U 3503

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U 3503
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Type : XXI
Field Post Number : M - 43 302
Shipyard: Schichau-Werke , Danzig
Construction contract: November 6, 1943
Build number: 1648
Keel laying: June 17, 1944
Launch: July 27, 1944
Commissioning: September 9, 1944
Commanders:

September 9, 1944 to May 8, 1945
Lieutenant Captain Hugo Deiring

Flotilla:
Calls: 3 activities
Sinkings:

no

Whereabouts: Self- sunk on May 8, 1945 off Gothenburg (58 military internees, extradited to the British on December 3, 1945 and released in 1946, no fatalities)

U 3503 was a submarine of the type XXI ("electric boat") used by the Navy in World War II off Iceland . In his only company in the last days of the war it sank no ships and was on 8 May 1945 in front of Gothenburg by its crew scuttled . The 58 crew members were interned in Backamo near Uddevalla and extradited to the British occupation authorities on December 3, 1945 , but were released again in 1946, including the commander Hugo Deiring .

Construction and equipment

As an "electric boat" (Type XXI), the U 3503 was designed for long diving trips and with its electric motors was more powerful than the diesel engines. It had a displacement of 1621 t on the surface and 1819 t under water. It was a total of 76.7 m long and 8.0 m wide with a 5.3 m wide pressure hull and had a draft of 6.32 m. The submarine built in the Danzig Schichau works was powered by two four-stroke diesel engines M6V40 / 46KBB from MAN , each with 6 cylinders and a charging fan with an output of 2900 kW each, with two electric motors GU365 / 30 from Siemens-Schuckertwerke with one power output of 3700 kW and at crawl speed driven by two quiet-running electric motors GV232 / 28 Siemens-Schuckert with a capacity of 116 kW. It had two drive shafts with two 2.15 m tall propellers. The submarine was suitable for diving to a depth of 240 m.

The submarine reached speeds of up to 15.6 knots on the surface and up to 17.2 knots under water, and up to 6.1 knots at crawl speed. When surfaced, the submarine could travel up to 15,500 nautical miles at 10 knots and up to 340 nautical miles submerged at 5 knots. U 3503 had six 53.3 cm torpedo tubes - four at the bow and two at the stern -, 23 torpedoes - alternatively 17 torpedoes and 12 sea ​​mines - and four twin 2 cm FlaK C / 30 with 16,000 rounds of ammunition, but not equipped with a deck gun. Instead, the submarine was equipped with a snorkel .

Use and self-immersion

After its commissioning on September 9, 1944, U 3503 served under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Hugo Deiring (1920–1999) in the 8th U-Flotilla as a training boat and in February 1945 was assigned to the 5th U-Flotilla .

On May 3, 1945 was U 3503 from Kiel made his first and only company on which it sink no Allied ships or could cause damage. On the morning of May 6, 1945 at around 3.40 a.m., it was attacked by a British Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber (RAF Squadron 86 / K), the crew of which believed that they had sunk the submarine. However, U 3503 escaped with minor damage and reached Swedish territorial waters west of Gothenburg near the island of Galtö that same morning . Here boats of the Swedish coast guard and the Swedish destroyer HMS Göteborg (J5) approached . Commander Hugo Deiring negotiated the handover to the Swedes and asked for medical help for several men because of carbon monoxide poisoning from the defective diesel exhaust. The self- sinking was prepared and all secret documents as well as the Enigma were sunk. The Swedes asked Deiring to lead the ship to the port, but on the afternoon of May 8, 1945 the valves were opened and the crew left the submarine in rubber dinghies. The Swedish icebreaker II from Gothenburg tried to rescue and tow the boat, but the hawser fell overboard. U 3503 sank to the bottom of the 15 m deep sea on May 8, 1945 at 7.55 p.m.

Captivity of the crew

The Swedish destroyer HMS Norrköping (J10) took the crew of U 3503 on board and brought them ashore. The 58 submarine drivers were interned in Backamo near Uddevalla . Around 3,000 members of the German armed forces came to Sweden towards the end of the war and afterwards and were taken to internment camps. The Swedish government decided to hand them over to the allied powers they had fought against. While for most of them this was the Soviet armed forces and they were therefore extradited to the Soviet Union, the direct enemy of the U 3503 was the Royal Navy. The men from U 3503 were among the roughly 310 German soldiers who were transferred to the British occupation authorities in Germany. The submarine crew was embarked in Trelleborg on November 30, 1945 and was taken to a prison camp in Holstein . In contrast to those sent to the Soviet Union, their captivity was short-lived. Commander Hugo Deiring was also released in February 1946.

Lifting and scrapping

Swedish naval divers practiced lifting submarine wrecks on the wreck of U 3503 in the weeks after the sinking from May 14 to the end of August , until after numerous attempts the wreck was on the surface on August 24 and on August 27, 1945 was towed to the Götaverken dry dock in Gothenburg. After intensive technical investigations and a review of received documents, it was scrapped in 1947.

See also

literature

  • Kjell Håkansson: U-3503s sista resa. In: Kjell Håkansson: Ubåt om styrbord, kapten! - När Handelsfartyg var jagat villebråd. Breakwater Publishing, Göteborg 2010. pp. 119-123 (Swedish).
  • 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. 50. 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. 161, 241. 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. 352, 354. 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. P. 736. ISBN 3-4531-6059-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Kjell Håkansson (2010), p. 121.
  2. ^ German U-Boats 1935-1945, Hugo Deiring, Ubootarchiv.de , accessed on October 26, 2019.
  3. Kjell Håkansson (2010), pp. 121–123.