Ub-82 [possibly]: Torr Head, Firth of Clyde
Overview
UB-82 was a German submarine sunk on 17 April 1918 by depth charges from Pilot Me and Young Fred, killing all 37 aboard. This national record contains detailed survey notes for an intact submarine-sized wreck and calls it possibly UB-82. However, the saved map point is far from both the survey coordinates written in the record and the wartime oil report. The candidate wreck is important, but this particular pin cannot be treated as a proved grave.
The vessel and voyage
The German Type UB III submarine UB-82 was launched at Bremen in September 1917 and commissioned in October under Walter Gustav Becker. About 56 metres long, it carried ten torpedoes and a deck gun. It completed three patrols and is not credited with sinking or damaging a vessel. Its last patrol took it towards the defended approaches north of Ireland, where British patrol craft watched routes between the Atlantic and the channels around Scotland and Ireland.
How it was lost
Pilot Me and Young Fred, British patrol drifters, attacked UB-82 with depth charges on 17 April 1918. The submarine sank and oil was reported on the surface. That event is much better supported than the modern map position. The national record's written wartime and survey coordinates cluster in a different area from the latitude and longitude saved for this page. The wreck described by survey may be UB-82, but the coordinate conflict prevents an exact pin match.
Deaths and survival
The entire company of 37 died, including commander Walter Gustav Becker. No survivor could describe the final attack from inside the submarine. Their loss gives the search for the correct wreck more than map interest: a confirmed hull would mark the place where all 37 remain. Until then, attaching the death site to the wrong coordinates would be misleading. The casualty story is certain, while the precise physical resting place remains under a possible identification.
What remains
Surveys beginning in the 1960s and revisited in 1980 described a wreck about 50 metres long and seven metres high in roughly 47 metres of water. It lay on a north-south line, appeared intact and had fish around it, with no obvious scour. It was suggested as UB-82 in 1983 but no named object is cited. Those observations are valuable, yet the written survey point is many kilometres from this saved pin, so the location data must be reconciled before publication as an exact site.
Why it mattered
UB-82's loss records how patrol craft protected the northern approaches from submarine attack during 1918. It also restores the people on both sides: small British vessels carried out the attack, while 37 German submariners died in a boat with no recorded success. The record's coordinate clash is locally important because modern maps can give a false sense of certainty. Correcting that clash could place the history and grave where the survey evidence actually points.
History checked 2026-08-15 against the named sources below.
A wreck point does not grant permission to dive, disturb the site or recover anything. Check current law and local conditions first.