U 450

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U 450
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Type : VII C
Field Post Number : M- 49 679
Shipyard: Schichau-Werke , Danzig
Construction contract: November 21, 1940
Build number: 1521
Keel laying: July 22, 1941
Launch: 4th July 1942
Commissioning: September 12, 1942
Commanders:

September 12, 1942 to March 10, 1944
First Lieutenant Kurt Böhme

Flotilla:
Calls: 3 patrols
Sinkings:

no

Whereabouts: Sunk on March 10, 1944 in the Mediterranean south of Ostia (51 prisoners of war, no dead)

U 450 was one of the Navy in World War II employed submarine of type VIIC . During his four operations in his fifteen-month period of operation, no enemy ships were sunk or damaged. The submarine was on July 18, 1944 in the Mediterranean before Ostia at the Allied beachhead of Anzio hard hit by several Allied destroyers and a moment later scuttled . All 51 crew members became British prisoners of war .

Construction and equipment

U 450 had a water displacement of 769 t on the surface and 871 t under water. It was a total of 67.1 m long, 6.2 m wide, 9.6 m high with a 50.5 m long pressure hull and had a draft of 4.74 m. The in Gdansk Schichau works built submarine was of two four-stroke diesel engines F46 with 6 cylinders and supercharger of Kiel Germaniawerft with a capacity from 2060 to 2350 kW, for underwater operation with two electric motors GU 460 / 8-27 of AEG with a power of 550 kW. It had two drive shafts with two 1.23 m tall propellers. The boat was suitable for diving to a depth of 230 m.

The submarine reached speeds of up to 17.7 knots on the surface and up to 7.6 knots under water. When surfaced, the boat could travel up to 8,500 nautical miles at 10 knots, and up to 80 nautical miles submerged at 4 knots. U 450 had five 53.3 cm torpedo tubes - four at the bow and one at the stern - and fourteen torpedoes , an 8.8 cm SK C / 35 cannon with 220 rounds of ammunition, and a 3.7 cm anti -aircraft gun M42 18/36/37/43 and two 2 cm FlaK C / 30.

The submarine was on both sides of the tower to a drawing by Hans Kossatz declining swordfish the 9th flotilla . On the front was the crew mark of the commandant's class of officers: a machete in front of a palm frond

team

The crew strength of the submarine was 44 to 60 men. On his last trip there were 51 men.

Calls

After its commissioning was U 450 under the command of in Elberfeld born lieutenant to sea Kurt Böhme tested (1917-1984, from the crew 37b) from September 12, 1942 and then served until May 31, 1943 at the 8th U-Flotilla in Gdansk with trips to other Baltic Sea ports as a training boat. From May 20, 1943 to May 27, 1943, the submarine in Kiel was equipped for the first operation.

On May 27, 1943, the U 450 , which was now assigned to the 9th U-Flotilla , left the port of Kiel and was refueled in Kristiansand on May 29, 1943 , from where it set out on its first patrol in the North and Central Atlantic on May 30, 1943. On June 15, it was supplied with fuel by U 645 . The submarine could not sink any ships and was itself badly damaged by an air attack. U 450 had to break off the operation and entered the port of Brest (Finistère) on June 22, 1943 .

On September 18, the repaired submarine ran out of Brest on its next patrol, but had to return several times due to various damage. It was not until October 17, 1943 that the final departure took place. The order was to cross the Strait of Gibraltar , which was heavily guarded by the British , and to advance into the Mediterranean . This breakthrough was made on October 30, 1943 together with four other submarines, but only U 450 and the U 642 commanded by Herbert Brünning succeeded , while the other three submarines were lost. Hans Hornkohl's U 566 was badly damaged by an aircraft and had to be self- scuttled on the Spanish coast near Vigo. The crew took the train back to Brest on October 31, 1943. Claus-Peter Carlsen's U 732 was sunk by British planes and two destroyers, with 19 men captured and the remaining 31 killed. U 340 under Hans-Joachim Klaus was badly damaged by three British warships and was also scuttled off the Spanish coast, with one man drowning for unknown reasons. Already on board a Spanish fishing boat and initially full of joy, the crew was captured by the British sloop HMS Fleetwood . U 450, on the other hand, was now operating in the western Mediterranean without being able to sink or damage enemy ships. It arrived at Toulon on November 8th . When the submarine was in the Toulon shipyard, it was heavily bombed by Allied airmen, so that two crew members perished and the batteries in the boat were destroyed and the bow tubes were torn. The repairs lasted until February 1944.

Last use and end

On February 4, the submarine ran out of Toulon again, but had to turn back due to a fire at the main switchboard. On February 6, 1944, a man went overboard in rough seas and drowned; the same day the boat returned to Toulon. On February 14th, it was ready to go so far that it could sail again and set out for the sea area near the Allied bridgehead at Anzio . On March 10, 1944, U 450 was in the Mediterranean south of Ostia , about 43 km away from Anzio, and fired a torpedo fan at enemy warships, but all torpedoes missed their target. Immediately thereafter it was on diving trip by the British destroyers HMS Blankney , HMS Blencathra , HMS Brecon and HMS Exmoor and the US destroyer USS Madison with water bombs attacked and hit so hard against 5:50 that much water into the submarine penetrated. It was still difficult to surface, but the boat came under fire from the enemy ships. Nevertheless, all 51 men were able to leave U 450 unharmed and the boat was subsequently sunk itself . Those swimming in the water were taken on board by the British destroyers and thus all fell into British captivity . They were taken to Naples that same day . The commandant Kurt Böhme and the two watch officers Schager and Gottfriedsen were first taken to Africa and, after the interrogations, to Canada for permanent internment , while others were transferred to England and interrogated there in a Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Center . These prisoners - including the chief engineer Oberleutnant (Ing.) Klein - were brought to the USA for permanent internment , but some (like many of the German prisoners of war in the USA) were still held in Great Britain after 1945. They all returned to Germany between 1945 and 1948, most of them in 1947.

U 450 is one of the very few German submarines of the Second World War in which the entire crew survived sinking in the course of a battle unharmed and all of them survived captivity. However, a total of three crew members were killed in previous missions in June 1943 and February 1944.

See also

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 und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 , p. 31f.
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 2: Submarine construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 88., 240.
  • 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, ISBN 3-8132-0514-2 , p. 203.
  • 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, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , pp. 389, 390, 537, 539, 610.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Georg Högel: " Embleme Wappen Maling's German U-Boats 1939-1945" , Fifth edition, Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-7822-1002-7 , page 108