Torpedo engine and gyroscope find.

[Nick Hessens]

My father bought the back of a German torpedo at a scrap yard 14 years ago. It came entangled in a fishing net when fishermen took the net up on the North Sea. My father began to disassemble the back to recover the engine and gyroscope. Is it possible to find out the name of the U-boat, through the markings on the gyroscope? Could I have some more information? If you have pieces of a torpedo, please place pictures here.

[Nick Hessens]

Anyone? Also do they have any value?

[Adrian Stevenson]

I very much doubt that the markings would enable you to determind which boat the torpedo was from.

I have no idea on any possible value, sorry.

But here are a couple of interesting links which might be of use:

German Torpedoes of World War II

uboat.net - Technical pages

Cheers, Ade.

[Nick Hessens]

Thanks Ade

[Matt L]

Indeed- this was simply ammunition, not a permanent part of the boat, so there'd surely be no specific markings as there would be for, say, a compass or radio. I've seen only a very, very few torpedo components, so they're quite rare- and that makes valuation quite difficult. They're damned cool though- I always thought it'd be awesome to have something from a torpedo

[Natter]

My father bought the back of a German torpedo at a scrap yard 14 years ago. It came entangled in a fishing net when fishermen took the net up on the North Sea. My father began to disassemble the back to recover the engine and gyroscope. Is it possible to find out the name of the U-boat, through the markings on the gyroscope? Could I have some more information? If you have pieces of a torpedo, please place pictures here.

In theory it would be possible. Each torpedo had a protocol were every maintenance-routine and (exercise) shot was logged. Every transfer to and from depot/workshop/ship was also logged. Both the engine and the gyroscope has a uniqe serialnumber. The engine-number would not have been noted, but the gyroscope was carefully matched and adjusted to it's specific torpedo and the serialnumber would have been logged in the torpedo-protocol (the gyroscope was always transported separately from the torpedo suspended in a special crate).
When I say "In theory", I think it will be virtually impossible to get hold of the information today: Most documents were destroyed after the war, so it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack (the haystack here being the german national archives) without even knowing if the needle is there.

[Natter]

Btw: The engine is a 4-cylinder steamengine from a G7a torpedo (developed max 350 horsepower on 44kn). The gyroscope is a standard GA VIII gyro (also used in the electric G7e torpedo).

[Nick Hessens]

Thanks for the extra information, Natter! The gyroscope has a lot of markings, I will upload some more pics when I can.

Regards

PS: Welcome to the forum.

[Natter]

You're welcome (and thanks ).

Come to think of it: Even though It will be more or less impossible to find the torpedo's serial number from the remains and then it's protocol, there is another possibility: The U-Boat commander made a thorough report ("schussmeldung") for every torpedo fired. I doubt the gyroscope's S/N would be noted in it, but the type of torpedo, date/time for attack and position would be. If you know the location where the remains of the torpedo was found, there's a chance you could find reports from attacks in that area and then (by a certain degree of probability) determine the U-Boat in question. Again: This will of course demand that the actual report has survived and is kept in archives (regarding the rate of U-Boat losses, that's a long shot in itself).

I recommend you contact Jerry who runs the U-boat archive site (U-boat Archive). I know they have very good knowledge on those reports.

[Natter]

Here are a couple of photos of the transport case for the GA VIII gyro + a photo showing the location of the serial number (red ring):