U 1105
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U 1105 ( previous / next - all submarines ) |
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| Type : | VII C / 41 |
| Field Post Number : | M 50 444 |
| Shipyard: | North Sea Works , Emden |
| Construction contract: | October 14, 1941 |
| Keel laying: | July 6, 1943 |
| Launch: | April 20, 1944 |
| Commissioning: | June 3, 1944 |
| Commanders: |
June 3, 1944 - May 10, 1945 First Lieutenant Hans-Joachim Schwarz |
| Calls: | 1 company |
| Sinkings: |
1 warship (1300 t) |
| Whereabouts: | capitulated on May 10, 1945, empty boat sunk on September 19, 1949 near Piney Point ( Maryland ) |
U 1105 was a German submarine from the Type VII C / 41 , which in the Second World War by the German navy was used.
Commitment and history
U 1105 was built at the Nordseewerke in Emden and put into active service on June 3, 1944 under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Hans-Joachim Schwarz. On April 27, 1945, it sank the British destroyer HMS Redmill with 1300 t on its only operation , killing 32 people. After the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht , U 1105 was handed over to the British on May 10, 1945, but later handed over to the United States . The empty submarine was sunk on September 19, 1949 at Piney Point ( Maryland ).
Boat sign
The boat was one of fewer than ten submarines that the Kriegsmarine had equipped with an experimental rubber coating to absorb enemy sonar waves . This novel disguise was named "Alberich" after a wizard in Nordic mythology who was able to make himself invisible with the help of a " magic hat" . The characteristic color - German submarines were usually gray - also helped to find the boat-specific symbol. While visiting Gdansk while the boat was being trained, some crew members had come across a lively song called "Black Panther" and got the record, which quickly became very popular with the crew. The commandant did not like the jazzy rhythms of the song, which is why he soon forbade playing the record. When considering a boat-specific symbol - common on German submarines at the time - the crew decided, based on this song, the color of the boat and the name of the commander, to depict a black panther on a globe.
commitment
After several training trips in the Baltic Sea and the final inspection in Wilhelmshaven , U 1105 began its operation against Allied convoys in the spring of 1945 near the Irish town of Blackrock , a suburb of Dublin . In April, the boat was the discovery by an enemy destroyer - patrol escape and discovered three days later in turn three British destroyers as part of the 2nd Division of the 21st Escort Group (dt .: 21 escort group) were out. U 1105 fired two acoustic torpedoes at the ships from a distance of 2000 m and immediately dived at 100 m to avoid a counterattack. The torpedoes hit the HMS Redmill ( Lage ), a US-built British destroyer. The attack killed 32 crew members of the British ship. The wreck of the Redmill was towed into a port, but the ship was no longer repaired and is considered a total loss. The search for the German submarine and the rescue operations for the survivors of the HMS Redmill began immediately. U 1105 meanwhile dived to about 175 m and remained there in absolute immobility. For the next 31 hours of searching, the Allied forces were unable to locate the boat, and so it eventually escaped its hunters.
On May 4, 1945, U 1105 received its last order, that of unconditional surrender , from Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz . Ironically, it surrendered to the 21st Escort Group - the group that attacked it a few weeks earlier. When surfaced, the boat drove to the British base in Loch Eriboll , Scotland on May 10, 1945 .
UK service
Although the German crew was still operating the boat, U 1105 was renamed N-16 and drove together with other captured submarines under the guard of an escort of the Royal Navy between the Inner and Outer Hebrides to the British base in Lochalsh off the northwest coast Scotland, then Lisahally , Northern Ireland . There, the boat in the port of Londonderry was assigned a British crew for a stay of seven months before it was transferred to the USA as spoils of war in early 1946 .
Service in the USA
In 1946 the boat, again renamed U 1105 , reached Portsmouth , New Hampshire . The United States Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC and the acoustics laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge , Massachusetts conducted extensive tests and research on the boat's novel rubber coating. After completion of the research, U 1105 was towed to Solomons Island, Maryland , to be exposed to explosive tests.
The two salvage ships USS Salvager and USS Windlass pulled U 1105 into Chesapeake Bay , where it was sunk several times in a controlled manner from August 10 to August 25 in order to carry out salvage and towing tests. On September 29, pontoons were attached to the side of the boat , which were also used for salvage tests. The tests were stopped on November 18 and U 1105 was sunk one last time for the next three years. A buoy was left at the sinking site for marking.
In the summer of 1949 U 1105 was lifted and pulled into the Potomac River and anchored off Piney Point, Maryland, in preparation for final demolition. On September 19, 1949 detonated in about 10 m distance to the boat a 250- pound - water bomb . The force of the bomb initially lifted it out of the water. The boat then sank almost 28 m to the bottom of the river and was not precisely located for the next 36 years because no marking measures were taken at the time of the sinking.
Whereabouts
On 29 June 1985, the wreck of was U 1105 one of a scuba diver team about a mile (1.6 km) west front of Piney Point at coordinates 38 ° 8 ' N , 76 ° 33' W found. In November 1994 it was declared Maryland's first historic doom and was therefore placed under the protection of the state, which wants to preserve it and make it partially accessible to the public. Between April and December a blue and a white buoy mark the cannon deck of the boat. The command tower and the wooden decks of the submarine can occasionally be seen when the water level is low.
See also
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. 224. 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. 155, 250. ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 .
- Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 3: The German submarine successes from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2008, p. 318. ISBN 978-3-8132-0513-8 .
- 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, p. 398. 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 - The Hunted 1942–1945 . Heyne Verlag, 1999. P. 783. ISBN 3-453-16059-2 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Georg Högel: Emblems, coats of arms, Malings German submarines 1939-1945 . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg, 4th edition / 2001, p. 166, ISBN 3-7822-0826-9
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