Type VII submarine

The Type VII was the standard medium attack U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine, built from 1935 to 1945 and designed to hunt convoys in the North Atlantic. It was a single-hull boat whose outer hull doubled as the pressure hull, with most of the fuel stored inside it, and it carried four bow and one stern 53.3 cm torpedo tubes together with an 8.8 cm deck gun. The class grew through several subtypes: the first VIIA, the improved VIIB, the slightly larger VIIC and its strengthened VIIC/41, the minelaying VIID and the torpedo supply VIIF. A total of 709 boats were commissioned, which made it the most produced submarine class in history. Ten VIIA boats were built in two batches, six at Deschimag AG Weser in Bremen and four at Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel, so Deschimag was the builder of the first Type VII boats. Construction was halted in September 1943 as newer electric boats took priority, and U-995 at Laboe is the lone surviving example.