U 3515

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U 3515
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Type : Type XXI
Field Post Number : 49 612
Shipyard: Schichau shipyard , Danzig
Construction contract: November 6, 1943
Build number: 1660
Keel laying: August 27, 1944
Launch: November 4, 1944
Commissioning: December 14, 1944
Commanders:

Fedor Kuscher

Calls: no
Sinkings:

no

Whereabouts: Capitulated in May 1945 and handed over to the Soviet Union in February 1946 as part of Operation Cabal

U 3515 was a German submarine of submarine class XXI , which wasintendedby the German navy for the battle of the Atlantic during World War II . It was no longer used and washanded overto the Soviet Union in 1946, where it served under different names in the Baltic Fleet until 1959.

construction

The Gdansk shipyard F. Schichau GmbH was immediately after the illegal incorporation of the Free City of Danzig incorporated into the German Reich in the submarine construction program of the Navy. Initially, the shipyard was intended for the annual production of 18, later 42 submarines per year - all of the Type VII . From 1943 the Danzig Schichau shipyard also manufactured boats of the larger type XXI. Such a boat was 71.5 m long and 6.6 m wide. Two 2,000 hp strong diesel engines guaranteed at surface running at a speed of 15, 6 knots , which is 29 km / h. Under water, two electric motors with 2500 HP each propelled the boat at a speed of up to 17.2 knots, which corresponds to 32 km / h. A XXI boat had 6 torpedo tubes and carried 23 torpedoes. The Schichau shipyard had delivered a total of 30 such boats to the Navy by the end of the war. U 3515 was on December 14th by Oberleutnant zur See d. R. Fedor Kuscher put into service.

Commissioning

The 25-year-old Kuscher joined the Navy in 1939 and was part of Crew XII / 39 . Following his submarine training in the spring of 1944, he was first in command of U 1274 from March to July before taking command of U 3515 in December of the same year . Like most German submarines of its time, the U 3515 also had a boat-specific mark that was worn by the crew on caps and boats . It was the silhouette of a moving submarine in front of a globe .

Commitment and history

U 3515 was assigned to the 8th U-Flotilla on December 14th and was stationed in Danzig. From here, Commander Kuscher undertook training trips in the Baltic Sea to train the crew and to retract the boat. On February 16, 1945, U 3515 was subordinated to the 5th U-Flotilla as a front boat and stationed in Kiel , where the boat arrived in March of the same year.

Relocation to Norway

U 3515 left Kiel at the beginning of May and moved to Horten , where it arrived on May 6 at 3:00 a.m. without having had any contact with the enemy. At the time of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht , five other Type XXI boats were still in the Norwegian port: U 2502 , U 2513 , U 2518 , U 3017 and U 3041 . On May 13, at the orders of the Allies, large parts of the crew of the German boats were withdrawn. According to this order, 35 men also left U 3515 - the commander, the first officer on watch , the chief engineer and some non-commissioned officers remained on board as the rump crew.

Operation Cabal

Between May 18 and June 6, 1945, Commander Kuscher transferred U 3515 from Horten to Oslo and from there via Scapa Flow to Lisahally, the port of Londonderry on the Northern Irish coast . There the crew went into captivity and the boat was placed under the Royal Navy . The future fate of the ships of the Kriegsmarine was also negotiated within the framework of the Potsdam Conference . The commission appointed here, which decided on the whereabouts of the German submarines, awarded the former U 3515 to the Soviet Union on November 5, 1945 . In the so-called “Operation Cabal” the boat was transferred to Libau in the winter of 1945-46 . In mid-February the boat with the registration number N 30 was assigned to the Baltic fleet. On January 12, 1949, the name was changed to B 30 . Towards the end of 1955 the boat was transferred to the reserve and finally disarmed in January 1956. It was first renamed PZS-35 , then B 100 and served as a shooting range boat for three years. On September 25, 1959, the boat was removed from the list of Soviet warships and on November 30th, it was assigned to be scrapped .

See also

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 , page 183.

literature

  • 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 2: German submarine losses from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1999, ISBN 3-8132-0514-2 .