U-boat surfaces on Argyll loch
If you thought the German navy had arrived in Scotland, don’t panic.
That was not a real U-boat you saw in
Loch Nell, but a model one, engineered by Oban student
Lewis Owen for the cover of a new historical novel, Craignish.
The forthcoming book, based on released MI5 files, reveals a secret German plot to land a Scottish traitor in Argyll during the Second World War to recruit enemy agents – one very high profile indeed. Strictly hush hush I’m afraid – for now.
The author Neil Owen, Lewis’s father, said: ‘I was looking for a suitable photo for a book cover, showing a Second World War U-boat in a local sea loch. As you can imagine, there are not too many about, so we built a large model from EPP foam and glassfibre, driven by an electric motor and radio-controlled.
‘Lewis is studying history and archaeology at the University of the Highlands and Islands and has been a keen modeller for many years.
‘The hull is made from a chunk of insulation foam, sheathed in glass fibre and cut to shape with hot wire after scaling up from a 1/350 plastic model to this one at 1/28 scale. It does not dive as all it was required to do was for photos on the surface with a typical Argyll background.
‘That’s all I can say without giving the game away.’