SM UB-14 was a German Type UB I submarine or U-boat in the German Imperial Navy () during World War I. The submarine was also known by the Austro-Hungarian Navy designation of SM U-26.
UB-14 was ordered in October 1914 and was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen in November. UB-14 was a little under in length and displaced between , depending on whether surfaced or submerged. She carried two torpedoes for her two bow torpedo tubes and was also armed with a deck-mounted machine gun. UB-14 was broken into sections and shipped by rail to the Austrian port Pola for reassembly. She was launched and commissioned in March 1915 as SM UB-14 in the German Imperial Navy under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Heino von Heimburg."SM" stands for "Seiner Majestät" () and combined with the U for Unterseeboot would be translated as His Majesty's Submarine.
Because Germany and Italy were not yet at war when UB-14 entered service, she was transferred in name only to the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The submarine retained her German captain and crew, and remained under German command as a part of the Kaiserliche Marines Pola Flotilla. During her first patrol in the Adriatic, UB-14 torpedoed and sank the . While traveling to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) to join the Constantinople Flotilla, UB-14 attacked two British troopships, sinking with heavy loss of life, and seriously damaging . All three of UB-14s first victims were among the largest ships attacked by U-boats during the war.
Although UB-14 sank the British submarine in the Sea of Marmara in November 1915, she spent most of the rest of her career patrolling in the Black Sea. The U-boat had only limited success there, sinking only three ships through the end of the war. After the war ended, the submarine was disarmed at Sevastopol and scuttled off that port in early 1919.
Design and construction After the German Army's rapid advance along the North Sea coast in the earliest stages of World War I, the German Imperial Navy found itself without suitable submarines that could be operated in the narrow and shallow seas off Flanders.Miller, pp. 46–47.Karau, p. 48. Project 34, a design effort begun in mid-August 1914, produced the Type UB I design: a small submarine that could be shipped by rail to a port of operations and quickly assembled. Constrained by railroad size limitations, the UB I design called for a boat about long and displacing about with two torpedo tubes.A further refinement of the design—replacing the torpedo tubes with mine chutes but changing little else—evolved into the Type UC I coastal minelaying submarine. See: Miller, p. 458.
UB-14 was part of the initial allotment of seven submarines—numbered to —ordered on 15 October from AG Weser of Bremen, just shy of two months after planning for the class began.Williamson, p. 12. UB-14 was laid down by Weser in Bremen on 9 November. As built, UB-14 was long, abeam, and had a draft of . She had a single Körting 4-cylinder diesel engine for surface travel, and a single Siemens-Schuckert electric motor for underwater travel, both attached to a single propeller shaft. Her top speeds were , surfaced, and , submerged. At more moderate speeds, she could sail up to on the surface before refueling, and up to submerged before recharging her batteries. Like all boats of the class, UB-14 was rated to a diving depth of , and could completely submerge in 33 seconds.
UB-14 was armed with two torpedoes in two bow torpedo tubes. She was also outfitted for a single machine gun on deck. UB-14s standard complement consisted of one officer and thirteen enlisted men.Karau, p. 49.
Launching and commissioning Most of the UB I boats were shipped to their port of operations by rail, where they were assembled, launched, tested, and commissioned. Information on UB-14 suggests that she may not have followed that pattern as closely as most other boats. According to several sources, UB-14 was launched on 23 March 1915, and commissioned into the German Imperial Navy as SM UB-14 on 25 March under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Heino von Heimburg a 25-year-old first-time U-boat commander.Von Heimburg was in the Navy's April 1907 cadet class with 34 other future U-boat captains, including Werner Fürbringer, Hans Howaldt, Otto Steinbrinck, and Ralph Wenninger. See: Those same sources are silent on UB-14s whereabouts at the time, but information on UB-14 later shipment and arrival in the Mediterranean suggest that her initial launch and commissioning may have occurred in Germany.
UB-14 was shipped by rail in June to the main Austrian naval base at Pola, with an arrival date on the 12th.Stern, p. 26; Koburger, p. 84. Koburger reports on UB-14s imminent arrival as of "mid-year 1915"; other events he lists as concurrent with UB-14s journey happened in the first weeks of June. The process of shipping a UB I boat involved breaking the submarine down into what was essentially a knock down kit. Each boat was broken into approximately fifteen pieces and loaded onto eight railway flatcars. German engineers and technicians that accompanied earlier UB I boats to Pola worked under the supervision of Kapitänleutnant Hans Adam, head of the U-boat special command ().Koburger, p. 82. Typically, the UB I assembly process took about two to three weeks.Messimer, pp. 126–27.
While UB-14 made her way to Austria-Hungary, von Heimburg and his German crew were assigned to UB-15 at Pola. The submarine was temporarily commissioned into the German Imperial Navy before a subsequent transfer to the Austro-Hungarian Navy as its .Stern, p. 24. Von Heimburg and his German crew, with one Austrian officer aboard, gained valuable experience in UB-15/U-11, sinking the on that U-boat's first patrol.Stern, pp. 24–26. Stern provides an in-depth recounting of the sinking of Medusa with reproductions of von Heimburg's hand-drawn diagrams of the attack. UB-15/U-11 was handed over to the Austro-Hungarian Navy on 16 June, and von Heimburg and his crew were transferred intact on 21 June to UB-14, which was still a few days from completion.Stern, p. 26
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Italy had declined to join its Triple Alliance partners—Germany and Austria-Hungary—in declaring war against the Entente Powers, and opted to remain neutral. Pressure from the United Kingdom and France swayed Italy to sign the secret 1915 Treaty of London on 26 April, in which Italy promised to leave the Triple Alliance and declare war against its former allies within a month in return for territorial gains after the end of the war. Because Italy initially declared war only on Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy were not officially at war. As a consequence, German submarines operating in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean were all assigned Austrian numbers and flew the flag of Austria-Hungary when making attacks on Italian vessels; UB-14 was assigned the designation of U-26 and entered onto the rolls of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, despite the fact that she remained completely under German control.Sondhaus, p. 279. According to historian Lawrence Sondhaus, this dual numbering system reflected the close submarine cooperation between the two countries and still makes it difficult to distinguish between submarines of the two navies.
On 1 July, UB-14 joined the Pola Flotilla (), and departed soon thereafter on her first patrol. On the night of 6/7 July, Italian armored cruisers that had recently been deployed at Venice undertook a "reconnaissance in force" off Pola in an attempt to discourage future Austrian sorties against the Italian coast. When the Italian ships retired in the early morning hours of the 7th, UB-14 was about off Venice. At dawn, the armored cruiser crossed paths with UB-14 and was torpedoed. Amalfi quickly began listing to port and sank within 30 minutes with the loss of 67 men. At displacement, Amalfi was one of the largest ships sunk by U-boats during the war. UB-14 escaped the scene without damage.
Aegean Sea
Enver Pasha and other Turkish leaders had been pleading with their German and Austrian allies to send submarines to the Dardanelles to help attack the British and French fleet pounding Turkish positions.Halpern, p. 116. As part of the German response, UB-14 was ordered to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) to join ; sister boats and ; and the UC I boats and in the Constantinople Flotilla ().Tarrant, p. 23. Since her intermediate refueling stop at Bodrum was beyond her limited range, UB-14 departed Pola under tow from an Austrian destroyer on 15 July 1915. UB-14s engine and gyrocompass broke down while off Crete, leaving the boat dead in the water for a time,The single propeller shaft/engine combo was a known weakness of the UB I design that was rectified in the larger Type UB II. See: Miller, p. 48; Williamson, p. 13. but temporary repairs by the crew enabled the boat to make Bodrum on the 24th. A repair crew from Constantinople was dispatched—having to travel by train and camel just to reach UB-14—and the ship was ready to resume her journey on 13 August.Naval historian Paul Halpern (p. 149) reports that UB-14 was involved in a scouting operation with the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the central Adriatic on 28 July. Given that UB-14 needed towing assistance and nine days to make Bodrum, it seems unlikely that the submarine could accomplish a passage back to the Adriatic in four days time.
Shortly after departing Bodrum, UB-14 had just cleared the Greek island of Kos and was off the nearby island of Kandeloussa when von Heimburg sighted several potential victims. The first ship seen was the British hospital ship , headed to Alexandria from the Dardanelles. Von Heimburg, seeing the properly identified hospital ship, allowed Soudan to pass unmolested. The next ship was not so lucky, however. It was the unescorted , a Canadian ocean liner pressed into troopship duties. Royal Edward was headed in the opposite direction from Soudan: from Alexandria to the Dardanelles with reinforcements for the British 29th Infantry and a small group with the Royal Army Medical Corps, all of whom were destined for Gallipoli.Wise and Baron, pp. 75–76. Von Heimburg launched one of his two torpedoes from about a mile (2 km) away and hit Royal Edward in the stern; the ship sank stern-first in six minutes, with a large loss of life. Soudan and several other ships were able to rescue nearly 700 men, but over 900 died.Wise and Baron, p. 77.According to authors James Wise and Scott Baron (p. 77), Royal Edwards death toll was 935 and was as high as it was, they contend, because Royal Edward had just completed a boat drill and the majority of the men were belowdecks re-stowing their equipment. Other sources report widely varying numbers of casualties, ranging from 132 on the low end (Tennent, pp. 36–37), to as many as 1,386 (Hendrickson, p. 270) or 1,865 (Gilbert, p. 185) on the upper end. Royal Edward, at , was also among the largest ships hit by U-boats during the war. While evading the rescue ships, which included two French destroyers, UB-14s compass broke down again, forcing a return to Bodrum on the morning of the 15th.Stern, p. 27.