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Downloaded from YTS.MX
NARRATOR: Beneath the cold and brackish waters of the Baltic
lies one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of Word War II.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
JUHA (off-screen): This is what we came here for.
It's only the wreck that tells the last line of the story.
HARRY: Nobody knew that it existed.
JUHA (off-screen): I could actually see the U-boat lying on its side,
and I was looking at it like wow.
NARRATOR: With all hope for victory fading fast the Nazi's
are desperate to turn the tide of the war.
Their last-ditch efforts in the Baltic may today be at the bottom of the sea.
JUHA (off-screen): Those guys don't know what hit them.
NARRATOR: After more than a decade of searching,
a Finnish dive team hopes to make history,
and reveal the secrets behind the Nazi sunken sub.
March 10th, 1945 the frozen body of a U-boat commandant
is found on the Island of Föglö.
His submarine and crew are presumed lost.
JUHA (off-screen): I received the scan of the original police report from the,
the police constable who went to examine the body.
And it was found out that it was a German Navy Officer in, in uniform
and a flotation jacket,
and with his dog tags so he could absolutely positively be identified as
Kapitanleutnant Wilhelm von Trotha, the commander of the U-745.
JUSSI: It was suspected that since the body was washed to the shores of Åland Islands
that the submarine had actually must be also somewhere very close to that area.
NARRATOR: Yet the wreck is never found.
The members of Badawanne, a skilled dive team,
hope to finally locate the U-745.
JUSSI: It needs to be done, it's no use to go out there to the sea spend enormous amount of
diesel fuel just searching for wrong place.
NARRATOR: They believe that if you're looking for U-boats in the Baltic
you first look where the minefields were laid.
One of the Finland's most dangerous minefields was Vantaa Three laid by the
Finnish minelayer Louhi in January 1945 in the Gulf of Finland.
JUSSI (off-screen): The Louhi was laying in the minefield and their guys were on board
really executing the operation.
They were first-timers none of them had been laying a minefield before.
Then there were of course officers saying ok you do this and don't think don't do
anything else but just do this.
And then someone with stopwatch saying it's, now it's time and now it's time.
And guys were able to accomplish.
NARRATOR: Today the members of Badewane are searching the very minefield
Louhi laid that day.
They believe they have located a sunken U-boat.
They make the leap of faith and descend to the ocean bottom,
hoping that this is the U-745.
The lost U-boat of Captain Lieutenant Wilhelm von Trotha.
If they are right they will be the first people to see the sub since the 48 men inside
sank to their deaths in 1945.
JUSSI: The problem with that wreck actually has been at the visibility.
JUSSI (off-screen): Close to the bottom it's often really poor.
It's getting milkier and milkier and some kind of clay particles are here and there
and hey where is it and then suddenly you see this whole bow of the U-boat coming at
you and it's beautiful, it's just unreal amazing site.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: This is the gold standard for World War II shipwrecks.
The frigid temperatures and low salinity of the Baltic have kept the wooden deck in
remarkably good condition.
JUHA (off-screen): I still remember like it was yesterday.
We were going down, Jussi was in front of me
because he had the lights and on that dive also the visibility was fairly good.
JUHA (off-screen): And I could actually see the U-boat lying on its side
and this incredible mushroom type
or a funnel type, if you like, conning tower construction and I was looking at it like wow!
What kind of a sub is this that after all because the conning tower,
it looked like it would be like one size too big.
It was a big platform with closed railing in the front
and double the amount of anti-aircraft warfare.
There was two twin two-centimeter automatic guns and two single
barrel 37 mil guns.
NARRATOR: Because of the depth of the wreck the divers time on the bottom is limited.
After only 15 minutes on the bottom the team must begin the process of decompression,
which allows the body to eliminate gases accumulated during the dive.
JUSSI (off-screen): It's kind of important to check your watch
because anyway exceeding bottom time by one or two minutes,
means we have a lot more decompression to do.
NARRATOR: If a diver ascends without proper decompression,
they run the risk of serious illness or even death.
JUSSI (off-screen): Every single minute that you're low at the bottom
it increases the total depth compression application by significant amounts.
♪ ♪
JUHA: The first thing that actually came to my mind is that I had seen a line
drawing of this design in one of the books.
JUHA (off-screen): I said "Hey that's the one that's supposedly never built."
NARRATOR: The design of this U-boat was strange.
Why would the Germans take one of their sleekest and most technically advanced
naval vessels and build such a large and awkward conning tower configuration on top of it?
It's like tying a bathtub to the back of a shark.
JUHA (off-screen): This kind of design was thought to be good for escorting the submarines
leaving the submarine base and heading for the patrol area and this anti-aircraft
weaponry on board was thought to be efficient to cover the submarine convoys.
NARRATOR: This one of a kind design would seem to make identifying this U-boat easy,
but it turns out not to be so simple.
JUHA: In the late stages of the war a lot of modifications were carried out in
the naval ports in the shipyards according to the skipper's wishes
or somebody just wanted to experiment.
JUHA (off-screen): This is typical for late war.
Things developed so quickly nobody made any records or there is no documentation.
You just built this thing and went out with it.
NARRATOR: Even though it's not the U-boat they're looking for,
it's a spectacular find.
HARRY: It was so unique that it wasn't supposed to, to have been built at all.
HARRY (off-screen): Nobody knew that it existed.
I wanted to, to know what the differences of those boats would be,
because uh they didn't have numbers on the conning towers.
This was the so called Turimbow Seven, the conning tower model seven,
which was presumably not built at all or if it was built,
probably built in a different formation.
STEN: So I mean that was a great amazing discovery.
STEN (off-screen): When we found it and of course it also made this 3-D modeling
a little bit more challenging.
There were just some sketches available.
It's the only known submarine with this, this kind of a tower configuration
where you have around the normal tower here,
you have this kind of bathtub like structure.
And then on top of that there's four anti-aircraft guns.
The whole boat was just kind of a prototype and many books and references claims that
this was never taken into use but obviously if there's one in the
Gulf of Finland, it was used.
NARRATOR: From this dive,
the members of Badewanne believe
the mystery U-boat is a variation of a Type VII,
but there are no official records of its identity to
be found in Germany.
JUSSI: We actually found one document of the kind of logbook entry there was
drawings this, of this conning tower type and number U-676.
NARRATOR: The sketch in a submarine guest book signed by the crew confirms that this
sub is the U-676.
The location of the U-745 remains a mystery.
NARRATOR: In 1940 German U-boats are on a killing spree in the Atlantic
wreaking havoc on an enemy that is unprepared for this new threat.
In just seven months U-boats attacking in wolf packs sink hundreds of ships
carrying vital supplies to Britain.
They are so effective Winston Churchill declares U-boats
the greatest threat to the allied forces.
JUHA: When you look at the Kreigsmarine submarines of the Second World War,
they already were fairly high tech.
JUHA (off-screen): They would have gyro compasses,
they would have different kinds of radio equipment
to communicate with their headquarters.
Their weapon systems already were,
like they had electric torpedoes,
higher acoustically homing torpedoes and stuff like that.
NARRATOR: The Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germans from possessing submarines,
but it did not stop them from secretly developing them.
Throughout the 20's and 30's the Germans evolve and test their designs across the
Baltic in the Netherlands.
By the start of the war the Germans design a sub that is both sea-worthy and
economical to build.
It will become known as the Type VII,
the workhorse of the Atlantic.
Over 700 will be rushed into service.
HARRY (off-screen): The southern Baltic was used as a training site for the
submarine captains who are heading towards Atlantic.
So first you go into bathtub and do a little training there,
then you go to the real sea.
JUHA: Right, you train your little boats there, then you go into big business.
NARRATOR: U-boats are built in Bremen then sailed
in the Baltic for several months.
The idea is to train the 44-man crew to operate as one,
before sending them to the Atlantic,
but not all subs are sent to fight the British and Americans.
Some U-boats are kept in the Baltic to fight the Russians.
JUSSI: The Baltic sea for the, for the Germany.
It was very, very important to keep it enemy free.
JUSSI (off-screen): As the Gulf of Finland is the only sea route
going to St. Petersburg that is,
strategically it's the key for the success of Russia.
Also during the Second World War,
it was essential for Russians to get their
submarine fleet from St. Petersburg to operate on the Baltic.
The Baltic Sea was important to the Germans for various reasons.
One it was the iron ore that they were getting from Sweden.
It was important and essential for the war machine.
JUSSI (off-screen): The Soviets also knew very well that if they can block this iron ore
shipments from all the way out to Germany,
that Germans won't be able to make any more tanks.
If you don't have steel you can't make more tanks.
If you don't have tanks, the situation on the eastern front is changing completely!
NARRATOR: The struggle for the control of the Baltic is fought between submarines
and naval mines.
The two leave behind a trail of wrecks.
JUHA (off-screen): When you start looking for submarines the basic nature of that
branch of military service is stealth.
Nobody knows where they are you might have a, have a rough idea.
The only way you may know that one is lost is that after a certain date it never reports
back to headquarters it never returns.
NARRATOR: Because the Baltic is shallow with little or no tides
it's well suited for mine warfare.
The use of these crude devices reached a peak during World War II
and over 200,000 would be laid defensively.
JUHA (off-screen): A marine mine is a relatively cheap weapon
so what happened was that over 60,000 mines were laid in the Gulf of Finland.
NARRATOR: There are at least 46 different types of mines used
with as many as ten different triggering mechanisms.
JUSSI: Fins were laying mines, Germans were laying mines here,
Russians were laying mines here and because the water depth which is only about
100 meters at its deepest at its maximum.
JUHA: Maximum.
JUSSI: Its kind of very favorable.
Here we have a cut out in the, in the mine showing its guts.
So how does it work?
Basically the horn, it's this lead horn with glass amp filled with acid and when a
submarine or something else hits into the lead part,
the glass amp is breaking and it forces two metal electrodes inside here in the
bottom of the cavity and it's generating on battery.
EERO: And then we have 250 kilos TNT.
JUSSI: And poof, off you go.
NARRATOR: Today they are diving in Vannta three,
the same minefield laid by Louhi where they found the U-676.
They are exploring an anomaly spotted on their sonar.
This could be a second U-boat.
JUSSI (off-screen): That was something that,
the first reaction was, was when we saw this on sonar is that
there's something busted in the equipment.
This can't be true, that kind, that kind of things don't just happen.
JUSSI (off-screen): The first thing was it's like ok there's some kind of cliff,
which is protruding from the sea bottom.
♪ ♪
It seems there are fishnets all over the place it might be very dangerous place to be.
And remember we are both yelling, "yoo hoo",
under pitch darkness.
NARRATOR: The team has found another intact U-boat.
JUSSI (off-screen): The whole sub is inside the clay
all the way to the conning tower.
That kind of sight is just insane.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Over 27,000 U-boat men lost their lives during the conflict.
It was the highest loss rate for any branch of the German military.
JUHA (off-screen): Each and every wreck is a military graveyard.
They were service men.
They died in the line of duty and you need to respect that.
NARRATOR: Inside this wreck is their final resting place
and the divers of Badewanne will never enter it.
JUSSI (off-screen): Imagine how the guys felt inside.
JUHA (off-screen): Yeah, I am fairly confident
that those guys actually don't know what hit them.
NARRATOR: The new U-boat lies only a few hundred meters from the one found earlier.
Now the team has to piece together information from various sources in order to
successfully identify this wreck.
Fingers are crossed that it's the elusive U-745.
At the military archive in Helsinki members of Badewanne consult maps of known
minefields and compare them to the last known area of operations of the U-745.
JUSSI: So what we are here is a map of Gulf of Finland.
Here's Hanko, Porkkala Peninsula, and here is Estonia.
And this map is showing all minefields that were laid to the western part of
Gulf of Finland during the Second World War.
JUSSI (off-screen): The minefield at Louhi was laying in January 12th, 1945
it's here in middle of mouth of Gulf of Finland,
and this is the place where the submarine,
submarine, German submarine wrecks are located at.
It's kind of a textbook example how, how ships sink where the mines are.
We know that mines were in depth of two and a half meters.
We believe that the explosion took place here somewhere around this forward torpedo
compartment and they might have been also secondary explosions from the torpedoes,
and then there's only few seconds time to react and the ship is diving into the clay.
JUSSI (off-screen): It's amazing it's like in length equal to 25-story building,
you can imagine half of it is buried in the mud.
That's just unreal.
NARRATION: U-boat designs constantly evolve so small variations in construction can
be used to identify them.
JUSSI (off-screen): This flooding holes is one thing that
helps us to identify the ships, the shape,
the number of flooding holes in the bow section also in the aft to the bow section is
actually buried in the mud and we were unable to see those.
So we have to rely on all the other evidence that's available out there.
This is the area where another U-boat was supposed to meet U-745.
They were searching this area but never found it.
NARRATOR: This is the team's first clue that the second U-boat could be the U-745.
Meanwhile Harry, the team's lead researcher finds a picture of the U-745 in which
it appears to have a distinctive metal plate or box on the conning tower.
They'll have to dive the wreck once more to see if they can ID
just such a box proving this wreck is the U-745.
Jussi and Juha collect the equipment needed for the dive.
♪ ♪
It's a two-hour drive to Hanko,
where they'll meet the dive team and boat.
JUSSI (off-screen): Lets just keep our fingers crossed and hopeful that weather be.
JUHA: Yeah that's a good question it could go anywhere from here.
NARRATOR: As the skies above turn gray,
the weather turns to rain and there is a growing
concern that they won't be able to dive.
Though it's not raining near the harbor in Hanko
where the other members of the team are gathered,
it doesn't mean it's clear in the gulf where the wreck is located.
IMMI: It's very different out at the sea middle of the gulf then what it is
here at the coast.
(speaking native language)
NARRATOR: Jouni, who has studied meteorology, analyzes high-resolution local area
weather maps and looks at raw wind data that's not available to the general public.
JOUNI (off-screen): When we start diving it's not enough that it's good weather
then we need good weather two hours after the diving when we are picking the divers up
and that's the most critical situation,
and also we need visibility at surface because of
we see the ship traffic.
JUHA: We just have to have the ship,
and the boat and the crew on station and if the
weather breaks we're ready to move out.
The only thing we can do is just go out and take a, take a look.
JUSSI: This is it, it's time to go then.
JUHA: (inaudible).
NARRATOR: It's the end of the diving season in Finland
and soon the temperatures will drop making diving too risky.
With their last chance to dive the wreck this season slipping away,
the team decides to head out to the wreck site and hope for a break in the forecast.
♪ ♪
The original members of Badawanne who call themselves the old school,
have brought several younger new members.
JUHA (off-screen): Basically it looks very difficult for diving right now.
Big waves.
That's the problem in here, like in an ocean you got big waves and the boat goes up the
wave and down the wave whereas here it's very, you have very aggressive
movements on the, on the boat.
NARRATOR: At the dive site there is still more waiting.
Conditions aren't improving.
(speaking native language)
NARRATOR: The team takes this opportunity to review the mission for the dive.
MAILIINA: Jussi, how can you be certain that it's U-745 and not another U-boat?
JUSSI: This is the only boat that was patrolling in the area,
which had this particular square metal plate in the aft of the conning tower.
JUHA: And we saw this photograph this very photograph of the uh...
NARRATOR: It sounds easy but at 70 meters below the surface nothing is easy.
JUHA: U-676 has the, the railing is solid from, from the,
from the, from the front part until like, like after the conning tower.
JUSSI (off-screen): Yes, yes. And it's like a can of anchovies.
MAILIINA: So how can you see just a box?
How, how can you identify just a box on the boat?
JUSSI (off-screen): U-745 is the only ship that operated here that had this box.
There were other ships, U-boats that also had it but they were operating elsewhere.
MAILIINA: So do you know what that box is?
JOUNI (off-screen): We don't know whether it is some kind of plate, sign or a box.
JUHA (off-screen): Yeah.
JOUNI: But clear, clearly it's smoking gun because picture show that U-745
had it and no other of these possible boats have it.
MAILIINA: So is this the same wreck where the captain was found uh, in the surface,
dead in Föglö?
JUHA: Yeah, exactly.
From the archives, we know that the commander of U-745
was Kapitanleutnant von Trotha.
NARRATOR: Where Badewanne team is diving is approximately 150 kilometers
from where his body washed up.
It's a long distance for it to have traveled.
JUHA (off-screen): When we looked into this issue more closely,
we found out that actually many bodies
of, of wrecked mariners from shipwrecks even in, in more
further east in Gulf of Finland, had ended up in the Åland Islands.
So obviously the, of course it depends at which depth the body is floating.
MAILIINA: So if the U-boat was driving on the surface how could they hit a mine?
I thought that U-boats are pretty shallow.
JOUNI: They're not.
JUHA (off-screen): Oh no, they're not, never.
JOUNI: U-boats have actually really deep draft.
JUHA: Yeah.
JOUNI: Because they are heavy and, and they must be heavy
to be able to dive so like the seven U-boat has five meter in drop.
JUHA (off-screen): Yeah. Drop, yeah.
And the mines we know from the museum and from the archives they were, they were,
they were set at two and a half meters depth so it's just the right depth.
So when you, when you lose that you get a, you get a hole in the pressure hull.
The boat will just sink like a rock.
MAILIINA: So I understood that these mines were laid by the mine layer Louhi.
JUHA (off-screen): Yes.
MAILIINA: Have we found a hole or any signs of an explosion on
that wreck or are they buried in the mud?
JUHA: No, they're buried, obviously, somewhere in the bow section.
Front of, of the conning towers everything else we can easily see.
JUHA (off-screen): On the, on the, on the let's say from conning tower towards the aft
we can see everything the bottom, the sides, the top casing.
There's no, no superficial damage there.
So it needs to be in the bow.
JUSSI: And this also supports the fact this kind of, this boat became nose heavy
and immediately went to the bottom.
JUHA: Yeah. It's like glacial, glacial clay actually.
And the properties of that stuff.
It's funny if it receives an impact it goes liquid for a while and it's,
sorry, if the momentum is there you can just keep on pushing
the object into the, into the clay and then
when the movement stops it sort of solidifies again,
and that's why it's standing there.
NARRATOR: With the weather at the dive site now clear, the Badewanne divers take
advantage of this small window of opportunity to get in the water and try and get the
proof they need that this is indeed the U-745.
JUSSI: So previously the weather didn't allow any diving operations it was way too
windy and now, now the wind has calmed down significantly so probably only about four
to five meters per second and it seems that now we're finally able to go down there
and see what we can find.
JUSSI (off-screen): The first team will be recon team going down.
Two divers one with camera and a dive body and they are going down and checking out where
the strut line is and what are the conditions whether there are any other currents
and what is the visibility and then after that we're going down
with video cameras and continue shooting current video, video plan.
JUSSI (off-screen): It's kind of very important team to go down because
security of all other divers is to some extent dependent on these guys and their findings.
JUSSI (off-screen): They are going down first and Jouni decided to take his camera
and said ok if the visibility allows he'd be shooting some more details.
We have this giant tombstone sticking out from otherwise flat mud.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
The size of the submarine in your presence, it feels enormous,
giant piece of machinery.
NARRATOR: The recon divers carry only enough in their tanks to survive under water
for a limited time.
JUSSI: Their maximum time in the bottom is about 25 minutes roughly
and the total time from surface to surface is 75 minutes.
NARRATOR: The recon team arrives on the surface on schedule.
JUSSI (off-screen): Where's, where's the shot and how are the conditions?
NARRATOR: The rest of the team is anxious to hear their report.
JUSSI: According to the recon divers the visibility is, is good at the bottom
and allows for shooting some video.
JUHA: You don't, you don't get to dive U-boats every day.
So it's going to be good.
JUSSI: Let's get ready then.
JUHA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. IMMI: Ok.
NARRATOR: The team is specifically looking for a small box that is visible in
an archival photograph of the U-745.
♪ ♪
JUHA: After the first divers we hear that the visibility is fairly good
so we're looking forward to shooting some really good video this time.
And get all the details and finally we can be sure which boat it is.
The 745 if we get good footage of the fixture at the back of the flak tower.
♪ ♪
JUHA (off-screen): We get the chance of showing it to the entire world.
It's big thing for us you know.
15, 20 years dream come true really.
♪ ♪
When you go to, to, towards,
a little bit further down from, from the tip of the stern,
from the rudders you can see the huge amounts of netting hanging down and that is
actually one complete pelagic trawl.
That trawl is actually a very, very big net that a big trawler hauls behind itself.
JUHA (off-screen): The net is actually so big that when it's open in the water
you can take a four story high, high apartment house and
put it in the mouth and all that netting is caught on the
boat and that is actually very dangerous.
If you would chance to go under the boat.
If you tried to come out into the topside of the boat you would end up in the trawl.
You think of yourself.
You know I'm carrying all these tanks on my back under my arm the big camera with
lights sticking out of it you know.
Nothing would be easier than, than get that tangled up the in the trawl.
You can actually see there are two dead seals in the netting
so I mean you got multitudes of tanks
and valves and you're a very clumsy thing under the water.
There's nothing sleeker than a seal and even they got caught in that.
So you need to have the eyes on the back of your head.
Approaching the conning tower one of the problems is this, this re-suspension
of sediment this milky mist
which could be just like a half a meter or several meters from the bottom.
Here it's about one and a half meters and it's like the boat would be
disappearing in the mist.
And the problem with this stuff is that it's very light and it just reflects
all the light back.
It's really difficult for, for filming.
When you go back towards the deck and look back down at the conning tower and the flak
platform it's right here
that you can actually see the, the, the rectangular part, the box.
This is what we came here for.
That was like uh, one of these big things you feel like yelling out of the water but
you can't do that since you'll get water in your mouth.
Tell you what boys and girls that was some dive, you don't get to do this everyday.
The old school is not completely over the hill yet, it's in the can man.
JUHA: It's in the can.
The visibility quite good enough at the end of the conning tower, we actually could make
the, I could make the box.
JUSSI (off-screen): Yes.
JUHA: And it's a good thing light was in the side so there's a bit of a shadow.
JUHA (off-screen): You could make it out.
It's the smoking gun and man I could tell you I was so happy when I was looking
through the view finder shooting this footage and I said okay, there it is
the same thing as on the photos.
JUSSI: Quite sure that now we have the identity and that the mission is
accomplished and we, we have solved this puzzle that
has been circulating in the air for so many years.
JUSSI (off-screen): Overall that was a success
and we were able to accomplish what we were actually looking for.
We have good footage and combined with Juha's photographs I believe the mystery
has been solved.
We have U-745 here right below us.
NARRATOR: The team members believe they have successfully located and identified two
Nazi U-boats in the last minefield laid by Louhi,
a boat many believe was sunk by a Finnish mine,
maybe even one of its own.
JUSSI: We had been diving these, these submarines and we knew that ok,
these submarines went down because they hit mines laid down by Louhi,
and it's essential for the whole story to know where Louhi is.
NARRATOR: Louhi was the one first ships of the Finnish Navy and by 1945
it was showing signs of age.
JUSSI (off-screen): It was an old ship, old design, it was leaking and
it was rolling badly if there was bad weather and it was not very sea worthy.
NARRATOR: On January 12, 1945 Louhi completed its mining mission
and is returning to Hanko.
JUSSI (off-screen): And suddenly there was an explosion under Louhi's keel
somewhere on the right side of the stern.
Many people heard some kind of knock and then there was
a huge explosion in the, in the aft.
JUSSI (off-screen): Most likely it was a mine.
JUHA: When I was a younger diver of course people would talk about the Louhi,
which was the last ship the Finnish Navy lost in the war.
JUSSI (off-screen): I think it is a matter of pride and it was,
matter of feeling really bad that
if it was fact that Louhi was indeed sunk by our own mines.
JUHA: And the whole thing was a little bit of an embarrassment.
JUSSI (off-screen): There were stories here and there but no one had really had kinda
collected all the information together and looked at the wreck
and done any, any investigations out there and seen that
'what could be the most probable cause of, of the sinking?'
NARRATOR: Members of Badewanne set out to find the wreck of Louhi.
After all, it's part of their heritage.
(speaking native language)
JUSSI: Louhi is an interesting wreck because location of Louhi's mark
in the sea charts has been there for ages,
but there's no shipwreck in that spot.
JUSSI (off-screen): This whole story was so remarkable that we thought
ok it's time to solve this mystery.
So we applied for a permit to do a seabed search in the location
where we thought that Louhi would have sunk.
JUHA: What we're about to do here is we're going to dive a wreck which superficial
would look like a very insignificant warship but it's actually the unsung hero
of the submarine warfare here in the Baltic Sea.
NARRATOR: Using side scan sonar they meticulously search the Louhi's route
from the minefield back towards the port of Hanko.
JUSSI (off-screen): Something starts to show up in, in a sonar and, and looking at it
ok it's a ship and all the bits and pieces were falling together
and I had to hold my breath because I wanted to
yell guys, hey, come down.
NARRATOR: After a call to the navy,
permission is granted for an exploratory dive.
JUSSI: Is that ok?
Ok, I'm outta here.
♪ ♪
JUSSI (off-screen): We came to the bridge of Louhi and saw the deck cannon out there
and it was quite obvious.
Ok this is it, this can't be anything else,
there's nothing like this missing in this area.
It was pristine water and amazing sightseeing the whole deck,
and deck gun and bow and everything and the bridge.
Everything at once out there.
We swam around the boat and saw the bow and, and there was minesweeping equipment
and everything was like expecting it to be like.
We noticed that the stern is very badly damaged the deck has just blown up out there.
A lot of, a lot of bent metal and details are missing.
JUSSI (off-screen): There must have been a tremendous explosion under the keel and,
and this missing of decking supports.
JUHA: It's actually much more probable that was instead torpedo.
JUSSI (off-screen): There might have been a torpedo which exploded very close to the hull
of Louhi about seven, eight meters towards the front from the propellers that's
where the machine room and that's where the strongest sounds are generated from.
That's the location where it, it actually did hit.
NARRATOR: There is still more evidence to support their theory.
While researching, the team came across German communication records.
JUHA (off-screen): What was found in the archivals.
The journals and the reports of the high command.
In the which was reported that, that U-370 actually torpedoed Louhi.
They fired a torpedo at a Finnish mine laying ship 11:47.
The Louhi log and the survivors tell that it was an explosion on board Louhi
in 12:50 so there's, there's over an hour difference but then of course
one has to take into account that a German ship
has its log in German time.
Germany is a little more to the West so it is one hour behind the Finnish time
and this explains the difference.
So it was like three minutes, which is actually the typical running time for the torpedo.
NARRATOR: The new information from Badewanne appears to set the record straight,
the Louhi was not sunk by a Finnish mine
but rather hit by a German torpedo
and the minefield she laid that day was responsible for the sinking of two
technically superior U-boats.
She was far from an embarrassment.
JUSSI (off-screen): The story altogether of this old,
old ship which is technically outdated,
but still kind of, it was the first ship of the independent Finnish Navy.
JUSSI (off-screen): This old steam ship gets hit by acoustic torpedo.
The state of the art weapon of that time shot by German U-boat.
Again, state of the art war machine
and there's this battle of old steamer against the grey wolf.
Although she sank, Louhi also was able to sink two German U-boats and
the operation was successful.
♪ ♪
JUHA (off-screen): As you look at the submarines or other wrecks on the seabed
they are dark and lonely places.
There are no bad guys or good guys anymore.
They're just young men who went out in the prime of their life to serve their country,
they died in the process.
So I think it's only just that the truth be told and their story be told to everybody.
It's only the wreck that tells the last line of the story, it cracks the former war.
Now we know where your boys are buried.
They're there, you can pay your respects and you can put an end to the story.
This old Russian proverb says something like the war is not over until the last of the
fallen soldiers has been buried,
and in a way I feel that this is what we're doing.
(music plays through credits)
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.
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