U 843

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U 843
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Type : IX C / 40
Field Post Number : M - 51 370
Shipyard: Deschimag AG Weser
Construction contract: January 20, 1941
Keel laying: April 21, 1942
Launch: December 15, 1942
Commissioning: March 24, 1943
Commanders:

Captain Oskar Herwartz

Flotilla:
Calls: 3 patrols
Sinkings:

April 8, 1944 Nebraska 8,261 GRT

Whereabouts: sunk on April 9, 1945 (44 dead, 13 survivors)

U 843 was a submarine of the former German Navy of the U-Boot-Klasse IX type , which was used in World War II . It was found on its return journey from Singapore with an essential cargo on April 9, 1945 in the Kattegat , west of Gothenburg (at 57 ° 33 ′  N , 11 ° 24 ′  E, coordinates: 57 ° 32 ′ 36 ″  N , 11 ° 23 ′ 36 ″  O ) Sunk by missiles from a British De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito (Squadron 143, 235 or 248). There were 45 dead and 13 survivors who were brought to Kiel , including the commander Kapitänleutnant Oskar Herwartz.

Calls

From March 24, 1943 to October 31, 1943, U 843 was tested under the command of Oskar Herwartz and served as a training boat.

On October 7, 1943, U 843 left Kiel for its first patrol, which, after brief refueling in Kristiansand and further stays in Haugesund , Bergen (Norway) , Ålesund and repairs in Trondheim, led to the operation in waters east of Newfoundland . Here it belonged to the submarine groups "Körner", "Tirpitz 1", "Eisenhart 2", "Schill 3" and "Weddigen", but could not sink any ships. It entered Lorient on December 15, 1943 .

U 843 was loaded with various goods for the Asian theater of war in Lorient, including 110 t of lead and a ship's propeller . With this cargo it left the port of Lorient on February 19, 1944 and operated as part of the submarine group "Monsun" in the Indian Ocean. On this voyage it sank on April 8, 1944, southwest of Ascension Island, the British merchant ship SS Nebraska with 8261 GRT, two of its crew died while 66 men were rescued. Oskar Herwarts let U 843 appear and helped the castaways in their three lifeboats to set course towards the Brazilian coast. On April 10, 1944, the submarine was attacked by an American Consolidated B-24 bomber of the US Navy Squadron VB-107 and the stern torpedo tubes were damaged. Instead of operating off Cape Town, the boat was now heading straight for Java. On June 11, 1944, it reached the Japanese-occupied port of Batavia in the former Dutch East Indies , today's Jakarta. On June 13, it continued its journey and entered Singapore on June 15 , which at the time was called Shonanto in Japanese. It stayed here until November 30, 1944 and returned to Batavia on December 2, 1944.

In Batavia, U 843 was loaded with 1.3 t opium , 157.2 t tin , 4.5 t molybdenum , 30.8 t rubber , 0.3 t quinine and 49.47 t tungsten . In addition, the urn of Corvette Captain Heinrich Schäfer (1907–1944), who died in Singapore, was brought on board. On December 10, 1944, U 843 began its long return journey from Batavia to the Atlantic, which led it first through the Indian Ocean, then through the South Atlantic and finally the North Atlantic. This time there was no sinking or damage to enemy ships. On December 20, 1944, U 843 was supplied with fuel by U 181 .

Sinking

On April 9, 1945, U 843 was badly hit in the Kattegat near Gothenburg by a British De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito (pilot: AJ Randall) of RAF Squadron 235 with eight hits with rockets and machine guns. Shortly afterwards there was an explosion in the submarine, which could have been caused by a battery or a sea ​​mine that exploded after the ingress of seawater . The boat sank quickly and a total of 44 submariners were killed. 13 men - among them Commander Oskar Herwartz - managed to jump into the water in time, where they were rescued by a German warship shortly afterwards and taken to Kiel. The ship tried in vain to use sound signals to make contact with the submarine, which was about 40 m deep, but the crew was obviously dead. Within one day three German submarines - U 804 , U 843 and U 1065  - were in the northern Kattegat was destroyed, with a total of 144 submarine drivers died, namely in two submarines the entire crew without survivors, while of the Allied aircraft only one Mosquito was lost.

Because of its precious cargo, the submarine was lifted on August 22, 1958 by a Norwegian salvage company with the help of a German salvage company and the former commander. The bodies of the sailors found in the boat were buried in a cemetery in Gothenburg. The wreck was scrapped in 1958/1959.

Commander Herwartz

Oskar Herwartz (1915–2002) joined the Reichsmarine as an officer candidate in 1935 and was therefore part of the 35 crew. After completing basic and on-board training and the ensign training courses, he passed the chief officer examination. He was then assigned to the air force - maritime reconnaissance group.

In 1942 he switched to the submarine weapon, completed the building instruction for U 843 and became the commander of this boat. After the sinking, Herwartz was rescued together with the tower crew and brought to Kiel. He survived the war.

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. 99.
  • 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 978-3-8132-0512-1 , pp. 107, 211.
  • 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 978-3-8132-0513-8 , p. 301.
  • 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 978-3-8132-0514-5 , pp. 173, 336.
  • 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 3-4531-6059-2 , pp. 622, 627, 630.
  • Poul Grooss: The Naval War in the Baltic 1939-1945. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley (GB) 2017, ISBN 1-5267-0003-4 , p. 331.
  • Egbert Thomer: Under Nippon's sun. Based on notes and reports from Frigate Captain Oskar Herwartz . Minden 1959, without ISBN, p. 248.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. UFA newsreel 110/1958 - films of the Federal Archives. Retrieved April 9, 2019 (German).
  2. ^ British Pathé: U-Boat Refloated: Salvage of a Nazi Submarine (1958) | British Pathé. April 13, 2014, accessed April 9, 2019 .
  3. Egbert Thomer: Under Nippon's sun. Based on notes and reports from Frigate Captain Oskar Herwartz . Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden in Westphalia 1959.