According to uboat.net, ubootarchiv.de/ubootwiki and Deutsches U-Boot-Museum (I guess that means the book by Rainer Busch/Hans-Joachim Röll - "Die deutschen U-Boot-Kommandanten" has the same info?) Erich Topp became the commanding officer of U-3010 on 23/3/1945.

Does anyone know where this information came from? Because going through DEFE 3 files I found out, that Topp replaced Ebert as CO of U-3010 at least 2 weeks earlier, on 9/3/1945.

On 4/3/1945 Topp sent a message to front-line training group Hela, that he would arrive around midnight in U-367 to relieve commanding officer of U-3010 (ZTPG 349192). On 9/3/1945 a message was sent from U-3010 through front-line training group, which specifically said, that commanding officers had been exchanged and asked about possibility of installing 'SU' installation before going to firing flotilla. (ZTPG 349370 - see screencap below).



From that day on, all or almost all messages for U-3010 were addressed to Topp and those that came from the u-boat itself were signed by him, which (as far as I could see after going through ovet 356 000 messages) meant that he was definitely the CO at the time.

Reply to previous message, ZTPG 349328, was addressed to 'front-line training group for U.3010 (Topp)' – and I'd say that Dönitz had to know, who was the commander of the boat.



On 13/3/1945 U-3010 (Topp) reported, that they have four men suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning - two of them seriously – and that they request two diesel stokers from Saar. On 21/3 another 2 messages from U-3010 (Topp) (ZTPG 354376 and ZTPG 355317) – he left Hela to go to Travemünde, but wanted to stop in Rønne first to do the hydrophone listening trials. Message from U-3010 on 22/3 is also signed by him (reporting he was in square 8431 – ZTPG 354400), as are those made early morning on 23/3 and 24/3 (he got a bit testy and complained directly to BdU about u-boats being stuck in Rønne because of no escort to the west).

I know I'm no u-boat expert, but I'd still say that the date 23/3/1945 as the date, when Topp took over U-3010, is incorrect. The message on 9/3 explicitly says "commanding officers exchanged", plus the rule about signatures in radio messages, which I've seen repeated way too many times, said: "In the home w/t area the boat's number is invariably to be used as the basic signature in w/t messages. The captain's name may be inserted in parentheses after it.", so I think there's no reason to believe that Erich Topp was not in command of U-3010 between 9/3/1945 and 23/3/1945.