January 1, 2019 • 23 mins
Toward the end of World War II, the German Type VIIC submarine was acknowledged to be one of the most advanced -- and deadliest -- predators on the seas. Yet, in at least one case, some of the same technological breakthroughs that made these subs astonishing also led to their demise. Join the guys as they dive (get it?) into the strange story of U-1206 and the high-tech toilet that led to its doom.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Ye, welcome to the show ridiculous historians as well as
fans of The Hunt for Red October, the Thrillers starring
(00:31):
Sean Connery. What about dust Boot? Das Boot is more
of a classic, I would say, and set a precedent
for sure. Yeah, do you know? You don't? Directed das
Boot Wolf Kan Peterson Pearson. That's our super producer, Casey Pegram.
He's already on the case, but we haven't. How do
we do that? Can we combine this Casey fairy sound
effect with the don't well? I like the way that
(00:56):
it just rolled in with the with the sound effect
after you know what? Yeah? Who cares? May we double
it up? Sure? I don't know, it's already happened. I'm ben,
I'm null and yeah Wolf. Kane Peterson also directed um A,
A Nightmare Fuel movie from mine and probably many other
people's childhoods. The never ending story nightmare Fuel. Really it's
(01:16):
an amazing it is, but as a kid it is
a very dark, depressing film, like when the horse gets
sucked into the swamp, and like those creepy sphinx that
shoot lasers and have breasts. Those were cool, though I
still think of what I'm trying to describe various rites
of passage to people. I use the metaphor of those
(01:36):
three gates that a tray who has to go through. No,
it's true. I think it just it traumatized me a
little bit as a child. And that's a sort of
a bit of an internet trope where it's a screenshot
of that scene where the horse is like sinking into
the swamps of sadness, and it's sort of like, this
is where it all started going south for me mental
health wise. Speaking of fantastic segues, today's episode is not
(01:57):
about the never ending story, but it is related to
maritime adventures dust Boot, thus Boot the hunt for Red October,
which to me, for nostalgic reasons, is probably closer to
my heart. In a previous episode, we explored life on
submarines because of that potato war. Yes, yes, very short
lived potato war. Very a potato skirmish, yeah, And today's
(02:21):
episode brings us to another tale of maritime mishaps. There
we go, that's the way to say it. We are
traveling back to April fourteenth, nineteen, and we are aboard
one of the most advanced submarines at the time. A
little thing called a U twelve oh six. Now, is
(02:42):
not that? Not not the harp on dust Boot because
obviously I like to say it, But isn't that what
that movie was about. Wasn't it about the crew of
a of a of a of a U boat? Yes? Yeah, cool, Um,
that's right. Then today's episode is in fact about a
sort of two point o version of one of these boats,
because this was kind of the skirt urge of the
Nazi Party, well, their scourge on the Allies. That was
(03:05):
one of their most covert and successful ways of wreaking havoc.
Isn't that right? Uh? That is correct. U boats were
quite dangerous, and one of the reasons they were dangerous
is because they were very difficult to detect and they
were very nimble last yeah, fast, agile creatures. I believe
the submarine in dos Boot is uh based on a
(03:31):
U nineties six. All the U boats submarines were called
boats at the time to all the U boats had
that designation of you dash something And in the case
of today's story, we're looking at you twelve o six.
The U twelve oh six was premier vessel. I mean,
(03:51):
this thing was a big deal. It went into service
in March of nineteen four. It's emblem was a white
store on a black shield with a green beak and legs.
So let's get an idea of the size of this thing.
It was two hundred and twenty ft seven inches long,
(04:13):
or for the rest of the world outside of the US,
that's sixty seven point to three meters. It was about
thirty one ft or nine point six ms high, and
it was able to, despite its size, disappear under the
water pretty quickly. It could operate at depths of up
to seven hundred and fifty ft or two hundred and
(04:34):
thirty meters. It also, in addition to its heightened functional capacities, right,
it's a superior armament and so on, it had a
couple of amenities which were pretty rare for submarines at
the time. In particular, it had a very high tech toilet,
(04:55):
a complicated toilet, very complicated. Let's backtrack just slightly. In
previous model UM they they did have toilets, but they
hadn't quite cracked the code yet on how to get
these toilets to flush and expel the waist while the
boat was submerged. While the sub was submerged, right, there
was a problem with operating the previous models of the
(05:16):
toilet at depth. This one, however, they figured it out.
Those crafty German engineers figured it out. But as you said, Ben,
it wasn't easy. In fact, it was so complicated. They
had to designate a toilet specialist to be on board
who could assist with the flushing of this latrine. Can
you imagine that, Ben, having to call in the toilet
(05:36):
specialist to flush down your your business. They had multiple specialists.
In fact, yeah, they had multiple specialists because someone who
was trained in the operation of this contraption had to
be present to flush it. It had a complicated system
of valves. That's essentially what it boils down to. You
(05:57):
couldn't just hit a handle and then call it a day.
This thing was complicated, um, But it was also poorly
placed in terms of the interior of the submarine. It
was directly over the batteries that powered the sub the
power of the sub when it was submerged, because the
engines had to be shut off at that right And
(06:18):
I actually wasn't aware that battery technology was quite as
advanced as it clearly was in this time. Um. They
were banks of batteries that would supply an ordinate amount
of electricity because can you imagine like how much you
would need to keep a boat like that moving. That's right.
These batteries provided five sixty killer lots of power for
(06:42):
propulsion when there was when the sub was submerged. And
you're right about killing the engines as well. Because diesel
electric submarines had a had a larger signature when they
were running underwater, it was allowed it was easier to detect,
so ideally you want a quieter source of power. And Ben,
(07:02):
I just want to point out we're getting a little
bit of this information from a website with a delightful
U r l. It is toilet dash Guru dot com.
I'm also a fan of War is Boring dot com,
very very good, and I've got a little spoiler alert,
a surprise that I'm saving for the end I think
you will appreciate. But for now, onward onward to this
(07:25):
the very epitome of sub technology at the time. On
April six, this fantastic submarine with it's very complicated toilet,
the U twelve oh six leaves the ports city of
Chris Johnson in Nazi occupied Norway, and it goes on
(07:46):
its first combat patrol. It's mission, like that of many
U boats, is to seek out and destroy British and
US ships, so you can destroy like the like the Stooges,
there's a search and destroy, same death. You know, you're
looking for something and then you know. Yeah, So it's
(08:08):
on patrol for about eight days. And I mentioned this
too underline the fact that the U twelve O six
was in the service of the Nazi war effort that
only had three more weeks to go at best before
it was the end of the game for them. Yeah.
I think at this point Hitler was already hold up
(08:30):
and what I had not heard the term for until
just a little while ago, his furor bunker. That's true, Yeah,
And I think on April thirty he commits suicide in
that same fuel bunker. Um. Seven days after that, Germany
completely surrenders and the war is over. But no one
knew that on the U twelve O six at the time.
(08:52):
They knew they were just out to find and obliterate
any Allied ship they could they could get in their sight,
so within range of their torpedoes. And so they're out
on the open sea and it's fairly uneventful. How big
was their crew again, it was around forty. So these
(09:12):
thirty to forty crew members trapped in this tin can
beneath the waves, um while they have their eyes peeled,
they're not running into their they're not running into any action,
any war. But they are doing the normal things that
you do. They're eating, they're sleeping, and shifts. They're using
(09:33):
that very very fancy toilet. Again, this is this is
like the version of this is too sub toilets as
the Japanese Toto bidays are too normal. I think we've
talked about this re a our sponsorship by Tushi, but man,
those things are high tech and incredible life changing. I know,
(09:55):
listen to US America. You've got to stop pooping like barbarians.
Seriously so so, but that's that's actually fairly accurate comparison
because a lot of people were confused by this. And
this is when we introduced Captain Carl Adolph Schlit to
the story. He was twenty seven years old and in
charge of the sub at the time. Yeah, it's true,
(10:16):
and it was just it was it was in fact
his first rodeo, and when it comes to going out
on a sub, he was very new to the game,
a little bit green. Uh, And if I'm not mistaken, Ben,
where our story really starts to get interesting, um is
about eight miles off of the coast of Scotland, at
about two hundred feet below the surface of the ocean.
(10:39):
That's when our man Schlit had to take a schlit
Captain Schlit he okay, to keep the chain of command there. Yes,
So he decided that he wasn't going to request the
assistance of the toilet technician. Right, surely, I'm a captain
of a submarine, the chief commotist. I can operate a toilet.
(11:01):
I can do this. The toilet tinker was either not
desired or not around, And so Schlitz said, you know what,
I'm I am in charge of this, this entire sub
I'm a captain. I know how everything works. And the
instruction manual is right here by the toilet. Did we
mention that it had a comprehensive instruction manual? I'm picturing
a massive tone uh, spiral bound hanging from a chain
(11:25):
on the wall. That's what I don't know. That's that's
just how I'm looking at it, which is helpful from
a design perspective when you think about it, because a
lot of people like to read when they're using the restroom,
so this is this is actually good engineering. But whatever,
Maybe he was in a hurry because being captain he
had other things to do. Maybe he just misread it.
Maybe he wasn't as smart on the quick on the
(11:47):
uptake as he thought he was, because something went wrong.
And then he goes, you know, sch and so he says, okay,
I know when I need to delegate. Where's the toilet specialist? Right?
Where's the Yeah, so Schlitz asked that crew member to
come help them out, and then that crew member takes
(12:09):
a stab, and maybe because something was already messed up
with the valves, they make the problem worse. I mean,
we were not trying to throw this specialist under the
bus here, you know. I'm sure he knew his craft,
but I have a feeling that our boy Schlit kind
of pre botched. The whole works right, right, And there's
the toilet, there's the commode, probably still full of Schlitz.
And now the specialist has to figure out not just
(12:31):
how to operate the toilet correctly, but how to make
up for Schlitz mishap. And so the specialist opens the
outside valve of the commode, the one that goes directly
to the sea, while the inside valve is still open,
and this causes a deluge of seawater into the sub
(12:53):
and also probably the rest of Schlitz leaving right, it's
fun to say. And we talked about the bank of batteries.
Did we talk about the design and where they were
located or just the fact that the sub operated on them.
The we did mention it did mention that the batteries
are directly under the toilet, right, And it's problematic. It's
(13:13):
tough to design this kind of stuff, you know, it's
tough to to put all the needed gadgetry into a
space with such a sharp, strong form constraint. Totally, it's
sort of like they keep making the iPhone thinner and thinner,
so they got to remove the headphone jack. Sure, just
like that. I don't buy. I don't buy. They actually
brought it back, but they made it a little thicker, right.
(13:33):
Or it's it's like looking under the hood of a
high end sports car because so much stuff is put
in this weird tetris like arrangement. And that's kind of
what was happening in this sub I mean, clearly it's
not a good idea to have the power source directly
under something like the toilet. But then it's a question
of where else are you going to put it? Right,
(13:54):
you don't want it necessarily near the torpedoes. Yeah, no,
it's it seemed like it probably seemed like a good
idea the time, probably seemed very clever to those crafty
German engineers. Right, So, Ben, is this the part where
we want to get into a little chemistry. Yeah, yeah,
it is. It is so salt. The symbol for that
in a c L right, water is H two O,
and if you dissolve salt in water you get a
(14:16):
solution of various ions. And H two on itself is
not conductive, doesn't conduct anything, but an ionic solution certainly
is conductive, and it certainly does conduct stuff. So when
this water floods in through the valve system of this
complicated toilet, the water and the salt in the sea
(14:39):
water hit the sub battery, and the sub battery as
a result of this chemical interaction, produces lie plus hydrogen
gas plus most importantly, chloring gas because the sub battery
is full of acid. So The problem chlorine gas is
(15:01):
that it is a deadly, deadly poison. Yeah, and they're
in a tube, a metal tube, under the water with
their pants down. Well you presumably let's pantser up at
this point. I like the idea of him still having
his trousers around his ankles in a blind panic. That
would be yeah, just kind of you know, scooting around
(15:23):
doing the little penguin run. That's the one. Yeah. So
so we don't have pictures of it, of the scene
at that pictures, mental pictures. We have imaginings, we have
dreams of this, of this moment, but we do know
what happens next. The submarine is filling with chlorine gas.
This could be a death sentence if they don't do something.
(15:44):
Do you think they clocked instantly what was happening on
a chemical level or do you think they just started
gagging and choking uncontrollably and new, oh, schlet something's gone wrong.
I'm absolutely sure they knew, because they were very well
aware of how the batteries worked. That's if the toilet
was complicated, that's because it was new, But diesel electric
(16:04):
battery power would have been familiar to them. So this
is when our boy schlit has to kind of jump
into action, and despite having sort of botched the whole
thing to begin with, had to sort of exercise his
thinking on his feet muscles, right, and the captain quickly
(16:27):
realized that he had no choice but to order the
submarine to surface because they had to vent this gas
as quickly as possible and then replace it with breathable air.
Mind you, they're doing this in enemy territory, off the
coast of Scotland, about eight miles. Yeah, and so they
surface within sight of the Scottish coastline. In one story
(16:48):
you will hear that they surfaced almost directly beneath an
Allied ship, but we do know for sure they surfaced
so close to shore that they were quickly spotted by
Allied aircraft. They were attacked and the captain to order
the crew to abandon ship. UM three three members of
the crew fell overboard and drowned, and I believe one
(17:11):
died in the malay fighting that occurred. So we're right
at forty crew members then, because thirty six survived. Yeah,
that is correct. So what happened? What happened during this attack?
The U twelve or six was badly damaged and couldn't dive.
And this is when Schlitz starts ordering the crew into lifeboats.
(17:33):
And then he makes the game time decision that only
a captain can make abandoned ship. Right, get on, get
ye hands to a lifeboat. He's done that, But now
he does the very last thing. He scuttles the ship.
What does that mean? I don't I don't think I
know that term. It means to purposefully sink a ship
of any sort. So in the rough definition, it means
(17:55):
to cut a hole through the bottom deck or side
of a ship. But you you know, you destroy it.
That's what he did. He destroyed the submarine his own ship,
and it went down, and as the ship sank, he
got away. By the way as the ship sank. We
can only imagine what he thought. Maybe he thought I
should have just contacted the toiletsman when I was supposed
(18:19):
to the headsman. Sure, that's that's that's something different. That's
someone that's like an executioner. They can or like. But
he also entered into history, the annals of history, as
the captain of the only warship in the entirety of
naval history to be doomed by its own malfunctioning toilets cool,
(18:40):
he gets on his tombstone. I think they probably he
probably wanted to go with something a little more prestigious,
like loving father or husband or something. So presumably they
were captured by the Allies, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thirty
six members of the crew were rescued by small boats
in the area. Uh. Some people made it to shore
(19:01):
in their lifeboats, and then we're captured, but nobody really
got away. So they would have ended up in like
pow camps or something. Right, yeah, they would have ended
up in pow camps, and they probably would have been well.
They were certainly well aware of the severity of the
situation on the Axis side. They knew getting towards the end.
(19:24):
And speaking of the end, we are reaching the end
of our story today, but we're reaching the beginning of
something else. We just went off Mike for a second
and realized that this episode is coming out on New
Year's Day, So happy New Year's though. Happy New Year's
to you, Ben, Happy new year to you, Casey, thank you,
(19:44):
Happy New Year's to everyone, and to all a good night.
No it's been it's been a hell of a good run.
And uh we we didn't even don't think we even
talked about this, but not too long ago. I remember
the exact day we reached a solid year of doing
this show. That's true. I don't think either of us
realized it until we were well off air, and or
we were well past the time, and then it was
(20:05):
just too late. So if we're talking about, you know,
New Year's business, I think we could recognize that fact
and and just say how much we appreciate all the
folks that tune in and seemed to dig the show,
and then allow us to kind of keep doing it.
I sure enjoy doing and hope we can keep doing
it for many years to come. Agreed. You know, if
I could turn back time, uh, the only thing I
(20:25):
would change is a little bit more energy at the
opening of this episode, because we totally forgot it's our
first episode of twenty nine. That's true. It's okay, we
saved it for the back end. There we go, There
we go. It's a reward for everyone who's stuck around, right,
So thank you so much. We would like to hear.
Oh oh, no, I forgot the surprise. I found a
(20:46):
lovely list of wacky submarine terms. Because you'll remember in
our Potato episode, we use some terms that I think
we're a little bit off because neither of us, you know,
have a history in the Navy, So there are so
many terms that people have. There's burn, a flick, it
just means watch a movie. There's bull George. By Navy tradition,
(21:08):
the most junior incident is called George, and the most
senior is called the Bull. And the submarine force, it
takes so long for junior officers to get to the
boat to six months. Schools attend weeks school at least
two moves and a oh and a bunch of red tape.
That most arrived as lieutenants junior grade. When you only
have one incident, as many of them do, by tradition,
(21:28):
he is both the Bull and the George, or the
bull George. And things that don't work are called broke dick.
Anything that doesn't work, that pump has been broke dick
for a week, broke dick, broke dick. I like it.
There there are a lot of vulgar terms on this thing,
so we we learned even more strange slang phrases, many
(21:50):
of which are not fit for air on this show.
But we would like to hear some of your favorite
military slang or naval slang phrases. Uh, anything that that
made you laugh, anything that made no sense, or anything
with a really compelling story behind it. Let us know.
You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We
(22:11):
especially like to recommend you check out our Facebook community page,
Ridiculous Historians, where you can interact with your fellow listeners,
many of whom have some fascinating stories to tell. Have
you been checking out some of that tooth fairy stuff
you love? The tooth fairy stuff that seemed to hit
a nerve like in your tooth nervous nerve endings. I
don't know, No, I thought I really enjoyed that episode
(22:32):
a lot. I want to say, I really had a
good time doing it. And And uh, when we listen back
to these um sometimes it feels like a chore. And
I actually found myself kind of enjoying that one. It's
good to hear, man, It's good to hear what well. Oh,
we want to thank our super producer, Casey Pegram. Sure,
we do want to thank Alex Williams, who composed our track.
We'd like to thank Gabe Losier, our wonderful research associate
(22:53):
who hipped us to this topic. Uh, and I'd like
to thank you. It's it's been a great year, Ben.
I think you as well. It has been a great
year and I look forward to many more on ridiculous history.
See you next year, folks. M
Ye, welcome to the show ridiculous historians as well as
fans of The Hunt for Red October, the Thrillers starring
(00:31):
Sean Connery. What about dust Boot? Das Boot is more
of a classic, I would say, and set a precedent
for sure. Yeah, do you know? You don't? Directed das
Boot Wolf Kan Peterson Pearson. That's our super producer, Casey Pegram.
He's already on the case, but we haven't. How do
we do that? Can we combine this Casey fairy sound
effect with the don't well? I like the way that
(00:56):
it just rolled in with the with the sound effect
after you know what? Yeah? Who cares? May we double
it up? Sure? I don't know, it's already happened. I'm ben,
I'm null and yeah Wolf. Kane Peterson also directed um A,
A Nightmare Fuel movie from mine and probably many other
people's childhoods. The never ending story nightmare Fuel. Really it's
(01:16):
an amazing it is, but as a kid it is
a very dark, depressing film, like when the horse gets
sucked into the swamp, and like those creepy sphinx that
shoot lasers and have breasts. Those were cool, though I
still think of what I'm trying to describe various rites
of passage to people. I use the metaphor of those
(01:36):
three gates that a tray who has to go through. No,
it's true. I think it just it traumatized me a
little bit as a child. And that's a sort of
a bit of an internet trope where it's a screenshot
of that scene where the horse is like sinking into
the swamps of sadness, and it's sort of like, this
is where it all started going south for me mental
health wise. Speaking of fantastic segues, today's episode is not
(01:57):
about the never ending story, but it is related to
maritime adventures dust Boot, thus Boot the hunt for Red October,
which to me, for nostalgic reasons, is probably closer to
my heart. In a previous episode, we explored life on
submarines because of that potato war. Yes, yes, very short
lived potato war. Very a potato skirmish, yeah, And today's
(02:21):
episode brings us to another tale of maritime mishaps. There
we go, that's the way to say it. We are
traveling back to April fourteenth, nineteen, and we are aboard
one of the most advanced submarines at the time. A
little thing called a U twelve oh six. Now, is
(02:42):
not that? Not not the harp on dust Boot because
obviously I like to say it, But isn't that what
that movie was about. Wasn't it about the crew of
a of a of a of a U boat? Yes? Yeah, cool, Um,
that's right. Then today's episode is in fact about a
sort of two point o version of one of these boats,
because this was kind of the skirt urge of the
Nazi Party, well, their scourge on the Allies. That was
(03:05):
one of their most covert and successful ways of wreaking havoc.
Isn't that right? Uh? That is correct. U boats were
quite dangerous, and one of the reasons they were dangerous
is because they were very difficult to detect and they
were very nimble last yeah, fast, agile creatures. I believe
the submarine in dos Boot is uh based on a
(03:31):
U nineties six. All the U boats submarines were called
boats at the time to all the U boats had
that designation of you dash something And in the case
of today's story, we're looking at you twelve o six.
The U twelve oh six was premier vessel. I mean,
(03:51):
this thing was a big deal. It went into service
in March of nineteen four. It's emblem was a white
store on a black shield with a green beak and legs.
So let's get an idea of the size of this thing.
It was two hundred and twenty ft seven inches long,
(04:13):
or for the rest of the world outside of the US,
that's sixty seven point to three meters. It was about
thirty one ft or nine point six ms high, and
it was able to, despite its size, disappear under the
water pretty quickly. It could operate at depths of up
to seven hundred and fifty ft or two hundred and
(04:34):
thirty meters. It also, in addition to its heightened functional capacities, right,
it's a superior armament and so on, it had a
couple of amenities which were pretty rare for submarines at
the time. In particular, it had a very high tech toilet,
(04:55):
a complicated toilet, very complicated. Let's backtrack just slightly. In
previous model UM they they did have toilets, but they
hadn't quite cracked the code yet on how to get
these toilets to flush and expel the waist while the
boat was submerged. While the sub was submerged, right, there
was a problem with operating the previous models of the
(05:16):
toilet at depth. This one, however, they figured it out.
Those crafty German engineers figured it out. But as you said, Ben,
it wasn't easy. In fact, it was so complicated. They
had to designate a toilet specialist to be on board
who could assist with the flushing of this latrine. Can
you imagine that, Ben, having to call in the toilet
(05:36):
specialist to flush down your your business. They had multiple specialists.
In fact, yeah, they had multiple specialists because someone who
was trained in the operation of this contraption had to
be present to flush it. It had a complicated system
of valves. That's essentially what it boils down to. You
(05:57):
couldn't just hit a handle and then call it a day.
This thing was complicated, um, But it was also poorly
placed in terms of the interior of the submarine. It
was directly over the batteries that powered the sub the
power of the sub when it was submerged, because the
engines had to be shut off at that right And
(06:18):
I actually wasn't aware that battery technology was quite as
advanced as it clearly was in this time. Um. They
were banks of batteries that would supply an ordinate amount
of electricity because can you imagine like how much you
would need to keep a boat like that moving. That's right.
These batteries provided five sixty killer lots of power for
(06:42):
propulsion when there was when the sub was submerged. And
you're right about killing the engines as well. Because diesel
electric submarines had a had a larger signature when they
were running underwater, it was allowed it was easier to detect,
so ideally you want a quieter source of power. And Ben,
(07:02):
I just want to point out we're getting a little
bit of this information from a website with a delightful
U r l. It is toilet dash Guru dot com.
I'm also a fan of War is Boring dot com,
very very good, and I've got a little spoiler alert,
a surprise that I'm saving for the end I think
you will appreciate. But for now, onward onward to this
(07:25):
the very epitome of sub technology at the time. On
April six, this fantastic submarine with it's very complicated toilet,
the U twelve oh six leaves the ports city of
Chris Johnson in Nazi occupied Norway, and it goes on
(07:46):
its first combat patrol. It's mission, like that of many
U boats, is to seek out and destroy British and
US ships, so you can destroy like the like the Stooges,
there's a search and destroy, same death. You know, you're
looking for something and then you know. Yeah, So it's
(08:08):
on patrol for about eight days. And I mentioned this
too underline the fact that the U twelve O six
was in the service of the Nazi war effort that
only had three more weeks to go at best before
it was the end of the game for them. Yeah.
I think at this point Hitler was already hold up
(08:30):
and what I had not heard the term for until
just a little while ago, his furor bunker. That's true, Yeah,
And I think on April thirty he commits suicide in
that same fuel bunker. Um. Seven days after that, Germany
completely surrenders and the war is over. But no one
knew that on the U twelve O six at the time.
(08:52):
They knew they were just out to find and obliterate
any Allied ship they could they could get in their sight,
so within range of their torpedoes. And so they're out
on the open sea and it's fairly uneventful. How big
was their crew again, it was around forty. So these
(09:12):
thirty to forty crew members trapped in this tin can
beneath the waves, um while they have their eyes peeled,
they're not running into their they're not running into any action,
any war. But they are doing the normal things that
you do. They're eating, they're sleeping, and shifts. They're using
(09:33):
that very very fancy toilet. Again, this is this is
like the version of this is too sub toilets as
the Japanese Toto bidays are too normal. I think we've
talked about this re a our sponsorship by Tushi, but man,
those things are high tech and incredible life changing. I know,
(09:55):
listen to US America. You've got to stop pooping like barbarians.
Seriously so so, but that's that's actually fairly accurate comparison
because a lot of people were confused by this. And
this is when we introduced Captain Carl Adolph Schlit to
the story. He was twenty seven years old and in
charge of the sub at the time. Yeah, it's true,
(10:16):
and it was just it was it was in fact
his first rodeo, and when it comes to going out
on a sub, he was very new to the game,
a little bit green. Uh, And if I'm not mistaken, Ben,
where our story really starts to get interesting, um is
about eight miles off of the coast of Scotland, at
about two hundred feet below the surface of the ocean.
(10:39):
That's when our man Schlit had to take a schlit
Captain Schlit he okay, to keep the chain of command there. Yes,
So he decided that he wasn't going to request the
assistance of the toilet technician. Right, surely, I'm a captain
of a submarine, the chief commotist. I can operate a toilet.
(11:01):
I can do this. The toilet tinker was either not
desired or not around, And so Schlitz said, you know what,
I'm I am in charge of this, this entire sub
I'm a captain. I know how everything works. And the
instruction manual is right here by the toilet. Did we
mention that it had a comprehensive instruction manual? I'm picturing
a massive tone uh, spiral bound hanging from a chain
(11:25):
on the wall. That's what I don't know. That's that's
just how I'm looking at it, which is helpful from
a design perspective when you think about it, because a
lot of people like to read when they're using the restroom,
so this is this is actually good engineering. But whatever,
Maybe he was in a hurry because being captain he
had other things to do. Maybe he just misread it.
Maybe he wasn't as smart on the quick on the
(11:47):
uptake as he thought he was, because something went wrong.
And then he goes, you know, sch and so he says, okay,
I know when I need to delegate. Where's the toilet specialist? Right?
Where's the Yeah, so Schlitz asked that crew member to
come help them out, and then that crew member takes
(12:09):
a stab, and maybe because something was already messed up
with the valves, they make the problem worse. I mean,
we were not trying to throw this specialist under the
bus here, you know. I'm sure he knew his craft,
but I have a feeling that our boy Schlit kind
of pre botched. The whole works right, right, And there's
the toilet, there's the commode, probably still full of Schlitz.
And now the specialist has to figure out not just
(12:31):
how to operate the toilet correctly, but how to make
up for Schlitz mishap. And so the specialist opens the
outside valve of the commode, the one that goes directly
to the sea, while the inside valve is still open,
and this causes a deluge of seawater into the sub
(12:53):
and also probably the rest of Schlitz leaving right, it's
fun to say. And we talked about the bank of batteries.
Did we talk about the design and where they were
located or just the fact that the sub operated on them.
The we did mention it did mention that the batteries
are directly under the toilet, right, And it's problematic. It's
(13:13):
tough to design this kind of stuff, you know, it's
tough to to put all the needed gadgetry into a
space with such a sharp, strong form constraint. Totally, it's
sort of like they keep making the iPhone thinner and thinner,
so they got to remove the headphone jack. Sure, just
like that. I don't buy. I don't buy. They actually
brought it back, but they made it a little thicker, right.
(13:33):
Or it's it's like looking under the hood of a
high end sports car because so much stuff is put
in this weird tetris like arrangement. And that's kind of
what was happening in this sub I mean, clearly it's
not a good idea to have the power source directly
under something like the toilet. But then it's a question
of where else are you going to put it? Right,
(13:54):
you don't want it necessarily near the torpedoes. Yeah, no,
it's it seemed like it probably seemed like a good
idea the time, probably seemed very clever to those crafty
German engineers. Right, So, Ben, is this the part where
we want to get into a little chemistry. Yeah, yeah,
it is. It is so salt. The symbol for that
in a c L right, water is H two O,
and if you dissolve salt in water you get a
(14:16):
solution of various ions. And H two on itself is
not conductive, doesn't conduct anything, but an ionic solution certainly
is conductive, and it certainly does conduct stuff. So when
this water floods in through the valve system of this
complicated toilet, the water and the salt in the sea
(14:39):
water hit the sub battery, and the sub battery as
a result of this chemical interaction, produces lie plus hydrogen
gas plus most importantly, chloring gas because the sub battery
is full of acid. So The problem chlorine gas is
(15:01):
that it is a deadly, deadly poison. Yeah, and they're
in a tube, a metal tube, under the water with
their pants down. Well you presumably let's pantser up at
this point. I like the idea of him still having
his trousers around his ankles in a blind panic. That
would be yeah, just kind of you know, scooting around
(15:23):
doing the little penguin run. That's the one. Yeah. So
so we don't have pictures of it, of the scene
at that pictures, mental pictures. We have imaginings, we have
dreams of this, of this moment, but we do know
what happens next. The submarine is filling with chlorine gas.
This could be a death sentence if they don't do something.
(15:44):
Do you think they clocked instantly what was happening on
a chemical level or do you think they just started
gagging and choking uncontrollably and new, oh, schlet something's gone wrong.
I'm absolutely sure they knew, because they were very well
aware of how the batteries worked. That's if the toilet
was complicated, that's because it was new, But diesel electric
(16:04):
battery power would have been familiar to them. So this
is when our boy schlit has to kind of jump
into action, and despite having sort of botched the whole
thing to begin with, had to sort of exercise his
thinking on his feet muscles, right, and the captain quickly
(16:27):
realized that he had no choice but to order the
submarine to surface because they had to vent this gas
as quickly as possible and then replace it with breathable air.
Mind you, they're doing this in enemy territory, off the
coast of Scotland, about eight miles. Yeah, and so they
surface within sight of the Scottish coastline. In one story
(16:48):
you will hear that they surfaced almost directly beneath an
Allied ship, but we do know for sure they surfaced
so close to shore that they were quickly spotted by
Allied aircraft. They were attacked and the captain to order
the crew to abandon ship. UM three three members of
the crew fell overboard and drowned, and I believe one
(17:11):
died in the malay fighting that occurred. So we're right
at forty crew members then, because thirty six survived. Yeah,
that is correct. So what happened? What happened during this attack?
The U twelve or six was badly damaged and couldn't dive.
And this is when Schlitz starts ordering the crew into lifeboats.
(17:33):
And then he makes the game time decision that only
a captain can make abandoned ship. Right, get on, get
ye hands to a lifeboat. He's done that, But now
he does the very last thing. He scuttles the ship.
What does that mean? I don't I don't think I
know that term. It means to purposefully sink a ship
of any sort. So in the rough definition, it means
(17:55):
to cut a hole through the bottom deck or side
of a ship. But you you know, you destroy it.
That's what he did. He destroyed the submarine his own ship,
and it went down, and as the ship sank, he
got away. By the way as the ship sank. We
can only imagine what he thought. Maybe he thought I
should have just contacted the toiletsman when I was supposed
(18:19):
to the headsman. Sure, that's that's that's something different. That's
someone that's like an executioner. They can or like. But
he also entered into history, the annals of history, as
the captain of the only warship in the entirety of
naval history to be doomed by its own malfunctioning toilets cool,
(18:40):
he gets on his tombstone. I think they probably he
probably wanted to go with something a little more prestigious,
like loving father or husband or something. So presumably they
were captured by the Allies, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thirty
six members of the crew were rescued by small boats
in the area. Uh. Some people made it to shore
(19:01):
in their lifeboats, and then we're captured, but nobody really
got away. So they would have ended up in like
pow camps or something. Right, yeah, they would have ended
up in pow camps, and they probably would have been well.
They were certainly well aware of the severity of the
situation on the Axis side. They knew getting towards the end.
(19:24):
And speaking of the end, we are reaching the end
of our story today, but we're reaching the beginning of
something else. We just went off Mike for a second
and realized that this episode is coming out on New
Year's Day, So happy New Year's though. Happy New Year's
to you, Ben, Happy new year to you, Casey, thank you,
(19:44):
Happy New Year's to everyone, and to all a good night.
No it's been it's been a hell of a good run.
And uh we we didn't even don't think we even
talked about this, but not too long ago. I remember
the exact day we reached a solid year of doing
this show. That's true. I don't think either of us
realized it until we were well off air, and or
we were well past the time, and then it was
(20:05):
just too late. So if we're talking about, you know,
New Year's business, I think we could recognize that fact
and and just say how much we appreciate all the
folks that tune in and seemed to dig the show,
and then allow us to kind of keep doing it.
I sure enjoy doing and hope we can keep doing
it for many years to come. Agreed. You know, if
I could turn back time, uh, the only thing I
(20:25):
would change is a little bit more energy at the
opening of this episode, because we totally forgot it's our
first episode of twenty nine. That's true. It's okay, we
saved it for the back end. There we go, There
we go. It's a reward for everyone who's stuck around, right,
So thank you so much. We would like to hear.
Oh oh, no, I forgot the surprise. I found a
(20:46):
lovely list of wacky submarine terms. Because you'll remember in
our Potato episode, we use some terms that I think
we're a little bit off because neither of us, you know,
have a history in the Navy, So there are so
many terms that people have. There's burn, a flick, it
just means watch a movie. There's bull George. By Navy tradition,
(21:08):
the most junior incident is called George, and the most
senior is called the Bull. And the submarine force, it
takes so long for junior officers to get to the
boat to six months. Schools attend weeks school at least
two moves and a oh and a bunch of red tape.
That most arrived as lieutenants junior grade. When you only
have one incident, as many of them do, by tradition,
(21:28):
he is both the Bull and the George, or the
bull George. And things that don't work are called broke dick.
Anything that doesn't work, that pump has been broke dick
for a week, broke dick, broke dick. I like it.
There there are a lot of vulgar terms on this thing,
so we we learned even more strange slang phrases, many
(21:50):
of which are not fit for air on this show.
But we would like to hear some of your favorite
military slang or naval slang phrases. Uh, anything that that
made you laugh, anything that made no sense, or anything
with a really compelling story behind it. Let us know.
You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We
(22:11):
especially like to recommend you check out our Facebook community page,
Ridiculous Historians, where you can interact with your fellow listeners,
many of whom have some fascinating stories to tell. Have
you been checking out some of that tooth fairy stuff
you love? The tooth fairy stuff that seemed to hit
a nerve like in your tooth nervous nerve endings. I
don't know, No, I thought I really enjoyed that episode
(22:32):
a lot. I want to say, I really had a
good time doing it. And And uh, when we listen back
to these um sometimes it feels like a chore. And
I actually found myself kind of enjoying that one. It's
good to hear, man, It's good to hear what well. Oh,
we want to thank our super producer, Casey Pegram. Sure,
we do want to thank Alex Williams, who composed our track.
We'd like to thank Gabe Losier, our wonderful research associate
(22:53):
who hipped us to this topic. Uh, and I'd like
to thank you. It's it's been a great year, Ben.
I think you as well. It has been a great
year and I look forward to many more on ridiculous history.
See you next year, folks. M
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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