U 581
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U 581 ( previous / next - all submarines ) |
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| Type : | VII C |
| Field Post Number : | 46 386 |
| Shipyard: | Blohm & Voss in Hamburg |
| Construction contract: | January 8, 1940 |
| Keel laying: | September 25, 1940 |
| Launch: | June 12, 1941 |
| Commissioning: | July 31, 1941 |
| Commanders: | |
| Flotilla: |
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| Calls: | two ventures |
| Sinkings: |
a ship with 364 t sunk (25 dead, context disputed) |
| Whereabouts: | Sunk on February 2, 1942 in the Atlantic off the Azores island of Pico (4 dead, 41 prisoners of war, 1 man returned to the Navy) |
U 581 was a German Type VII C submarine of the German Navy that was used in World War II . On the second of its two operations in the Atlantic, it probably sank an auxiliary warship with 364 t, whose 25 crew members all died. On February 2, 1942, it was sunk off the island of Pico ( Azores ), four men were killed and 41 fell into British captivity , while one man was able to save himself to Pico and returned to the Navy.
Calls
After its commissioning on July 31, 1941 under Lieutenant Werner Pfeifer , U 581 served as a training boat for the 5th U-Flotilla until November 30, 1941 .
On December 13, 1941, U 581 ran from Kiel for its first operation in the North Atlantic, in which it could not sink or damage ships. It entered Saint-Nazaire on December 24, 1941 .
U 581 left Saint-Nazaire on January 11, 1942 for the second venture to operate in the mid-Atlantic southwest of the Azores . On January 19, 1942, the submarine torpedoed what it believed to be a British corvette weighing around 800 tons. On that day, the British auxiliary warship (trawler) HMS Rosemonde sank with 364 t, with all 25 crew members died. Probably this was the ship torpedoed by U 581 .
Sinking
During a night spying in the port of Horta , the submarine was discovered and then pursued by the British destroyer Westcott . U 581 ran to the southern exit of the canal between Faial and Pico , but was detected with ASDIC sonar and appeared. The British destroyer threw depth charges . As a result of severe damage from the bombing and water ingress, the commanding officer gave the crew the order to leave the boat and sink. The submarine sank in the morning hours of February 2, 1942. 42 men of the crew survived, four were killed by a depth charge on the surface of the water. 41 crew members were taken on board as prisoners of war by the British destroyers Westcott and Croome .
2nd officer on watch escapes
The second officer on watch, Lieutenant at Sea Walter Sitek, did not want to be captured and swam to the island of Pico, 4 nautical miles (6 km) away, which took him over 5 hours. A Portuguese destroyer took him to Lisbon , from where he returned to Germany. As a first lieutenant in the navy, he became commander of U 981 , which he commanded on two operations before he was replaced by first lieutenant in the sea, Günther Keller.
Captivity of the submariners
During the capture, Kapitänleutnant Pfeifer, commander of U 581 , protested against what he believed to be illegal sinking because the submarine was in Portuguese and therefore neutral waters at the time. The British destroyer commander examined the complaint and came to the conclusion that U 581 had been sunk just outside the three-mile zone . He refused Pfeifer's request to hand over the captured Germans to the Portuguese authorities.
The prisoners from the submarines U 581 and U 93 were first brought to Gibraltar , reached Great Britain on March 7, 1942 and were interrogated in London. In April 1942 they were transferred to Canada by ship and brought back to England at the end of 1946, only to return to Germany in August 1947.
The wreck today
On September 13, 2016, Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen from the Rebikoff- Niggeler Foundation based in the Azores discovered the wreck at a depth of 870 m. For this purpose, both sonar technology (including a multibeam sonar and a sidescan sonar ) and the manned submersible LULA1000 were used. The wreck is of great interest to marine biologists , as the growth speed and conditions of the cold water corals attached to it can be studied.
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. 179. 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. 51, 233. 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. 44f. 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 Hunters 1939–1942 . Heyne Verlag, 1998. pp. 573, 575, 646. ISBN 3-4531-2345-X .
Web links
- German U-Boats 1935–1945, U 581, Ubootarchiv.de
- U-581, Uboat.net
- U-581, Uboatarchive.net: CB 4051 (42), "U 581", Interrogation of Survivors, April, 1942. Naval Intelligence Division, Admiralty, SW1., NID (Royal Navy)
- Coral reef U 581 , video on nano from February 28, 2017 (5:52 minutes).
- Kai Steenbuck: The story of U 581 , German U-Boat Museum, Foundation Traditional Archive Sub-Sea Boats .
- n-tv: Lost German submarine from WWII discovered on February 3, 2017 (1:31 min)
Footnotes
- ^ Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars. Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing vor München 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 , p. 81.
- ↑ a b U-581: German submarine wreck from 1942 found! on the homepage of the Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation, accessed on February 5, 2017
Map with all coordinates: