SM U-82
u-boat of the Imperial German Navy during World War I

SM U-82 was a Type U 81 U-boat of the Imperial German Navy during World War I.
She was launched on 1 July 1916 and commissioned on 16 September 1916 under Hans Adam. She was assigned to IV Flotilla on 21 November 1916, serving with them throughout the war. She carried out 11 patrols during the war, commanded from 30 April 1918 by Heinrich Middendorff. SM U-82 sank 36 ships for a total of 110,160 gross register tons (GRT), and damaging a further three ships for 32,914 tons. Among the ships she damaged was the USS Mount Vernon, the former SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie. At 18,372 tons she was one of the largest ships to be hit by a U-boat during the war.
She was surrendered to the British on 16 January 1919 under the terms of the armistice, and was broken up at Blyth between 1919 and 1920.
Design
Type U 81 submarines were preceded by the shorter Type UE I submarines. U-82 had a displacement of 808 tonnes (795 long tons) when at the surface and 946 tonnes (931 long tons) while submerged. She had a total length of 70.06 m (229 ft 10 in), a pressure hull length of 55.55 m (182 ft 3 in), a beam of 6.30 m (20 ft 8 in), a height of 8 m (26 ft 3 in), and a draught of 4.02 m (13 ft 2 in).
The public source identifies “SM U-82” as u-boat of the Imperial German Navy during World War I. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around U-82, u-boat and Imperial.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7391593. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1916, 1918, 1919 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “SM U-82” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.