U 1231
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U 1231 ( previous / next - all submarines ) |
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| Type : | IX C / 40 |
| Field Post Number : | 43 319 |
| Shipyard: | Deutsche Werft AG, Hamburg |
| Construction contract: | October 14, 1941 |
| Build number: | 394 |
| Keel laying: | March 31, 1943 |
| Launch: | November 18, 1943 |
| Commissioning: | February 9, 1944 |
| Commanders: |
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| Calls: | Two ventures |
| Sinkings: |
No sinking |
| Whereabouts: | Taken over by the Soviet Navy on February 13, 1946, scrapped on January 13, 1968 |
U 1231 was a German type IX submarine that was used by the Navy during the Second World War, among other things as a weather boat in the western Atlantic.
Technical specifications
At the beginning of the war, the Deutsche Werft AG in Hamburg-Finkenwerder was included in the submarine construction program. The navy commissioned the shipyard to build Type IX submarines based on plans from the Bremen Deschimag shipyard . The modern facilities of the Deutsche Werft should guarantee an annual production of 24 boats of this type. These requirements could never be met. By the end of the war, Deutsche Werft AG had delivered 24 Type IX boats and another 41 models of the further developed Type IX C / 40. A submarine of this class was 76.8 m long and had a 4.7 m draft. It had six torpedo tubes, two of them in the stern, and carried 22 torpedoes. Two diesel engines from MAN achieved a speed of 18.3 knots over water . When underwater, an IX C / 40 boat was propelled by two electric motors at a speed of up to 7.3 knots. Since the first commander of the boat had led a squadron for two years, U 1231 wore their badge, a seahorse, on the tower.
Calls
U 1231 left Norway on October 15 to operate in the mouth of the St. Lawrence River . The commander, Captain Lessing, was the oldest German submarine commander in active service at the time. When the boat reached the target area, not only had the convoy traffic in this area been stopped, the weather was also exceptionally bad. Commander Lessing reported that he had attacked a freighter and a security vehicle, which was unsuccessful because the torpedoes had failed. At the beginning of December he planned to move his area of operations to the coast off Halifax .
Adverse circumstances
As soon as U 1231 reached the operational area, the crew had to contend with adverse circumstances. Due to the low temperatures, the snorkel froze and the torpedoes failed. As the boat drove down Cabot Strait towards the Nova Scotia coast , Chief Engineer Commander Lessing reported less fuel than was actually available. Lessing decided to go home, but turned back when the error was noticed after three days.
Weather boat
U 1231 only encountered a few ships and Commander Lessing continued not to be sunk. Instead, he collected weather data. Such missions were based on the fact that the weather situation in Europe depends largely on the meteorological processes in the Arctic region. The task of a weather boat was to determine temperatures and to carry out weather observations from which the current and expected weather conditions could be derived to support further operational planning of the Navy. U 1231 entered Flensburg on February 5th .
Whereabouts
Under the new commander Helmut Wicke, U 1231 ran in April 1945 first from Kiel to Horten , from there to Kristiansand and from here to the enterprise that was to take place off the US east coast.
surrender
When he learned of the surrender, Commander Wicke surrendered to the British armed forces and called on Loch Eriboll , the assembly point of the German submarines that had surrendered in this area of the sea. From here the boat first drove to Loch Alsh and finally ran into the Northern Irish port of Lisahally , where it was subordinated to the British Navy as N 26 . It awarded it to the USA in August, which ultimately gave it to the Soviet Union as spoils of war in November.
Operation Cabal
Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the USA had agreed not to sink some of the German submarines collected in Scotland, but rather to divide them up equally. The transfer of ten of these boats from Lisahally in Ireland to the Baltic port of Liepāja was called "Operation Cabal". U 1231 reached the Baltic Sea port on its own and was assigned to the Baltic fleet on February 13, 1946 under the name N 26 . Until 1968 it was used under different names for different education and training purposes and on January 13th it was separated, demolished and scrapped in Riga.
literature
- Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. Heyne, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 .
- Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 .
- Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 .
- Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 4: German submarine losses from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1999, ISBN 3-8132-0514-2 .
Individual evidence
- ^ 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. 171.
- ↑ C. Blair: The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. 1999, p. 753.
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