German U-boat wreck may be at bottom of Churchill River in Labrador
Brian Corbin says it might sound far-fetched but he’s 100 per cent sure there is a German U-boat lying on the bottom of Labrador’s Churchill River more than 200 kilometres from the coast.
Rumours of a World War II German submarine at the bottom of the river have been around for years, but a grainy sonar image seems to show the outline of the type of sub that terrorized the North Atlantic during World War II.
Corbin, 50, a diver from Happy Valley Goose Bay in Labrador, was among several people using side scan sonar technology searching the river bottom for three men lost over Muskrat Falls in 2010 but it was only three weeks ago they made what they believe to be an historic discovery.
“Our focus was finding bodies . . . but lo and behold we found something that sort of resembles a submarine,” Corbin told the Star Thursday.
It was after Corbin heard that other people were searching for “the so-called submarine” that he decided to pore over the sonar images since his group had spent three weeks combing the area near the falls.
“I’m 100 per cent (convinced) . . . it does resemble a conning tower, snorkel vents for the generators for charging the batteries and the cables are there that go to the conning tower . . . it’s a very good sonar image,” he said.
Corbin said he has registered with Transport Canada’s Receiver of Wreck, who acts as the custodian of found and recovered wrecks, and he’s eager to get back to the site, about one kilometre from Muskrat Falls.
It certainly wasn’t unheard of for German U-boats to be operating off the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick during the war targeting convoys to England. At least one U-boat reached as far upriver on the St. Lawrence River as Rimouski, 300 kilometres from Quebec City.
“I think it is possible,” Wyman Jacque, town manager for Happy Valley Goose Bay, told the Star.
Jacque said the U-boat could have quite easily made the trip inland on Labrador’s largest estuary to the shipping port of Happy Valley Goose Bay from the coast. He added that the Churchill River before it was dammed in the 1970s might well have been deep enough to allow German sailors to get to the Falls.
“I can tell you that I have seen the sonar and the outline . . . and you can actually see an outline of what appears to be . . . a submarine,” Jacque said.
The German Embassy in Ottawa, which has been contacted about the possible find, has confirmed that as many as 50 U-boats were unaccounted for when the war ended in 1945.
Georg Juergens, deputy head of mission for the German Embassy said in a televised interview that on the off chance it is a German submarine it would be considered a war grave site and would not be disturbed.
“It is not absolutely impossible although it would be a sensation if it really turns out to be a German U-boat so far inland . . . that would be very exceptional,” he told the CBC. .
Juergens recalled how not long ago a battery operated weather station was found decades after being left in Labrador by a U-boat in a remote area of the coast. It is now on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
“We must brace ourselves for surprises,” Juergens said.
Corbin said he will first have to get a permit from the provincial archeological office before further efforts can be made to identify the object, which sits in about 20 metres of water.
“We are excited . . . it’s quite amazing,” he said.
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