U 995
|
U 995 ( previous / next - all submarines ) |
|
|---|---|
 U 995, photographed from the Laboe Naval Memorial |
|
| Type : | VII C / 41 |
| Field Post Number : | M 55 055 |
| Shipyard: | Blohm & Voss , Hamburg |
| Construction contract: | October 14, 1941 |
| Build number: | 195 |
| Keel laying: | November 25, 1942 |
| Launch: | July 22, 1943 |
| Commissioning: | September 16, 1943 |
| Commanders: |
|
| Calls: | 9 patrols |
| Sinkings: |
|
| Whereabouts: | Delivered to Great Britain , then Norwegian Navy , from 1972 museum ship in Laboe |
U 995 is a German submarine of the former Navy from Type VII C / 41 , which in World War II, was used. In September 1943 it was put into service and completed nine patrols . After the end of the war, it was owned by the Norwegian Navy as a test and training boat Kaura . It was returned to Germany in 1965 and the official handover took place on October 2, 1971. Since March 13, 1972, the submarine has been a museum ship at the foot of the Naval Memorial in Laboe . The German Navy Federation is the operator of the Technical Museum U 995 , according to which it is visited by around 350,000 people every year.
Commissioning and training of the team
|
|
|
|
Bow view, the mouth flaps of the torpedo tubes are welded shut on the museum ship.
|
Rear view
|
After being launched at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, the boat was put into service on September 16, 1943 under the command of Lieutenant Walter Köhntopp and assigned to the 5th submarine flotilla in Kiel for training. After a run-in and trial period, tactical combat training followed as part of the Front Training Group (AGRU Front). On-board training content such as role work, exercises, disruptive exercises by bringing in damage and the like were mapped, but also tactical maneuvers by shooting torpedoes at target ships or attacking a secured convoy with other boats in training. The training was carried out by experienced submarine men and the boat and crew were only fully operational after the AGRU front had passed. This section lasted until April 1944, after which the boat was sent to a submarine base in Norway. From June 1, 1944, the boat was then assigned to the 13th U-Flotilla with base Trondheim (also Drontheim according to the spelling at the time). At this point in time, the initial successes of the German submarine war were history. Due to improved tactics and technical innovations in anti-submarine defense, the Allies had gained the upper hand in the Atlantic. The "new" submarine U 995 belonged to a technically outdated construction before the arrival of the first real submarines of the type XXI and XXIII.
Leaving for Norway
U 995 left Kiel for Norway on April 25, 1944 . After stopping at Kristiansand and Flekkefjord, it entered Bergen on May 16, 1944. Already at sea on the 18th, it was surprised and shot at by a Sunderland flying boat on May 21st, 1944 . The boat was damaged in the attack and 5 men were wounded. U 995 then ran into Trondheim on May 23, 1944 and was repaired.
In the meantime moved to Narvik, the boat ran out on July 3, 1944 for the next patrol into the North Sea . While searching for an Allied convoy, the boat was discovered and attacked on July 21 by a B-24 Liberator. While the plane was firing at the boat with machine guns, the boat returned the defensive fire with its anti-aircraft weapons. After the Liberator turned off, U 995 carried out an alarm dive, followed by a depth charge of the aircraft. This only caused minor damage, but five days later a leak was discovered in the antenna bushing. Since the boat was only partially ready for diving, Narvik was called, where it entered on July 28th.
Short missions and changes of commanders
After moving to Hammerfest , the boat ran from there on August 29 for the next patrol. After laying a mine barrier in Jugorstrasse , U 995 entered Hammerfest again on September 11, 1944. On September 25th it ran out again to hunt down Allied convoys, but on October 3rd, 1944, it entered the Skjomenfjord again without success. On October 9, the previous commanding officer, Walter Köhntopp, was relieved of his command. After reports from his crew, according to which Köhntopp assumed the impossibility of a successful attack if a heavily secured convoy came into view and thus exposed himself to the charge of cowardice, a court martial could only be averted after his wife intervened with General Admiral von Friedeburg . It is unknown whether this or his health condition led to the detachment. The new commander was on October 10, 1944, the 21-year-old first lieutenant at sea in the reserve, Hans-Georg Hess.
Northern sea missions
On October 14th the boat left for the next patrol. As part of the submarine pack “Panther”, supply convoys to Murmansk in the Norway and Barents Sea were to be tracked down. On November 11th, the boat ran into Narvik without having achieved any success . There it ran out again on November 30, 1944 and sank the Soviet steamer Proletarij from convoy PK-20 north of Murmansk on December 5 . 29 men of the 56-man crew of the ship measuring 1123 GRT were killed. On December 9, U 995 entered the bow bay .
On December 11, 1944, it sunk the Reshitel'nyi motorboat by fire on board. Only 3 of the 31 crew members and passengers survived the sinking of the 20 ts boat. Five days later the fishing vessel RT-52 Som with a crew of 32 was sunk. The only survivor of the 417 GRT boat was captured by the submarine crew. The Soviet minesweeper T-883 (No. 37) was sunk on December 29, 1944 from convoy KB-37. None of the 49 men on board survived the sinking of the 633 ts large warship. On January 7, 1945 the boat entered Narvik again.
U 995 left Narvik on February 2 for the next patrol . On February 8, the boat broke into the port of Kirkenes , which was occupied by Soviet troops, and torpedoed the freighter Idefjord, which was lying there, without sinking it. Without being asked to find suitable map material on board or even knowing how to encounter enemy ships there, the company almost led to the loss of the boat. Nevertheless, the commander Hess was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross as an award for bravery for his demonstrated courage . In addition, the Soviet submarine hunter BO-224 with 105 ts was sunk on March 2nd, with 24 men surviving and 7 crew members perishing with the boat. The boat then returned to Narvik on March 6th. On March 13, 1945 it ran out for the last patrol, a week later, as part of the "Hagen" pack, the Liberty freighter Horace Bushnell from convoy JW-65 was torpedoed . With five crew members killed by the torpedo explosion on board, the 7176 GRT freighter was beached and written off as a total loss. The boat returned to Harstad on March 25th.
Then it was moved to Trondheim to be one of the last front boats to be equipped with a snorkel . This air mast made it possible to operate the diesel under water and, due to the Allied presence at sea, was considered essential for the survival of the technically inferior German submarines.
Use after the war
On May 8, 1945 U 995 was in the dock in Trondheim and was decommissioned by the crew. At the end of the war, the submarine fell to Great Britain as spoils of war, but remained in its Norwegian base because it was not ready to go again after the snorkel system was installed and was therefore not destroyed during Operation Deadlight . It was then awarded to Norway as spoils of war with the other German submarines U 926 (Type VII C) and U 1202 (Type VII C / 41) and handed over to the Norwegian Navy in 1946 .
There the boat, now in Norway as part of the K-Class, was used from 1952 under the name Kaura. For this purpose, the boat was partially rebuilt, for example pressure-resistant lifeboat containers were integrated on the forecastle (which many German submarines, but not U 995, had there in the second half of the war), the rear part of the tower was reduced in size and a platform called winter garden without flak weapons Most of the German labels have been replaced by those in Norwegian. Later, the unpopular Junkers air compressor was replaced by an electric compressor and a Swedish balcony passive sonar was installed at the bow. With the tactical Hullnumber S 309, Kaura was used to train Norwegian submarine drivers, but should have carried out combat missions from his home base in Narvik in the event of war. The defense of the local coasts and fjords was the main task of the Norwegian Navy. For this purpose, the K-Class relied on German material - until the boat was decommissioned in 1962, for example, the German torpedo supplies stored in Norway since the end of the war had still not been used up.
Finally retired in 1965, the boat was to be returned to the Federal Republic of Germany two decades after the end of the war as a sign of reconciliation. After a similar project failed in advance at Kinn ex U 1202 and the boat was scrapped, it is mainly thanks to the naval attaché and former commander of U 711 Hans-Günther Lange that the boat was bought by a German for the symbolic amount Mark was given to Germany. After initially nobody could be found who could finance the condition of the conversion into a museum and the maintenance, the German Marinebund eV took over the boat. In the Kiel Naval Arsenal, the boat was prepared for museum use: lines, pipes and cables that were no longer needed were removed, rods and flanges were sealed, and missing devices were reinstalled in the boat or Germanized by replacing the labeling. Up until 1971, however, some of the systems could not be obtained either as an original or as a model; most of them are still missing in the boat today. Other devices have been replaced in makeshift, so an optically converted 4-cm is Bofors Flak not fitted instead to be procured 3.7 cm Flak M42U on the lower winter garden and a periscope of the type XXIII was installed instead of the air periscope. The snorkel head also no longer has the ring float valve that can be seen on photos from 1945, the exhaust pipe on the upper deck in front of the tower is completely missing. Due to corrosion, some areas of the hull were renewed, but the naval arsenal was not based on the original flood slot pattern, but replaced it with another pattern.
The floating cranes Magnus II and Magnus V beached the boat from the naval arsenal through the Kiel Fjord and through a specially dredged fairway in front of the Naval Memorial in Laboe on March 13, 1972. Due to the number of visitors of 400,000 visitors annually at peak times, the German Navy Federation was able to quickly recoup the costs incurred for renovation and installation.
However, due to the free installation without special protection from the weather, corrosion damage gradually developed on the boat, which at the end of the 1980s led to an increasing deterioration of the bow and the tower. Parts of the plating on the hull also rusted through. When the bow threatened to snap in 1990, a new bow was quickly welded on, but it has only a few details. In addition to the flood slots, the mouth flaps are now represented by simple welded metal sheets. Many parts were also exchanged on the tower, so that a number of details were lost. In addition, the interior of the boat within the pressure hull was repainted, which, however, does not seem very successful.
From 2014 onwards, extensive conservation work was carried out in the tower and upper deck area, but this was done in accordance with the preservation of the original structure. Further work on the fuselage and within the pressure hull is planned for the next few years (as of the end of 2019) in order to preserve the substance of the U 995 technical museum for the next decades.
In addition, the "Marinekameradschaft Freundeskreis U 995" was founded on September 28, 2019 within the German Navy Federation, which wants to actively support the preservation, maintenance and restoration of the museum. The plans for the next few years are to replicate the details of the bow and other parts of the hull and tower, to procure missing or stolen parts of the interior and to run a “living museum” on special occasions.
Views
E-engine room, behind it the diesel room
Control station of the electric machines
Diesel room
Pressure bulkhead, behind it the headquarters
View from the headquarters into the tower
Central, behind the bow room
Bow room with the four torpedo tubes
Flak 4 × 2 cm and 1 × 3.7 cm
Rear view of U 995
Tower of U 995
Technical specifications
Main dimensions
Length: 67.2 m
Width: 6.2 m
Draft: 4.8 m
Height: 9.6 m
Pressure hull
(diameter): 4.7 m Pressure hull thickness
: 20.5 mm
Immersion depth (constructed / achieved): 120/240 m
Immersion time: 30 sec.
Displacement above water: 759 m³
Displacement under water: 1070 m³
Crew: 4 officers, 4 top boatmen, 10 NCOs, 27–34 ranks
Armament
Torpedo tubes (bow / stern): 4/1
torpedoes: 12 (or 26–39 mines)
1 × 3.7 cm anti-aircraft gun
2 × 2.0 cm twin anti-aircraft gun
drive
2 × GW 6-cylinder diesel engines with 1400 HP each
2 × BBC electric motors with 375 HP each
Top speed (surfaced / submerged): 17 knots (kn) / 7.6 kn (1 knot = 1.852 km / h)
Travel distance (surfaced / submerged): 10,000 nautical miles (nm) at 7 kn / 130 nm at 2 kn
Fuel oil supply: 113 , 5 t
See also
literature
- Hans Georg Hess: The men from U 995. Conversations with former crew members of the Laboe boat. Stalling, Oldenburg 1979, ISBN 3-7979-1507-1 .
- Eckard Wetzel: U 995. The submarine in front of the naval memorial in Laboe. Paschke, Kiel 1985, ISBN 3-924625-06-9 (numerous editions).
- Eckard Wetzel: Submarines in front of Murmansk. Berlin, 2008. ISBN 978-3-548-26810-1 (numerous editions)
- Schröder, Paul-Patrick: Photos with history: U-995 - then and now. In: U-Boot im Focus No. 16. Bad Zwischenahn, 2018. ISBN 978-3-941437-37-1 .
Web links
- U-995.com - Unofficial site about the boat in Laboe
- U 995 documentary - page for documentation on U 995
- Navy Federation - Website of the German Navy Federation on U 995
- https://uboat.net/boats/u995.htm
- https://www.facebook.com/Freundeskreis-U995-833633730175464/
Individual evidence
- ↑ deutscher-marinebund.de: U 995 and its history. Retrieved on June 2, 2011. ( Memento of May 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ War Patrols by German U-boat U-995 - Boats - uboat.net. Retrieved December 28, 2019 .
- ↑ Schröder, Paul-Patrick: Photos with a story: U-995 - then and now . In: Axel Urbanke (Ed.): U-Boot in Focus . No 16. Luftfahrtverlag-Start, Bad Zwischenahn 2018, ISBN 978-3-941437-37-1 .
- ^ Deutscher Marinebund eV / Schröder, Paul-Patrick: Archive documents on the use of the technical museum U 995 since 1970 . tape 3 to 5. Laboe.
- ↑ Circle of Friends U995. Retrieved December 28, 2019 .
Coordinates: 54 ° 24 ′ 45 ″ N , 10 ° 13 ′ 44 ″ E