Type 206A U17 (S196) at Technik Museum, Sinsheim Germany

[jphatton]

A few days ago I had the opportunity to visit the Sinsheim site of the Technik Museum where the Type 206A submarine U17 has recently been put on display. The submarine is mounted on a plinth, so it is possible to walk under it and inspect it in detail. The interior is accessed by a walkway from the museum roof, with entry through the torpedo room hatch and exit through an opening cut into the engine room.

Sinsheim is long way from the sea and the transport from Kiel took the best part of 2 years using a combination of barges and specialised road transport. There are some good videos and photos of the transport on the museum website at the following link;

https://u17.technik-museum.de/en/transport/

As there were many low bridges and other obstacles along the route the transport required some ingenuity, with the hull having to be rotated on its side at some points to pass under bridges etc. Also the there was only a few inches clearance going through some villages...

Attached are a few photos from my visit which you may find of interest

[trout]

Very cool! Those photos can be used as reference. Thank you for posting!

[Albacore 569]

Amazing transport to Museum. The French Arethuse class sub-Argonaut was transported to Paris in the narrow canals there to that science museum in Paris. But the U-17 Type 209 A transport far surpasses in engineering hurdles. Amazing planning and carful execution.

How were they able to roll the submarine on this side and then re right it on the trailer?

[jphatton]

Amazing transport to Museum. The French Arethuse class sub-Argonaut was transported to Paris in the narrow canals there to that science museum in Paris. But the U-17 Type 209 A transport far surpasses in engineering hurdles. Amazing planning and carful execution.

How were they able to roll the submarine on this side and then re right it on the trailer?

They used a cradle with rollers on the parallel mid body section to rotate it to a specific position and back. Here is a link to a section of video showing the system in action

https://youtu.be/XDffzr5Ao0M?si=fCHnLPmmbl8KtLcF&t=101

The other videos in the playlist cover the final phase of the transport from Speyer to Sinsheim in detail.

The German TV channel Welt produced a nice documentary on the history & preservation of U-17, which includes interviews with the former crew members and covers the first phase of the transport as far as Speyer. The English language version is at the following link;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vojYmQGstAE

The marks used as reference for the rotation angle are still visible on the hull at the moment, as shown on my photo below;