Company Lapwing

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The company lapwing was an unsuccessful German operation of the German Navy during the Second World War . The aim of the company was to recruit four experienced German submarine officers, namely Otto Kretschmer , the commander of U 93 , Horst Elfe, and the commander of U 433 , Hans Ey, as well as Hans-Joachim von Knebel-Döberitz , the former adjutant by Karl Dönitz and First Officer under Otto Kretschmer on U 99 , after an escape from the Canadian POW camp in Bowmanville , in the province of Ontario in Canada , to be brought back to the German Reich with the help of a submarine .

prehistory

On March 17, 1941, the submarine commander Otto Kretschmer had to give up his successful boat U 99 after a battle with the British destroyer HMS Walker and was taken prisoner by the British. First he was interned with other German officers in northern England. In 1942 he was transferred to Bowmanville , Canada . The prisoners of war there managed to build and operate a transmitter that was able to guarantee the connection with home. In this way, an escape plan was agreed upon, which included that the prisoners should escape through an escape tunnel and make their way to Pointe de Maisonnette in New Brunswick in September 1942 . There they should be picked up by a German submarine. U 669 was designed for this task . The boat left St. Nazaire on August 29, 1943 in strictest secrecy and crossed the Bay of Biscay with a course for Canada. A week later it was sunk by a bombing raid.

Failure of the company

After the sinking of U 669 on September 7th, U 536 was included in the Kiebitz company . The boat sailed from Lorient on August 29 under the command of Rolf Schauenburg and was supposed to be patrolling the North American east coast. At the command of the submarine command, Schauenburg opened the corresponding envelope, the contents of which the Kiebitz company explained to him. On September 24, U 536 took up position at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River .

The Canadian Military Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) intercepted messages from the prisoners and planned a counter-operation. The encrypted messages from the prisoners were deciphered and aid items sent from home, such as maps, were confiscated.

The counter-operation by the Royal Canadian Navy against U 536 , known as "Operation Pointe Maisonnette" - named after the planned meeting point Pointe de Maisonnette - led to the German plan being thwarted. U 536 was able to escape the submarine hunters led by HMCS Rimouski . But this represented a turning point for the Germans in the battle of the Saint Lawrence River .

literature

  • Nathan M. Greenfield: The battle of the St. Lawrence: The Second World War in Canada . HarperCollins, Toronto 2004, p. 286. ISBN 978-0002006644 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Michael L. Hadley: U-Boats Against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters . McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1990, ISBN 978-0-7735-0801-9 , pp. 175 ( google.de [accessed October 20, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Michael L. Hadley: U-Boats Against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1990, ISBN 0-773-5080-15 , p. 169.
  3. ^ T. Robertson: The wolf in the Atlantic. 5th edition. 1969, p. 336 ff.
  4. ↑ a b C. Blair: The Submarine War. Volume 2: The Hunted, 1942–1945. 1999, p. 485.
  5. ↑ Michael L. Hadley: U-Boats Against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters . McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1990, ISBN 978-0-7735-0801-9 , pp. 177 ( google.de [accessed October 20, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Operation LAPWING, Musée Maritime du Québec ( Memento of 8 January 2008 at the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Michael L. Hadley: U-Boats Against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters . McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1990, ISBN 978-0-7735-0801-9 , pp. 180 ( google.de [accessed on October 20, 2018]).