U 188

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U 188
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Type : IX C / 40
Field Post Number : 10 459
Shipyard: Deschimag , Bremen
Construction contract: August 15, 1940
Build number: 1028
Keel laying: August 18, 1941
Launch: March 31, 1942
Commissioning: August 5, 1942
Commanders:

Siegfried Ludden

Flotilla:
  • August 1942 - January 1943 4th U-Flotilla training boat
  • February 1943 - August 1944 11th U-Flotilla front boat
Calls: 3 activities
Sinkings:

8 ships with 45,927 GRT 1 warship with 1,190 t

Whereabouts: Decommissioned and blown up in Bordeaux on August 20, 1944

U 188 was a German submarine of the type IX C / 40 , which was used in the Second World War during the submarine war by the German navy in the North and Central Atlantic and in operations of the Monsoon group in the Indian Ocean .

Construction and technical data

The Bremen shipyard of Deschimag AG Weser had been commissioned with the construction of submarines for the Reichsmarine since 1934, initially bypassing the provisions of the Versailles Treaty . Since the beginning of the war, the shipyard has mainly produced submarines - especially the submarine class IX C. U 188 was part of the fifteenth construction contract that Deschimag AG Weser received and comprised eight type IX C boats. These two-hulled boats displaced 1,144 t over water and 1,247 t submerged. IX C-boats were 76.76 m long, 6.86 m wide and had a draft of 4.67 m. Two 2,200 PS MAN nine-cylinder four-stroke diesel engines ensured a top speed of 18.3 knots when sailing above water . At a speed of 10 kn, these boats had a range of 13,850 nautical miles (nm) . When underwater, two electric motors with a total of 1,000 hp achieved a top speed of 7.3 knots. At 4 kn, the underwater range was 63 nm. IX C boats were armed with 22 torpedoes, which could be ejected from 4 bow and 2 stern torpedo tubes . In addition, these boats were armed with artillery to defend themselves against aircraft or to attack ships above the water - which, however, was rarely used. Like most German submarines of that time, U 188 also had an emblem on the tower. It represented the silhouette of a submarine in front of a globe, entitled “Weltensegler”. The boat was put into service on August 5, 1942 by Lieutenant Siegfried Lüdden.

commander

Siegfried Lüdden was born on May 20, 1916 in Neubrandenburg and joined the Navy in 1936, making him a member of Crew 36 . In the summer of 1940 he completed his submarine training and then made three patrols on the U 141 and U 129 as an officer on watch until May 1942 . After training as a submarine commander in June 1942, he took over command of the U 188 in August , which he held until 1944. Between November 1943 and February 1944, Siegfried Lüdden sank seven ships and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , although the assessment standard for this was 100,000 GRT of sunk shipping space, and at that time he had only reported about 70,000 GRT as sunk and 45,927 GRT actually sunk.

Commitment and history

From August 5, 1942 to January 31, 1943, the U 188 was a training boat for the 4th U-Flotilla and was stationed in Stettin . During this time, Commander Lüdden undertook training trips in the Baltic Sea to retract the boat and train the crew. On February 1, the boat was assigned to the 10th U-Flotilla stationed in Lorient in northern France as a front boat.

U-boat group Adler

HMS Beverly was sunk by U 188

On March 4, 1943 was U 188 from Kiel made his first business venture. The intended area of ​​operation was the North Atlantic. The boat was assigned to the Adler submarine group , which was to attack an SC and an HX convoy based on the data determined by the German reconnaissance with regard to Allied convoys and according to the pack tactics developed by Karl Dönitz . Instead, the Adler submarine group came across an ON convoy, which consisted of 46 ships and was protected by three warships. The submarine command then ordered U 188 and three other boats of the group to attack it. Siegfried Lüdden attacked the HMS Beverly , a destroyer of the Clemson class , whose sonar device had recently failed due to a collision with one of the ships of the convoy, which therefore could not see the submarine and was also traveling at reduced speed. Of the 152 men of the Norwegian crew of the British destroyer, only 4 men could be saved. The boats of the Adler submarine group sank three more ships with around 7,000 GRT in this attack. The success of this submarine group, however, was significantly overestimated by the submarine command, which put the result at nine ships with 56,500 GRT. Commander Lüdden's statement that he had sunk three other ships with a total of 18,000 GRT in addition to the Beverly , played a significant role in the incorrect assessment of the sinking result by the submarine command. U 188 reached Lorient, the boat's new base, on May 4, 1943.

Monsoon boat

On June 30th, U 188 left Lorient in the direction of the Indian Ocean. The boat had been assigned to the Monsun group, a group of German submarines that operated from Japanese-occupied bases off the East African coast, in the Arabian Sea , off Australia, in the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean. On July 23, the boat was supplied with fuel off the West African coast by U 153 and on September 12 in the Indian Ocean by the tanker Brake . U 188 patrolled the Gulf of Oman in autumn 1943 , where Commander Lüdden attacked two ships, one of which he sank.

  • September 21, 1943 American steamer Cornelia P. Spencer (7,176 GRT, location ) sunk
  • 28 September Norwegian tanker Britannia (9,977 GRT) damaged

On October 30, U 188 reached its new base in Penang . From here, Commander Lüdden set out on January 1st of the following year on his third patrol with this boat. U 188 was supposed to return to France after this venture and therefore had - like all monsoon boats - taken on board a few tons of war-essential raw materials, such as tin, tungsten and opium. Commander Lüdden sank seven ships in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden .

  • 20th January 1944 British steamer Fort Buckingham (7,122 GRT, location ) sunk
  • 25th January British steamer Fort la Maure (7,130 GRT, location ) sunk
  • 26th January British steamers Samouri ( Lage ) and Surada ( Lage ) (12,646 GRT) sunk
  • 29th January Greek steamer Olga E. Embincos (4,677 GRT, location ) sunk
  • February 4th Chinese steamer Chung Cheng (7,176 GRT, location ) sunk
  • February 9, Norwegian steamer Viva (3,798 GRT, location ) sunk

On February 7th and 12th, Commander Lüdden attacked some cotton-laden dhows with the artillery on board. With FLAK and by ramming he sank a total of seven of these sailing boats. After he had informed the submarine command about these acts, Karl Dönitz, Commander in Chief of the Submarines and Commander in Chief of the Navy, recommended Lüdden for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. On June 19th the boat reached Bordeaux. U 532 and U 188 were the only boats of the original Monsun group to return to Europe.

Whereabouts

Commander Lüdden decommissioned the boat in Bordeaux on August 20. The original plan to transfer the boat to Norway was abandoned because no new batteries could be obtained and U 188 was not roadworthy. The boat was blown up on the same day in the submarine bunker of the 12th U-Flotilla and broken up in 1947.

literature

  • Bodo Herzog: German U-Boats 1906–1966. Karl Müller, Erlangen 1996, ISBN 3-86070-036-7 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 .

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ There was also a Deschimag shipyard in Wesermünde .
  2. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. 1997, pp. 210-211.
  3. ↑ This construction contract also included U 181 , U 182 , U 183 , U 184 , U 185 , U 186 and U 187 .
  4. ↑ Bodo Herzog: German U-Boats 1906–1966. 1996, p. 199.
  5. ^ 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. 71.
  6. ↑ Siegfried Lüdden had given the successes of his first patrol with U 188 from March to May 1943, in addition to the destroyer Beverly , three steamers with 5,000 GRT each and a tanker with 8,000 GRT - these figures were recognized, although actually only the British warship during this operation had been sunk. See Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 5: The knight's cross bearers of the submarine weapon from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-8132-0515-0 , p. 425.
  7. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 3: German submarine successes from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0513-4 , pp. 130-140.
  8. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 1997, p. 457.
  9. ↑ Six other boats from the Adler group formed the newly established Meise submarine group .
  10. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. Heyne, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , p. 345.
  11. ↑ U 153 also supplied U 168 and U 183 .
  12. ↑ Information according to Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars. Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing before Munich 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 , p. 223 and Bodo Herzog: Deutsche U-Boats 1906–1966. 1996, p. 268. On the other hand, Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: Der U-Boot-Krieg 1939–1945. Volume 4: German submarine losses from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 1999, ISBN 3-8132-0514-2 , p. 285, the date August 25, 1944 as the time of the blast