U 773

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U 773
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Type : VII C
Field Post Number : 49 058
Shipyard: Kriegsmarine shipyard Wilhelmshaven
Construction contract: November 21, 1940
Build number: 156
Keel laying: October 13, 1942
Launch: December 8, 1943
Commissioning: January 20, 1944
Commanders:

April 18, 1944 - May 8, 1945
First Lieutenant Hugo Baldus

Flotilla:
Calls: 4 patrols
Sinkings:

no

Whereabouts: Sunk on December 8, 1945 at 9 a.m. as part of Operation Deadlight

U 773 was a German type VII C submarine , a so-called "Atlantic boat ". It was used by the Kriegsmarine during the submarine war .

Technical specifications

The Kriegsmarinewerft (formerly Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven ) was mainly responsible for equipping warships. It was not until 1942 that the shipyard was included in the German submarine building program and was intended for an annual output of 12 boats. This production goal was never achieved. The Kriegsmarinewerft had completed a total of 27 Type VII C boats by 1945. Such a boat had a length of 67 m and a displacement of 865 m³ under water. It had two diesel engines that enabled a speed of 17 knots over water . Two electric motors enabled a maximum speed of 7 knots for underwater travel.

commander

  • April 18, 1944 to May 8, 1945

Hugo Baldus was born on April 12, 1921 in Hohenbudberg on the Lower Rhine and joined the Navy in 1939 as an officer candidate . From June 1941 to June 1943 he was an officer on watch on the torpedo boat Löwe . On October 1, 1943, Hugo Baldus was promoted to first lieutenant at sea. In June 1943 he started his submarine training and in the spring of 1944 he was a commanding student on the U 618 . Baldus then took over command of the newly commissioned U 773 .

Mission history

U 773 did not undertake any patrols during its career, it was only entrusted with other tasks. After the first training trips in the Baltic Sea, the boat was placed under the 1st submarine flotilla in autumn 1944 and made a transport trip to Saint-Nazaire with a load of anti-tank weapons and ammunition from mid-October to mid-November . The base of the 1st U-Flotilla, Brest , was already occupied by the Allies at this time . U 773 was assigned to the 11th U-Flotilla after the 1st U-Flotilla was disbanded in September. At the beginning of December of the same year, Commander Baldus therefore undertook a transfer trip to Bergen , the new base of the FdU - West Hans-Rudolf Rösing . In January of the following year the boat moved from Bergen to the arched bay near Narvik . From here, U 773 undertook its last voyage, a mission as a weather boat in the sea area near Iceland. The boat returned to Trondheim on April 14, 1945 and was no longer used from that point on.

Weather boat

In spring 1945 U 773 was used as a weather boat. Such missions were based on the fact that the weather situation in Europe depends largely on the meteorological processes in the Arctic region . The tasks of such boats included the determination of temperatures and weather observations from which the current and expected weather conditions could be derived to support further operational planning of the Navy. The voyage lasted from February 19 to April 14, 1945 and took U 773 to the North Atlantic sea area off Iceland .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. 1997, pp. 251-252.
  2. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. 1996, p. 20.

literature

  • Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. Heyne, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 2: U-boat construction in German shipyards. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 .
  • Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945. Volume 3: German submarine successes from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler und Sohn, Hamburg et al. 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0513-4 .