Elster company
The Elster company was a German espionage mission designed to gather information about US military and technological facilities during the Second World War .
Process of the company
The mission began in September 1944 with two German agents who were brought on board the U 1230 first from Kiel to Norway and from there to North America. On the crossing, U 1230 had considerable difficulties using the so-called snorkel - a device that was supposed to ensure the supply of fresh air and the extraction of diesel gases during underwater travel and thus enable longer diving times. The tip of the snorkel was repeatedly submerged for long periods of time during the voyage, which created considerable negative pressure inside the boat, which was so strong that tin cans in the storage room burst and parts of the crew lost consciousness.
Landing in Maine
51 days after leaving Norway, U 1230 reached the North American coast at Cape Cod and then drove to Frenchman's Bay in the Gulf of Maine , where the agents were to be landed at Hancock's Point. On November 29, 1944, the two agents were brought ashore in a rubber dinghy in the US state of Maine . Captain Hans Hilbig, commander of U 1230 , then patrolled the Gulf of Maine for a few days. On December 3rd, he sank a Canadian ship, the Damper Cornwallis . This sinking revealed the presence of a German submarine off the North American coast, whereupon an anti-submarine warfare group of the US Navy under the leadership of escort carrier Bogue searched the sea area. Hilbig initially drove north with U 1230 and escaped the ASW group. U 1230 arrived in Flensburg at the end of January . The participation in the Elster company and the trip with U 1230 was Hilbig's only war mission.
On the way to the operational area
The agents had initially tried to reach a street on foot. They were William Colepaugh , a US citizen who defected to Germany, and Erich Gimpel , an experienced German secret service agent. Both agents wore unusually casual clothes for the time of year - the snow was deep - and on the way to a train station they caught the eye of the son of a Hancock deputy sheriff who was driving back from a dance. He told his father about the nightly observation the next day and later reported it to the FBI. Colepaugh and Gimpel were able to escape the immediately launched manhunt and reached New York City by train. In addition to 99 small diamonds, the men had US $ 60,000 in cash with them, which they initially spent on new clothes and renting an apartment. They both then spent almost a month living in New York. During this time, they spent a large amount of the money they received for conducting the intelligence operation on entertainment and personal luxuries.
End of the enterprise
Colepaugh quickly lost his interest in espionage, initially confiding in a childhood friend and finally surrendering to the FBI on December 26th . In the hope of avoiding the death penalty for high treason, he also betrayed his partner Gimpel. As a result, the mission effectively failed at the end of December 1944. In February 1945 the two agents were sentenced to death by a military court for espionage. After the war ended, her sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by President Harry S. Truman . Gimpel was paroled in 1955. Colepaugh was paroled in 1960.
Aftermath
In the course of the interrogation of Gimpel and Colepaugh, the American investigative authorities got the impression that the German side had meanwhile made good progress in the development of a carrier submarine that was able to fire missiles. There was even a growing fear that an attack by a fleet of these boats was imminent. As a result of these misjudgments, plans were initiated to counter this danger and tactics were developed and practiced with considerable use of manpower and ships to track down and fight the feared "missile submarines". The historian Clay Blair sees these misused resources as the only visible success of the Elster company .
classification
The Elster company was, alongside the Pastorius company, one of only two operations in which the Germans landed agents on American coasts with the help of submarines during the war. Despite a number of allegations and speculations that the mission was supposed to sabotage the Manhattan Project , there is no clear supporting evidence to support this in the official investigation files.
Artistic processing
Gimpel's story was filmed in 1956 under the title " Spy for Germany ". Gimpel was played by Martin Held , Colepaugh ("Billy Cole") played Walter Giller .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. Heyne, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , page 753
- ↑ 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 321
literature
- Christopher Vasey: Nazi Intelligence Operations in Non-Occupied Territories. Espionage Efforts in the United States, Britain, South America and Southern Africa. McFarland. McFarland & Company, Jefferson 2016, ISBN 978-1-4766-2458-7 , pp. 85 ff.