Otto Kretschmer (naval officer)

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Otto Kretschmer (November 1940)

Otto Kretschmer (born May 1, 1912 in Heidau , Upper Silesia , † August 5, 1998 in Straubing ) was a German naval officer . He was the most successful submarine - commander in World War II . Most recently he was flotilla admiral in the German Navy .

Life

Promotions

Before the war

Otto Kretschmer was born in Heidau an der Neisse in Silesia. During his youth he spent eight months in England at the University College of the South West of England , where he studied chemistry, mathematics, and literature, and learned the English language. On April 1, 1930 he joined the Reichsmarine as a midshipman and underwent officer training on the sailing training ship Niobe . He then served on the light cruiser Emden , the research ship Meteor and the light cruiser Cologne . In January 1936 he was transferred to the submarine fleet, where he rose to the rank of first lieutenant at sea . In August 1937 he was given command of U 35 , which was patrolling the Spanish coast at the time of the Spanish Civil War . On October 1, 1937, he became a first lieutenant at sea in command of U 23 .

Second World War

Otto Kretschmer, 1940

The war began for Kretschmer with U 23. By February 1940 he was able to sink a total of seven ships with 26,249 GRT as well as the British destroyer HMS Daring (1375 ts) on eight missions . On April 18, Kretschmer took over the VII B boat U 99 . With this boat he sank 38 ships with 244,658 GRT on a further eight patrols, including three armed auxiliary cruisers . Another ship was awarded as a prize . On August 4, 1940, he received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and on November 4, as the second submarine commander (after Günther Prien ), the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross (6th award). On December 26, 1941, Otto Kretschmer was the first submarine commander to receive the Knight's Cross Swords (5th award).

On its last voyage, U 99 initially operated with U 47 (Günther Prien) on March 7, 1941 on convoy OB-293. U 47 was lost in this attack for unknown reasons. U 99 was able to sink two large ships before it was pushed aside. On March 16, U 110 , under the command of Kapitänleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp , sighted the convoy HX 112 southeast of Iceland . U 37 ( Nikolai Asmus Clausen ), U 99 and U 100 ( Joachim Schepke ) caught up and formed a so-called " wolf pack " which attacked late in the evening. U 99 was the only boat to successfully penetrate the convoy, sinking five ships and torpedoing another. Then all torpedoes were fired and U 99 ran out. At around 3:00 a.m., on March 17, it encountered the destroyers HMS Walker and HMS Vanoc , far from the escort . After a long pursuit, they had just sunk the U 100 . U 99 dived away, which is why HMS Walker first noticed it using ASDIC location. After several depth charges , U 99 had to appear badly damaged. Because the screws were blocked, Kretschmer had to give up his boat. The crew disembarked. Three men, including L. I. (Chief Engineer) Schroeder, were killed. The remainder were picked up by the destroyer HMS Walker and taken prisoner of war .

Kretschmer was first brought to England. There he received the news that he had been promoted to corvette captain in Germany . In 1942 he came to Canada in the Bowmanville POW camp and was supposed to be liberated in August 1943 with the Kiebitz company . In December 1947 he was released from captivity.

In August 1941 the German U 570 was seized by the Royal Navy . In September the first officer on watch , the second officer on watch and the chief engineer of U 570 were imprisoned in the British prison camp at Grizedale Hall . At that time, Kretschmer was also a prisoner in the camp. The inmates of the camp were aware of "Case U 570" from British newspapers and, contrary to the Geneva Conventions, the three officers of the boat were brought before a so-called "honorary council" of inmates on behalf of Kretschmer and without the knowledge of the guards who were supposed to investigate to what extent the three newcomers could be accused of "cowardice before the enemy". See the article HMS Graph .

New beginning

Otto Kretschmer (1st row, 2nd from right) as flotilla admiral in 1966

After the war, he first studied law and worked as an interpreter . He was also President of the German Navy Federation . In 1948 he married Luise-Charlotte Mohnsen-Hinrichs, b. Bruns.

When the Bundeswehr was set up , Kretschmer was one of the first soldiers on December 1, 1955 to enter active service in the new German Navy . From January to October 1957 he was the commander of the 1st escort wing as a frigate captain . On November 1, 1958, he became the first commander in command of the Amphibious Armed Forces , which he led until January 1962. After 1962 Kretschmer was part of a NATO command staff. From June 1964 to May 1965 he was entrusted with the duties of Chief of Staff at the Commander of the Naval Forces of the North Sea . He then became Chief of Staff at the NATO Commander of the Naval Forces Baltic Sea Accesses until his retirement . In 1970 he retired from military service as a flotilla admiral. He then worked as a military advisor. In 1973 Kretschmer was seen as a witness in the British television series Die Welt im Krieg . On August 2, 1998, during a cruise on the Danube in Straubing , he suffered serious head injuries from a fall from a staff staircase, which resulted in his death three days later in the St. Elisabeth Hospital. Its ashes were given to the North Sea .

rating

Otto Kretschmer sank a total of 47 ships with 272,282 GRT and damaged five ships with 37,965 GRT. That number, despite his early capture, remained unmatched until the end of the war. He is therefore considered the tonnage king of the Second World War. In contrast to Joachim Schepke and Günther Prien , Kretschmer never made a fuss about his successes and hardly appeared in propaganda either. He was therefore called "Otto the Silent". A well-known sentence characterizes the commanders Kretschmer, Prien and Schepke as follows: Prien was the most famous, Schepke the most popular among the people and Kretschmer the most successful of all submarine commanders.

literature

  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 3: German submarine successes from September 1939 to May 1945. Mittler, Hamburg a. a. 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0513-4 .
  • Bodo Herzog: Admiral a. D. Otto Kretschmer. Volume 1: The most successful submarine commander of the Second World War 1939–1945. A Prussian legend from Silesia. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2001, ISBN 3-931533-44-1 .
  • Franz Kurowski : Otto Kretschmer. In: Franz Kurowski: Hunter of the Seven Seas. The most famous submarine commanders of World War II. 2nd Edition. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-613-01633-8 , pp. 111-138 (biographical information, representation of Feindfahrten).
  • Terence Robertson: The Golden Horseshoe , Preface by Admiral Sir George Creasy. Evans Brothers, London 1955; as Pan paperback, London / Sydney 1957, ISBN 0-330-10517-5 .
German: Terence Robertson: The wolf in the Atlantic. The sensational report by an English naval officer about Germany's most successful submarine commander, Frigate Captain Otto Kretschmer and his crew. Weltbild-Verlag, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-695-0 .

Web links

Commons : Otto Kretschmer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Melanie Wiggins: U-boat Adventures: Firsthand Accounts from World War II . US Naval Institute Press, 1999, ISBN 978-1-59114-958-3 , pp. 26 (English).
  2. ↑ 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 .
  3. ↑ MOV MOH DMI Nachrichten 10-1998 P. 80 *: Obituary of the Navy Officers Association
  4. ^ "A tragic end to a vacation trip. The wolf of the Atlantic died on the Danube. 86-year-old Otto Kretschmer died after falling from a ship's staircase in the hospital" in Straubinger Rundschau, September 10, 1998, page 28
  5. ↑ u-995.com
personal data
SURNAME Kretschmer, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, submarine commander in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidau , Upper Silesia
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1998
Place of death Straubing