Jürgen Oesten

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Jürgen Oesten (born October 24, 1913 in Berlin-Grunewald ; † August 5, 2010 in Hamburg ) was a German naval officer and submarine commander of the Second World War , most recently in the rank of corvette captain .

Life

In April 1933 he joined the Reichsmarine as a member of Crew 33. After completing his training, he spent over a year on the armored ship Admiral Graf Spee and on the light cruiser Karlsruhe . In May 1937 he switched to the submarine weapon and in October of the same year he became an officer on watch on the U 20 , a Type IIB boat.

Wartime (1939–1945)

Oesten became the commander of the U 61 (Type IIC), which was put into service on August 12, 1939 . In October 1939 the first war voyage took place with the new boat and Lieutenant Oesten sank five ships and damaged another one as a result of mine operations. After the eighth voyage, Oesten left this boat to put the new Type IX B boat U 106 into service on September 24, 1940 . On the march from Kiel to the new Lorient base, U 106 sank the two ships Zealandic and Sesostris .

On his second patrol, Oesten destroyed eight ships off West Africa.

During the fighting for the convoy SL-68, while visibility was poor, he shot two torpedoes at the shadow of a supposed merchant ship. In fact, however, he hit the 31,100-ton British battleship HMS Malaya . This was so badly damaged that it had to be docked for four months for repairs. On March 26, 1941, Jürgen Oesten was awarded the Knight's Cross at Sea.

After another voyage, he left U 106 and on October 20, 1941, he became the commander of the 9th submarine flotilla in Brest. In March 1942 he was transferred to Admiral Nordmeer, where he coordinated the attacks in the Arctic Ocean as a submarine admiral staff officer.

In July 1943 he left Norway and returned to active service to put the Type IX D2 (monsoon) boat U 861 into service in Lorient on September 2, 1943 . One of the visitors on the new boat was the Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition, Albert Speer , who asked Oeste what future Germany still had. “Well, I think we'll be defeated in the fall of 1944,” Speer replied. When Oesten set sail for his first and last patrol on U 861 on April 20, 1944, it happened with a heavy heart: “I had a damn queasy feeling because I actually knew that it would not do anything - what we would sink and whoever we would kill , none of it was really necessary. "

With this deep-sea boat, Oesten sailed towards the Indian Ocean and sank the troop transport Vital de Oliveira and the Liberty freighter William Gaston off the Brazilian coast . On September 23, 1944, U 861 entered the Penang base after having been at sea for five months.

With only two torpedoes for self-defense and urgently needed cargo, Oesten left Soerabaja on January 15, 1945 with U 861. On this last trip the gyrocompass failed at Cape Town , so that from now on only a magnetic compass was available.

Originally Lorient was supposed to be called to build a snorkel at U 861 , but the boat was already further than assumed by the commander of the submarines (BdU), and according to Oesten's calculations, the fuel still reached the submarine base Trondheim . South of Greenland, the bridge watch overlooked an iceberg at night, which drifted onto the boat and caused slight damage in the front area.

With a remaining stock of two of the 441 tons of fuel that could be bunkered by a boat of this type, he finally reached the Trondheim base on April 18, 1945 , after having been on patrol in the Far East and the South Atlantic for a year. “For us the war was long over. But in Trondheim it said Better dead than a slave! The war was not over here. It was downright terrible because when my men went ashore and had a drink in a pub, they just laughed at the others. Then the military police came and arrested her. I had this iron collar (knight's cross) and my chief had one too, and that helped. We both went from one prison to the next and got our people out again. "

On June 2, 1945, Jürgen Oesten was taken prisoner by the British , from which he returned from England on March 2, 1947.

Balance in the war

On twelve trips with three boats, Jürgen Oesten reached a total of 565 days at sea and sank 20 ships with 102,827 GRT. Four other ships (including the HMS Malaya) with 51,668 GRT were damaged.

Promotions

  • Ensign at sea on July 1, 1934
  • Senior midshipman on April 1, 1936
  • Lieutenant at sea on October 1, 1936
  • First lieutenant at sea on June 1, 1938
  • Lieutenant on March 1, 1941
  • Corvette Captain on December 1, 1944

Awards

post war period

After his release from British captivity, Oesten worked as a sales manager at international shipyards and shipping companies. He lived in Hamburg until his death.

literature

  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: Der U-Boot-Krieg Vol. 5 - Knight's Cross bearer of the submarine weapon from September 1939 to May 1945

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrew Williams: Submarine War in the Atlantic . Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2007, ISBN 978-3-8289-0587-0 , p. 273.
    The book (English original edition 2002) goes back to a television series of the BBC, for which contemporary witnesses were interviewed.
  2. ↑ Andrew Williams: Submarine War in the Atlantic . Ibid.
  3. ↑ Andrew Williams: Submarine War in the Atlantic , p. 285
  4. ↑ 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. 576.
personal data
SURNAME Oesten, Jürgen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German submarine commander of World War II
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Grunewald
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 2010
Place of death Hamburg