There Really Was a World War One U-Boat on Lake Michigan, and It’s Still There!

The UC-97 Under Way

By James  Patton

Back in the 1970s,  I was at a party in Oak Park, Illinois, conversing with urbane, well-educated persons who confidently told me that the U-boat at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry was captured on Lake Michigan!

Now, even then I knew that this wasn’t true. I would have called it an urban legend, but the term hadn’t become popular yet. 

The submarine on display is the World War II U-505, captured in the North Atlantic in 1944, acquired by the museum in the 1950s and towed to Chicago via the St. Lawrence River and the Welland Canal.  

However, I later learned that there was another U-boat on the Great Lakes, which today lies on the bottom of Lake Michigan. 

In 1992 a research vessel owned by A&T Recovery, salvagers working for the Naval History and Heritage Command, were searching the South Chippewa Basin of Lake Michigan for more of the 142 Navy aircraft lost during World War II flight training, when their sonar detected an unfamiliar object. Cameras lowered to the site revealed the stern of a submarine. 

How did a sub up there? The Armistice required the Germans to surrender their entire navy, so the 176 seaworthy U-boats went to the British port of Harwich. Although some of them had been sabotaged, and others poorly maintained, they represented a high level of technology, significantly better than that of any other navy.

Accordingly, the British agreed to allow Allied nations to take some of the U-boats to study their technology, requiring that they later be destroyed by sinking them in deep water. The British pushed hard at postwar treaty conferences to ban submarines, but no other naval power supported them.

Initially, the U.S. Navy had little interest in the U-boats. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William Benson, believed that they might be outlawed anyway, and he, among others, did not believe that submarine warfare had a future. There was also an arrogant belief that U.S. submarines were superior to the German; in two respects they were—underwater speed and habitability. However, the U-boats, were superior weapons of war—having better periscopes, better torpedoes, more reliable engines, and especially the ability to submerge far more quickly than any other submarine.

Nevertheless, the senior U.S. submarine officer, Captain Thomas Hart, convinced the Victory Loan bond drive leaders that displaying U-boats would be a great help to the campaign in the spring of 1919. Public curiosity had already been whetted by displays of German artillery—what German weapon could excite the public like the dastardly submarines that had led us to war? 

U.S. Navy Officers Inspecting U-117
in Philadelphia

So the U.S. Navy sent crews to bring six of the U-boats to the United States. First, the Navy sailed UB-88, UC-97, U-117 and UB-148 in company with the tender USS Bushnell (AS-2), via a longer and safer trans-Atlantic route via the Azores and Bermuda. The U-111 was delayed by mechanical issues and took the direct course across the stormy north Atlantic alone, without wireless, and a dodgy power plant. Nevertheless, she got to New York first for the kick-off of the drive. U-140 came over still later.

UC-97 stayed around New York City (which included a bizarre re-enactment of the Lusitania sinking); UC-97 was said to have sunk seven ships, but in reality she was completed too late to participate in the war. The other subs visited eastern ports, attracting many thousands of visitors.

After the successful bond drive it was decided to use the U-boats as a recruiting tool. The Navy needed more sailors as ships authorized in the 1916 and 1917 expansion programs began to come on line. So “adventure, see the world, and learn high-technology” became the slogans. 

In May 1919, UB-88 embarked on an epic recruiting voyage, visiting numerous ports down the East Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River as far as Memphis, then through the Panama Canal to the West Coast.  Meanwhile, UC-97 sailed via the St. Lawrence River and the Welland Canal to become the first submarine on the Great Lakes.

U-97 Visiting Toronto

During most of UC-97’s time on the lakes her skipper was by Lieutenant Charles A. Lockwood. His career ambitions survived a diplomatic spat between Canada and the United States. While visiting Canadian ports and transiting the Welland Canal, Lockwood had refused to fly the Union Jack (Canada didn’t have an official flag until 1965), the protocol for a merchant ship. Rather, Lockwood flew the U.S. flag over the Imperial German Naval flag, identifying a captured naval ship, which resulted in angry protests by the Canadians. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels insisted that UC-97 was a commissioned U.S. Navy vessel, so flying the Union Jack was inappropriate. As a vice-admiral, Lockwood would later be in charge of all U.S. submarines in the Pacific during World War II. 

Since UB-88 and UC-97 were small coastal mine-laying submarines, they were not designed for long voyages. It was the huge crowds (as many as 5,000 in a day) and added stops due to political pressure that caused UC-97 to fall behind schedule and cancel the Lake Superior leg so as to finish in Chicago in August 1919. Nevertheless, the voyage was considered successful. Within a year, UC-97 was a derelict moored on the Chicago River.

All of the six U-boats had been stripped of everything useful for study of German technology. In compliance with the Armistice, UB-88 was sunk on 3 January 1921 by the USS Wickes (DD-75), commanded by then-Commander William F. “Bull” Halsey. In June and July 1921 three of the U-boats (U-117, U-140 and U-148) were sunk as part of Brigadier General Billy Mitchell’s demonstrations of sinking ships with aircraft. U-111 sank while under tow, and as a hazard to navigation, she had to be raised, towed to deep water and scuttled on 31 August 1922.

UC-97 was in no condition to go very far, so she was towed into Lake Michigan on 7 June 1921 and used as a target by the auxiliary USS Wilmette (IX-29), formerly the Eastland, which had capsized in July 1915, killing 844—the worst death toll from a single ship accident in Great Lakes history.

The first shot was fired by Gunner’s Mate J. O. Sabin, who had been credited with firing the first U.S. Navy shot in the Atlantic during World War I. The last shot was fired by Gunner’s Mate A. H. Anderson, who had fired the first torpedo at a U-boat during the war. After being hit by 13 4-inch rounds (out of 18 fired) UC-97 sank.

Visiting Rochester, NY

 

Out of sight, out of mind. The UC-97 was forgotten so completely that researchers in the 1960s looking for evidence of a U-boat on the Great Lakes were initially met by total incredulity, even by the U.S. Navy Historical Center. Searches for UC-97 in those days were unsuccessful and she was reputed to be one of the Great Lakes’ most elusive shipwrecks. Then she was found.

There’s another chapter to the story of submarines on Lake Michigan. During World War II 28 were built by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. in Wisconsin. These boats went on to destroy 488,918 tons of Japanese shipping. How did the Navy get them to the ocean? This time they didn’t use the Welland Canal.

Source: The Naval History and Heritage Command

Additional Recommendation: The Great Navy Birds of Lake Michigan explores an archeological aspect of the military heritage of the  Great Lakes.  Over the past 35 years, a small team of explorers have surveyed the southern basin of Lake Michigan in search of World War II U.S. Navy aircraft. The aircraft were lost during mishaps that occurred during an almost forgotten naval project which had trained thousands of aircraft carrier pilots between the years of 1942 through 1945. Because the explorers became so proficient at locating and recovering the aircraft, the Director of the National Naval Aviation Museum engaged them in an effort to rescue dozens of aircraft for presentation to the American public. It was due to the efforts of these researchers that the resting place of UC-97 was finally located.