| abstract | - SM U-5 or U-V was the lead boat of the U-5 class of submarines or U-boats built for and operated by the Austro-Hungarian Navy () before and during the First World War. The submarine was built as part of a plan to evaluate foreign submarine designs, and was the first of three boats of the class built by Whitehead & Co. of Fiume after a design by American John Philip Holland. U-5 was laid down in April 1907 and launched in February 1909. The double-hulled submarine was just over long and displaced between , depending on whether surfaced or submerged. U-5's design had inadequate ventilation and exhaust from her twin gasoline engines often intoxicated the crew. The boat was commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy in April 1910, and served as a training boat—sometimes making as many as ten cruises a month—through the beginning of the First World War in 1914. The submarine scored most of her wartime successes during the first year of the war while under the command of Georg Ritter von Trapp. The French armoured cruiser Léon Gambetta, sunk in April 1915, was the largest ship sunk by U-5. In May 1917, U-5 hit a mine and sank with the loss of six men. She was raised, rebuilt, and recommissioned, but sank no more ships. At the end of the war, U-5 was ceded to Italy as a war reparation, and scrapped in 1920. In all, U-5 sank four ships totaling .
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