Walther Schwieger

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Walther Schwieger with the Pour le Mérite (1917)
Group photo of Walther Schwieger's torpedo teaching division (bottom right), 1906

Walther Schwieger (born April 7, 1885 in Berlin , † September 5, 1917 in the North Sea ) was a German naval officer . During the First World War he commanded the submarines U 14 , U 20 and U 88 .

Military career

Walther Schwieger came from a respected family in Berlin. In 1903 he joined the Imperial Navy as a midshipman . In 1904 he was promoted to ensign in the sea and in 1906 to lieutenant in the sea . From 1911 he served in the U-Bootwaffe . In 1912 he took command of U 14 . After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he was promoted to lieutenant captain. On December 16 of the same year he was given command of U 20 .

During its seventh voyage on May 7, 1915, Schwieger sank the British passenger steamer RMS Lusitania of the Cunard Line , killing 1,198 people. He sighted the luxury liner steaming eastwards at 1:20 p.m. south of Cape Old Head of Kinsale on the southern Irish coast and observed its course through the periscope. At 2.10 p.m. he gave the order to fire to his watch and torpedo officer Raimund Weisbach without warning the ship beforehand. The large passenger ship sank within eighteen minutes, only 761 survivors were rescued.

The accusation was raised that Schwieger acted contrary to international law . Accordingly, he would not only have attacked a defenseless passenger ship, but also shot a second torpedo on the sinking ship. Immediately after the first torpedo hit, another explosion shook the ship, but it was possibly caused by ammunition, coal, aluminum dust or the like. was triggered. However, according to his war diary and a radio message from his submarine decoded by the British, Schwieger had only shot one torpedo. The Lusitania reportedly did not fly a flag and had a large load of ammunition on board.

Historians have also speculated whether the United States used the sinking of the Lusitania to join Great Britain in the First World War.

Because of this act, Schwieger was immediately placed on the Allied list of war criminals and a corresponding bounty was placed on him.

On September 4, 1915, Schwieger sank the Canadian passenger steamer RMS Hesperian of the Allan Line off the Irish coast without warning, killing 32 passengers. On November 4, 1916, U 20 ran aground five nautical miles north of Bovbjerg on its way home from its 29th mission as a result of a current transfer and thick fog . All rescue attempts failed. The boat was blown up the next day. Schwieger had sunk a total of 36 ships with 144,300 GRT on 21 trips  with U 20 .

Hereditary funeral of the Schwieger family in Berlin-Kreuzberg with a memorial inscription for Walther Schwieger

On April 7, 1917, Schwieger put the new U 88 into service. On September 5, 1917, this boat set out on its third and final voyage to wage a trade war in the Bay of Biscay . U 54 (Kapitänleutnant Heeseler) ran ahead. Both boats used the yellow exit route (route through the German minefields). In the late evening they got into a British minefield at the exit, north of the island of Terschelling . When attempting to pass under this submerged, U 54 touched the anchor rope of a mine , but drove clear. Shortly afterwards, two mine detonations were heard astern. U 88 has not contacted me since then . It fell victim to the British mine lock No. 56, which had only recently been laid out.

From August 1914 to September 1917 Walther Schwieger sank a total of 49 ships with 183,883 GRT with three submarines on 34 missions. He is sixth in the list of submarine commanders with the most sunkings during World War I.

The boat U 139 was also named U-Kreuzer Kapitänleutnant Schwieger after Walther Schwieger . Walther Schwieger is remembered on the tombstone of his family's hereditary burial in Cemetery III of the Jerusalem and New Church in Berlin-Kreuzberg .

Awards

literature

  • Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars. Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing before Munich 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 .
  • Diana Preston: Have been torpedoed, send help . The sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-421-05408-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bodo Herzog: German U-Boats 1906–1966. Karl Müller, Erlangen, 1993, p. 69.
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 246.
  3. ↑ a b c Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy for the year 1916 , Ed .: Marine-Kabinett, Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1916, p. 35
personal data
SURNAME In-law, Walther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 5, 1917
Place of death North Sea