In April 1945, just weeks before Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II, a soldier’s trip to the bathroom resulted in the dramatic sinking of a Nazi submarine.
U-boat 1206 sailed beneath the waves of the Scottish coastline near Aberdeen. Germany’s U-boats, whose name derives from the acronym for Unterseeboot (submarine boat), were incredibly effective at sinking ships and proved to be a serious threat repeatedly throughout the Second World War.
In addition to many technological and engineering advantages, U-boats also had an impressively advanced toilet system compared to Allied submarines.
The toilets of the Allied submarines contained a septic tank for a period of time where waste was collected and emptied into the sea when the ship reached the water surface. While this system worked relatively well, this tank took up much-needed extra space in the cramped sub.
To overcome this problem, this model of the Nazi U-boat used a high-pressure system that sprayed debris directly into the sea, even when the ship was underwater. Unfortunately, this space-saving technology can be complicated to use, as Captain Karl-Adolf Schlitt learned the hard way.
Captain Schlitt visited the deep sea toilet on April 14 and somehow managed to turn the wrong valves and disrupt the flushing system. He called in an engineer to help fix the problem, but the situation got worse and seawater (and possibly human waste) started flowing in.
“I was in the engine room when there was a water leak in the front of the boat,” Captain Schlitt said, according to The Scotsman newspaper. “What I learned was that a mechanic was trying to fix the external vent of the front toilet. The engineer, who was in the control room at the time, managed to float the boat despite the heavy flooding and it surfaced. Meanwhile, the batteries were covered with seawater. Chlorine gas began to fill the boat. We could no longer dive or move. At this point, British planes and patrols noticed us. I let the boat sink.”
And in this way, the role of this U-boat in the war came to an end. Four of the soldiers on board are believed to have drowned, with the remaining crew members captured as prisoners of war.
The wreck of the submarine remained deep in waters near Scotland for nearly 70 years, until it was discovered in 2012.
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