U 287

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U 287
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Type : VII C
Field Post Number : 20576
Shipyard: Vegesacker shipyard
Bremen-Vegesack
Construction contract: June 5, 1941
Build number: 052
Keel laying: August 8, 1942
Launch: August 13, 1943
Commissioning: September 22, 1943
Commanders:

22 Sep 1943 - May 16, 1945
Oblt. S. Heinrich Meyer

Calls: 1 patrol
Sinkings:

no

Whereabouts: Self- sunk on May 16, 1945 in the Elbe estuary off Cuxhaven (no dead; long-term official version: mine hit and only 4 survivors)

U 287 was a German type VII C submarine of the former German Navy . For a long time it was exclusively a training and test submarine and only served as a front boat in the Atlantic from March 1945. On his single company could sink any ships or damage and was on 16 May 1945 in the Elbe estuary before Cuxhaven without loss of life scuttled , so several days after the war. For many years, a mine hit was considered to be the cause of the loss, as a result of which only four men allegedly survived, but interviews with crew members actually still alive in the 1990s revealed that U 287 was self- sunk and the legend about the mine hit was invented, with which the commander Heinrich Meyer avoided delivering the submarine to the Allies. Only the commanding officer and three other officers went into British captivity as allegedly the only survivors .

history

Construction and commissioning

The construction contract went to the Vegesack shipyard on June 5, 1941 . The keel was laid on August 8, 1942; the launch on August 13, 1943. U 287 was as hull number 052 part of a production run with the boats U 280 - U 291 . The boat was put into service on September 22, 1943 under the command of Lt. z. S. Heinrich Meyer. It had the field post number 20576.

The only commander of the boat was Oblt. S. Heinrich Meyer, former watch officer under Oskar Kusch on U 154 . He commanded the boat from September 22, 1943 to May 16, 1945.

Time as a training boat

First it was a training boat (September 22, 1943 - February 28, 1945) with the 24th U-Flotilla in Danzig .

First and last patrol

In Danzig it officially served as a front boat until the surrender on May 8, 1945.

Then on March 1, 1945 it was subordinated to the 31st U-Flotilla in Hamburg .

  • April 15–16. May 1945 - Under Oberleutnant zur See Heinrich Meyer
  • Left Kiel on April 15, 1945
  • Arrived in Horten on April 20, 1945
  • Leaked out of Horten on April 26, 1945
  • Arrived in Kristiansand on April 27, 1945
  • Left Kristiansand on April 29, 1945
  • Operational Area: East of the Orkneys
  • May 16, 1945 Loss of the boat in the mouth of the Elbe, sunk at Altenbruch roadstead.

One week after the end of the war, U 287 returned home from its first patrol without success. It had previously cruised east of the Orkney Islands for two weeks . As for many of the other submarines used in the spring of 1945, the U 287 's first voyage was also its last, albeit with a “good” end.

Downfall

In the mouth of the Elbe before Cuxhaven , Commander Heinrich Meyer learned that the war was over. The officers decided to put the crews on land with rubber dinghies and to sink the boat. On Wednesday, May 16, 1945 was U 287 by Heinrich Meyer, the Chief Engineer Rainer Kersten and the second watch officer at Altenbruch scuttled , making the officers avoided extradition of the submarine to the Allies. 36 men of the crew went ashore near Altenbruch ( Lower Saxony ) and eight men near Glückstadt ( Schleswig-Holstein ). Of the latter, four men stood up to the British and stated that the submarine had sunk through a sea ​​mine and that they were the only four survivors, which enabled them to cover up the destruction of the submarine , which was prohibited by the surrender regulations . So only the four officers went into British captivity . For many years the legend was the official explanation for the loss of the submarine both in the Royal Navy and in Germany.

One report states:

“After the crew had been set down with rubber dinghies on the right bank of the Elbe, the commander Oberleutnant zur See Heinrich Meyer, the chief engineer and the second officer on watch drove on with U 287 and sank the boat in front of Schelenkuhlen. There were no dead. "

A crew member of U 287 and later an officer in the German Navy , Gerhard Koop, was the author of various non-fiction books on ship technology and the Second World War.

Until November 2005, no information was available about the whereabouts of the wreck.

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. 160. 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. 128, 220. 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. 359, 372. 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. ISBN 3-4531-6059-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chris Madsen: The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament, 1942-1947. Frank Cass, London 1998. p. 180.
  2. ↑ a b Gerhard Koop: Battle and sinking of the German submarine weapon: a balance in words and pictures from the opponent's point of view. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1998. p. 195.
  3. ↑ Horst Bredow: The story of U 287 - The conspiratorial community of U 287. German U-Boot-Museum, Foundation for the traditional archive of Unterseeboote, August 15, 2012.