Jürgen Quaet-Faslem

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Jürgen Quaet-Faslem (born May 25, 1913 in Göttingen ; † April 10, 1971 in Hanover - Waldhausen ) was a German naval officer and submarine commander in World War II . He broke through the Strait of Gibraltar with U 595 , but could not sink any ships in the Mediterranean . Before the submarine was destroyed on November 14, 1942, he was able to come out alive with all his men and went with them into captivity . In the US public he gained attention through two escapes from the Camp Papago Park prison camp together with other officers, whereby after his first escape on February 12, 1944, he also escaped across the border to Mexico , which, however, as a warring power of the Allies extradited back to the USA.

Life

Quaet-Faslem joined the Reichsmarine on April 8, 1934 as a sea ​​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 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, Quaet-Faslem was appointed ensign in the sea, and from then until March 31, 1936 he attended the main course for ensigns at the Naval School in Flensburg - Mürwik , where he also met Friedrich Guggenberger , and other courses up to September 1936. In October 1936 he was assigned to the Air Force , where he served in the flight squadron on the battleship Scharnhorst and as a squadron captain in the 3rd Air Supplementary Group See in the Kamp Air Base (now a desert near the new housing estate Rogowo ) in Pomerania . On April 1, 1937 he was promoted to lieutenant at sea and on April 1, 1939 to first lieutenant at sea .

In 1940 Quaet-Faslem married Ruth-Lilly Duncklenberg (1916–1989) from Gotha , who bore him two children during the war: Hasko Quaet-Faslem (1942–2012, later a businessman) and Wiebke Quaet-Faslem (later a teacher). This succeeded, although he later complained that he had only seen his wife for a full two weeks during the entire first year of his marriage. The Quaet-Faslem family owned a manor near Weimar .

In January 1941 he switched to the submarine weapon, where he was trained until June 1941. From June to August 1941 he was a watch officer in the submarine U 98 , in September and October 1941 he attended a commanders course with the 24th U-Flotilla in Memel and received building instruction for U 595 from the 8th warship construction department in Hamburg . On November 6, 1941 he was finally appointed commander of U 595 , of which he would be the only commander and which would also remain the only submarine under his command. It has now been tested under his command and served until May 31, 1942 as a training boat for the 8th U-Flotilla based in Danzig , where it was twice stuck in the ice of the Baltic Sea in Gotenhafen . On March 1, 1942 Quaet-Faslem was appointed lieutenant captain. During his shooting training with the 25th U-Flotilla on June 1, 1942, private corporal Günther Hoppe went overboard off the Hela peninsula near Danzig and drowned. On July 23, 1942, Quaet-Faslem left the port of Kiel with his U 595, which was now assigned to the 9th U-Flotilla , and set out with him on July 25, 1942 from Kristiansand on his first patrol in the Atlantic to be in to enter the port of Brest (Finistère) . On this as well as on the other two patrols, the submarine commanded by Quaet-Faslem could not sink or damage any enemy ships.

On its third patrol in early November 1942, Quaet-Faslem managed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar , which was heavily guarded by the British , and advance into the Mediterranean , but U 595 could not sink or damage any enemy ships in the Mediterranean either.

On November 14, 1942, U 595 was attacked in the Mediterranean northeast of Oran near the Algerian coast by seven Lockheed Hudson and so badly damaged that it could not dive. Quaet-Faslem had the Enigma and secret documents sunk. Despite persistent attacks by the planes, he succeeded in beaching the submarine at Tenes near Cape Khamis , safely bringing 44 of the 45 men of the crew ashore and blowing up the stranded boat. However, one of his men swam in the water and did not reach the bank, but was taken on board as a prisoner by the British destroyer HMS Wivern (D66) and brought to England.

Once on land, Quaet-Faslem and his men were taken under machine gun fire by an airplane, but they escaped the attack without loss. When they met a French unit, they let them have their weapons because they considered them Vichy French and thus allies. They were housed in a French barracks in Picard , where they went to sleep while the French kept watch. At midnight, the U-boat operator, however, were soldiers of a tank unit of the United States Army awakened and taken prisoner . The Lieutenant Colonel of the armored unit drove Quaet-Faslem to the place where the submarine was stranded. About 60 cm of the U 595 tower still protruded from the water. All prisoners were then taken to Oran . Here they set sail on November 16, 1942, on board a US ship and reached the United States on November 30, 1942.

On December 1, 1942 Quaet-Faslem was in the interrogation center Fort Hunt ( Virginia brought). After the interrogations he was described by the interrogating officers as a "less pleasant" among the interrogated submarine commanders, full of bitterness, discreet and hardly polite, even with "hatred in the eyes", so that all attempts by the Americans to get into conversation with him (and thus to get useful information) were in vain. They had the impression that he was reproaching himself for the loss of his submarine (of which, however, all crew members survived) and that he was therefore exposed to more or less hidden accusations from his men.

Upon completion of the interrogation Quaet-Faslem was on 21 December 1942 to Crossville ( Tennessee transferred), where he was held captive the whole 1943. On January 27, 1944, he was taken to the newly opened camp for submarine prisoners, Camp Papago Park near Phoenix , Arizona .

Quaet-Faslem participated in two major escape attempts by naval officers from the Camp Papago Park prison camp.

On February 12, 1944, Jürgen Quaet-Faslem, together with four other submarine commanders - August Maus , Friedrich Guggenberger , Hermann Kottmann and Hans Johannsen - managed to get through the main gate of the camp, hidden in a truck driven by prisoners to work escape. While August Maus and Friedrich Guggenberger were caught during a police check in Tucson , Quaet-Faslem escaped with Kottmann and Johannsen, initially over the state border 48 km into Mexico . Under the false assumption that Mexico was still a neutral country - in fact, Mexico had already declared war on the Axis powers on May 22, 1942 after the sinking of two Mexican tankers by German submarines - and they could now return to Germany, the three of them became arrested by the Mexican Federal Police and extradited to the US Army, so that they were returned to Camp Papago Park on March 1st.

On the night of December 23-24, 1944, Quaet-Faslem was one of the 25 German prisoners of war who got outside through a camouflaged tunnel, although this was not noticed for several hours the next day. Together with his companion from the time in Mürwik, Friedrich Guggenberger, he enjoyed two weeks of freedom on foot. On January 6, 1945, just 17 km from the Mexican border, the two were captured and brought back to Camp Papago Park.

In February 1946 Quaet-Faslem to Camp Shanks ( New York State soon) and moved out to a camp in the British zone of occupation in Germany before he was released.

The manor of the Quaet-Faslem family near Weimar was in the Soviet zone of occupation and was expropriated after the war. Jürgen Quaet-Faslem moved with his wife and two children into a small house in Hanover - Döhren , where their third child, son Jan-Peter, was born soon after. Jürgen Quaet Faslem died in 1971 in Hanover- Waldhausen at the age of 57. His widow Ruth survived him by 18 years.

Awards

literature

  • 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 and Son, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 1996, p. 184. ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 .
  • Clay Blair: The Submarine War - The Hunters 1939-1945 . Heyne Verlag, 1998. pp. 763, 766. ISBN 3-4531-2345-X .
  • Clay Blair: The Submarine War - The Hunted 1942–1945 . Heyne Verlag, 1999. pp. 69, 129, 138, 140, 142. ISBN 3-4531-6059-2 .
  • Kenneth Wynn: U-boat Operations of the Second World War: Career histories, U511-UIT25 Naval Institute Press 1998, ISBN 1-55750-862-3 .
  • Keith Warren Lloyd: The Great Desert Escape - How the Flight of 25 German Prisoners of War Sparked One of the Largest Manhunts in American History. Rowman & Littlefield, Guilford (Connecticut) 2019. ISBN 978-1-4930-3891-6 .
  • John Hammond Moore: The Fistball Tunnel. Bluejacket Books, 2006. ISBN 1-59114-526-0 . Reprint of the original edition from 1978.
  • Roger Naylor: Great Papago Escape: 25 German POWs dug their way out of Phoenix prison camp . The Republic, December 18, 2015.
  • Robert L. Pela: Flight From Phoenix. Phoenix New Times, March 8, 2001.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ruth-Lilly Quaet-Faslem on myheritage.de.
  2. ^ A b Thilo von Trotha : Pioneers Ride Off: A Life in Two Germanys . Lau-Verlag, 2016. Chapters 7 and 11 (for von Trotha the names are shortened or given in a different spelling: Ruth, Wibke, Peter). ISBN 978-3-9576-8174-4
  3. ↑ a b c d e U 595 , Uboatarchive.net: Navy Department Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Washington, Op-16-Z, ONI 250 - G / Serial 8, Report on the Interrogation of Survivors From U-595 Sunk November 14, 1942 .
  4. ↑ U 595 , Uboatarchive.net: Jürgen Quaet-Faslem statement taken aboard the USAT Brazil as the U-595 crew what Transported from North Africa to the United States.
  5. ^ Keith Warren Lloyd, p. 57.
  6. ↑ Keith Warren Lloyd, pp. 122, 147-156, 198.
personal data
SURNAME Quaet-Faslem, Jürgen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1971
Place of death Hanover - Waldhausen