U 313

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U 313
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Type : Type VII C
Field Post Number : 44 826
Shipyard: Flender-Werke , Lübeck
Construction contract: August 25, 1941
Build number: 313
Keel laying: May 11, 1942
Launch: March 27, 1943
Commissioning: May 20, 1943
Commanders:

Friedhelm Schweiger

Calls: nine ventures
Sinkings:

1 destroyer

Whereabouts: capitulated on May 9, 1945, sunk in tow on December 21 as part of Operation Deadlight

U 313 was a Type VII C submarinethat was used in the submarine warfare during the Second World War by the German Navy in the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean .

Technical specifications

The Flender works in Lübeck were already commissioned to build submarines as part of the Z-Plan before the war began . From the beginning of the war, the shipyard was scheduled to produce ten Type VII C boats a year. This margin was first met in 1942. In 1943, the shipyard also delivered ten Type VII C boats to the Kriegsmarine as planned - one of them was the U 313 . The boats of this class were also called "Atlantic boats". A VII-C boat was 67.1 m long and displaced 761 t of water. The 2,800 hp diesel engine enabled a speed of up to 17 knots (31.6 km / h) over water.

Commitment and history

Oberleutnant zur See Friedhelm Schweiger put U 313 into service on May 20, 1943. Until the end of the year, the boat was under the 8th submarine flotilla and stationed in Gdansk . At the beginning of the new year the boat was assigned to the 11th submarine flotilla , where it remained until mid-September. During this time, Commander Schweiger carried out five operations with U 313 . On September 14, 1944, the boat was assigned to the 13th U-Flotilla .

In mid-December 1944, Karl Dönitz , Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, ordered the British naval base in Scapa Flow to be blocked. The aim was to prevent attacks by British aircraft carriers on the Norwegian navy bases. A total of eight submarines were ordered to this endeavor in the waters around northern Scotland - one of them was U 313 . Commander Schweiger patrolled Scapa Flow for a total of two weeks without successfully attacking the British naval forces. Even when the submarine command instructed him to expand his area of ​​operation to the Firth of Forth , Schweiger did not score any sinkings. U 313 returned to Norway on February 15, where it was overtaken.

By the end of the war, the boat ran from the German naval bases in Narvik , Trondheim and Harstad for three other ventures. Commander Schweiger surrendered on May 9th in Narvik and handed the boat over to the British armed forces.

Sinking

At the end of 1945, U 313 was brought to the port of Londonderry and prepared there for sinking during target exercises as part of Operation Deadlight . While the boat was being towed into position by a British destroyer on December 21, 1945, it capsized and sank.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War Volume 2. The Hunted. Heyne Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , pp. 745-746.

literature

  • Gerhard Rynkowski: "U 313 Bordgeschichten" - From launch to Operation Deadlight , self-published in 2018
  • 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 .

See also