U-995

U-995 was laid down on 25 November 1942 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg and commissioned on 16 September 1943 with Oberleutnant zur See Walter Köhntopp in command. The Type VIIC/41 followed the heavier Type VIIC. She displaced 759 tonnes surfaced and 860 submerged, ran 67.10 m overall with a pressure hull of 50.50 m, a beam of 6.20 m and a draught of 4.74 m, and was rated to operate at depths of up to 230 metres.

Two Germaniawerft F46 four-stroke supercharged diesels produced 2,800 to 3,200 metric horsepower on the surface, and two Brown, Boveri double-acting electric motors 750 metric horsepower submerged, turning two shafts and two 1.23 m propellers. She could make 17.7 knots surfaced and 7.6 submerged, run 8,500 nautical miles at 10 knots on the surface, and only 80 nautical miles at 4 knots submerged. Armament was five 53.3 cm torpedo tubes, four in the bow and one in the stern, with fourteen torpedoes.

Her anti-aircraft fit reflected how dangerous the air had become for U-boats: a single 3.7 cm Flak M42 on an LM 42U mount, the most common mounting for that weapon and the naval version of the standard 3.7 cm gun, with a pair of twin 2 cm Flak 38 "Flakzwilling" mounts immediately alongside it. Her complement ran between forty-four and sixty men.

Her career began with training under the 5th Flotilla from 16 September 1943, the day she was commissioned. More than eight months of working up followed before she was judged fit for operations, and she passed to active service with the 13th Flotilla on 1 June 1944. She transferred again to the 14th Flotilla on 1 March 1945, in the last weeks of the war — so that of the twenty months between her commissioning and the German surrender, only the last eleven were spent on operational strength.

She took part in five wolfpacks: Dachs, from 1 to 5 September 1944; Zorn, from 26 September to 1 October; Panther, from 16 October to 10 November; Stier, from 11 December 1944 to 6 January 1945; and Hagen, from 17 to 21 March 1945 — five formations in under seven months, the last of them barely six weeks before the German surrender.

At the end of the war, on 8 May 1945, U-995 was stricken at Trondheim in Norway. She was surrendered to the British on 9 December and transferred to Norwegian ownership in October 1948. On 1 December 1952 she entered the Royal Norwegian Navy as the submarine Kaura of the Norwegian K class, and served until she was stricken in 1965. At some point in the 1960s she was fitted with a Royal Norwegian Navy design of Balkongerät passive sonar, removed again between November 1971 and March 1972.

She was then offered to the West German government for the ceremonial price of one Deutsche Mark. The offer was refused. The boat was saved instead by the German Navy League, and became a museum ship at the Laboe Naval Memorial near Kiel in October 1971, where she remains — one of the very few surviving U-boats, alongside SM U-1, U-505, U-534 and U-2540.