Service Career
Upon completion of the two boats, the Austro-Hungarian Navy evaluated the U-1 class in trials through 1910. During the trials, technical problems with the gasoline engines were revealed. Exhaust fumes and gasoline vapors frequently poisoned the air inside the boats and the engines themselves were not able reach the contracted speed. Because of the problems, the Austro-Hungarian Navy considered the engines to be unsuitable for wartime use and paid only for the hulls and armament of the two U-1 boats. While replacement diesel engines were ordered from the Austrian firm Maschinenfabrik Leobersdorf, they agreed to a lease of the gasoline engines at a fee of US$4,544 annually.
In order to dive, the diving tanks, located above the waterline, had to be flooded by pumps, which took over 14½ minutes in early tests, but which was later reduced to 8 minutes. The maximum diving depth was set at 40 meters (130 ft) when the hulls began to show signs of stress at that depth. The four pairs of diving planes gave the boats exceptional underwater handling, and, when the boats were properly trimmed and balanced, the boats could be held within 20 centimeters (7.9 in) of the desired depth. Other tests proved the underwater wheels to be useless. The U-1 class boats outperformed the U-3 (Germaniawerft) and U-5 (Holland) classes in both diving and steering capabilities in the Austro-Hungarian Navy evaluations.
Both boats were officially commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1911—U-1 in April, U-2 in June—and served as training boats, each making as many as ten training cruises a month. At the outbreak of World War I, U-1 and U-2 were both in drydock awaiting the installation of their new diesel engines. To accommodate the new engines, the boats were lengthened by about 11 inches (28 cm). These changes lowered the surface displacement to 223.0 metric tons (219.5 long tons) but increased the submerged displacement to 277.5 metric tons (273.1 long tons).
From 1915, both boats conducted reconnaissance cruises out of either Trieste or Pola. In January 1918, the boats were declared obsolete, but remained in service as training boats at the submarine base at Brioni, but at the war's end both boats were in Pola, After the war, both boats were ceded to Italy as war reparations and scrapped. Neither boat sank any ships during the war.
Read more about this topic: U-1 Class Submarine (Austria-Hungary)
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