U 1059

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U 1059
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Type : VII F
Field Post Number : 43 973
Shipyard: Germania shipyard , Kiel
Construction contract: August 25, 1941
Build number: 693
Keel laying: June 4, 1942
Launch: January 18, 1943
Commissioning: May 1, 1943
Commanders:
  • May 1 to September 30, 1943
    OLtzS H. Brüninghaus
  • October 1 to March 19,
    OltzS G. Leupold
Flotilla:
Calls: A company
Sinkings:

no ships sunk or damaged; 1 Avenger shot down (2 dead)

Whereabouts: Sunk on March 19, 1944 southwest of Cape Verde (47 dead, 8 prisoners of war)

U 1059 was a German submarine from type VII F , which during the Second World War as part of the submarine war was used. U 1059 was intended as a supply boat to support a company in the Indian Ocean , and was sunk on this first mission while approaching the area of ​​operations, but shot down one of the attacking aircraft in which two men died. 47 men of the submarine crew died and eight - among them the commander Günter Leupold (1921–2001) - were taken prisoner of war .

Technical specifications

Until the summer of 1941, the supply of the submarines of the Kriegsmarine operating in the Central and South Atlantic could be ensured by surface ships. After the sinking of the battleship Bismarck , the British naval forces succeeded in destroying the German supply network for submarines by displacing and sinking the supply ships. The Kriegsmarine reacted by developing and realizing submarines that were suitable for supply. The Type VII F was based on the Type D in its class, but was significantly larger. In addition to additional hold - also in containers on the upper deck - for torpedoes, a VII F-boat had a deck directly behind the bridge for transferring torpedoes to other submarines as well as larger fuel oil saddle cells. The building contract for four VII F-boats was given to the Germania shipyard in Kiel on August 22, 1941. Even before the German-British fleet agreement , i.e. under secrecy, the Germania shipyard was commissioned with the construction of submarines. By 1945 the shipyard had delivered 130 submarines to the Navy , four of which were of the type VII F. A submarine of this type was 77.6 m long and was powered by two diesel engines with 1400 hp each. Under water, two electric motors with 375 hp each enabled a top speed of 7.9 knots . The boat badge of U 1059 was a running rooster.

Commanders

  • Herbert Brüninghaus was born in Siegen on October 11, 1910 , joined the Reichsmarine in 1931 and served as a non-commissioned officer until 1941 - most recently with the 6th U-Flotilla . In the summer of 1941, Brüninghaus started his career as an officer and commanded first U 6 , then later U 148 , smaller school boats that were used for training in the Baltic Sea . From May to September 1943 Brüninghaus commanded U 1059 , but did not take the boat to any company.
  • Günter Leupold was born near Graudenz on February 11, 1921 and joined the Navy in 1938. Until the summer of 1943, Leupold served as first watch officer on U 355 and in the same year, following a commanders course, took command of U 1059 , which he held until the boat was sunk.

Commitment and history

The 5th U-Flotilla, which U 1059 was subordinate to until it was transferred to the front flotilla, was located in Kiel-Wik on the present-day site of the Kiel naval base . The training flotilla was also responsible for equipping the submarines trained here for their first mission. The last issuing of orders to officers who set out on the patrol from here was the responsibility of their flotilla chief Karl-Heinz Moehle . Günter Leupold later testified during an interrogation in captivity that he understood Korvettenkapitän Moehle on this occasion with regard to the instructions of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Karl Dönitz , to mean that survivors of a sunk ship were to be killed. On February 4, 1944 went underground in 1059 from Kiel made to the first company that was to remain his only one.

Supply boat for the Indian Ocean

U 1059 reached Bergen on February 10 and ran out again after a two-day stay. Commander Leupold had taken 40 torpedoes on board, which were intended to supply the submarines operating in the Indian Ocean. A rendezvous with the supply submarine U 488 was planned near the Cape Verde Islands . The US Navy learned of this intended meeting through intercepted and deciphered radio messages and a task force led by the American escort carrier USS Block Island set out from Casablanca to arrest the two German submarines, although the British Admiralty has launched attacks on such supply companies Had prohibited reasons of secrecy.

Sinking

The combat group first encountered U 801 on March 17 , which was badly damaged and sunk by the crew themselves. When scouting aircraft from Block Island - an Avenger and a Wildcat - found U 1059 two days later , part of the German crew was swimming in the sea. While the fighter plane was shooting at the crew, the Avenger torpedo bomber succeeded in sinking the submarine by dropping a depth charge, but was hit badly by the submarine's anti-aircraft fire on the second approach and fell into the sea. The pilot and the radio operator were killed, only the gunner was able to save himself from the sinking machine. The hapless U 1059 sank within 90 seconds, only one of the survivors was uninjured. Three Germans, including the commandant, were taken up by the raft of the crashed Avenger. A total of eight crew members survived the sinking of U 1059 .

Aftermath

The sinking of the two German submarines U 801 and U 1059 within the same sea area by one and the same US task force led to disagreements between the Allied commanders. The First Sea Lord Cunningham accused the commander of the US Navy, Admiral King, of having given the war opponent unnecessary information about the decryption of the German code through these attacks on pre-arranged meetings between submarines of the Kriegsmarine . Admiral King refused to follow this line of reasoning and informed the First Sea Lord that the Americans did not intend to comply with British wishes in this regard.

Statements of the commander in captivity

During the interrogations in the prisoner-of-war camp, the anti-Nazi commander Günter Leupold made clear his understanding of the command situation for the submarine weapon at the time.

"Leave no traces"

From the conversation with his flotilla commander Moehle, he stated to the interrogating officers, before his patrol, that there would be no survivors in the event of a sinking. From the explanations given by the flotilla chief Moehle, it was clear to him, especially with regard to the Laconia order and the rescue ship order , that opposing crews, even if they were in distress after their ship was sunk, should be murdered. The Allies first became aware of this view through Leupold.

Comradely consistency

Günter Leupold was excluded from the so-called Crew 38 by the members of his officer class . Accordingly, Günter Leupold is not mentioned in the anniversary volume "25 Years of Crew 38" from his class of officers. The two authors of this anniversary volume were considered Dönitz admirers. Leupold's testimony was not discussed either in the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals at Dönitz's account, or in the Eck trial to exonerate Heinz-Wilhelm Eck.

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, pp. 39, 144. ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 2: Submarine construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 1997, pp. 111, 194. ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 4: The German submarine losses from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2008, pp. 208–210. ISBN 978-3-8132-0514-5 .
  • Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maas: The German warships 1815-1945. Volume 3: Submarines, auxiliary cruisers, mine ships, net layers. Bernhard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7637-4802-4 .
  • Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. Heyne Verlag, 1999. pp. 628f., 636. ISBN 3-4531-6059-2 .
  • Dieter Hartwig: Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. Legend and reality. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-77027-1 .

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. Eberhard Rössler, History of German U-Boat Building. Volume 1. 2nd edition. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-86047-153-8 , pp. 240-243.
  2. ^ Georg Högel: Emblems, coats of arms, Malings German submarines 1939-1945. 5th edition. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7822-1002-7 , p. 153.
  3. Such submarines, specially designed for the transport and delivery of ordnance and supplies, were intended to enable the submarines to be used for longer periods, for example off the American coast or - as in the case of U 1059 - in the Indian Ocean and were used by the submarine Drivers also referred to as "dairy cows" in internal jargon.
  4. This "Block Island Group" had already sunk the U 603 and U 709 .
  5. Clay Blair: The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. 1999, p. 629.
  6. ^ Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars. Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing vor München 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 , p. 187.
  7. Clay Blair: The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. 1999, p. 630.
  8. ^ Dieter Hartwig: Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. Legend and reality. 2010, p. 357.
  9. ^ Dieter Hartwig: Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. Legend and reality. 2010, p. 153.