Company Caesar

Northern sea

Part of: Submarine War ( World War II )

The Arkhangelsk was the only target of the K units in the North Sea

date	August 1944 to May 1945
place	Northern sea
output	Termination of the company

Parties to the conflict
German Empire	Soviet Union
Commander
Albrecht Brandi
losses
no	no

The company Caesar was the code name of a commando operation of the small combat units of the Kriegsmarine during the Second World War from January 5th to 8th 1945. Their goal was the sinking of the Soviet battleship Arkhangelsk in the Kola Bay off Murmansk . However, the mission failed due to technical inadequacies of the small submarines of the Biber type used .

Process of the company

At the end of December 1944, the German secret service reported that a Soviet battleship, possibly not operational, was guarding the Kola Bay and the strategically located port of Murmansk as a floating fortress. The battleship turned out to be the former British battleship HMS Royal Sovereign , now under the Soviet flag and named Arkhangelsk . Two attempts to sink the ship using conventional submarines failed because the torpedo network was blocked. Chance came to the aid of the Germans when U 995 took two Soviet soldiers on board on December 24, 1944, who were the only ones who had survived the sinking of their ships. The torpedoed ships were a Soviet fishing cutter and a trawler. During their interrogation, the prisoners disclosed important details about the defenses, the network blocking and the Archangelsk's U-defense patrol . Frigate captain Reinhard Suhren , leader of the submarines in the North Sea , suggested the naval war command (SKL) to use K-formations. The SKL agreed to his request. On January 1, 1945, Dönitz and Rear Admiral Gerhard Wagner informed Hitler in his Führer headquarters Adlerhorst about the planned use of six beavers against the Soviet battleship. Hitler also agreed.

The beavers for the "Operation Caesar" were provided by the K-Flotilla 265. Other sources mention the K-Flotilla 264 here. In order to be able to bring it into the Kola Bay, the U-boats U 295 , U 716 and U 719 , all belonging to the 13th U-Flotilla ( Narvik ), were converted into carrier boats so that each of them could carry two beavers on the upper deck. However, instead of U 719 , other sources name U 318 . or U 739 . This transport variant had not yet been tested under combat conditions. The first attempts were successful, but it turned out that the very sensitive beavers could be damaged by the vibrations of the diesel engine. The damage recorded ranged from cracks in the fuselage to breaks in various supply lines. Nevertheless, it was decided to attack on the night of January 8, 1945. On January 5, 1945 the carrier boats left Harstad (Black Watch). During the three-day surface march, which brought the submarines up to 65 nautical miles to their destination, numerous defects were found on the beavers , which, as expected, were caused by the engine vibrations of the carrier submarines. In addition, there was other damage that had occurred to the hulls of the small submarines due to the heavy swell. The closer the submarines approached their destination, the more serious the reported beaver damage became, so that the three submarine commanders Günter Wieboldt (U 295), Friedrich-August Gréus (U 716) and Klaus-Dietrich Steffens (U 719) Suhren advised to abort the operation, which they agreed. A little later, the carrier submarines ran back into Harstad. A similar mission was to be repeated with the improved beaver variant Biber II in autumn 1945. This did not happen because of the end of the war.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans Georg Hess: Die Männer von U 995 , self-published 1999, ISBN 3-7979-1507-1 , p. 16.
2. ↑ Lawrence Paterson: Weapons of Despair. German combat swimmers and micro-submarines in World War II. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-548-26887-3 , p. 239 f.
3. ↑ Cajus Bekker: Battle and sinking of the navy. Sponholtz Verlag, Hannover 1953, p. 168.
4. ↑ Cajus Bekker: ... and yet loved life. 8th edition. Adolf Sponholtz Verlag, Hannover 1980, ISBN 3-453-00009-9 , p. 136.
5. ↑ Helmut Blocksdorf: The command of small combat units of the navy. The "Storm Vikings". Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-613-02330-X , p. 86.
6. ↑ Harald Fock: Naval small weapons. Manned torpedoes, small submarines, small speedboats, explosives yesterday - today - tomorrow. Nikol Verlagsvertretungen, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-930656-34-5 , p. 167.
7. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war. Volume 1: The German submarine commanders. Verlag Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg et al. 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 , pp. 315, 326, 327.
8. ↑ Lawrence Paterson: Weapons of Despair. German combat swimmers and micro-submarines in World War II. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-548-26887-3 , p. 240.

Remarks

1. ↑ Even if the beavers had been successfully detached from their carrier ships, the beaver pilots would only have found an empty Kola Bay, since the Arkhangelsk did not anchor there on January 8 and patrolled the White Sea .