The U28 creature
Witnessed once. By people who had other problems.
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AquaticWorld War OneNorth AtlanticMarine CryptidDeep SeaNaval Encounter
Overview
On July 30, 1915, the crew of German submarine U-28 torpedoed the British steamer Iberian in the North Atlantic, approximately 100 miles southwest of Fastnet Rock. When the Iberian’s forward section detonated and sank, a large unidentified animal was reportedly ejected from the water along with the wreckage, thrashed at the surface for approximately ten to fifteen seconds, and then submerged. The animal was observed by Kapitänleutnant Georg-Günther Freiherr von Forstner and several crew members from the submarine’s conning tower at an estimated distance of 25 metres. This remains one of the very few reported cryptid sightings to have occurred as a direct consequence of naval warfare, which WTC acknowledges is a narrow category but an important one.
The creature has been variously classified by independent researchers as a mosasaur, a plesiosaur, a giant eel, a decomposing basking shark in an improbable configuration, and, in one submission to the WTC database that was declined for publication, ‘a very large problem.’ What is consistent across assessments is the description of an animal approximately 18 to 24 feet in length, with four limbs and a long tail, that appeared sufficiently unfamiliar to multiple trained naval observers that they committed the account to formal record. Given that the observers were actively engaged in submarine warfare at the time of the sighting, their decision to document the creature at all is perhaps the most remarkable detail of the incident.
History & Mythology
The primary account of the U-28 Creature originates from a written statement by Kapitänleutnant Georg-Günther Freiherr von Forstner, who commanded the U-28 during its wartime patrols and documented the sighting in his official log. Von Forstner’s account describes the creature as crocodile-like in general profile, with four webbed limbs and a long tapering tail, and estimated its length at between 18 and 24 feet. The account was supplemented by corroborating statements from crew members, though the exact number of witnesses who signed or verified the documentation varies across sources from three to six individuals, a discrepancy that WTC attributes to the general difficulty of conducting thorough archival research on World War One German U-boat crew records.
The sighting entered wider cryptozoological literature largely through the work of German naturalist and folklorist Hanns Heinz Ewers and was subsequently cited in early twentieth century popular accounts of sea monsters, including those referencing the broader tradition of North Atlantic marine anomalies reported by sailors from the sixteenth century onward. Pre-modern accounts of large unidentified sea creatures in the waters between Ireland and Iceland are numerous and consistent in certain respects — limbed, large, and apparently indifferent to ships — though none prior to 1915 benefit from the corroborating circumstance of a nearby underwater explosion, which researchers have speculated may have driven the animal from depth. The Iberian sank to the seafloor at a depth of approximately 1,100 metres. What else may have been down there was not recorded, because no one looked.
Physical Description
Witness accounts place the U-28 Creature at between 18 and 24 feet in length, with the variation attributed partly to the observers’ estimate being made under conditions that included active wreckage, surface turbulence, and, to be direct about it, the immediate aftermath of a torpedo detonation. Von Forstner’s written account describes a body that was elongate and roughly cylindrical, tapering to a long tail, with four clearly visible limbs that were described as flippers or paddles rather than fins. The head was reported as elongate and distinct from the body, consistent with a long neck, though no detailed description of facial features was committed to record, possibly because the observation window was brief and the observers had not anticipated needing to take notes.
The general morphology as described — four limbed, long-tailed, long-necked, with a body length in the eighteen-to-twenty-four foot range — has led to repeated comparison with Mesozoic marine reptiles of the plesiosaur lineage, a comparison WTC presents without editorial endorsement. The skin was not described in sufficient detail to determine colouration with confidence, though several accounts reference a pale or silvery underside visible as the animal turned at the surface. No secondary sexual characteristics, age indicators, or signs of injury from the explosion were noted, suggesting either that the animal was unharmed, or that the witnesses had reached the limit of what they were willing to write down.
Behaviour & Temperament
The U-28 Creature was observed at the surface for an estimated ten to fifteen seconds before submerging and was not seen again. During this window it was described as moving actively — thrashing or writhing — in a manner that witnesses attributed to distress, though it is also consistent with an animal surfacing rapidly from depth and reorienting itself before diving. No aggressive behaviour toward the submarine or its crew was reported, and no vocalisation was recorded, a detail that von Forstner’s account notes implicitly by not mentioning one.
The behaviour pattern of rapid surfacing following a deep underwater pressure event, brief surface activity, and immediate resubmersion is consistent with an animal that spends the majority of its time at depth and treats the surface as an emergency exit rather than a preferred environment. If the creature was driven upward by the detonation of the Iberian’s forward section, its prompt return to depth suggests either that it was uninjured and functioning normally, or that it found the surface — with its active naval engagement and general chaos — a less appealing environment than the one it had come from. This is not an unreasonable assessment of the situation.
Habitat & Territory
The sighting occurred at coordinates placing the vessel approximately 100 miles southwest of Fastnet Rock, off the southwest coast of Ireland, in open North Atlantic water. The depth at the sighting location is consistent with the continental shelf drop-off zone, where seafloor depth transitions from several hundred to over a thousand metres within a relatively short horizontal distance. This zone is characterised by significant thermal layering, reduced light penetration below 200 metres, and comparatively sparse human observation, all of which represent practical advantages for an animal of this profile.
No secondary sightings have placed the creature in coastal shallows, enclosed seas, or freshwater environments. If the entity is an extant large-bodied marine animal that inhabits deep North Atlantic water, its range could theoretically extend from the Norwegian Sea to the mid-Atlantic ridge without requiring surface exposure in any monitored area. WTC notes that this is a very large amount of ocean and declines to estimate how many animals of this description it could comfortably contain.
Diet & Hunting
No direct observation of the U-28 Creature feeding has been recorded, and the single documented encounter did not include any feeding behaviour. Dietary assessment is therefore based entirely on morphological inference, which WTC acknowledges is a methodology with known limitations, particularly when the morphology in question was observed for fifteen seconds by people who were not expecting to need it.
An animal of the described size and limbed, predatory profile in a deep North Atlantic pelagic environment would be expected to prey on large cephalopods, deep-water fish species, or other marine fauna available at depth. The mouth was not described in sufficient detail to determine dentition, which would otherwise be the primary indicator of prey preference. Giant squid inhabiting the same depth range have been documented at lengths exceeding 40 feet, which is larger than the U-28 Creature by a meaningful margin. WTC has tabled the implications of this for a later meeting.
Notable Sightings
Kapitänleutnant Georg-Günther Freiherr von Forstner and crew observed an unidentified animal ejected from the sea following the torpedo strike on the British steamer Iberian. The creature was estimated at 18-24 feet, four-limbed, with a long tail and elongate neck, and remained visible at the surface for approximately ten to fifteen seconds before submerging. Von Forstner documented the sighting in the U-28’s official log and later provided a written account that has been reproduced in multiple subsequent sources, none of which have been able to verify the original log’s current archival location.
The crew of HMS Hilary reported an unidentified large marine animal at the surface following a depth charge engagement with a suspected U-boat in waters west of Orkney. The animal was described by the reporting officer as ‘unlike any known species,’ approximately 30 feet in length, and visible for less than one minute before submerging. The report was filed with the Admiralty’s naval intelligence division and classified for reasons that the relevant archive describes only as ‘operational sensitivity.’ The file was partially declassified in 1983 and the relevant page was found to be missing.
A Norwegian merchant vessel operating under wartime convoy conditions reported a large unidentified animal surfacing alongside the ship at approximately 0300 hours. The officer of the watch described a long neck and two visible rear flippers before the animal submerged. The report was made to convoy command and subsequently forwarded to British naval authorities under a classification system that no longer exists, which has made retrieval difficult. The vessel’s surviving crew complement was interviewed by WTC researchers in 1987; of the four men still living, two confirmed recollection of the incident and two said they preferred not to discuss it.
An Aberdeen-registered fishing trawler reported a collision with an unidentified submerged object during standard fishing operations approximately 40 miles east of Aberdeen. The crew observed a large dark shape moving away from the vessel at speed, which the skipper described in his insurance report as ‘animal in nature and of unusual size.’ The vessel sustained minor hull damage to the starboard bow consistent with impact from a large, smooth-surfaced moving object. The skipper submitted a formal sighting report to WTC, filed his insurance claim under ‘collision with unidentified debris,’ and did not file a second report.
Threat Assessment
The U-28 Creature has not, in any documented encounter, initiated contact with or displayed aggression toward human beings or vessels. The 1915 sighting involved an animal that surfaced involuntarily due to external pressure events and departed as rapidly as its physiology allowed. WTC does not consider this an aggressive encounter and recommends it not be treated as a baseline for threat assessment. However, an animal estimated at 18-24 feet in length and consistent morphological weight — preliminary estimates suggest in excess of 2,000 pounds, though our consulting marine biologist noted that estimating the weight of an animal from a fifteen-second eyewitness account is ‘not a technique she teaches in her programme’ — should be treated with the same caution appropriate to any large marine predator of unknown temperament.
Persons operating vessels in open North Atlantic water at depths exceeding 500 metres should maintain standard marine mammal awareness protocols. WTC recommends against depth charge deployment in areas of known or suspected U-28 Creature habitat, not as a precaution against retaliation, but because the documented evidence suggests that deep-water pressure events bring the animal to the surface in circumstances that are uncomfortable for everyone involved. WTC cannot at this time recommend a safe observation distance, because we do not yet know what the creature considers an appropriate distance, and it has not filed the relevant paperwork.
WTC Field Notes
The U-28 Creature file has been open at WTC since the network’s founding, and has remained in a state our senior researchers describe as ‘actively inconclusive’ for the entirety of that period. The core evidentiary problem is straightforward: the primary account is credible, corroborated by multiple witnesses, and documented in an official naval record, but the original log has not been independently verified, the 1918 Admiralty file has a page missing, and the 1942 convoy report exists in a classification system that was dissolved in 1947. WTC submitted freedom of information requests to the relevant British, German, and Norwegian archival bodies in 2019 and has received responses from two of the three, both of which confirmed that the requested documents either do not exist or are not held at that location. This is a technically distinct outcome from confirmation that the documents never existed, and our legal team has asked us to note that distinction explicitly.
A WTC field research expedition to the primary sighting coordinates was proposed in 2021 and remains in budget review. The primary cost obstacle is the vessel charter required to conduct the expedition at the relevant depth range, which our equipment director described as ‘a number that would require us to cancel several other things, and those things have already been announced.’ We have applied for two external research grants. One application was declined on the grounds that the entity has not been confirmed to exist. The other has not yet received a response, which we are choosing to interpret optimistically.
