Lothar by Arnauld de la Perière

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Lieutenant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière (1918)

Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière (born March 18, 1886 in Posen , † February 24, 1941 at Le Bourget , Paris) was a German naval officer , most recently vice admiral in World War II . He was the most successful submarine - Commander of the First World War and 194 sunken ships of 453,716 GRT together at the same time most successful U-boat commander of naval history.

family

His great-grandfather Johann Gabriel Arnauld de la Perière had to flee France after a duel in 1757 and went to Prussia, where he became an officer in the army of Frederick the Great . One of his sons, Eugen Ahasverus Albert Arnauld de la Perière (born October 10, 1800 in Neidenburg ), was the grandfather of Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière.

Life

Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière took effect on 1 April 1903 at the age of 17 years as a naval cadet in the Imperial Navy a (Crew 4/03). He went through the usual training and sailed with frigate captain von Dombrowski on the sailing training ship SMS Stein for a training trip to the West Indies. In 1905 he completed special courses for torpedo weapons and artillery. In 1906 he became a lieutenant at sea .

During the next few years commands followed on the ships of the line Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm , Silesia and Schleswig-Holstein as well as on the II. Torpedo Boat Division. From 1911 to 1913 Oberleutnant zur See von Arnauld de la Perière was a torpedo officer on the small cruiser Emden . Until the beginning of the war he was an adjutant to the chief of the Admiral's staff, Admiral Hugo von Pohl , in Berlin.

First World War

U 35 on patrol in the Mediterranean

When the war broke out, Arnauld de la Perière reported to the naval aviators. He was promoted to lieutenant captain on December 16, 1914, and on April 1, 1915, he switched to submarine weapons. After completing a commanding course (with training drives in U 1 and U 3 ), he took command of U 35 on November 18, 1915 with the U-Flotilla Pola in Pola . Arnauld de la Perière made 14 patrols with this boat in the Mediterranean until March 1918. The sixth operation, which lasted from July 26 to August 20, 1916, was the most successful war voyage of the First World War with 54 sunk ships with over 90,000 GRT. On October 11, 1916 he was awarded the order Pour le Mérite as the third submarine commander of the U-Flotilla Pola . On May 18, 1918, Arnauld de la Perière put the U-cruiser U 139 , which was named Kapitänleutnant Schwieger , into service. With this boat he made a journey on which five ships with 7,008 GRT were sunk.

During his patrols he sank a total of 193 merchant ships with 457,179 GRT and two gunboats with 2,500 GRT; in addition, seven ships with a total of 31,810 GRT were damaged.

Between the world wars

After the end of the war, Arnauld de la Perière remained in the navy and from February 1, 1919 to October 1920, led the von-Arnauld-de-la-Perière assault battalion in the 3rd Marine Brigade under Wilfried von Loewenfeld . In 1922 he was promoted to corvette captain. In the following years he worked as a navigation officer on the ships of the line Hanover and Alsace as well as an admiral staff officer for the chief of the North Sea naval station under Vice Admiral Bauer . From 1928 to 1930 he was in the meantime promoted to frigate captain, commander of the light cruiser Emden . On September 30, 1931, he took early retirement with the rank of sea ​​captain .

From 1932 to 1938 he taught at the Turkish Naval Academy.

Second World War

Tomb in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin

Arnauld de la Perière was reactivated at the start of the war and was naval plenipotentiary in Gdansk until March 1940 . After a short time as Naval Commander Belgium-Netherlands , he was as Rear Admiral zV until June 1940 Naval Commander Brittany and then Naval Commander Western France. On February 1, 1941, he was promoted to Vice Admiral. On the way to assuming command as Admiral Südost, Arnauld de la Perière died when his plane crashed at Le Bourget near Paris.

In his memory, a group of VII-C boats in the Mediterranean was brought together under the name Arnauld .

Arnauld de la Perière was buried in the Berlin Invalidenfriedhof .

Awards

Fonts

  • “U 35” on the hunt. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1938. ( Republished as Meine Kriegsfahrten mit U-35. EBook, Sketec-Verlag, Passau 2012.)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Arnauld de la Perière, Lothar von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, submarine commander in World War I and Vice Admiral in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1941
Place of death Le Bourget near Paris , France