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Deutschland was a blockade-breaking German merchant submarine used during World War I. It was developed with private funds and operated by the North German Lloyd Line. She was one of the first of seven class U-boats built and one of only two used as unarmed cargo submarines. After making two voyages as an unarmed merchantman, she was taken over by the German Imperial Navy on 19 February 1917 and converted into the ''U-155'', armed with six torpedo tubes and two deck guns. ==Construction== ''Deutschland'' was built together with her sister ship ''Bremen'' in 1916 by the ''Deutsche Ozean-Reederei'', a private shipping company created for the enterprise, a subsidiary company of the North German Lloyd shipping company (now Hapag-Lloyd) and the Deutsche Bank.〔 She was constructed without armaments, with a wide beam to provide space for cargo. The cargo capacity was 700 tons (230 tons of rubber could be stored in the free-flooding spaces between the inner and outer hulls), relatively small compared to surface ships. ''Deutschland'' was one of seven submarines designed to carry cargo between the United States and Germany in 1916, through the naval blockade of the Entente Powers. Mainly enforced by Great Britain's Royal Navy, the blockade had led to great difficulties for German companies in acquiring raw materials which could not be found in quantity within the German sphere of influence, and thus substantially hindered the German war effort. Five of the submarine freighters were converted into long-range cruiser U-boats (U-kreuzers) equipped with two 150mm deck guns, and only two were completed according to the original design: the ''Deutschland'' and the ''Bremen'', which was lost without a trace on her maiden voyage. Britain and France soon protested against the use of submarines as merchant ships, arguing that they could not be stopped and inspected for munitions in the same manner as other cargo vessels. The US, under diplomatic pressure for supposedly showing favoritism while having declared itself neutral, rejected the argument. Even submarines, as long as they were unarmed, were to be regarded as merchant vessels and accordingly would be permitted to trade. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「German submarine Deutschland」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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