U 866
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U 866 ( previous / next - all submarines ) |
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|---|---|
| Type : | IX C / 40 |
| Field Post Number : | 54 899 |
| Shipyard: | Deschimag AG Weser , Bremen |
| Construction contract: | August 25, 1941 |
| Build number: | 1074 |
| Keel laying: | January 23, 1943 |
| Launch: | July 29, 1943 |
| Commissioning: | November 17, 1943 |
| Commanders: |
Walter Pommerehne |
| Flotilla: |
|
| Calls: | A company |
| Sinkings: |
no |
| Whereabouts: | Sunk by depth charges off Nova Scotia on March 18, 1945 |
U 866 was a submarine of type IX C / 40 , which the Navy during the Second World War in the North Atlantic was used.
Technical specifications
As early as 1934, Deschimag AG Weser was involved in building up the German submarine fleet , partly by circumventing the provisions of the Versailles Treaty . During the war, the shipyard specialized in the construction of boats of the larger type IX. By the end of the war, 113 of these boats had been delivered to the Navy. The Type IX C / 40 designed for overseas use was a two-hulled boat that was 76 m long and 6.84 m in diameter. It reached a speed of 18.3 knots when sailing above water and drove a maximum of 7.5 knots under water. U 866 was put into service on November 17th by Lieutenant Walter Pommerehne.
From autumn 1944 the boat was equipped with the new short-signal procedure courier .
Commitment and history
Until July 1944, U 866 was subordinate to the 4th U-Flotilla , a training flotilla stationed in Stettin . During this time, Commander Pommerehne, with the rank of Korvettenkapitän since 1943, undertook training trips in the Baltic Sea to bring the boat in and train the crew. In December 1944 Oberleutnant zur See Peter Rogowsky took over command of U 866 after three months as a student commander , which at that time was again in Stettin and left for Kiel in early 1945 .
On January 21, 1945, the boat left Kiel for its first venture. This initially took the boat to Horten in Norway, where it arrived on January 23. From there, U 866 drove to two other Norwegian naval bases before setting off on February 6 from Bergen as part of the Paukenschlag company for the area of operation on the North American Atlantic coast.
The boat belonged to a group of three IX / C boats ( U 857 , U 879 ), which were to be used in a coordinated manner in the operational area and all of them left Norway between February 6 and 11. They were instructed to deliver daily weather reports, which enabled the British radio reconnaissance to trace the group's path. The Royal Navy passed these findings on to the US Navy, which put together a submarine hunting group of six escort ships to intercept the three German submarines.
On March 10, Commander Rogowsky attacked two ships with LUT torpedoes in the sea area off Boston and reported detonations. However, no sinking or damage could be confirmed.
Sinking
U 866 was on March 18, 1945 southeast of the Canadian port city of Halifax American US by the escorts USS Lowe , USS Menges , USS Pride and USS Mosley with depth charges sunk. All 55 men of the crew were killed.
literature
- 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. 149, 211. ISBN 3-8132-0512-6 .
Notes and individual references
- ↑ Bodo Herzog: German U-Boats 1906–1966 , Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1996, ISBN 3-86070-036-7 . Page 199
- ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. Heyne, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 . Page 794
- ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat 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 . Page 303
- ↑ Axel Niestlé: German U-Boat Losses during World War II. Details of Destruction , Frontline Books, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-84832-210-3 , page 131