Tag Archives: U-Boat

Werner Lott -U Boat commander.

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Captain(Korvettenkapitän)Werner Lott was commander of U-35 from 15 August 1937 until 29 November 1939.He sank 4 ships and damaged one.

You often hear about war crimes committed by the German armed forces, but there were also acts of decency.

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Around 15.40  on 3 Oct, 1939, the Greek freighter Diamantis, although the ship was neutral it was carrying strategic cargo to Britain and was therefore considered a “legitimate target” for the German Navy. It was therefore torpedoed by U-35 and sank 40 miles west of the Scilly Islands, . Because the lifeboats were not suited for use in the bad weather, Capt Lott decided to take all crew members aboard and landed them the next day at Dingle, Co Kerry.Ireland.

Lott’s role in the war would be very limited.On 29 November 1939  the U-35 was scuttled by its crew in the North Sea,after a depth charge attack from the British destroyers Kingston, Icarus, and Kashmir. Lord Louis Mountbatten was the commander of the British squadron.

Lott and his crew were taken as prisoners of war.While imprisoned at the Tower of London. He complained about the accommodations, and demanded to talk to the officer in charge. But it was Lord  Mountbatten who visited him instead,  Mountbatten arranged for the Admiralty to allow Lott and his second-in-command to dine at Scott’s restaurant on the condition they would  not attempt to escape. Lott agreed to the demand and kept his promise, he was returned to the Tower later that evening.

A few days later, he and his fellow officers were moved to the Grizedale P.O.W. camp.

GizedaleLater, the entire crew was moved to P.O.W. camps in Canada.

The fact that the U35 was scuttled in the early stages of WWII and because the crew was taken as POW’s the entire crew survived the war.

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Sources

https://uboat.net/men/commanders/754.html

http://www.u-35.com/english.htm

https://www.mariner.ie/close-encounter-with-u-boat/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harry Truman

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I know what you all will be thinking that this will be a blog about President Truman, possibly about the order he gave to drop the atomic bombs. Well, you’d be wrong. It is indeed a blog about some explosive events but nothing WWII related. In fact it isn’t about President Truman either.

The subject in this blog is Harry R Truman a resident of the state of Washington who lived near Mount St. Helens.

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Truman enlisted in the US Army as a private in August 1917. and served in France during World War I.

On 24 January 1918, the SS Tuscania departed Hoboken, New Jersey, with 384 crew members and 2,013 United States Army personnel aboard, Harry R Truman was one of the 2,013. The destination was Liverpool in England.

Tuscania

On the morning of February 5th, 1918, the SS Tuscania was sighted by the German submarine UB 77.During that day, the U-Boat stalked the SS Tuscania until early evening. Under the cover of darkness at about 6:40 pm, the submarine′s commanding officer, Captain Wilhelm Meyer, ordered two torpedoes fired at the Tuscania.

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The second torpedo struck the ship and sank it in the Irish Sea. 210 of the crew and troops perished that day. Harry R Truman was not one of them.

He went on to live a long life, but his death was caused by another explosion of sorts.

Truman moved near to Mount St Helens where he owned a lodge on Spirit Lake ,near the foot of the mountain for more than 50 years. He became somewhat of a  celebrity during the two months of volcanic activity preceding the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. He figured the danger was exaggerated and told reporters

“I’m going to stay right here because, I’ll tell you why, my home and my f**king life’s here. If the mountain goes, I’m going with it”

Unfortunately the volcano did erupt and Harry R Truman did die on May 18,1980 aged 83. His home was hit by a mud and snow avalanche, and buried the site of his lodge under 150 feet (46 m) of volcanic landslide debris.. His remains were never found.

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Some people may think he was foolish not to leave while he still could. But he knew what he wanted and where he was happiest and that was where he and his wife, who died a few years earlier, had made a life for themselves. They had found their bit of paradise for that I admire him because so few find that place they can truly call home.

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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U-1206-Ach Scheiße

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First of all I want to apologize for the rude title but I thought it to be the most appropriate.

War is a driving force behind innovation. From superglue to the internet, military technology has led to the invention of many products that have proven useful in both warfare and in civilian life. However, sometimes military technology backfires, creating more problems than it solves, which the German submarine U-1206 discovered in 1945.

During WW2, German submarines were leading the way in underwater waste management. Rather than keeping their waste on board the submarine in septic tanks, German engineers devised a method for waste to be discharged directly into the water.

On April 6, 1945,  the U-1206 departed from the port city of Kristiansand, 1398662087-0in Nazi-occupied Norway, and began its first combat patrol. Assigned to the waters of the North Atlantic, its mission was to seek out and destroy British and American ships on the high seas.

For the 50-man crew aboard submarines like the U-1206, life wasn’t just extremely dangerous, it was also very unpleasant: Quarters were cramped, and the bathrooms were no exception. There were only two heads (toilets), and because one of the heads was right next to the galley, the space was often used to store food. When it was, the toilet was unavailable, meaning the entire crew had to share the remaining toilet.

The U-1206 had a new-and-improved plumbing system. Unlike many subs in the fleet, it had high-pressure toilets that could be used at greater depths than the standard heads could. But the new system was very difficult to operate. The toilets came with complicated instructions manuals, and a few members of the crew had to be trained so that they could serve a toilet-flushing “specialists.”

A specialist on each submarine received training on proper toilet operating procedures. There was an exact order of opening and closing valves to ensure the system flowed in the correct direction.

Now meet U-1206 and its proud 27-year-old captain, Karl-Adolf Schlitt.(rhymes with sh…) On April 14, 1945, Schlitt and his submarine were eight days into their first combat patrol of the war. The submarine lurked 200 feet beneath the surface of the North Sea when Schlitt decided that he could figure the toilet out himself.

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But Schlitt was not properly trained as a toilet specialist. After calling an engineer to help, the engineer turned a wrong valve and accidentally unleashed a torrent of sewage and seawater back into the sub,and reacted to produce chlorine gas, a toxic chemical that threatened to poison the whole crew.  With no other options, Schlitt ordered the submarine to rise to the surface so they could attempt to flush the chlorine gas out of the boat.

Upon surfacing, they were almost immediately spotted by British planes, who unleashed aerial attacks on the boat, sufficiently damaging the submarine so it was no longer able to dive underwater. Schlitt ordered the crew to abandon ship and scuttled the U-1206 while the crew tried to make it to the Scottish shore in emergency lifeboats. Three crew members, Hans Berkhauer, Karl Koren and Emil Kupper, were killed.

Schlitt and the remaining members survived the war, which ended only a few weeks later, when the Germans officially surrendered on May 7, 1945. To this day, the U-1206 remains, full of water at the bottom of the North Sea.

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Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Action of 9 February 1945

 

u-864_mapThe Action of 9 February 1945 refers to the sinking of the U-boat U-864 in the North Sea off the Norwegian coast during the Second World War by the Royal Navy submarine HMS Venturer.

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This action is the first and so far only incident of its kind in history where one submarine has intentionally sunk another submarine in combat while both were fully submerged.

U-864 was a Type IX U-boat, designed for ocean-going voyages far from home ports with limited re-supply. She was on a long-range, covert mission codenamed Operation Caesar to deliver highly sensitive technology to Germany’s wartime ally, the Empire of Japan.

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Commanded throughout her entire career by Korvettenkapitän Ralf-Reimar Wolfram,she served with the 4th U-boat Flotilla undergoing crew training from her commissioning until 31 October 1944. She was then reassigned to the 33rd U-boat Flotilla.

U-Boot-Kommandant Ralf-Reimar Wolfram

On 6 February 1945, U-864 passed through the Fedje area without being detected, but on 9 February  the HMS Venturer ,under the command of 25-year-old Jimmy Launders, heard U-864‘s engine noise. Launders had decided not to use ASDIC since it would betray his position and spotted the U-boat’s periscope as her captain looked for his escort.

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In an unusually long engagement for a submarine, and in a situation for which neither crew had been trained, Launders waited 45 minutes after first contact before going to action stations. Launders was waiting for U-864 to surface and thus present an easier target. Upon realising they were being followed by the British submarine and that their escort had still not arrived, U-864 zig-zagged underwater in attempted evasive manoeuvres, with each submarine occasionally risking raising her periscope.

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Venturer had only eight torpedoes as opposed to the 22 carried by U-864. After three hours Launders decided to make a prediction of U-864‘s zig-zag, and released a spread of his torpedoes into its predicted course. This manual computation of a firing solution against a three-dimensionally manoeuvring target was the first occasion on which techniques were used and became the basis of modern computer-based torpedo targeting systems. Prior to this attack, no target had been sunk by torpedo where the firing ship had to consider the target’s position in three-dimensional terms, where the depth of the target was variable and not a fixed value. The computation thus differs fundamentally from those performed by analogue torpedo fire-control computers which regarded the target in strictly 2D terms with a constant depth determined by the target’s draught.

The torpedoes were released in 17 second intervals beginning at 12:12, and all taking four minutes to reach their target.(picture below are not the actual torpedoes)

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Launders then dived Venturer suddenly to evade any retaliation. U-864 heard the torpedoes coming, dived deeper, and turned away to avoid them. The first three torpedoes were avoided, but U-864 unknowingly steering into the path of the fourth. Exploding, U-864 split in two, and sank with all hands coming to rest more than 150 metres (490 ft) below the surface. Launders was awarded a bar to his DSO for this action.

During her career she also sank five merchant ships

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