Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock

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Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock after returning from a trip with U 96 , May 1941

Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock (* 11. December 1911 in Bremen ; † 18th April 1986 ibid) was German submarine - commander in World War II and later captain of the only German nuclear ship , the Otto Hahn .

He is best known as a role model for the old , as Lothar-Günther Buchheim calls the captain lieutenant of U 96 in his books The Boat , The Fortress and The Farewell .

biography

education

Lehmann-Willenbrock joined the Reichsmarine in April 1931 and completed a large part of his training in Flensburg - Mürwik , at the local naval school , the torpedo school and the news school . On April 1, 1935 he became a lieutenant at sea . On the light cruiser Karlsruhe he made a training trip as a division lieutenant under the then lieutenant at sea Karl-Friedrich Merten . Afterwards he became an instructor on the newly commissioned sailing training ship Horst Wessel .

On April 1, 1939, he was transferred as a first lieutenant to the sea for the purpose of further officer training for submarine weapons .

Second World War

Use in submarine warfare

Emblem of U 96

On October 1, 1939, he was promoted to lieutenant captain . He took over his first command with the Type II A boat U 8 , a so-called dugout canoe. Without having carried out a front mission with this boat, he was appointed commander of U 5 on December 5, 1939 . With this boat he made a 15-day patrol trip in April 1940 during the invasion of Norway , known as Operation Weser Exercise .

On September 14, 1940, he took over the newly commissioned U 96 . With this boat, which belonged to the 7th submarine flotilla ( Kiel or St. Nazaire ), he completed eight enemy voyages with a total of 259 days at sea. From a military point of view, the first four missions at the front from December 1940 to May 1941 were particularly successful. Lehmann-Willenbrock sank 18 merchant ships during these four missions . The Wehrmacht report noted on February 25, 1941: “The boat of Lieutenant Lehmann-Willenbrock with 55,600 GRT played an outstanding role in the great success of the submarine weapon. Captain Lehmann-Willenbrock thus destroyed 125,580 GRT of enemy merchant shipping space in a short time. ”In the newsreel of April 28, 1941, he was briefly seen at a briefing at the BdU Karl Dönitz .

During the seventh voyage, the events of which form the basis for the novel Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim , the attempt to break through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea failed . U 96 suffered severe damage in an air raid and had to return to St. Nazaire.

After the eighth voyage (January to March 1942) Lehmann-Willenbrock was appointed head of the 9th submarine flotilla in Brest . He made the tower symbol of U 96 , the laughing sawfish , the badge of the 9th submarine flotilla and led it until August 1944. When the American troops were close to Brest, the 9th submarine flotilla was disbanded. He managed to make makeshift repairs to the U 256 , which was not ready for use, and to equip it with a makeshift snorkel. U 256 left Brest on September 4th . It passed the Bay of Biscay and the British guard line between the Shetland and Faroe Islands unmolested. On October 23, U 256 reached the Norwegian base in Bergen . There Lehmann-Willenbrock was promoted to chief of the 11th submarine flotilla stationed there on December 1, 1944 and at the same time promoted to frigate captain. From May 1945 to May 7, 1946 he was a prisoner of war .

Lehmann-Willenbrock sank a total of 25 Allied ships with over 180,000 GRT and damaged two more with around 16,000 GRT.

post war period

Since 1946 Lehmann-Willenbrock worked with Karl-Friedrich Merten on salvaging sunken ships in the Rhine.

In 1949 he sailed with the skipper Ado Nolte whose sailing ship Magellan to Buenos Aires . Two friends of Nolte were on board. The start of this tour from Brake / Weser was achieved on September 11, 1949 through camouflaging participation in a regatta.

He then became the captain of merchant ships for the Helmut Bastian shipping company . On the night of March 21, 1959, he managed to rescue 57 shipwrecked people off the coast of Brazil with the motor freighter Inga Bastian . Under adverse circumstances, he and his crew were able to take the entire crew of the burning Brazilian freighter Commandante Lyra on board.

In 1969 Lehmann-Willenbrock became captain of the only German nuclear-powered ship, the Otto Hahn ; he was in command for five years.

For a long time he was chairman of the Bremen submarine comradeship.

He got married in Argentina. His two sons were born there.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Flensburger Tageblatt : U-boat commander Lehmann-Willenbrock: Schleswig-Holstein's "Age" of U96 , from: September 16, 2018; accessed on: October 10, 2018
  2. ↑ U-Boot Archive. Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock , accessed on: October 10, 2018
  3. ^ Mark Bielefeld, The fourth man ( memento from July 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), in: mare issue 70, October 2008, pp. 58–63
  4. ↑ Report in the "Weser-Kurier", March 25, 1986
personal data
SURNAME Lehmann-Willenbrock, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German captain and frigate captain
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH April 18, 1986
Place of death Bremen