Hello,

The (Belgian) Flanders Marine Institute has announced yesterday the identification of a German U-boat, whose wreck was discovered in the North Sea during the ’80ties. Divers visited the wreckage in 1999 and 2009, and was then identified as a U-boat. It’s now definitively ID as the UB-32, a UBII type, wrote C. Clapson.
This submarine was commissioned 10 Apr 1916, made 16 patrols and sank 22 ships (total of 42.893 tons), and damaged 4 with a total of 19.933 tons.

Under Oblt. Benno von Ditfurth, she was sunk in Sept. 1917, (24 hands lost) by 2 bombs dropped by a British seaplane Curtiss H-8 (probably # 8695). The vessel displays clear signs of the air-attack and was identified thanks to an inscription on one of her two propellers. She lies on the edge of Belgian territorial waters, some 35 sea miles northwest of Ostend and 20 miles from British waters, at a depth of 41 meters. The wreck is intact from its stern until two meters after its turret. The front of the boat is heavily damaged as a result of a heavy impact and seems pressed together from above.
U-32 received the dubious “honor” of going down in history as the first U-boat to be sunk by an aircraft.
Best regards,
Freddy.