Robert Moraht

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Captain Moraht - Imperial Navy

Robert Wilhelm Moraht (* 7. September 1884 in Sønderborg , Province of Schleswig-Holstein , Kingdom of Prussia ; † 26. August 1956 in Hamburg ) was a German naval officer , commander of SM U-64 in World War I and Knight of the Order Pour le Mérite .

Report from 1917 by the Chief of the Admiralty's Staff of the Imperial Navy to SM Kaiser Wilhelm II about the successes of U64 under his commandant Kptlt. Moraht - contains handwritten notes from the Emperor → "Bravo", "Donnerwetter", "very good" and "Soll Pour le" Get Merite !! " ...
Robert Moraht (2nd from left; December 1943 in the Fjell Fortress in Norway)

Life

Early years

Moraht occurred on 10 April 1901 as a midshipman in the Imperial Navy , a ( Department 1.4) and, after adequate training on April 22, 1902 Midshipman transported. After attending the naval school, he came to the torpedo weapon. His promotion to lieutenant in the sea took place on September 29, 1904, to lieutenant in the sea on March 30, 1906, and to lieutenant captain on December 9, 1911. In October 1913, Moraht came to the VI. Torpedo boat flotilla, where he initially served as a flag lieutenant and after the start of the First World War and until May 1915 as the commander of the torpedo boat V 161 .

First World War

Moraht spent the first months of the war with guard duty at Heligoland and outpost trips from the Gulf of Finland to the Dogger Bank . In May 1915 he switched to submarine weapons and received his submarine training until October 1915 at the submarine school in Kiel . After successful completion he was first assigned to the submarine inspection and then in February 1916 to the Admiral's staff. On April 15, 1916, he put the submarine SM U 64, launched on February 29, 1916 , into service as commander , which he commanded until it was sunk on June 17, 1918. From May 31 to November 19, 1916, the boat was used in the 4th submarine flotilla. After completing the test and training trips, he undertook a mission trip in the North Sea with U 64 in September 1916 ; a small fishing cutter was sunk and a slightly larger one was taken as a prize and brought to Germany. In the early years of the war, the trade war of the German submarines was still based on the historical right to award prizes , which did not allow merchant ships of the opposing nation to be sunk without warning. .

Then Moraht was moved to the Mediterranean with his boat . On the way there he sank two ships off Garrucha on the Spanish Mediterranean coast and a third off the island of Linosa in the Strait of Sicily . From November 19, 1916 to June 17, 1918, U 64 was subordinate to the U-Flotilla Pola under Corvette Captain Waldemar Kophamel and stationed in Cattaro . From Cattaro, Moraht and his boat undertook a total of eight mission trips, on which 40 merchant ships with a total of 129,569 GRT were sunk and three others with a total of 12,871 GRT were damaged. His spektakulärster success was the sinking of the greatest sunken by a submarine during World War warship , the French pre- Dreadnought - battleship Danton (18,300 t ) on 19 March 1917 about 35 km southwest of Sardinia . For these successes he was personally awarded the Pour le Mérite on November 12, 1917 by Kaiser Wilhelm II in Pola .

On June 17, 1918, at around 4 p.m. west of Sicily , U 64 was torpedoed and damaged by the British Q-Ship HMS Lychnis , a sloop built with the profile of a cargo ship , after it had torpedoed and damaged the freighter Kandy , which was traveling in a small convoy . with depth charges so badly damaged that it was forced to surface. It became instantly while under intense shelling and fell shortly thereafter at the position 38 ° 7 '  N , 10 ° 27'  O . 38 men of the crew were killed; only the five man on the tower located Guard , including Moraht were rescued and arrived in British captivity . Moraht spent the remainder of the war in the Colsterdale, Yorkshire officer prison camp .

With U 64 he had sunk a total of 45 merchant ships with a total of 129,569 GRT and the battleship Danton on ten mission trips, captured a small ship of 186 GRT as a prize and damaged three other ships with a total of 12,871 GRT.

Interwar period

After his release from captivity served Moraht in the Navy in inspection of the torpedo and mine essence , where he on 5 February 1920, Lieutenant Commander was, but then passed was promoted at his own request on 31 July 1920th He then began a study of the national economy , which he with the doctorate magna cum laude graduated. In the following years he worked as a consultant for various German industrial groups. In 1933 he published his war memoirs under the title Werewolf of the Seas. U 64 chases the enemy.

Second World War

During the Second World War , Morath was reactivated by the Navy in 1940 . On April 4, 1942 he was appointed frigate captain zV and port commander of Kirkenes , and in August 1942 he moved to Ålesund in the same capacity . On October 1, 1942, he was promoted to frigate captain and in December 1942 he was sea ​​commander of Bergen . From March 1944 he served as a staff officer at the Norwegian Naval Command , then from June 1944 for a short time with the commanding Admiral Skagerrak . From July 1944 to April 1945 he was the island commander of Bornholm . There he was taken prisoner by the Soviets on March 9, 1945 , from which he was only released on October 27, 1948.

Awards

literature

  • Hanns Möller: History of the Knights of the Order pour le mérite in World War II , Volume II: M – Z, Verlag Bernard & Graefe, Berlin 1935, pp. 51–52
  • Andreas Michelsen: The U-Boat War 1914-1918 , v. Hase & Koehler Verlag, Leipzig 1925
  • Lowell Thomas : Knight of the Deep , C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh 1930
  • Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War, Volume 2: HO , Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2003, ISBN 3-7648-2516-2 , pp. 464-466

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ His two brothers, Richard (* 1881) and Kurt (* 1886), also became naval officers. Richard was at war Lieutenant Commander Kurt came as Lieutenant on the auxiliary cruiser SMS Cormoran in December 1914 in Guam in American internment and after the war entrance of the USA in 1917 in their captivity and died in a POW camp Fort McPherson ( Georgia ) on 24 December 1918th ( http://www.histomar.net/GSM/htm/morath.htm )
  2. ↑ a b http://www.histomar.net/GSM/htm/morath.htm
  3. ↑ The flotilla was formed on November 18, 1915 from the previous German U-Flotilla Pola, which was set up on July 1, 1915, was renamed the U-Flotilla Mediterranean in June 1917 and finally on January 1, 1918 into the I. U-Flotilla Mediterranean (in Pola ) and the II. U-Flotilla Mediterranean (in Cattaro ) split.
  4. ^ Vorhut-Verlag, Berlin, 1933.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy for the year 1918 , Ed .: Marine-Kabinett , Mittler & Sohn Verlag , Berlin 1918, p. 33
personal data
SURNAME Moraht, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moraht, Robert Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer and submarine commander in World War I.
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Sonderburg
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1956
Place of death Hamburg