SM U-3 was laid down on 12 March 1907 at Germaniawerft in Kiel (work no. 135)Baumgartner and Sieche, as excerpted here (reprinted and translated into English by Sieche). Retrieved 14 November 2008. and launched on 20 August 1908. Upon completion, she was towed via Gibraltar to Pola, where she arrived on 24 January 1909. She was commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy on 12 September, and served as a training vessel through the beginning of World War I. For most of the first year of the war, she conducted reconnaissance cruises from Cattaro. On 12 August 1915, U-3 made an unsuccessful torpedo attack on the Italian armed merchant cruiser in the northern end of the Strait of Otranto and was rammed and damaged by the Italian ship in return. U-3 succumbed to gunfire from the French destroyer Bisson the following day, with the loss of seven crewmen, including Linienschiffsleutnant Karl Strnad, her commanding officer; the other fourteen men of the crew were captured.
