on the island history

which involves a
wartime tragedy.

This is the northernmost
9.2-inch gun emplacement.

There are three of them
down the spine of the island

and this is the one that
covers the north channel.

This is inchkeith the
gatekeeper to Scotland's waters,

during world war I

the island was issued
with nine new Cannon.

Most of these fortifications
are built in the early 1900s,

1903, 1904, '05, '06, '07

as they're responding to
these fears of German invasion.

To defend the firth of forth

it was made into an
impregnable fortress.

But that firepower wasn't
enough to prevent a disaster.

On 4 September out
near the main island,

'hms pathfinder' was sunk,
went down in a few minutes

and only a handful of men
survived out of over 200 crew.

When these guns
were put in place

they were designed to
fire on surface vessels,

dreadnought and destroyers.

They weren't built to defend
against anything beneath the waves.

The firth of forth
had been breached.

Two days before the attack

there had been an
opportunity to prevent it,

but inchkeith was found wanting.

On 2 September 1914,

a u-boat submerged,

managed to get all the
way up to the forth rail bridge

by about 10:30 in the evening.

For ages, it was undetected

and then suddenly
someone spotted a periscope

sticking up out of the waves
and the u-boat left the area.

Two days later, that
same submarine surfaced

just outside of
the firth of forth

and took a shot and
sunk 'hms pathfinder'.

It was the first sinking by
a submarine in world war I

of a ship.

The Germans then rely
all in world war I on u-boats,

submarines that can get
past the British blockade

and they can attack
British warships,

British shipping covertly.

This island fortress had failed.

In 1914 there was only one
way to detect enemy submarines.

The only way to detect a
submarine was the human eye,

binoculars looking
out at the sea,

this grey featureless
surface, hour after hour

and if one spotted the
wake of a periscope

going through the
water you were lucky.

Other than that there
was no technology

to detect a submarine

or indeed to prevent a
submarine penetrating a base.

At that time there
was a lot of hysteria

about new German weapons,

the public were reporting sightings
of u-boats left, right and centre,

99% of them ended
up being false reports.

Everybody saw a periscope,
everybody saw a submarine

so they were just overwhelmed
with warnings of German submarines

and so the British
came to disregard them.

So when a boy actually saw
clearly a submarine and reported it

they ignored him.

Three months after
the first u-boat attack

the firth of forth
began a major upgrade.

A network of new defences
between the islands were built.

Inchkeith is so important

in this anti-submarine
war for the British

they begin first of all by
defending the firth of forth

with anti-submarine nets

that will trap a German
submarine trying to come in.

Or will attach a buoy to
the German submarine

so it will drag this
buoy along the surface

and we'll be able
to know where it is.

But Cannon and nets weren't
the key to defending Scotland.

The most powerful defences
were a collection of small huts

built to the rear of inchkeith.

Places like this were vital

to the protection
of the firth of forth.

The men in the gun crews at
least were out in the fresh air

but here you were
stuck hour in, hour out,

day in, day out,
watching the instruments.

These huts were
built on the island

as part of a powerful new
anti-submarine weapon,

the detector loop.

A submarine produces a magnetic
field from its large steel hull.

By laying three cables
in a loop on the river bed

its magnetic signature
could be detected

and a warning signal
sent to the guard huts.

The men listening out
for an enemy submarine

had to be somewhere quiet
where they could concentrate,

where there would be no noise
to drown out or to distract them.

Here at my feet,
you see the outlet

of one bundle of cables
from detector loops

under the river still there.

For six long years
during world war ii

these huts were never empty,

an officer was always on station

waiting for a signal
that might never come.

There were multiple
layers of defence,

a submarine would first be
detected passing the isle of may

and again by the detector
loops just east of inchkeith.

Parallel with inchkeith
were the minefields

which if a submarine was detected
entering them could be exploded,

it was pretty impregnable.

As far as we're aware,

no submarine ever
penetrated the defences...

..Until the final
hours of world war ii.

On 2 may 1945,

the first German regiments in
Europe laid down their weapons,

they agreed to a total surrender
to take place six days later.

But on the morning of 8 may,
a u-boat crept into the forth.

Two hours before
the end of the war,

one u-boat captain attacked
a convoy leaving the river

out towards the isle of may,

and sank two ships,
killing a number of men.

It was another
tragedy for inchkeith.

German u-boat gets in

mainly because the
British are napping,

they think the war's over,

it's the last day
of the war, literally.

He claimed that he had
not received the order

to stand down.

He had, however, been
one of the officers responsible

for developing the
new type of submarine

that he was commanding.

And to my mind,
he ignored his orders

and decided to
try out his new toy,

his murderous new toy.

Fort inchkeith saw the
first submarine sinking

in world war I

and ended its watch with
the final sinking world war ii.

Now few people cross
the forth to visit the island,

what was once on the front
line in the defence of Scotland

is now a safe
haven for the wildlife

that has reclaimed it.

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