SM UB-47

SM UB-47

SM UB-47 was a Type UB II submarine or U-boat for the German Imperial Navy (German: Kaiserliche Marine) during World War I. UB-47 was sold to the Austro-Hungarian Navy (German: Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine or K.u.K. Kriegsmarine) during the war. In Austro-Hungarian service the B was dropped from her name and she was known as SM U-47 or U-XLVII as a member of the Austro-Hungarian U-43 class.

UB-47 was ordered in July 1915 and was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen in September. UB-47 was a little more than 121 feet (37 m) in length and displaced between 270 and 305 metric tons (300 and 336 short tons), depending on whether surfaced or submerged. She was equipped to carry a complement of four torpedoes for her two bow torpedo tubes and had an 88-millimeter (3.5 in) deck gun. As part of a group of six submarines selected for Mediterranean service, UB-47 was broken into railcar sized components and shipped to Pola where she was assembled and launched in June 1916, and commissioned in July. Over the next year the U-boat sank twenty ships, which included the French battleship Gaulois and two Cunard Line steamers in use as troopships, Franconia and Ivernia.

The German Imperial Navy was having difficulties in finding trained submarine crews and offered to sell UB-47 and a sister boat UB-43 to the Austro-Hungarian Navy. After the terms were agreed to in June 1917, both boats were handed over at Pola. When commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy, the B in her designation was dropped so that she became U-47 or U-XLVII. She sank an additional three ships in Austro-Hungarian service through the end of the war. U-47 was ceded to France as a war reparation in 1920 and broken at Bizerta that same year.