U 318

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U 318
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Type : VII C / 41
Field Post Number : 54 549
Shipyard: Flender-Werke Lübeck
Construction contract: October 14, 1941
Build number: 318
Keel laying: October 14, 1942
Launch: September 25, 1943
Commissioning: November 13, 1943
Commanders:
  • November 13, 1943 - May 9, 1945
    OblzS Josef Will
Calls: 3 activities
Sinkings:

no

Whereabouts: on December 21, 1945 in the context of the operation Dead Light sunk coordinates: 55 ° 47 '0 "  N , 8 ° 30' 0"  W

U 318 was a German submarine of the type VII C / 41 , which was used by the German navy during the Second World War in the North Atlantic and in the Arctic Ocean.

history

U 318 was commissioned from Flender Werke AG Lübeck on October 14, 1941 . The boat was laid down on October 14, 1942 and launched on September 25, 1943. The commissioning took place on November 13, 1943 by Oberleutnant zur See Josef Will. He carried out a total of four operations with the boat, all of which took place near the coast of Norway. During these patrols , Will did not sink or damage any enemy ships. Like many German submarines of its time, U 318 also had a boat-specific symbol that was usually selected and designed by the crew. It was a stylized portrait of the poet Joachim Ringelnatz , signed with the name of his most famous figure: Kuttel Daddeldu .

commander

Josef Will was born on April 30, 1906 in Mülheim an der Ruhr and joined the Navy in 1939 . His submarine training took place between April and September 1943. During this time Will was promoted to first lieutenant at sea in the reserve . Following a U-boat commander course, he took command of the U 318 in October of the same year .

Stakes and whereabouts

Will moved from Kiel to Bergen with U 318 in June 1944 . From Norway, the boat completed three operations in the North Sea , the Barents Sea and the White Sea by the end of the war . At the beginning of December 1944, U 318 was involved in the attack on the Allied convoy Convoy RA 62 , which had been assembled in Kola Bay and was supposed to sail to Loch Ewe with 28 merchant ships in ballast . On December 9, ships of the exceptionally strong escort attempted to drive the German submarines away from the entrance of the Kola Fjord. Subsequently, several escort ships chased U 318 and made an attack on the convoy impossible. At the beginning of February 1945 U 318 was used again off the Kolafjord. It was assigned to the Rasmus submarine group , which, according to the pack tactics developed by Karl Dönitz , was supposed to track down and fight the small convoy HK 2 , which had been discovered the day before by a weather observation aircraft . Even when the Rasmus submarine group was deployed, Commander Will was unable to sink an enemy ship.

On May 19, 1945, Will surrendered at Narvik . The boat was towed by the British to Ireland on December 21, 1945 , to be sunk northwest of the island as part of Operation Deadlight .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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. 90.
  2. Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 . P. 255
  3. Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Sea War 1939–1945, December 1944. Retrieved on August 8, 2018 .