WWII. German "BIBER" or BEAVER Submarine.
The WWII German "BIBER" ( or Beaver) was a one man submarine, the hull was approximately 29’6" long with a beam of 4’ 6". These midget submarines were primarily designed as a defensive weapon and were larger and more seaworthy than their predecessors. Most were built by AG Weser, Bremen.
The single crewman or ‘pilot’ sat upright in the hull and looked through the windows in the small conning tower to help him navigate, they also had a small 2" periscope. They had a small petrol engine that gave a range of 130 nm @ 6 knots, submerged they used a torpedo engine for power, this gave a range of 9 nm @ 5 knots. They were quite a clever design, perhaps a little too complex for successful operations.
Their main armament were two torpedoes, one slung either side of the hull, these were released by compressed air and allowed to run to the target, unfortunately the "BIBER" had a habit of bobbing up to the surface when the torpedoes were fired, this made them rather vulnerable to retaliation. They were really dogged by poor torpedo performance.
As stated previously the "BIBER" ( Beaver ) was primarily built to combat the Allied invasion forces sea supply lines, over 324 were actually built and they had some small successes, a large force was assembled on the coast to carry out this actual job, however they were unreliable and suffered quite a few miss-haps (premature firing of torpedoes that ran amuck in harbour) this resulted in about 75% of the fleet present being either sunk or damaged.
Another 50 or so attacked the Nijmegen Bridge held by the allies but were unsuccessful in penetrating the fourth torpedo net (having destroyed the first three).
For those of you in the UK who would actually like to see the real thing, a captured "BIBER" is on display in the Imperial War Museum. Lambeth, London.
The BIBER is one of the models we have bought in from John Darnell of ‘Darnell Models’ it has been available before, but only as a kit.
This single screw model has been primarily designed for 4 channel radio and pump operated submerging, this is fully possible as the hull with its short ends has a large interior volume.
If the modeller fits the torpedoes either side, then motorises these (instead of the submarine itself) you could drive the model from their props, using the torpedo motors for steering!. The only drawback with this method is that it does not work too well if you intend to make the model submerge by using forward power only.
Our set of GRP mouldings consist of :
Photo showing completed "BIBER" with torpedoes not fitted.
