Hans Heidtmann

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Hans Heidtmann (born August 8, 1914 in Gleschendorf station ; † April 5, 1976 in Hamburg ) was a German naval officer and submarine commander in World War II . As the commanded him U 559 on 30 October 1942 at the Mediterranean was damaged by five British destroyers, he failed rapid scuttling . Three men from a British prize squad were able to steal secret documents that were important to the war effort, even if two of them went down with U 559 . As a result, the British were able to decipher the secret code of the Enigma-M4 , which resulted in the destruction of most of the German submarines by the Allies in the years that followed. While seven of Heidtmann's men died, Heidtmann and 42 of his men were taken prisoner without knowing that the documents had been captured. Obviously ignorant of these circumstances, the naval leadership awarded him the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in 1943 for his numerous sinkings with several hundred dead , even though he was in captivity. After the war, Heidtmann served in the German Navy , most recently as a sea ​​captain .

Life

Training as a naval officer

Heidtmann joined the Reichsmarine on April 8, 1934 as a candidate for naval officers and was assigned to the 4th Company of the 2nd Ship Mastery Department of the Baltic Sea in Stralsund for basic infantry training. On June 14, 1934, he was transferred to the sailing training ship Gorch Fock , where he began his practical on-board training, which he continued on the light cruiser Emden on September 26, 1934 after his appointment as a midshipman . During this period, on June 1, 1935, the Reichsmarine was renamed the Kriegsmarine . On July 1, 1935, Heidtmann was appointed ensign at sea, and from June 27, 1935 to March 30, 1936, he attended the main course for ensigns at the Naval School in Flensburg - Mürwik and took part in navigation instruction trips on the training ship Poseidon (19 to March 1936) August 24, 1935) and the steamer Hecht (February 17, 1936 to February 22, 1936). This was followed by an anti-aircraft weapons course at the coastal artillery school in Wilhelmshaven (March 31, 1936 to April 13, 1936), a news course at the news school in Flensburg-Mürwik (April 14, 1936 to May 4, 1936), an infantry course in 3rd class. Company of the 2nd Ship Mastery Department of the Baltic Sea in Stralsund (May 5, 1936 to June 2, 1936) and an artillery course at the Ship Artillery School in Kiel - Wik (June 3, 1936 to July 27, 1936). From September 21, 1936 to October 4, 1937 he served on the ironclad Germany , where he was appointed Oberfähnrich zur See on January 1, 1937 and from February 15, 1937 to March 23, 1937 a course at the E- Attended measuring school in Saßnitz . On April 1, 1937, he was promoted to lieutenant at sea . A torpedo course for officers at the torpedo school in Flensburg-Mürwik followed from October 5, 1937 to January 29, 1938 .

Submarine training

On January 30, 1938, Heidtmann began his training at the U-Schule Kiel, which he completed on May 4, 1938. Of 5 May 1938 to September 7, 1938, he was in the underground headquarters company in Wilhelmshaven and served from 8 September 1938 as a first officer on watch in the submarine U 33 , where he on April 1, 1939 Lieutenant promoted and stayed here until January 7, 1940. From January 8, 1940 to June 8, 1940, as a commanding student, he was the first officer on watch on U 14 . From June 9, 1940 to July 6, 1940, Heidtmann attended a commanding course with the 24th U-Flotilla in Memel and was able to gain experience as a commander on three submarines in the same year: from July 7, 1940 to 31 July 1940 he was the commander representing U 2 , from August 1, 1940 to September 29, 1940, commander representing U 14, and from August 1, 1940 to December 20, 1940, commander of U 21 . From December 21, 1940 to January 20, 1941 he was available in command of the 1st U-Flotilla in Kiel, before he received the building instruction for U 559 from the U-North Sea warship construction department from January 21, 1941 to February 26, 1941 received in Bremen .

Commander of U 559

On February 27, 1941, Heidtmann was appointed commander of U 559 , of which he remained the only commander. It was now tested under his command and served until June 1941 with the 1st U-Flotilla as a training boat with trips in the Baltic Sea . On June 4, 1941, U 559 ran out of Kiel with the commander Heidtmann on its first patrol, during which it did not sink or damage any ships, and reached Saint-Nazaire on July 5, 1941 . Heidtmann achieved his first success on his second patrol, which began on July 26, 1941: In the west of the Bay of Biscay, the submarine sank a British ship on August 19, 1941, three days before it returned to Saint-Nazaire. On October 1, 1941, Heidtmann was appointed lieutenant captain. In October he achieved the breakthrough of U 559 as part of the submarine group "Goeben" and as one of the first German submarines in World War II through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean , where on October 31, 1941 the Greek island Salamis reached. Heidtmann was now operating off the coasts of Egypt and Libya and thus supported the Africa Corps under Erwin Rommel on its Africa campaign . Under Heidtmann's command, U 559 sank five Allied freighters with a total of 12,871 GRT and the Australian sloop of the Grimsby class HMAS Parramatta with 1060 t. Another Allied ship was so badly damaged by torpedo hits that it later had to be declared a total loss. There were a total of more than 480 deaths. The highest number of deaths there was on 23 December 1941, the sinking of the British prison ship Shuntien with 3059 BRT on which 88 crew members and gunners, 40 guards of the Durham Light Infantry (DLI) and about 850 Italian and German prisoners of war were that should be brought from Tobruk to Alexandria . The ship sank so quickly that lifeboats could no longer be used and most of the occupants drowned shortly afterwards. The British frigate HMS Salvia (K 97) took in 47 crew members of the shunties and perhaps 100 prisoners, but was sunk the next day by U 568 under Commander Preuss, so that all of its 58-man crew and all those previously taken on board drowned. Less than 20 men from shuntia were rescued by HMS Heythrop (L 85) and survived, including no prisoners.

Sinking of U 559 and capture of the code books

On 30 October 1942, U 559 when stalking discovered at a convoy off the coast of Egypt. The British destroyer HMS Petard under the command of Mark Thornton , supported by the destroyers HMS Pakenham , HMS Hurworth and HMS Dulverton , attacked the submarine with depth charges and damaged it so badly that Heidtmann had to give the order to surface. He ordered the scuttling and "all hands on board", but failed to destroy the Enigma - M4 and the secret, easily destructible code books . The chief engineer Günther Gräser noticed too late that the valves had been damaged by operating errors in the excitement. Due to defective valves, the sea water did not enter the boat as quickly as it would have been necessary to prevent boarding. Seven crew members of U 559 were killed in the attack by the British destroyers. Heidtmann, on the other hand, survived the sinking, as did 42 of his men as British prisoners of war . The prisoners were all taken to Haifa first .

A British prize squad reached the sinking submarine, which has since been abandoned by its crew. Three men, Tony Fasson , Colin Grazier and Tommy Brown , boarded the boat and stole important secret documents such as a short signal booklet and weather shortcut key . Grazier and Fasson returned to the submarine and also tried to dismantle the Enigma, but went down with the boat.

captivity

Heidtmann was brought from Haifa to a prison camp in Egypt and was later transferred to a camp in Canada . Finally he was in northern England in the British POW camp Featherstone Park (Camp 18, Haltwhistle ), in which among other submarine commanders were concentrated. In May 1947 he returned to Germany.

Federal Navy

With the establishment of the German Navy, Heidtmann returned to active service as a naval officer in January 1958. In September 1972 he retired as a sea ​​captain and died on April 5, 1976 at the age of 61 in Hamburg .

Ignorance of the capture of the code books, knight's cross

The intelligence was brought to Bletchley Park and helped the Allies break the Enigma-M4 code. Heidtmann did not learn of this devastating defeat, because like the other survivors swimming in the water, he had been quickly taken out of the water and brought below deck by the British. The 19-year-old submarine driver Hermann Dethlefs, who witnessed the boarding, was kept isolated by the British and, even after his return to Germany, did not make his experiences public for decades and did not share them with his former commander Heidtmann .

Until the end of the war and beyond, the German naval command and the public did not find out anything about the capture of the documents and the fact that more and more German submarines were being sunk. It even came to that Heidt man when he was detained in a British prison camp, still on 12 April 1943 by the Navy leadership for its sinking success with over a thousand dead - with - including several hundred dead German and Italian POWs Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross awarded has been. The British's success in secrecy was lasting: In 1967, 22 years after the end of the war, Heidtmann stated that he had successfully sunk his submarine U 559 himself .

Heidtmann's responsibility for stealing the code books

Under Heidtmann's command, the timely self -sinking of U 559 failed and made it possible for the British to capture documents, which historians believe had a decisive influence on the course of the war: from 1943 onwards, more German submarines were sunk, and the number of Allied ships built exceeded those of the sunk. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore emphasizes in his Enigma - The Battle for the Code the role of the chief engineer Günther Gräser, who did not ensure that his men removed the protective pins with which the levers of the valves were locked. The valves were permanently damaged and the water penetrated the boat only slowly. Phil Shanahan, on the other hand, emphasizes that Heidtmann, as commanding officer, made it possible for the British to capture the documents in the first place by not having the key documents - which only had to be thrown into the water - and the Enigma machine destroyed. In his 1967 report, Heidtmann found it difficult to explain why he had not had them destroyed.

Character descriptions

Heidtmann was described as aggressive, which also explains his success in sinking, with many dead. At Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, an incident on board U 33 , which had just laid mines in the Bristol Channel in October and November 1939 , is described on the way from the British coast back to Germany. Here the submarine sank several British ships. At that time, Heidtmann was still the first officer on watch , ordered by the commandant Hans-Wilhelm von Dresky to let the riflemen on the upper deck stop firing on a British ship, as an offer to negotiate had been received from the commanding officer. However, Heidtmann kept firing and cursed the British. It was only when Dresky threatened him with a pistol that the fire stopped. Hans Heidtmanns Conqueror, the commander of HMS Petard Mark Thornton , is described as having a similar character, which means that he not only achieved considerable success against U 559 . In December 1942, the men of his Petard hijacked the Italian submarine Uarscieck (named after a town in Italian Somaliland ), for which Thornton himself had previously seized a machine gun and mowed down the Italian submarine drivers on deck, although he believed them The crew wanted to surrender. Thornton later argued that the Italians still wanted to destroy their code books. William Prendergast, Petard's surgeon , in turn complained that Thornton was mistreating his men. It is cited as an irony of history that the victor Thornton had to give up his command shortly after the successful capture of the Uarscieck submarine (and U 559 ), while the catastrophic loser Heidtmann received the highest award of the Wehrmacht from the completely uninformed naval command Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , which he would never have received given a real assessment of the situation.

Awards

literature

  • Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The Battle for the Code. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2000, pp. 62, 218, 222. ISBN 978-0-2978-4251-4
  • Phil Shanahan: The Real Enigma Heroes. The History Press, Cheltenham 2017, pp. 31-34. ISBN 978-0-7509-8700-4
  • Stephen Harper: The Battle for Enigma - The Hunt for U-559. Mittler, Hamburg 2001, p. 66 ff. ISBN 3-8132-0737-4
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. Preface by Prof. Dr. Hans Rohwer, member of the Presidium of the International Commission on Military History. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 1996, p. 93. ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 5: The knight's cross bearers of the submarine weapon. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2003, p. 341. ISBN 3-8132-0515-0 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 3: The German submarine successes from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2008, p. 238f. ISBN 3-8132-0513-4 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 4: The German submarine losses from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2008, p. 63f. ISBN 3-8132-0514-2 .
  • Clay Blair: The Submarine War - The Hunters 1939-1945 . Heyne Verlag, 1998. pp. 367, 371, 405, 469, 647, 752. ISBN 3-453-12345-X .
  • Clay Blair: The Submarine War - The Hunted 1942–1945 . Heyne Verlag, 1999. pp. 183, 251f., 258, 405, 411, 415f., 604. ISBN 3-453-16059-2 .
  • Kenneth Wynn: U-boat Operations of the Second World War: Career histories, U511-UIT25 Naval Institute Press 1998, ISBN 1-55750-862-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 3: German submarine successes from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0513-4 , pp. 238-239.
  2. ^ A b Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (2000): Enigma - The Battle for the Code. Pp. 218-224.
  3. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. Heyne, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , pp. 121-125.
  4. ↑ a b Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 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. 374.
  5. ^ Georg Högel: Emblems, coats of arms, Malings German submarines 1939-1945. 5th edition. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7822-1002-7 , p. 122.
  6. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (2000): Enigma - The Battle for the Code , p. 218.
  7. ↑ Phil Shanahan: The Real Enigma Heroes. The History Press, Cheltenham 2017, pp. 31-34.
  8. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (2000): Enigma - The Battle for the Code , p. 62.
  9. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (2000): Enigma - The Battle for the Code , p. 222.
personal data
SURNAME Heidtmann, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Gleschendorf railway station
DATE OF DEATH April 5th 1976
Place of death Hamburg