Military, WW2

U-Boat “Packed With Gold” Famed Treasure Hunter Has Left Clues

U-boat Hunter Roger Miklos was a prominent American explorer and was best known for his work on Cooper’s Treasures, a television series that explores lost ships. Roger gained a reputation as an explorer, a hunter, and a television personality over the years.

  • Roger Miklos, a renowned treasure hunter, left a series of encrypted documents. 
  • The clues hint towards the existence of a German U-Boat “Packed With Gold.”
  • Mike Fletcher was handed Roger Miklos’s cache to find the sunken submarine.
  • Mike and his team are currently investigating the whereabouts of the U-Boat.
  • The precise location of the missing U-Boat has not been discovered.

It is no secret that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis looted billions in art, precious gems, gold and much more as they swept through Europe in their bid to rise to power. As the Second World War raged on, millions of people were taken from their homes and sent to concentration camps.

Everything of value they left behind was seized by the Nazis, then hidden intended for “safekeeping” until the war was over and Hitler could claim all as his own. That, at least, was his plan.

German loot stored at Schlosskirche Ellingen, Bavaria (April 1945)

Fortunately, by 1944 the Allies were hammering the German forces, and not long after D-Day on June 6th of that year, the writing was on the wall. On May 7th , 1945, the Allies declared victory and Germany admitted defeat.

The war in Europe was over, but questions lingered about the fate of all those valuable possessions. Where were they? Were they lost forever?

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One man was convinced that at least some of the millions in gold stolen by the Nazis lies in a U-boat on the ocean floor, off Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean.

Now deceased, treasure hunter Roger Miklos insisted that on one of his expeditions, he spotted a fleet of U-boats down in the murky depths. Miklos was there on another shipwreck dive, but intended to go back and explore the submarines. He never got the opportunity to test his theory, and died in 2018.

Roger Miklos treasure hunter
Renowned treasure hunter Roger Miklos left a series of encrypted clues as to the location of a sunken U-boat ‘packed with gold’ in the Caribbean following his death in 2018. Now the hunt has began.

Roger Miklos was a prominent American explorer and was best known for his work on Cooper’s Treasures, a television series that explores lost ships. Roger gained a reputation as an explorer, a hunter, and a television personality over the years.

The renowned treasure hunter left behind a series of encrypted clues hinting at the German Gold Treasure.

The claims of the sunken U-Boat came back in 1981 when Miklos was hunting for Pinta, a ship used by Columbus to travel to the New World in 1492.

During the hunt, his crew members picked up on the magnetometer reading. Following the indicator, Miklos dived down to inspect the ocean floor. The mystery had begun.

However, a team working for the documentary series “History’s Greatest Mysteries” (which started airing this September on the History Channel) explores his idea in greater detail. The show plunges into persistent mysteries all around the world. The Fletcher episode is entitled “Hunting Hitler’s U-Boats,” and it comes second in this Autumns season.

U-Boats
Many U-Boats surrendered, this is U-505 that was captured by the US.

Headed by diver and adventurer Mike Fletcher, this episode examines the theory that Miklos shared. Hitler, aware he was losing the war, had subs refitted to carry tons of gold out of Germany and those countries occupied by the Nazis.

During a trip crossing the Caribbean Sea, the subs sank – or so Miklos insisted, partially due to the weight of gold they carried.

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When Miklos first made public his theory, he caused an uproar in the small, exclusive community of divers who explore wrecks professionally. Some publications described it as a “frenzy” in 1981, when Miklos first announced his belief about the Nazi gold.

But he was understandably cagey about its precise location as that could have allowed competitors to preempt his bid to get to the spoils. After his death, his family turned all his papers over to Fletcher. It is his investigation that the documentary focuses on.

During the war, the Germans harassed the Allies with U-boats in the Atlantic. Although the British and American forces sank approximately 600 of the subs over the course of the war, the German ships sank hundreds of Allied vessels too.

The fight for superiority on the high seas became known as the “Battle of the Atlantic.” It lasted from 1939 until 1945, when the war finally ended.

Why Miklos didn’t reveal the U-boat’s location to a few trusted friends while he was alive is unknown.  Perhaps he meant to, but a sudden heart attack while travelling put an end to those plans.

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Yet he teased competitors constantly about where the sub was and the bounty in its cargo hold. “There (isn’t) anybody going to find anything better than that,” he said in his last media interview, referring to the U-boat and the valuable loot potentially on board it.

Mike Fletcher has over 40 years of experience as a ship explorer. A small team led by Fletcher is on the hunt to uncover the U-Boat. The team is currently deciphering the clues and sketches left by Roger Miklos to locate the treasures.

Fletcher isn’t convinced the submarine holds untold millions in cargo. He acknowledges that plenty of goods went missing during and after the war, and that some of those goods may rest on a U-boat on the ocean floor.

But like all wise explorers, he still remains skeptical about just what he found when he read the Miklos papers, and what he’ll show viewers when the documentary rolls this fall.

Meanwhile, Darrel Miklos, Roger Miklos’s son, has continued his father’s legacy on Cooper’s Treasure. He worked alongside his father in the show until he retired. He recently explored the famous ‘Atocha Shipwreck’ site on Discovery Channel. 

The Atocha Shipwreck of 1622 was discovered by Darrel’s father, Roger Miklos. The ship carried tens of millions of dollars worth of treasure. His impressive discovery left the world stunned. Since then, he has been seen as an authority in treasure hunting.

Proof that there really is gold in the hills beneath the waves.