"Disposal of surrendered U Boats at the end of WW2." Topic

In the latest After the Battle magazine,there is an article detailing the fate of all surrendered U Boats at the end of WW2. Out of 156 U Boats, 30 were allocated between the allies, 8 were classified unseaworthy and the remaining 118 were sunk at sea.
Now call me old fashioned but I am utterly confused by that explanation. Did no one at any point say, 'Hey, wouldnt it be a good idea to make use of this source of steel, brass and bronze and scrap the 118?' Or were we just so overrun with scrap metal, we could afford to sink it deep in the North Atlantic?

Perhaps it was easier than bickering over who got what ?

US production alone would have easily supplied all their needs, so the demand for scrap metal would be minimal. The drive for standardisation would have created issues as well, no spare parts would have been available for much of these boats.

Be interesting to see if they salvaged more complex manufactures like optics for periscopes, though items like radios wouldn't have much value.

Saw a program recently where German ships that were scuppered in Scapa Flow at the end of WW1 were salvaged for their metal in the 2 decades afterwards.

A lot of the metal was really high grade.

Well apparently a lot of that metal found it's way back to Germany and went into building new German ships.

So the Germans took recycling to a new level.

So sinking all those subs was really making sure they weren't going to come back.

Hope this helps,

B

Germany was littered with scrap metal from one end to the other. In the 70's I used steal construction products that had been made from that scrap. Almost 30 years later and they were still trying to use it up.

I imagine that we had enough scrap metal of our own to get rid of without the added burden of dealing with Germany's scrap pile.

Recycling was or cool back then. :)

The steel from pre-1945 sunken ships is quite valuable as it isn't contaminated with radiation to the same degree as more recent steel.

Useful for some types of scientific instruments.

Interesting thoughts. Thank you for everyone who has commented. I can unerstand the fact that spare parts for the surviving boats would dry up quickly and so any allocated to the Allies would be useful for technical evaluation only. Dumping 118 on the sea bed still seems a bit of a knee jerk reaction though!
I wasn't there though so I have hindsight.

In hindsight, one wonders what effect, if any,
oil, battery acid and other potential pollutant
substances from the sunken 118 would/did have
upon areas where the boats are.

Or were they so deeply put down that water pressure
would aid in containment ? Or, if beyond the hull's
crush depth, accelerate potential pollutant spread ?

Obviously I know nothing of fluid dynamics…

Under the terms of the Potsdam Agreement, most U Boats had to be scuttled. Some interesting info here link

Potsdam text: "The larger part of the German submarine fleet shall be sunk. Not more than thirty submarines
shall be preserved and divided equally between the U.S.S.R., U. K., and U.S. A. for experimental
and technical purposes."