SM UB-8

SM UB-8

SM UB-8 was a German Type UB I submarine or U-boat in the German Imperial Navy (German: Kaiserliche Marine) during World War I. She was sold to Bulgaria in 1916 and renamed Podvodnik No. 18 (Bulgarian: Пoдвoдник №18), and was the first ever Bulgarian submarine.

UB-8 was ordered in October 1914 and was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen in November. UB-8 was a little under 92 feet (28 m) in length and displaced between 127 and 141 metric tons (140 and 155 short tons), 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-8 was originally one of a pair of UB I boats sent to the Austro-Hungarian Navy to replace an Austrian pair to be sent to the Dardanelles, and was broken into sections and shipped by rail to Pola in March 1915 for reassembly. She was launched and commissioned as SM UB-8 in the German Imperial Navy in April when the Austrians opted out of the agreement.

Although briefly a part of the Pola Flotilla at commissioning, UB-8 spent the majority of her German career patrolling the Black Sea as part of the Constantinople Flotilla. The U-boat sank two ships. One of them, SS Merion, was disguised by the British Admiralty as a Royal Navy battlecruiser as part of a decoy operation. In October, she helped repel a Russian bombardment of Bulgaria.

In May 1916, the submarine was transferred to the Bulgarian Navy as Podvodnik No. 18 and commissioned in a ceremony that was attended by Crown Prince Boris and Prince Kiril. In Bulgarian service, the submarine patrolled the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and had encounters with Russian vessels on several occasions. After the war ended, the submarine was surrendered to France in February 1919 and scrapped at Bizerta in August 1921. However in July 2011 Viceadmiral Manushev, Commander of the Bulgarian Navy, announced that the submarine, discovered in 2010 at the sea bottom near the town of Varna, is UB-8. Divers discovered manufacturer numbers and according to them the identity is confirmed.