Friedrich Guggenberger

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Friedrich Guggenberger (October 1941)

Friedrich Guggenberger (born March 6, 1915 in Munich ; † May 13, 1988 in Erlenbach am Main ) was a German naval officer in the Reichsmarine , the Kriegsmarine and the Federal Navy , most recently as rear admiral .

He was in command of U 28 , U 81 , U 847 and U 513 . On his patrols he sank a total of 17 ships and seriously damaged one.

Life

Guggenberger joined the Reichsmarine on April 8, 1934 . In October 1939 he was transferred to the submarine weapon. After completing his basic training, he served as first watch officer on the school boat U 28 . On November 16, 1940, he replaced Günther Kuhnke as commandant.

HMS Ark Royal about to sink

On April 26, 1941, he took over the newly commissioned U 81 boat stationed in Kiel and Brest . After he was promoted to lieutenant captain in September of the same year , he was ordered to call at the port of La Spezia in Italy . On November 13, he succeeded in breaking the British naval blockade of the Strait of Gibraltar . Shortly thereafter, Guggenberger torpedoed the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal (22,600 ts ), which was so badly damaged that it sank the following day. For this shooting he was honored with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on December 10, 1941 .

After a further six patrols, he gave up command and switched to the BdU as an admiralty staff officer for three months.After receiving the oak leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on January 8, 1943, he took command of U 847 for a week on the 23rd of this month .

On May 15, 1943, he was transferred to the boat U 513 . While on patrol off the Brazilian coast southeast of São Francisco do Sul , the boat was located on July 19 by radio direction finding, as Guggenberger had made an unusually long radio message. It was attacked by a US aircraft, type PBM Mariner , and sank so quickly that most of the men on board were lost in the boat. Only 12 men - some seriously wounded - were able to jump from the command bridge and the flak into the water, but only seven managed to pull themselves into a floating lifeboat dropped by an airplane. The seriously injured Guggenberger was pulled into the boat by the hair. The seven survivors had to watch helplessly as two wounded were eaten by sharks and the other three drowned. After a day in the lifeboat, they were picked up by the USS Barnegat , taken as prisoners of war, first to Rio de Janeiro and later to the United States. Guggenberger was the most seriously wounded and was flown first to Miami and later to Washington, DC for medical operations . It was not until the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland , that US surgeons managed to restore Guggenberger's health. A total of 46 men on the U 513 crew were killed, while seven survived.

U 513 was rediscovered around 120 kilometers east of the Brazilian city of Florianópolis in 2011 . As the University of Vale do Itajaí announced, the wreck detected at a depth of 130 meters is U 513.

After a long hospital stay, Guggenberger came via Fort Hunt and Crossville in January 1944 to the POW camp " Camp Papago Park " in Arizona . During his imprisonment, he and other inmates forged escape plans. Together with four submarine commanders, he managed to escape for the first time on February 12, 1944. However, he and August Maus were caught again in Tucson (Arizona), while Jürgen Quaet-Faslem , Hermann Kottmann and Hans Johannsen were only captured in Mexico and sent back to Papago Park. His second attempt to escape (" Great Papago Escape ") on December 23, 1944 was initially more successful. Together with 24 other companions - this time without the wounded mouse, who only helped dig the tunnel - he managed to escape for two weeks. They were only found by the American authorities six kilometers from the Mexican border.

In February 1946 he was transferred to Shanks Camp near New York City . Then Guggenberger was transferred to a prison camp in the British occupation zone in Germany. In August of that year he was released from captivity .

When he was free again, he became an architect. After the Federal Republic of Germany had decided to found the Bundeswehr and thus also the Bundesmarine in 1956, he joined the latter. He studied at the US Naval War College in Newport. After successful completion, he received the rank of rear admiral and became Chief of Staff at the AFNORTH NATO headquarters in Kolsås, Norway . Guggenberger retired on October 31, 1972.

In the last years of his life, Guggenberger suffered from Alzheimer's . On May 13, 1988, he went on a walk in the woods from which he never came back. His heavily decayed body was only discovered two years later and identified by the wedding ring . His widow died on January 21, 1991, uncertain of the circumstances of his death.

Ranks

Awards

literature

  • Theodore P. Savas: Silent Hunters. German U-boat Commanders of World War II. Savas Publishing, Campbell (California) 1997, ISBN 1-940669-00-6 , pp. 74-107, 194-196.
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. Preface by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rohwer, Member of the Presidium of the International Commission on Military History. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 , p. 85.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Website uboat.net: Profile of Friedrich Guggenberger
  2. ^ German Naval Archives : Profile of Friedrich Guggenberger ( Memento from June 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ A b c U-Boot-Archiv: Profile of Friedrich Guggenberger
  4. ^ Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars. Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing vor München 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 , p. 137.
  5. ↑ a b c Theodore P. Savas: Silent Hunters. German U-boat Commanders of World War II. Savas Publishing, Campbell (California) 1997, pp. 105f.
  6. ↑ The secret of U 513. ( Memento from January 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Part 2 of the five-part ZDF documentary “Secrets of the Second World War”, broadcast on November 13, 2012. (Statement: Wreck of U 513 lies at a depth of 130 , documented with video.)
  7. ↑ Sunk German submarine discovered off Brazil , message on t-online.de of July 17, 2011. (Statement: Wreck of U 513 is at a depth of 75, probably confused with the length of the submarine)
  8. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 355.
  9. ↑ BAnz. 238/1972
personal data
SURNAME Guggenberger, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, submarine commander in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1988
Place of death Erlenbach am Main