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Home | The Machines | The Presenters | The Experts | Find out more
Introduction | Small but efficient | In pieces | Out of retirement
The Biber (or Beaver) midget submarine is one of Hitler's forgotten weapons. Over 300 of these one-man submersibles were built in 1944 to repel the Allied invasion fleets on D-Day. Had they been operational by 6 June 1944, they could have changed the course of the war.
Biber No 105 was captured at sea by the Royal Navy in 1945. It was then taken for assessment at Chatham before ending up as an exhibit at the Royal Naval Training Establishment at HMS Ganges in Suffolk. When HMS Ganges closed in the 1970s, the Biber was given to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum where it was put on public display.
The Biber was conceived at short notice and its simple design went from drawing board to production in just eight weeks. It was 9 metres long, built of 3-millimetre sheet steel and constructed in three sections that bolted together. The main compartment, between the first and second bulkhead, was where the operator sat with his head poking up into the 28-inch conning tower.
Behind the operator was a compartment containing an Opel petrol engine which ran the boat when it was on the surface and an electric motor which it used when submerged. The Biber had no compensating or trimming tanks, just a single diving tank in the bow and another in the stern. It had a safe diving depth of 60 metres. The armament consisted of two G7 torpedoes slung on a rail on either side of the craft, which were fired by compressed air.
When Claire and Suggs are shown Biber 105 by museum director, Commander Geoff Tall, it is in three pieces and hasn't worked for over 60 years.
Claire brings restoration expert Ian Clark on board to help rebuild the submarine. Ian has won awards for his restoration of Holland I, the Royal Navy's first submarine. But he has never restored a sub back to full working condition.
While Suggs is busy sleuthing, Claire has the racing engine bearings recoated in white metal and the cylinders rebored. With the engine sorted out, Claire and Neil have to rebuild the car.
The Biber presents a difficult challenge: it's missing a lot of crucial parts and the pressure hull is holed in several places and has to be repaired. The high-pressure air system needs to be completely replumbed, though the original air bottles pass the safety tests and can be reused. The electric motor has to be rebuilt. New curved glass windows must be manufactured for the conning tower and the helm wheels, and the control panel will need to be built from scratch.
While Claire and Ian take on the engineering problems, Suggs is busy in the archives. He tracks down Heinz Huebler, an 82-year-old German World War Two veteran who, in 1944, volunteered to pilot Bibers in combat.
After an immense amount of work, along with help from technical experts at Fleet Support Limited in Portsmouth, at last the Biber is restored. After 60 years on dry land, rescue pilot Tom Heron takes our submarine beneath the waves again, while Heinz Huebler watches from the shore. It is the only working Second World War submarine in the world.
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