The Type 202 was a short lived class of German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

s. Design of these very small submarines started in 1957 by Ingenieurkontor Lübeck (IKL). It was intended to build 40 Type 202 mini submarines with a six man crew but technical difficulties and doubts about their usefulness reduced them to three, and of those three for trials, to be further reduced to two. The boats were in service only a few months and were scrapped shortly after.

They were one of the few military U-Boat

U-boat

U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...

s not bearing "U-numbers", probably since they were never intended for combat use. Instead they were named after important German engineers in submarine constructions (like Wilhelm Bauer).

Hans Techel was built with traditional propeller

Propeller

A propeller is a type of fan that transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. A pressure difference is produced between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blade, and a fluid is accelerated behind the blade. Propeller dynamics can be modeled by both Bernoulli's...

 and rudder

Rudder

A rudder is a device used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft or other conveyance that moves through a medium . On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adverse yaw and p-factor and is not the primary control used to turn the airplane...

s (similar to the Type 205 submarine

Type 205 submarine

The Type 205 was a class of diesel-electric German hunter-killer U-boat submarines. They were single-hull vessels optimized for the use in the shallow Baltic Sea. The Type 205 is a direct evolution of the Type 201 class with lengthened hull, new machinery and sensors...

s), but Friedrich Schürer had a rotatable Kort nozzle

Kort nozzle

The Kort nozzle is a shrouded, ducted propeller assembly for marine propulsion. The hydrodynamic design of the shroud, which is shaped like a foil, offers advantages for certain conditions over bare propellers....

 instead.

List of ships

Pennant number Pennant number In the modern Royal Navy, and other navies of Europe and the Commonwealth, ships are identified by pennant numbers...	Name	Launched	com- missioned	Decom- missioned	Fate
S172	Hans Techel	March 15, 1965	October 14, 1965	December 15, 1966	scrapped
S173	Friedrich Schürer	November 10, 1966	April 6, 1966	December 15, 1966	scrapped