Transport of the U17 Submarine to pass through Bonn on the Rhine
Bonn · The U17 submarine will be transported on the Rhine from Kiel to Speyer in April - May 2023 and will also pass Bonn on its way.
In mid-May, there will be a rare spectacle to see on the Rhine in and around Bonn: A submarine will sail past on the Rhine. The warship in question is the U17 - a nearly 50-metre-long decommissioned Bundeswehr submarine that has a draught of 4.6 metres and displaces about 500 tonnes when submerged. It will not sail on the Rhine itself, however, but will be transported from Kiel to Speyer in Rhineland-Palatinate on a floating pontoon. There it will be refurbished at the Technik Museum Speyer and later put on display.
"This is going to be a very challenging operation," says Hermann Layher, President of the Technik Museen Sinsheim and Speyer. After all, the U17 project is the first large-scale transport in over ten years. Some in the Rhine region can certainly still remember the transports of the space shuttle "Buran" in 2008 and the Boeing 747 in 2002, both of which were also shipped across the Rhine to Speyer. "All the teams in charge of the transport are motivated to the hilt," says Layher. He himself will be on board for the transport of the submarine in May.
The itinerary
In Kiel, the submarine will be loaded onto a floating pontoon with a 900-ton crane. It then sails through the Kiel Canal to Rotterdam. From there, it will travel on the Waal through Holland back to Germany. On this leg, the warship will travel along the Rhine past Cologne, Bonn and Koblenz to Speyer, where it will come ashore in the natural harbour. The U17 will be transported to the Technik Museum by heavy goods vehicle.
The transport plan so far is as follows:
28 April: Submarine will be loaded in Kiel
28 April - 2 May: Kiel - Dordrecht
11 May: Dordrecht - Nijmegen
12 May: Nijmegen - Cologne
13 May: Transport past Bonn and Koblenz to Lahnstein
14 May: Lahnstein - Mainz
15 May: Mainz - Mannheim
16 May: Submarine arrives in the natural harbour of Speyer
21 May: Transport by road to the Technik Museum Speyer
The history of the U17
The U17 was in service from 1973 until it was decommissioned in 2010. Together with US26, it was the first German post-war submarine to cross the Atlantic to complete an extensive military training programme in the Caribbean and on the east coast of the USA. After being decommissioned, it lay in the naval arsenal in Wilhelmshaven for eleven years until it was towed to the Thyssenkrupp shipyard in Kiel in 2021. There it was demilitarised, i.e. the weapon systems and batteries were removed.
Since 2017, the "Auto - Technik - Museum e.V." association, which runs the Technik Museen Sinsheim and Speyer, had been showing interest in the submarine with the Bundeswehr. The then Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen finally agreed. "That was really great news," says Layher. "We knew there were some companies interested in the decommissioned U-boats for scrapping. And that would be a terrible shame."
In the long term, the warship will find its place in the Technik Museum Sinsheim. Before that, however, some work has to be done on the sub, which is to be carried out by the workshop at the Speyer site. The Technik Museum there already houses the U9 submarine, which was transported in 1993 along a route similar to the one now used for the U17, which also led across the Rhine to Speyer.
Original text: Sarah Remsky
Translation: Jean Lennox
