| abstract | - SM U-3 or U-III was the lead boat of the U-3 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 built by Germaniawerft of Kiel, Germany. U-3 was authorized in 1906, begun in March 1907, launched in August 1908, and towed from Kiel to Pola in January 1909. The double-hulled submarine was just under long and displaced between , depending on whether surfaced or submerged. The design of the submarine had poor diving qualities and several modifications to U-3's diving planes and fins occurred in her first years in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Her armament, as built, consisted of two bow torpedo tubes with a supply of three torpedoes, but was supplemented with a deck gun in 1915. The boat was commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy in September 1909, 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. At the start of that conflict, she was one of only four operational submarines in the Austro-Hungarian Navy U-boat fleet. Over the first year of the war, U-3 conducted reconnaissance cruises out of Cattaro. On 12 August 1915, U-3 was damaged after an unsuccessful torpedo attack on an Italian armed merchant cruiser and, after she surfaced the next day, was sunk by a French destroyer. U-3's commanding officer and 6 men died in the attack; the 14 survivors were captured.
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