Unterseeboot 86 (1916)

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Unterseeboot 86 or U-86 was a Type Mittel U style submarine manufactured in the Germaniawerft, Kiel shipyard for the German Empire during World War I.

On 27 June 1918 that boat sank the Canadian hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle off the coast of Ireland in violation of international law. When the crew took to the lifeboats, U-86 surfaced, ran down all the lifeboats except one, and shot at the people in the water. Only the 24 people in the remaining lifeboat survived. They were rescued shortly afterwards and testified as to what had happened. The 234 others on board the Llandovery Castle drowned, including fourteen nursing sisters.

USS Covington (ID-1409), the former Hamburg America ocean liner SS Cincinnati, was torpedoed by U-86 on 1 July 1918 and sank the next day.^[1]

After the war the captain of U-86, Lieutenant Helmut Patzig and two of his lieutenants were arraigned for trial on war crimes, but Patzig disappeared, and though the two lieutenants were convicted and sentenced to four years in prison, they both escaped.

This U-86 was surrendered after the war and sank in the English Channel on the way to be broken up in 1921.