U 336

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U 336
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Type : VII C
Field Post Number : 40 923
Shipyard: North Sea Works , Emden
Construction contract: August 15, 1940
Build number: 208
Keel laying: March 28, 1941
Launch: December 4, 1941
Commissioning: February 14, 1942
Commanders:


First lieutenant at sea Hans Hunger

Flotilla:
Calls: 4. Activities
Sinkings:

1 ship (4,919 GRT)

Whereabouts: Sunk on October 5, 1943 southwest of Iceland

U 336 was a German submarine from the Type VII C , which in World War II by the German navy was used in the North and Central Atlantic.

Construction and commissioning

The Nordseewerke stopped all civil projects immediately after the outbreak of war and switched their production entirely to submarine construction on behalf of the Navy. The shipyard only built type VII boats - this class was also called "Atlantic boat" - and delivered a total of 30 boats by the end of the war. The two diesel engines of the Type VII C boats achieved a speed of 17 knots when sailing above the water . Such a boat had a maximum range of 6500 nm . When underwater, the two 375 hp electric motors each enabled a top speed of 7.6 knots.

Mission history

U 336 was put into service on February 14, 1942 by First Lieutenant for the Sea, Hans Hunger. The boat patrolled a total of four ventures south of Iceland , southwest of the Azores and west of Portugal . In the course of his patrols with this boat, Hans Hunger sank a ship and rescued six castaways from distress.

At the end of December 1942, the submarine command coordinated two submarine groups - Spitz and Ungetüm - to form a task force of 20 boats, which attacked the Allied convoy ONS 154 according to the pack tactics developed by Karl Dönitz . On the night of December 28th to 29th, a convoy battle broke out in the sea area 1,100 km west of Brest . Hunger fired three torpedoes at the Belgian tanker President Franqui (4,919 GRT), but all of them failed. The President Franqui was only stopped by a hit from U 225 . Two more torpedoes that Hunger fired at the idle ship did not detonate due to gun failures. Only the third torpedo sank the damaged tanker.

At the end of February 1943, Günther Gretschel, commander of U 707 , torpedoed the American freighter Johnathan Sturges and sank it. On April 5, U 336 , which had left Brest on March 2 for its second venture , sighted six survivors of the Jonathan Sturges , who by this time had been drifting in the open Atlantic for over a month. OltzS Hunger had the American sailors taken on board, broke off its patrol and brought the castaways to France.

Sinking

A Lockheed Hudson of the 269th Squadron of the RAF , which was securing the US 19 convoy , sighted the surfaced boat on October 4, 1943 and, despite heavy flak fire, attacked it with two rocket salvos that damaged the pressure hull of U 336 in several places. The boat, whose anti-aircraft gun continued to fire, sank at a steep angle over the bow. The pilot of the bomber was able to make out about 15 survivors in the water. When he flew over the area again after a quarter of an hour, no one could be seen in the oil pool that had now formed.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The remaining capacity of the shipyard was used to repair surface units.
  2. ↑ 22 boats of the type VII C and eight boats of the further developed type VII C / 41.
  3. ↑ C. Blair: The Submarine War. Volume 1: The Hunters. 1939-1942. 1998, p. 177.
  4. ↑ C. Blair: The Submarine War. Volume 1: The Hunters. 1939-1942. 1998, p. 316.
  5. ↑ The sinking of U 336 was originally credited to a Lockheed Ventura of the US Navy, but this actually sank U 279 in this sea area at the same time .
  6. ^ Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars. Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing vor München 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 , p. 153.

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