U-boat
Sighting
Los Angeles Times, October 21, 2003
By John Balzar
Times Staff Writer
At this depth, the sun barely penetrates, although exactly
how deep is still secret. In the murky ocean water, even
the brightest lights allow visibility of only 15 or 20
feet. As diver Kendall Raine recounted it, he kept getting
more and more excited: First his eyes lighted on the
shadowy, encrusted shape of a cylindrical hull, then a
submarine’s characteristic diving planes, then a
conning tower.
“Well, that about nails it,” he said to
himself, his voice echoing in his own ears in the squeaky
pitch of Donald Duck’s, thanks to helium mixed into
the breathing gas that allows tech divers to survive the
extreme depths that can be found off San Pedro Bay.
After 82 years, the German submarine UB-88 had been
discovered.
The 182-foot UB-88 had traveled half the world to reach the
bottom of the sea. No other German U-boat is thought to
rest off the West Coast of the U.S., according to the
underwater archeologists who pursued the wreck.
Few vessels in history chalked up a record like
UB-88’s – having served against the Allies in
wartime and then for them in peacetime.
Under commission of the German Navy in World War I, UB-88
sank more than a dozen Allied ships in the Atlantic. After
the war, it became a laboratory for U.S. Navy technicians
to study the workings of an enemy submarine.
Later, it became a traveling tourist attraction in a
campaign to sell victory bonds and pay off American war
debts. Finally, UB-88 was towed out of San Pedro Harbor on
Jan. 3, 1921, and sunk in a Navy live-fire exercise.
The Los Angeles Times reported from the scene that the
“former Hun sea scourge” went down six miles
from the harbor “somewhere off San Pedro
light.”
In recent years, the exact resting place of UB-88 has
attracted wreck divers in the region, and there have been
rumors of its location. But the first confirmation occurred
when Southern California fisherman and nondiver Gary Fabian
lowered a video camera over the side of his boat in July
and filmed it.
With friend Ray Arntz, a long-time dive boat skipper,
Fabian spent more than a year in the search, using old Navy
ship logs and high-tech sea-floor maps. Fabian first
developed an interest in “underwater
structures” because they attract fish.
When he heard the story of UB-88, his interest became an
obsession. He investigated about 50 targets in the deep
waters, most of them piles of rocks, before achieving
success.
The team enlisted Raine and partner John Walker, respected
tech divers, to confirm and photograph the wreck.
Raine’s reaction at first sight of the old warship?
“A thrill. It was an act of discovery and
fulfillment.”
Team members vow to maintain secrecy about its location.
They say UB-88 may contain an unexploded scuttling charge
and they do not want to encourage divers at depths far
below the recreational scuba limit of 130 feet.
Nautical charts show the seabed in this vicinity drops from
70 feet to more than 2,500 feet. Besides, the team says
souvenir hunters are unlikely to find anything in the wreck
because UB-88 was stripped before being sunk.