U 353

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U 353
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Type : VII C
Field Post Number : 44 455
Shipyard: Flensburg shipbuilding company
Construction contract: September 23, 1939
Build number: 472
Keel laying: March 30, 1940
Launch: November 11, 1941
Commissioning: March 31, 1942
Commanders:

First lieutenant to the sea Wolfgang Römer

Flotilla:
Calls: 1 company
Sinkings:

no depressions

Whereabouts: Sunk in the North Atlantic on October 16, 1942 (6 dead, 39 prisoners of war)

U 353 was a German submarine from the Type VII C , which in World War II by the German navy was used. On its only venture it could not sink ships and was sunk by the British destroyer Fame in the North Atlantic on October 16, 1942 , whereby six crew members died and 39 fell into British captivity , among them the commander Wolfgang Römer (1916-1972).

Construction and technical data

In addition to building six type VII C boats a year, the Flensburger Schiffbaugesellschaft was earmarked for the repair and overhaul of five other boats by the Navy. A submarine of this type was 67.1 m long and 6.2 m wide. It was propelled over water by two diesel engines with 1400 hp each up to a maximum speed of 17 knots (kn) . When underwater, two electric motors with 375 hp each ensured a speed of 7.6 knots. In March 1942 a total of twelve Type VII C boats were put into service by the Navy. On the tower , U 353 portrayed an ancient soldier with a raised short sword.

commander

Wolfgang Römer was born on October 22, 1916 in Rathenow and joined the Navy in 1936. In the summer of 1939 he was the second officer on watch on the U 52 . Until June 1940 he then served as a training officer at the submarine school in Neustadt in Holstein and at the submarine training department in Plön . Until spring 1941, Wolfgang Römer was second watch officer on U 103 . On April 22nd, he was given command of U 56 , a school boat used for training in the Baltic Sea . On March 31, Wolfgang Römer took command of the U 353 . He was taken prisoner of war in October 1942 , from which he was released in summer 1947.

Commitment and history

On September 22, 1942, Commander Römer left with U 353 for his first patrol with this boat. The North Atlantic was intended as the operational area. At the end of the trip, the boat should call at Brest . The 1st U-Flotilla , assigned to U 353 at the beginning of October, was stationed here .

Wotan submarine group

At the beginning of October, the good reconnaissance results of the German B-Dienst enabled Karl Dönitz to position the three submarine groups Leopard, Panther and Wotan , which were looking for Allied convoys in the North Atlantic , in such a way that some convoys were tracked down. On October 12, U 258 discovered the convoy SC 104 moving eastwards. Commander Wilhelm von Mässenhausen decided, in accordance with the pack tactics , to keep in touch with the convoy and to bring further submarines by radio signal. U 356 and U 221 were the first to arrive . Commander Wallas of U 356 reported the sighting of a steamship and several clouds of smoke, which he assigned to the convoy, around noon on October 13. However, he lost contact when his boat was attacked by an escort corvette and had to dive. Two hours after midnight, U 221 finally managed to locate convoy SC 104 again. During the first attack on SC 104 that followed, three ships were sunk. Four days later, more submarines had reached the position of the convoy and attacked again. Five boats from the Wotan submarine group - 607 , U 661 , U 410 , U 618 and U 410 - sank a total of six Allied ships on October 16, including the whaling mother ship Southern Empress . During the convoy battle for SC 104, the British destroyers of the escort sank two German submarines: U 661 and U 353 .

Sinking

The HMS Fame sank U 353

On October 16, the British destroyer Fame located the German submarine U 353 at a depth of 20 meters with Asdic ( sonar ) when it was patrolling the sea area in front of the convoy. The fame attacked the German submarine with ten depth charges, which severely damaged the U 353 . Commander Römer decided to show up. The gunfire of the Fame , which was trying to sink U 353 with one ram thrust at the same time , and some of the ships in the convoy, killed six crew members. A British boarding crew tried to secure documents on U 353 , but had to withdraw quickly as the German submarine sank quickly. Commander Wolfgang Römer and another 38 men of the crew were taken in by the fame and the corvette Acanthus and were taken prisoner of war . Since the Fame itself had been permanently damaged in the ramming, it could no longer offer the convoy SC 104 any further escort protection and returned to Great Britain alone. The 39 prisoners were brought ashore by the Fame and the Acanthus in Liverpool and were taken to the interrogation center there between 20 and 22 October.

In captivity

Wolfgang Römer testified to the Allied interrogation specialists in Liverpool that only one of the 45 men in his crew, the chief engineer, had experience on submarine trips. According to Römer, there is a shortage of experienced seafarers in the German submarine weaponry. Wolfgang Römer was released from captivity in 1947.

literature

  • 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. 195. 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. 72, 255. 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 und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2008, p. 62. 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. pp. 73-75. ISBN 3-4531-6059-2 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 255.
  2. ^ 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. 94.
  3. ↑ Some submarine crews chose their boat emblems in reference to the name of the respective commander.
  4. ↑ 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. 195.
  5. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 476.
  6. ↑ The abbreviation “SC” stands for “slow convoi” - such convoys usually consisted of a large number of ships.
  7. ↑ C. Blair: The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. 1998, p. 53.
  8. ↑ Lt. Busch, Röll The U-Boat War 1939–1945. Volume 4: German submarine losses from September 1939 to May 1945. 1999, a total of 39 crew members of U 353 survived the sinking.
  9. ^ After Werner Pfeifer, commander of U 581 and Otto Harms of U 464 , Wolfgang Römer was the third commander of the U 56 school boat , which was taken prisoner of war.

See also