U 468

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U 468
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DEU Heiligenhaus COA.svg
City arms of Heiligenhaus, arms of the boat
Type : VII C
Field Post Number : M- 49 533
Shipyard: Deutsche Werke AG, Kiel
Construction contract: August 15, 1940
Build number: 299
Keel laying: July 1, 1941
Launch: May 16, 1942
Commissioning: August 12, 1942
Commanders:

August 12, 1942 to August 11, 1943
First Lieutenant Klemens Schamong

Flotilla:
Calls: 3 activities
Sinkings:

1 tanker with 6537 GRT

Whereabouts: sunk in the mid-Atlantic on August 11, 1943 (44 dead, 7 prisoners of war)

U 468 was one of the Navy in World War II employed submarine of type VIIC . During the first of its three patrols on March 12, 1943, it sank a British tanker in the North Atlantic. On August 11, 1943, the submarine wassunkby a Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber, but at the same time shot down the bomber. Of the 51 crew members, only seven survived and fell into British captivity .

Construction and equipment

U 468 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 submarine, built by Deutsche Werke AG in Kiel , was powered by two four-stroke F46 diesel engines with 6 cylinders each and a charging fan from the Kiel Germania shipyard with an output of 2060 to 2350 kW, with two electric motors GU 460 / 8-27 from AEG for underwater operation driven with an output 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 468 had five 533 mm 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 M42 18/36 anti-aircraft gun / 37/43 and two 2 cm FlaK C / 30 .

Many German cities take the opportunity to "sponsor" a submarine, citizens sent gifts to the base and the crew was invited on certain occasions. The godfather town of U 468 was Heiligenhaus , whose city coat of arms was adopted by the crew as the boat coat of arms. In addition, the boat carried the stylized drawing of a hatchet on the tower, with which the crew referred to the so-called “Haarmann song” ( Wait, just wait a while ... ) .

team

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

Use and end

After its commissioning, U 468 was tested under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Klemens Schamong (* 1917; still alive in 2007) from August 12, 1942 and served as a training boat for the 5th U-Flotilla in Kiel until January 27, 1943 , to be assigned to the 3rd U-Flotilla stationed in La Pallice . U 468 left the port of Kiel on January 28, 1943 , was refueled on February 1 in Kristiansand, Norway and, after a short stay in Egersund , set off for its first venture in the North Atlantic between Jan Mayen and Newfoundland on February 2 , where the U -Boot groups "Knight", "Burgrave" and "Raubgraf" belonged, which sought combat with Allied convoy according to the pack tactics developed by Karl Dönitz . On March 3, 1943, U 468 was supplied with fuel and provisions by U 462 . On March 12, Commander Schamong sank the British tanker Empire Light with 6,537 GRT with two torpedoes southeast of Cape Farvel . The ship belonged to the ONS 168 convoy and had previously been so badly damaged by an attack by U 638 that it had to be abandoned by the crew. Of the 50 sailors on the Empire Light , only five survived. Schamong then took up the pursuit of the convoy ON 170 , which he shaded from cover according to the pack tactics and submitted position reports in order to bring more submarines to the convoy. However, these reports were unusable, so that the submarine command assumed the convoy was in an incorrect position. The Raubgraf submarine group set up on OPN 170 did not find the convoy, and ON 170 reached Canadian waters without losses. On March 27, U 468 arrived in the port of La Pallice , a suburb of La Rochelle .

On April 19, 1943, the submarine left La Pallice for its second expedition, during which it did not encounter any enemy ships. It belonged to the submarine groups "Amsel", "Amsel 3", "Rhein", "Elbe 1" and "Mosel". This submarine group was positioned in a line southwest of Greenland and consisted of 23 German submarines. On May 17, 1943, U 468 was supplied with fuel and provisions by U 505 . At 8:35 a.m. on May 22, a Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber of Squadron VC-9 from the carrier ship USS Bogue attacked the submarine. The pilot of the Avenger , Roger C. Kuhn, broke off the attack and gave insufficient position reports before he turned off. For this reason, the submarine could no longer be found by other aircraft of the Bogue . Commander Schamong announced in turn that U 468 have been exposed on this day several air raids as well as surface units with depth charges had been pursued. U 468 was badly damaged so that Commander Schamong decided to break off the operation and return to the base. It returned to La Pallice on May 29, 1943.

On July 7, 1943, U 468 left La Pallice for the last time to hunt Allied ships in the Central Atlantic, but this time too there were no successes. On August 11, 1943, the submarine was discovered southwest of Dakar by the crew of a light sea reconnaissance aircraft, a so-called Catalina . This announced the position of the submarine, after a heavy "Liberator" bomber of the British RAF Squadron 200 tracking recorded and U 468 with depth charges attack. The crew managed to set the aircraft on fire with the help of the 2 cm flak. But despite considerable damage, its pilot, Lloyd Allan Trigg attacked the submarine again with his burning Liberator . He dropped six torpex-tipped depth charges set at shallow depths on the submarine. The depth charges that hit the water close to it were enough to hit the submarine so hard that water penetrated and chlorine gas formed, which resulted in the death of most of the crew members. Seriously wounded, bleeding submariners fell into the water and were eaten by sharks and barracudas , according to reports from survivors . The Liberator crashed into the sea with an explosion, killing all of its eight crew members - as well as 44 men of the submarine crew. Only seven members of the crew of U 468 - including the commander Klemens Schamong, two other officers and a non-commissioned officer - were able to save themselves from the sinking submarine. First, three of those swimming in the water found a lifeboat from the crashed Liberator , and later four other survivors joined them. Two days later, the seamen floating in the water, surrounded by sharks, were discovered by a Sunderland flying boat that had been sent to search for the missing persons from the Liberator . The Sunderland crew mistook the castaways for people from the Liberator , whereupon they dropped a life raft and radioed a British warship over to them. On August 13, the shipwrecked Germans were picked up by the British corvette HMS Clarkia and taken prisoner of war . According to contemporary reports, two of the rescued had severe bite wounds: one arm was torn by a shark, while another was bitten by a piece of meat on the thigh.

Flight officer Lloyd Allan Trigg and his opponent Klemens Schamong

The fallen pilot of the Liberator , Flying Officer Lloyd Allan Trigg RNZAF , was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for the sinking of U 468 . A peculiarity was that this award was given for the only time in this case on the basis of the testimony of a member of the enemy armed forces - the captured Klemens Schamong. It was also the first time this medal was given to a member of a British aircraft crew fighting submarines.

The submarine commander Klemens Schamong, born in 1917, lived in seclusion after the war. In 2007, however, the New Zealand journalist Arthur Arculus was able to find out the address of the now 90-year-old Schamong, who lives near Kiel, through his son and nephew, and to contact him by letters as part of his research into the sinking of U 468 .

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. 203.
  • 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, 190, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 85.
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 3: The German submarine successes from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2008, ISBN 3-8132-0513-4 , p. 209.
  • 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. 138.
  • 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. 244, 321, 405, 473.

Web links

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 110
  2. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War - The Hunted 1942-1945 . Heyne Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , page 321
  3. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. Heyne, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 . Page 405
  4. ↑ a b Clay Blair : The Submarine War - The Hunted 1942-1945 . Heyne Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , page 473
  5. ^ A b Max Lambert: U-boat skipper's testimony led to VC for New Zealand pilot. In: The New Zealand Herald . April 24, 2007, accessed August 22, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Horrifying Ordeal. Survivors of a U-Boat . Evening Post (New Zealand), November 16, 1943.
  7. ↑ Tommy Carter and the crew of a Sundeland flying boat and Captain Klemens Schamong and his U Boat crew. BBC History (Article ID: A5319740), August 25, 2005, accessed March 29, 2020.