U-995 is a World War Two German submarine that sits on the beach at Laboe, near Kiel. It's one of the last surviving U-boats from the war.

The submarine was built in Hamburg in 1942. Its mission was to destroy merchant ships carrying supplies to Allied forces. It hunted in the Atlantic Ocean and English Channel as part of Germany's "wolf pack" fleet. This submarine was successful and survived the war.

Life aboard was brutal. 50 men lived packed together in tight spaces. Food hung from pipes in the torpedo room. The stench was constant: diesel, sweat, cigarettes, hydraulic fluid, dried meat, and sewage. Condensation dripped from the ceiling onto everything. Cockroaches crawled everywhere.

Submarines stayed underwater during the day, sometimes at depths of 230 metres. Many crew members never saw sunlight for weeks. The engine room heated to 35 degrees Celsius. Men knew the air was going bad when they couldn't light their cigarettes, as there wasn't enough oxygen. They had to surface every night for air or suffocate.

Of the 1,162 German U-boats in World War Two, 785 were destroyed. The crew had a 70% chance of dying. After the war, Norway used U-995 as a training vessel for 20 years. In 1971, Germany bought it back for one Deutsch Mark, about 60 cents. It became a museum.

VoiceMap's audio tours explain what daily life was like for the crew and reveal how the submarine came to rest here.