ABOUT THIS BOOK
This book is about a missing U-boat from the Great War: its background, its discovery, its location, and its eventual identification.
I know so much about the U-111 because I first started researching it in the 1980’s. When I learned from official documents that it lay at a depth of 266 fathoms, or 1,596 feet, I put it aside. It 1989, when Ken Clayton and I formulated the Billy Mitchell Wrecks Project, I brought the U-111 out of hibernation. Even though I could not dive to such a depth, I included it with the Billy Mitchell chapter in Shipwrecks of Virginia (1992).
The BMW-Project continued throughout the 1990’s, starting with our discovery of and dive on the German battleship Ostfriesland, at a depth of 380 feet, until we located and dived on eight of the nine German warships that were scuttled by naval gunnery, and by aerial bombardment from Billy Mitchell’s nascent air force.
The only vessel that we did not locate was the U-111. Yet since then, the errant U-boat has re-entered the limelight, due in no small part to my continued research and keen observation.