Hello!

I was going through some info, that U-boat archive in Cuxhaven has online, and found something I thought was quite odd. OLtn. zS Alfred Radermacher became the commander of U5 on 20.3.1943 and ended his run as the commander of that u-boat on 25.3.1943. The problem is, on 19.3.1943 U5 sank – 16 survivors, 21 dead (including the commander H. Rahn). Now, this is probably a stupid question (my apologies, but I'm no expert on u-boats like most of you), but why exactly does a u-boat that sank, need a new commander? I think this was the only case so far, where I've seen that someone's been given the command of an u-boat *after* the boat sank.

Were there plans to raise the boat and that's why Radermacher was given the command or was this more of a 'someone needs to do the paperwork' kind of a job? At the time Radermacher was the commander of his own u-boat, U120, and even though that was a school boat, I'd still say he's had his hands full already. Why would he need another boat? And, with all due respect to A. Radermacher, but wasn't it a bit unusual, that "a mere Leutnant" (at the time) got to command 2 u-boats at once (considering great majority of other commanders were Oberleutnants and Kapitänleutnants)? Was his rank of Leutnant the reason, why U5 was assigned to him – somehow I doubt, that higher ranking officers were just standing in line to be given this job. Or was the command of U5 perhaps given to him, because of his personal connection to the boat? Afterall, that was the u-boat, on which he started his career - if I'm not mistaken, he spent 5 years on U5, from August 1935 to August 1940.