U 612

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U 612
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Type : VII C
Field Post Number : 42 940
Shipyard: Blohm & Voss , Hamburg
Construction contract: August 15, 1940
Build number: 112
Keel laying: April 21, 1941
Launch: January 9, 1942
Commissioning: March 5, 1942
Commanders:
  • Paul Siegmann
  • Theodor Petersen
  • Hans-Peter Dick
Calls: no ventures
Sinkings:

no

Whereabouts: self- sunk on May 1, 1945 off Warnemünde

U 612 was a German type VII C submarine of the Kriegsmarine in World War II . After a collision with another submarine, U 612 was used as a school boat.

The eponymous submarine in the series "Das Boot" , which aired for the first time in 2018 , has the same name, but is not identical to U 612 .

Construction and commissioning

U 612 was laid on April 21, 1941 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg , the launch took place on January 9, 1942. On March 5, 1942 it was put into service under the command of First Lieutenant Paul Siegmann.

Commanders

  • Paul Siegmann was born in Hamburg on May 24, 1913 and joined the Navy in 1935 . From 1940 to 1941 he served as 1st Watch Officer (WO) on the torpedo boat Greif . Following his submarine training, he was first assigned to the 7th U-Flotilla , then he completed a U-boat commander course with the 24th U-Flotilla . Following the building instruction from January to March 1942, Siegmann took command of the U 612 on March 5, 1942 . He was promoted to lieutenant captain on the same day . A week later, his boat collided with another submarine and sank.
  • Theodor Petersen was born on January 14, 1914 in Flensburg and joined the Reichsmarine in 1934 . From 1940 to 1942 he drove as a sergeant in the rank of senior helmsman and as 3rd WO on U 138 and U 43 . From May 1942 to February 1943, Petersen was the 1st WO on U 181 . On January 1, 1943, he was promoted to lieutenant at sea. On May 31, 1943, he was given command of U 612 , which he held until February 20, 1944.
  • Hans-Peter Dick was born in Dresden on November 13, 1920 and joined the Navy in 1939. From October to November 1942 he served as WO in the 5th U-Flotilla in Kiel. In December of the same year he was 1st WO on the newly commissioned U 713 , on which he participated in two operations in the North Sea until November 1943 . Following his commanders course, Dick took command of U 612 on February 21, 1944 , which he held until the boat was sunk.

Calls

On March 5, 1942, the boat was assigned to the 5th U-Flotilla , which was stationed in Kiel . During this time, Commander Siegmann undertook training trips in the Baltic Sea to train the crew and to retract the boat. U 612 sank during a training run on August 6, 1942 after a collision with U 444 . Two crew members were killed here.

The boat was recovered from a depth of 48 meters using two floating cranes . After twelve days the floating cranes reached Danzig and the boat was pumped out. Meanwhile, the crew was accommodated in Gdansk on an ocean liner of the Hamburg-America Line (HAPAG) . It turned out that the damage was more significant than expected. The center was filthy with sand, algae and oil, and the forecastle was filled with water. Through an unsealed mouthpiece that connected the submarine tower to the radio room, sea water had penetrated the front compartments and damaged the batteries, both radio rooms and the officers 'and non-commissioned officers' rooms. The original plan to return the boat to service after the purge has been abandoned. Commander Siegmann and his crew took over the U 230 instead a few months later . During the commissioning at the Tirpitz pier in Kiel , the flag of U 612 was hoisted, which had been taken by the crew on the new boat.

In the following, U 612 was only used in submarine training. On May 31, 1943, the boat was assigned to the 24th U-Flotilla and served in their location in Memel for the U-boat commanders' shooting training. At the beginning of March, the boat was assigned to the 31st U-Flotilla stationed in Hamburg .

Other crew members

  • Herbert A. Werner, who later became a submarine commander himself, served as the 1st WO on U 612 . With the publication of the autobiographical book The Iron Coffins , Werner achieved a high level of awareness and triggered the debate about the “ramming order” , which was later also taken up by Lothar-Günther Buchheim . In his controversial account, Werner explained his understanding of Karl Dönitz's instructions to attack the submarines on the ships of the Allied invasion fleet . In his book, published in 1970, Werner gave the wording of a speech by Hans-Rudolf Rösing to submarine commanders in which the flotilla commander at the time urged Werner to commit suicidal operations. The naval historian Jürgen Rohwer then described Werner as an “uninhibited braggart” and the description as incorrect.
  • Horst Klatt, machinist on U 612 , survived another sinking on September 23, 1944, when the monsoon boat U 859 was sunk by the British submarine Trenchant off Penang .

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Axel Niestlé: “German U-Boat Losses during World War II. Details of Destruction” , Frontline Books, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-84832-210-3 . Page 74
  2. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 , p. 71.
  3. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 , p. 227.
  4. ↑ Siegmann later commanded U 230 (October 1942 to August 1942) and U 2507 (September 1944 to May 1945)
  5. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 , p. 178.
  6. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 , p. 50.
  7. ^ Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars . Graefelfing before Munich: Urbes, 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 . Page 88
  8. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 4: German submarine losses from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler and Son, Hamburg a. a. 1999, ISBN 3-8132-0514-2 . Page 55
  9. ^ Herbert A. Werner: The iron coffins . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1969, ISBN 3-453-00515-5 , pp. 113-115
  10. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War . Volume 1: The Hunters 1939–1942 . Heyne Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-453-12345-X , p. 719
  11. ↑ Jürgen Schlemm: The submarine war 1939-1945 in literature . Elbe-Spree-Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-931129-24-1 , p. 84
  12. ↑ "On the Horns" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1970 ( online report on the Rammbefehl controversy).
  13. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War . Volume 2: The Hunted 1942–1945 . Heyne Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , p. 633

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