If you prefer to read this story in Danish click here.

Grenaa, Saturday 16/5, 2009

According to the plan we, the dive team silver arrow, should depart from a port in Zealand, Denmark, or Sweden during Friday evening. Tour participants are Hans Joergen Eriksen, Jens Erik Eriksen, Jan Petersen, and myself.
Everyone are diving on CCR – closed circuit rebreather). I will later go in depth with the technique in the rebreathers and the gas we intend to use on the trip.
The goal is the eastern Baltic, where we will visit new or unknown wrecks in depths between 60 and 80 meters, but the top of the wish list is a visit to the wreck of the “General von Steuben”.

Since the weather forecast was not very good for diving before late Sunday, it was agreed that weather during the Sunday dinner would determine the departure date.

We are sailing with the Ternen, which is a former Swedish customs cruiser, currently owned by Åge Jensen, better known as Dynamite Åge.
Ternen were purchased when the U534 was raised, sponsored by Karsten Ree. After this project Åge and Karsten made a deal, and today Ternen is owned by Åge. For many years this has been the divingship which found the new wrecks and told their storys.

Åge himself have been diving since 1960 and was the first man on countless shipwrecks over time, but the main interest
has been the submarines and he has the honor of having located U251 in 1976 south of Anholt and U534 north
of Anholt in 1986. In 2007 he found the last uboat that were reported sunk in Danish waters, but which had not yet been found namely the U2359. This has required some extensive investigation of the German war archives and it is no exaggeration to say that Åge Jensen today is probably the
Dane with the greatest knowledge of the wrecks in the Danish waters with Kattegat in particular and German Uboots as a specialty.

According to Åge there is only one known wreck that still hasn’t been found in the Kattegat. That’s the wreck of the steamer BALTIC, which collided with another ship and sank in the 1930’ties.

One would think that all wrecks have been found by now, but with the opportunities with technical diving and gas mixture, which allows the divers to go
deeper than ever before, and stay there longer, there are still many wrecks in the deep that still haven’t had their
story told.

That was a little background history. Now we have to see if the weather gods are with us, so that we can reach our goals this time! The right weather will be bring the stories to the surface.

Grenaa, Sunday 17/5
The Weatherreport today was not particularly promising for diving in the Baltic Sea, but there should be a chance
for some good days in the northern Kattegat. It was agreed that Jens Erik and I drove to the port in Dragør were Ternen was.

Dragør, Monday 18/5

We arrived at 0600 and threw our equipment, the sponsor sign, and some fresh supplies aboard. Our plan was to sail
to the Kattegat and make a few dives while we headed north. If the weather would be better we would sail into Grenaa, take the rest of the team onboard, and then continue further north.

As we rounded Helsingoer, we had a blank sea – time for diving! The course was set towards the wreck of steamer “THEMIS”, which rests at 28 meters of water southeast of the island Hesseloe.

“THEMIS” had clear water and no current. It had collapsed a great deal more than the last time we were there, but
that’s also a couple of years ago.

Back aboard Ternen there was good news. The weather forecast had significantly
improved since the morning, so we phoned around and called the people together for a departure from Grenaa next morning – monday at 01:00. The plan was to head north to the area around Laesoe because the weather was still bad in the Baltic region.

At the end of the day we arrived at Grenaa and got busy. We needed extra supplies, diesel and lubricating oil, gas, limestone,
and extra gear.

There were also new planning to do, now that we were going to the Skagerrak instead of the Baltic Sea, so which wrecks should we investigate in and which port should we use as a base?

Grenaa Tuesday 19/5

We sailed from Grenaa at 01:30 with all participants on board and a promising weather forecast for the Skagerrak.
The course was set for the position of U-2359 which we should make some footage of so that the planning of the salvage could move on.

We also had to measure the angle of the uboot, and measure how much of it that is buried in the mud, as well as the height from the elevated port to the seafloor. Everything is important information that is needed to know before a recovery.

We arrived at the position at 07:30 o’clock. The weight was thrown and the first team of divers made clear. The buoy stood nice and there was a moderate current. We hoped that the sight was good enough for that task could be solved. Jan
Petersen and I were the first team and we were excited, it’s not everyday that you have to dive on true war story
and even to be some of the first to see U-2359 in more than 64 years. Only two men had dived there before and that was Jens Erik Eriksen, who is also along on this ride, and Allan Greisen. No doubt that we were excited.

See the video from the dive on U2359 here.

U-2359 is a challenging dive, as it is in deep water (approx. 70 meters) in a heavily trafficked area and there is often a strong current. In addition, the sight is often very poor due to the soft bottom in the area, and to all this a large part of the submarine is wrapped in trawler nets, which doesn’t make things easier.

We left the surface and began the journey into the depth. As we crossed the 40 meters all surface lights disappeared and we continued the journey in total darkness. The reflection from our computer screens and LEDs in our Headup display was only
source of light. We were approaching 60 meters fast and began to decrease the rate of descent and turn our powerful HID lights on.

Now we were about to be there. The first thing that captured our light in the dark water, were the green trawl nets and the large orange balls that keep the trawl floating. We took a look around the area so that we didn’t ended up in the middle of the trawl.
The sinker had landed right down in a trawl, but we could immediately see the periscope and a antenna, and the contours of the submarine’s tower. “Touchdown” – we had landed.

We swam around the hull of to get an overview before we started. U-2359 is buried in the muddy bottom, to approx. one meter before the tower.
The screw and rudder is elevated from the seafloor. It fits very well, because at the film from the British bomb squadron that sank it, it seemed that it got the most hits in front of the tower. This means that the bow has been flooded, and it has sunk with the bow downwards.

When we had a overview of the ship, we went in to work. When that was successfully accomplished, we started to look more closely at the tower – exciting,
but now the time was running out, and we began our ascent to the surface. At 26 meters we had our first decompression stop

While we were degassing at the rope, we let our thoughts go back to May 2nd 1945, when U-2359 as one of the last submarines escaped from Nazi Germany and met its fate in the form of a mosquito fighter-bombers squadron. It was a short process when Hellfire missiles and machinegun fire slammed into the hull in front of the tower and shortly after U-2359 dived for the last time.

After completing the decompression we broke the surface with a certain satisfaction having seen something as some of the very first people ever.
We also knew that this probably is the last time that such a finding is made in
Danish waters.

The next team was ready and went into the water while I and Jan was ready for lunch and coffee.
When the last team came out of the water again there was a lively discussion about the things that were observed and measured, – a very exciting dive and good teamwork.

The next dive that day was to take place in the same area but not on the same depth. Åge had a position some miles away, which hadn’t been checked before and he wanted us to go have a look.

Jan and I had been degassing for the longest time on the surface, so we were also the first to get in the water again. According to Åge it was a fairly large wreck that was located at about 48 meters.

We had a lot of expectations when we jumped in and began our descent towards the deep. But when we came to the end of the rope that was lowered down to the seafloor, we found that it had hit the wreck, and the sight in the water was less than half a meter.

We then took our line wheels and fixed it firmly in the bottom.
Then we began the search by swimming in larger and larger circles. After 5 minutes of swimming we hit the side of the wreck. We quickly swam up to the deck and could see that we were on the stern of the wreck. Unfortunately that was the only thing we found out the as the sight was still zero. In addition, the wreck was completely overgrown by sea flowers, so it was impossible to navigate around. We spent another 15 minutes tumbling around before we agreed to abort the dive. We then returned to the surface.

After having conferred with the others on board, we agreed to sail to the port Østerby on Laesoe, to have a little
dinner and make plans for the next day’s diving.

Part two of this log will be available soon.