The U-boat Sunk by a Toilet Flush by Simple History | A History Teacher Reacts

hey youtube welcome back to another history teacher reacts video mr terry's a continuing search for historical knowledge found here on the internet all right today's video comes from our awesome patrons and they voted on this video this week and that is the u-boat sunk by a toilet flush all right this is by simple history a channel favorite here what a name of a story if that isn't an attention getter i don't know what else is so what all right we're going to check this one out let you know what i think if you would like to vote in future videos patrons of all levels starting a dollar month can can vote on the polls you get a bunch of other stuff too check that out if you're interested links to some other stuff down below as well including the original video link make sure you support simple history if you haven't subbed to them you're definitely going to want to they got all kinds of awesome historical stories like this and i highly highly suggest it alright let's get started [Music] 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a war bonus starter pack players can register with the code boom to receive 200 doubloons 2.5 million credits the two free ships the st louis and the premium ship ended seven days of premium time and more the u-boat sunk by a toilet flush gosh strange stories of world war ii greeks craig's marine monthly on the morning of april 14th 1945 u-1206 one of the last german u-boats to be commissioned was cruising at a depth of 200 feet i was about to say 1945 that means this is the last year of the war one of the last to be commissioned so the war in europe is going to end in april um well technically beginning of may so this is very very end of the war just off the coast of scotland about eight to ten miles from peterhead in aberdeenshire the submarine was on its first combat patrol and had launched just eight days prior to this from the nazi-occupied port christensen in norway under the command of 27 year old captain lieutenant carl adolf slit the crew's mission was to seek out and destroy american and british convoys in the north atlantic i feel like we haven't had an adolph since world war ii anyone know if there had been any adolfs born since world war ii because there's a few handful before has anyone ever been named that afterwards they had been experiencing a few difficulties such as the u-boats diesel engines not operating correctly forcing it to run on battery power so the crew were busy making repairs what happened next can arguably be considered one of the strangest demises for a vessel in naval history to fully appreciate this story a little information on the complexity of submarine toilets is necessary high external pressure when the vessel is submerged means that waste can't just be dumped into the sea british submarines of the time got around this problem by having septic tanks on board but these came with their own set of problems taking a precious space and adding weight right the germans opted for a different method one that could expel waste directly unfortunately this only worked while they were either close to or at the surface i mean guys this is this is why we're all history fans this this is the stuff we want to know i mean this is the stuff we study for people like me went to college and became professional teachers it's we're finally getting to the big important questions how did submarines handle poop this meant that during a deep dive the crew of a u-boat had no working toilet who were forced to relieve themselves and open buckets despite the obvious unpleasantness world war ii submarines were not known for their delightful aromas even at the best of times however this wasn't too much of a problem during the early stages of the war the allies ability to spot and hunt down u-boats was not particularly effective at this time meaning that the vessels could surface regularly as the war progressed this began to change the u-boats were forced to spend increasing amounts of time submerged in order to avoid detection yeah you can't you can't be um submerged forever you eventually have to come up um i know world war one that was a lot harder you know world war ii the submarines are so much better than they were early on and they were dangerous like that even said you know it's world war ii that engine problems and things i know in world war one i mean a sub submarine was one of the most deadly places you could be it's like just an underwater coffin for the most part the toilet situation had to change to solve the problem the germans developed a new high-pressure toilet system which could be used at depth unfortunately the system was extremely complicated to use and required specialist training okay you're you're getting into the military you're like i'm joining the military for my country maybe you got to have to be like i joined the military i will serve my country in whatever capacity they want me in you go and you do your basic training all that stuff and then you're you're you're off the front lines and then your commander tells you all right private we have a special job for you you will learn the mechanics and operate the toilet and the poop removal system okay take your oath now toilet directed human waste through a series of chambers to a pressurized airlock then the deep water high-pressure toilet blasted the human waste into the sea with compressed air like a poop torpedo a special weapon proper toilet operating procedures there was an exact door for opening and closing a series of valves sure that the flush reporting for duty directly this officially trained in how to flush the toilet specialist was called a wc waste disposal unit manager oh that's not cool also known among the crew as the man okay that that's what i want i don't even want i don't even want any other name and i hope he wore a name tag had a poop emoji metal like he needs to be he he yeah he needs to display that back to the morning of april 14th in the ill-fated u-1206 it should be noted that there are actually two versions of the events that unfolded that day the first of these comes in the form of captain schlitz official report he claims that he was in the engine see i think i think captain schlitz that he should be in charge of the poop duty schlitz was told that there was a leak coming from the front of the boat and that he later learned a mechanic had attempted to fix the outboard vent of the forward toilet which had ultimately failed the second and by far the most popular version of events goes as follows a submariner according to most accounts captain schlitt himself had to answer a call of nature and when he was done with his business attempted to use the complicated flushing mechanism by himself no when he was okay not anybody can run the system i mean you took it took training okay like you went to a private poop camp to operate this not just any okay member of the kriegsmarine is is gonna be able to handle this unable to make the flush work he called in the specialist who unfortunately misjudged the situation and failed to operate the valves in the correct order the uh poop ratio whichever version of the story is true the poop to water ratio is too high for the uh the settings the end results were the same a failure in the toilet system resulted in sewage and sea water flooding into the vessel in such large quantities that it came into contact with the submarine's batteries which were located just below the toilet causing a chemical reaction which released deadly chlorine gas into the air and to make this smashing works the u-boats bilge pumps malfunctioned despite their proximity to the coast and the likelihood of being spotted the situation had become dire enough that captain schlitt was forced to lower the u-boat to surface in the hope that they could successfully vent the gas unfortunately for the captain and his men this was not to be they very soon came under attack by the raf were able to do enough damage that the u-boat was utterly disabled unable to either dive or maneuver all because of a proof situation had become hopeless captain schlitt threw his code books overboard in order do you think do you think the british would have gone easy on him if they had known what caused it like they could kind of feel for him and then they might let him go u-1206 to be scuppered out of the u-boat's crew of 50 men four didn't survive the incident one man lost his life during the raf attack and the other three as they attempted to make their way to the scottish coast i thought they're gonna say the other ones actually died of methane and poisoning or something the remaining 46 crew members were captured and held as pows for the rest of the war oh this didn't prove to be very long that's just 16 days later adolf hitler committed suicide in his bunker in berlin and eight days after that the nazis surrendered bringing an end to the war in europe as for captain schlitt he survived the war passed away in 2009 at the age of 90. u-1206 however still rests at the bottom of the north sea full of poop full of poop this episode was bro all right so i bet you didn't know poop made such an impact in the war or in any war the power of poop all right well yeah um wild story there ship ends up getting sunk before it uh for their malfunction in the poop system and i want to know like what the pro they didn't really say what the problem was why did they have such a hard time dealing with that one poop did that guy because he ended up living a long time did did he just try to keep it under wraps that he actually like clogged the toilet because he had he had such a bowel movement that it it ruined the this the systems or ruined the whole u-boats poop system i i think that's what it is i think need to investigate this more so let's get uh some historians some professional researchers let's get on that chat if you have any access to these documents um youtube viewers chatters all that let's let's get to it okay stop what you're doing whatever other research you're doing and we need to find out what happened specifically with this uh uh with this incident okay because like they said and like we say those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it and we don't we don't want this to happen again all right guys hey thanks for uh checking this video out the original video link is down below if you haven't subbed my channel and you've stuck around this long thank you definitely hit that sub button like the video i told that really helps promote the channel and the algorithms and all that stuff so that's the case great again this video was voted on um by our patrons over at patreon there's a link down below you can check that out if you're into some gaming stuff they're promoting some games in the video check out my gaming channel on youtube and twitch on youtube it's mr terry gaming twitch it's mr terry history there's some links down below join our discord server all that fun stuff all right and with that we'll see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 10,497

Rating: 4.9832168 out of 5

Keywords: react, history, submarine, world war 2

Id: kKdLlMWRMnU

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021