Horst Degen

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Horst Degen (born July 19, 1913 in Hemer , † January 29, 1996 in Lüneburg ) was a German naval officer , most recently a lieutenant captain , and submarine commander in World War II . With the U 701 under his command , he operated in the North Atlantic off the coast of the United States and was the most successful commander with eleven sunken ships (four of which were warships) with a total tonnage of 27,056 and five damaged merchant ships with 38,283 GRT, with 176 people dying among the German submarines sailing in US waters. On July 7, 1942, his submarine was sunk by a US aircraft off Cape Hatteras . With the greater part of his crew he drifted in the sea for two days and witnessed the deaths of most of his men until he and six other survivors were rescued in a spectacular rescue operation with a seaplane and became a prisoner of war in the United States . After the war Degen worked as a managing director in the wine and spirits trade and later in the car trade.

Life

Family of origin and childhood

Horst Degen was born as the son of the civil servant and later mayor of Hemer Carl Degen and his wife Josephine and grew up with two sisters. He lost both parents as a child, which is why, when he was not yet 16 years old, his older, 23-year-old sister Hanna and her husband had to look after him and his ten-year-old sister. He later lived in Hamburg . When he was shipwrecked shortly before his 29th birthday as a submarine commander, his younger sister was already married, but he was not yet.

Training as a naval officer

During his last year at high school, Degen applied to the Naval Academy in Kiel , for which he had to pass various physical, mental and psychological tests, including resistance to electric shocks. Degen joined the Reichsmarine on April 1, 1933 as a naval officer candidate and was assigned to the 4th Company of the 2nd Ship Mastery Department of the Baltic Sea in Stralsund for basic infantry training. On July 1, 1933, he was transferred to the sailing training ship Gorch Fock , where he began his practical on-board training, which he continued after his appointment as a midshipman on September 23, 1933 with a trip around the world on the light cruiser Karlsruhe , including Australia , Hawaii , Visited San Diego and Boston until he returned to Germany on June 27, 1934. On July 1, 1934 Degen was appointed ensign in the sea, and from July 12, 1934 to April 18, 1935 he attended the main course for ensigns at the Naval School in Flensburg - Mürwik as well as other courses until August 1939. During this period, took place on June 1, 1935 the renaming of the Reichsmarine to the Kriegsmarine . On April 1, 1936 Degen was promoted to Oberfähnrich zur See , on October 1, 1936 to lieutenant at sea and on June 1, 1938 to first lieutenant at sea . At the beginning of the war, Degen became second watch officer , torpedo officer and radio engineer on the destroyer Z 10 Hans Lody in September 1939 , where he remained until June 1940. He took part in Operation Weser Exercise ( Norway ) and was near the heavy cruiser Scharnhorst on June 8, 1940 , when he sank the HMS Glorious .

Submarine training

In July 1940 he began his training with the submarine weapon, which he continued in January 1941 with a commanding course in Kiel . On March 1, 1941, he was promoted to lieutenant captain. From March to May 1941 he was an extra-scheduled commanding student on U 552 under Commander Erich Topp , during whose second patrol from Saint-Nazaire from April 7 to May 6, 1941, three ships were sunk and one was damaged. From May 1941 to July 15, 1941 Degen received the building instruction for U 701 at the warship building training department U-Nordsee in Bremen .

Commander of U 701

On July 16, 1941 Degen was appointed commander of U 701 , of which he remained the only commander. It was now tested under his command and served until December 1941 with the 3rd U-Flotilla in Kiel as a training boat with trips in the Baltic Sea . On December 27, 1941, U 701 left Kiel with Commander Degen on his first patrol in the North Atlantic, which lasted 45 days and in which Lieutenant Bernhard Weinitschke was killed in an accident on December 31, 1941. January 1942 the British steamer Baron Erskine was sunk with 3657 GRT, with all 41 men on board died. U 701 left Saint-Nazaire on February 26, 1942 and sank two trawlers with a total of 562 GRT and 32 dead as well as two auxiliary warships with a total of 1048 t and 74 dead on its second, 35-day patrol in the North Atlantic , and finally sank in Brest (Finistère ) to run in .

Horst Degen's third patrol began on May 19, 1942 from Brest and took him after a short stay on the night of May 20, 1942 in Lorient in the territorial waters of the United States , where he laid sea ​​mines off Virginia Beach on June 11, 1942 . On June 15, 1942, the auxiliary warship HMS Kingston Ceylonite ran 448 t from the convoy KN-109 on one of these mines and sank, killing 18 people, while two merchant ships and a destroyer were damaged, one man died. On June 17, 1942, the American merchant ship Santore with 7117 GRT sank through one of these mines , killing three people. In the following days Degen achieved further successes: On June 19, 1942, the American auxiliary warship USS YP-389 with 170 tons was sunk by artillery fire , killing 6 people. The Norwegian merchant ship Tamesis with 7256 GRT and the British tanker British Freedom with 6985 GRT were damaged by torpedoes , as a result of which one man died on the latter. Finally, on the night of June 28 to 29, 1942, the American tanker William Rockefeller , who at the time was one of the largest tankers in the world with 14,054 GRT, was sunk with two torpedoes, but the entire 50-man crew was saved . On its third patrol voyage, U 701 sank four ships with 21,789 GRT, damaged five other ships with 38,283 GRT and thereby killed 29 people, whereby Horst Degen and his submarine achieved the most sunkings off the Atlantic coast of the USA and became a main target of the enemy has been. At the end of June he lurked outside Cape Hatteras and waited for another target before the submarine was to start its return journey across the Atlantic, but no ship was seen for eight days.

Countersinking of U 701

On the afternoon of July 7, 1942, U 701 was on a surface voyage off Cape Hatteras when, in calm seas, a US Hudson plane suddenly emerged from the clouds , which was piloted by Harry Kane . Despite alarm diving, the boat was only just under the water when it hit two of three depth charges dropped directly. Water quickly penetrated the fast-sinking boat through a hole in the stern. Degen was able to open the tower hatch with ease and through it he and 17 of his men got outside, while another 18 left the boat through the torpedo tubes at the bow without his being informed of this. As a result, seven men went down with the boat in which the secret documents and the Enigma also remained.

Odyssey in the Atlantic

Degen's group of 18 submariners had three diving rescuers and three life jackets , two of which had been dropped by the bomber. Despite Degen's warning, two men - Hansel and Lange - set out to swim to the shore about 30 nautical miles away. They were never seen again. The next two days turned into a nightmare, as the comrades gradually lost their strength and one after the other drowned. According to his own statement, Degen survived mainly because the chief helmsman Günter Kunert supported him again and again. A US Coast Guard ship passed the group around 2 km away on July 8 without noticing their calls for help. Planes also flew overhead without seeing anything. On the night of July 8th to 9th, a coconut and a lemon drove towards the castaways, which provided a slight quenching of hunger and thirst. Nevertheless, three more comrades died that night, so that only four men, including swords, were left. On the morning of July 9 1942 discovered airship the US Navy , the shipwrecked and tossed from a boat with drinking water and food. Günther Kunert, Ludwig Vaupel and Herbert Grotheer, almost at the end of their tether, climbed into the boat and only shortly after saw the unconscious sword that they pulled into the boat. Meanwhile the sea was wild. On the same day at 4:05 p.m., a US Coast Guard seaplane landed near the inflatable boat in heavy swell and brought Degen and his three surviving men on board - 49 hours after the sinking, about 65 nautical miles from the spot and about 110 from the coast . On board were three other of his men - Gerhard Schwendel, Werner Seldte and Bruno Faust - from the other group, who had been rescued up to five nautical miles away. Thus only seven men out of 46 had survived and were now prisoners of war in the United States.

Pilot Richard L. Burke flew the seven survivors to Naval Station Norfolk Naval Base in Norfolk, Virginia . He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for the rescue of the German submarine drivers .

captivity

Degen and the six other prisoners received medical care for two days at Naval Station Norfolk before coming to Fort Devens , Massachusetts for interrogation . Here they were interrogated intensively for two months by officers of the United States Army and Navy. An important role was played by the fact that on the night of the new moon in mid-June 1942, eight German agents were dropped off from the U-boats U 202 and U 584 on the US coast. George Dasch and Ernst Berger had betrayed the mission and turned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the hope of mild treatment , so that by June 27th all agents were captured. The Americans had a suspicion, corroborated in the agents' interrogations, that a third submarine with two agents could have left Lorient at the same time as U 202 and U 584 , and they assumed that it was U 701 . They suspected this all the more since Degen, in order to hide his responsibility for the mining operation off Virginia Beach, did not want to disclose the date of the departure of U 701 from Lorient. After the questioning officers threatened a special court and the death penalty, Degen was finally prepared to disclose the date of departure - May 19, 1942. At the beginning of August, a conversation between Degen and his fellow prisoner Oberleutnant zur See Oskar Bernhard from U 352 was overheard, in which he stated that he did not want to be executed like the six German agents and thus justified his willingness to give evidence. He knew very little about the espionage mission and was unable to provide any useful information to the Americans. Degen and his six men also managed to keep their role in mine laying a secret. This was unknown for 40 years.

The interrogations finally ended in September 1942 and the seven prisoners from U 701 were taken to various prison camps. At that time only 33 other submarine drivers were in US American captivity, namely the survivors of the sinking of U 352 on May 9, 1942. Horst Degen first came to Camp Blanding south of Jacksonville in Florida , but in early 1944 he was moved like the other submarine prisoners to Camp Papago Park in eastern Phoenix , Arizona . Due to his knowledge of English, Horst Degen was employed in the administrative center of Camp Papago Park. Degen later admitted that he suffered from not being allowed to see his six surviving men from U 701 in Camp Papago Park, as officers and men were generally separated in the US prison camps. The seven did not see each other again until the summer of 1946 in Germany.

post war period

In June 1946 Horst Degen returned to Germany from captivity. On June 6th, he arrived in Hamburg by ship and was released. Only a few days later he met his future wife, the 30-year-old widow Lotte Dressler, whose husband had died on the Eastern Front in 1943 and with whom she had two sons. In 1948 Lotte and Horst Degen's son Günther was born. Horst Degen now ran the business of his wife's family, a wine and spirits store in Lüneburg, which was sold in 1964. Degen then switched to the local Ford car dealer and soon after became its managing director. In 1978 he retired and died in Lüneburg in 1996 at the age of 82.

Horst Degen and his opponent Harry Kane, reception

A first brief encounter between Horst Degen and his victorious opponent, the bomber pilot Harry Kane , took place shortly after Degen's capture, when Kane and his flight crew visited Degen in the Norfolk hospital. Kane also expressed his regret that he could not do more to rescue the submariners from the submarine he sunk.

The story of the two opponents was picked up by the Hamburger Abendblatt 37 years later after Kane turned to the latter in search of Degen, and was the subject of a book by the American author Ed Offley with the title The Burning Shore. How Hitler's U-Boats Brought World War II to America , published in 2014.

Horst Degen did not talk about the war in his family. In May 1968, he saw a report on television that the US Navy had come across a wrecked submarine while searching for the missing nuclear submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589) . Suddenly his memories of the worst days of his life, watching his men die, came back to life, and he decided to write a letter to the US Navy expressing his regret for the deaths of those killed in the war. American sailors expressed. It soon turned out, however, that the wreck was the remains of a freighter sunk by a submarine.

However, it was Harry Kane, the pilot of the sinking plane, who sought direct contact with Degen when he was reminded of his former success in scuttling by a number of submarine wrecks found by divers, whereby U 701 was not among the wrecks found. Finally, in October 1979, Kane wrote to the Hamburger Abendblatt, which published the search report and thus enabled Kane to contact Horst Degen within two days. This started a long-term exchange between the former counterparties. In 1982 Kane finally visited Degen in Lüneburg.

Character descriptions

The interrogating officers of the US Navy described Degen as an exuberant man with a quick mind. He spoke empathically about his men and was deeply saddened that so few survived. He also pointed out that the twelve husbands and fathers had all perished, while all of the survivors, including himself, were single. Degen also admired the one year younger commander of U 552 , Erich Topp , from whom he “learned everything”. Through this and through his determination, he had achieved considerable success in sinking.

Awards

literature

  • Ed Offley: The Burning Shore. How Hitler's U-Boats Brought World War II to America. Basic Books, New York 2014.
  • Rainer Busch, Horst-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. Preface by Prof. Dr. Horst Rohwer, member of the Presidium of the International Commission for Military History. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 1996, p. 49. ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 .
  • Clay Blair : The Submarine War - The Hunters 1939–1942 . Heyne Verlag, 1998. pp. 531f., 554, 644, 699-707, 728, 789, 803f. ISBN 3-4531-2345-X .
  • Clay Blair: The Submarine War - The Hunted 1942–1945 . Heyne Verlag, 1999. p. 146. ISBN 3-4531-6059-2 .
  • Kenneth Wynn: U-boat Operations of the Second World War: Career histories, U511-UIT25 Naval Institute Press, Annapolis (Maryland) 1998, pp. 125f. ISBN 1-55750-862-3 .
  • Jim Bunch: U-Boats off the Outer Banks: Shadows in the Moonlight. History Press, Charleston (SC) 2017, pp. 173-177. ISBN 1-55750-862-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt, October 24, 1979, After thirty years: found in four hours , page 1 , Two enemies who became friends , page 4 .
  2. ^ A b Hamburger Abendblatt, July 13, 1982, War opponents became friends. Submarine commander Degen and bomber pilot Kane met after 40 years , page 4 .
  3. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt, October 22, 1979, Mr. Kane is looking for Horst Degen , page 3 .
personal data
SURNAME Sword, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Hemer
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1996
Place of death Luneburg