[GERMAN SUBMARINE INDUSTRY / WWII EVE / MIDDLE EAST] Photo album consisting of 31 large gelatin silver photos documenting the construction and launching of Turkish U-Boats titled "Birinci" and "Ikınci Inönü" in Fijenoord Shipyard

Netherlands, 1928.

Original brown leather photo album including 31 large gelatin silver photographs. Album size: 23x31 cm. Photo sizes: 16,5x22,5 cm. No captions. Each photo is mounted on album leaves and separated with tissue guards. 

Historically significant photo album including attractive photographs showing the process of the construction and launchings of the first two Turkish submarines at the Fijenoord Shipyard in Rotterdam, by German and Turkish engineers, under the secret project "NV Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (i.e. Engineer-office for Shipbuilding) which was a Dutch dummy company set up in The Hague and funded by the Reichsmarine after World War I in order to maintain and develop German submarine know-how and to circumvent the limitations set by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. IvS first designed two submarines based on the World War I UB III of the Kaiserliche Marine. Both were built by the Fijenoord shipyard in Rotterdam in 1927 and sold to Turkey, which named them TCG Birinci Inönü and Ikinci Inönü.

Photos show the Turkish and German commissions of engineers including Ata[ullah] Nutku who is the first Turkish shipbuilder and designer as well as the process of construction of these two Turkish submarines and launching at the Fijenoord Shipyard.

The first two submarines built during the Republic era were U-Boats designed based on the UB-III class, one of the German submarine classes of the First World War era, ordered in 1925, received in 1928, and built at the Fijenoord shipyard in the Netherlands.

NV Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (Dutch: engineer-office for shipbuilding) designed several submarine types for paying countries, including the Soviet S-class submarine, as well as the prototypes for the German Type II submarines and Type VII submarines. The company was a joint venture by the German shipyards AG Vulcan Stettin (located in Stettin and Hamburg), the Krupp-owned Germaniawerft in Kiel, and AG Weser in Bremen. Design work was carried out at the facilities of these companies in Germany. 

At the time of IvS, the Germans were bound by the Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919. This treaty, among other terms, demanded that all German U-boats be destroyed or given to other nations. Thus the Reichsmarine was left without a submarine capability, and IvS was created to work around these restrictions. The work of the company was a major factor in the foundation of the Kriegsmarine of World War II.

The first designed two U-Boats TCG Birinci Inönü and Ikinci Inönü were followed by the Submarino E-1 built-in 1930 by the Echevarrieta y Larrinaga shipyard in Cádiz, Spain, initially for the Spanish Navy, but mainly as a prototype of the German Type I submarine. However, the Spanish lost interest in the E-1, and it was also sold to Turkey in 1935 as the TCG Gür.