What's New

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  • Modified personal info for Commander Wolfgang Boehmer 19 May 15 May 14 May 10 May 9 May 5 May 30 April 28 April 23 April 21 April 20 April 15 April

    • 22:01 - Allied Warships wartime histories page
      Just added a new page showing all our Allied Warships with full wartime histories. This is a easier way to find the warships which have been upgraded to list great info on patrols, maps and so on.


    13 April

    • 10:11 - Server upgrade on uboat.net
      I upgraded the server to more memory and faster processing (and some smaller tuning). Overall we should be faster and better. The site was down for about 25 minutes while this went through, sorry about that it was worth it :)


    25 March

    • 22:27 - U-boat found off Norway
      The wreck of German U-boat U-486, sunk in April 1945, has been found at depth of 250 meters off Bergen, Norway. The boat was found during oil pipe work by Statoil. More info on the find. The boat is about 2 km off the wreck of U-864, a boat that has caused much trouble in recent years due to its big cargo of highly toxic mercury. Also read up on U-486's commander, Oblt. Gerhard Meyer, one of the most capable U-boat commanders at the end of the war.


    19 March

    • 19:23 - Server outage
      Today the site was down for almost 5 hours due to hardware problems at my host (which hosts many other sites). Migration to a new machine/server took some time and I just got the server running again. This is the first real problem for 2 years or so - I've been very happy with the host.



    • 09:53 - U-676 and U-745 reported found in Baltic Sea
      In late 2012 a Finnish diving team 'Badewanne', after 10 years of searching, reported they had found both U-676 and U-745 in the Baltic south of the Finnish island of Hanko. Both boats went missing in early 1945 with all hands lost. The boats were apparently lost in the Finnish minefield 'Vantaa 3' laid by Finnish mine layers Louhi and Ruotsinsalmi on 12 Jan 1945.


    27 February 22 January

    • 08:32 - Major update completed

      After more than four years of work all British and Dutch T-class submarines now have detailed info added for their wartime operations. Also the Dutch O12-class and O21-class have this info added to their pages. This has resulted in over 5000 events and over 780 maps being added to the database.

      The administrator of the Allied warships section would especially like to thank Mr. Platon Alexiades from Canada for his help on completing this project. Due to his help a lot of details "from the enemy side" regarding Allied submarine attacks could be added.

      Also thanks to Mr. Gerard Horneman from The Netherlands, the staff of the English National Archives at Kew, London and the staff of the Dutch archives at The Hague, Mr. Thomas Weis from the Württembergische Landesbibliothek at Stuttgart, Germany, the contributors of the forum at Warsailors.com and finally everybody I forgot to mention.

      Work is now underway on British S-class and U-class submarines. Work on other Dutch submarines will continue as well.




    2012


    30 December

    • 10:58 - Mine operations by U-boats now properly shown
      Fixed a long-standing bug in the display of ships hit by mines laid by U-boats. The problem was that ships hit by mines after the U-boat returned to port were not shown. The ship list was always based on ships hit during the patrol of the boat. This has been fixed and the first patrol by U-15 is a great example. All 3 ships were sunk after she returned to port.


    11 December

    • 11:36 - Book review added

      Added a book review on the excellent Neutral Shores: Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic by Mark McShane.



    • Added book review for Neutral Shores

    • 10:11 - U-234 and jet fighters update
      The story on U-234's last mission to the Far East has been updated with new research on what the boat actually carried in its vast hold. The coolness has been downgraded somewhat as she carried Me 262 plans and drawings, not actual aircraft parts.


    26 November 24 November

    • 21:42 - Allied Commander updates
      Added photos to pages of 60 Allied Commanders plus other details to many more.


    22 November

    • 22:24 - Destroyed my working machine
      Yesterday I somehow managed to destroy my nice linux development machine at home. Rebuilding now :)


    1 August

    • 18:16 - U-boat Commander photos added
      To wrap this project up I have just added 116 photos of U-boat Commanders; 70 from Crew 37a and 46 officers from Crew X/39. All the photos came from Kriegsmarine Crew books and mostly feature photos from their training years. Now we have photos of 885 U-boat Commanders (63%).



    • 00:26 - U-boat Commander photos added
      Have just added 69 photos of U-boat Commanders; all were from Crew 38 (the so-called "Gangster Crew"). The photos came from Kriegsmarine Crew books and mostly feature photos from their training years. Now we have photos of 769 U-boat Commanders.


    31 July

    • 11:20 - U-boat Commander photos added
      Have just added 94 photos of U-boat Commanders; 60 from Crew 37b and 34 officers from Crew 34. All the photos came from Kriegsmarine Crew books and mostly feature photos from their training years. Now we have photos of 700 U-boat Commanders.


    30 July 29 July
    • Modified personal info for Commander Günther Stark

    • 20:58 - Commander page written
      Wrote a career bio on the 26-year old Kptlt. Klaus Hänert, the Commander of U-550 just discovered of the US coast this week.


    • Modified personal info for Commander Klaus Hänert
    28 July

    • 23:11 - U-boat found of USA
      The wreck of U-550 has been found off the US coast. See our announcement on this discovery or visit the U-550 page directly. Thanks to everyone who sent this in (I was away for the day and just saw this while, fittingly, at sea).


    18 July 13 July 10 July

    • 20:17 - Maps of U-boat losses
      Just added a map on each U-boat page showing its position of loss - if applicable. See U-157 for example.


    9 July

    • 11:47 - Allied Warships section improvements
      We added 8,656 new warships to our Allied Warships section. We now have 21,092 ships listed there. Most of these new warships were of various small motor boat types.


    20 June 27 May

    • 11:49 - Update to Maps
      Reworked the U-boat shipyards map. Now it's clickable showing the yards in each city and their production.



    • 09:06 - Improved Allied Warships section
      Changed the Allied Warship ship pages a bit. Now the loss position (if any) is shown on a nice map right away. Example of this is seen on the British battleship HMS Royal Oak which was sunk on 14 Oct 1939 by U-47 at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. Also improved the title of the page.


    1 May

    • 20:00 - Allied Warships section improved
      Rewrote and improved the page British submarines of WWII.



    • 20:06 - Captured U-boat U-B
      Updated the page for captured submarine U-B, former British submarine HMS Seal.


    22 April

    • 17:20 - Wreck at Loch Foyle - more news
      Some more news on this mystery wreck. The BBC has this article explaining things a bit more: Royal Navy divers to explore Foyle wreck. There you can see a sonar image showing something submarine shaped. The experts are considering next steps and say this could be all kinds of a ship or boat.


    20 April

    • 10:53 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
      Added 4,785 new personnel entries to our Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats section. 61,776 names listed now. This addition contains mostly casualties ships sunk during the months of April and May.



    • 09:44 - Mystery U-boat wreck found in Ireland?
      A wreck located on the river bed of Foyle near Londonderry in Northern Ireland is causing some confusion. On a photo (source) it might be a German type XXIII U-boat but those should all be accounted for. The location of the wreck is currently a secret to protect it from scavengers. Another source.


    20 February

    • 20:47 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
      Added 9,318 new personnel entries to our Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats section. 56,893 names listed now. This addition contains most of the casualties of all British and Norwegian ships sunk in the months January, February and March.


    29 January

    • 21:58 - New emblem page created
      Added 29 new emblems to our Emblem section. Almost all of them were Coat of Arms of various cities, towns or regions. I thus created a special Coat of Arms page showing all known Wappen displayed on U-boats. Some Coats of Arms are still unknown to us but we already have most of them here.


    • Modified personal info for Commander Eckehard Wolf
    • Modified personal info for Commander Eberhard Hoffmann

    • 10:08 - U-boat Commander passes away
      Former U-boat Commander ace of WWII Kvrkpt. Georg Lassen, passed away on 18 Jan at Mallorca, Spain at the age of 96. He was one of very, very few of the top aces to still be with us.


    • Modified personal info for Commander Georg Lassen

    2011


    16 December 13 November 4 November 1 November 31 October 9 October 8 October 7 September 4 September 16 August 7 August

    • 15:04 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
      We've just added 4,271 more names of people on ships hit by U-boats. Now there are 34,231 names of Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats.



    • 14:09 - Two new U-boat Commanders added
      Yes, even now history is being cleaned up and edited a bit: we just added two U-boat commanders that are never listed in commander listings. These are Oberleutnant zur See Adolf Gundlach of U-120 and Oberleutnant zur See (R) Hans Julius Hoß of U-1109. Both left their command after brief time.


    26 July
    • Modified personal info for Commander Rolf Rüggeberg

    • 09:05 - U-513 found off Brazil
      The wreck of the U-513, sunk off Sao Francisco do Sul, Brazil on 19 July 1943 has been located. The boat was located by the Schurmann family. They have a nice website, u-513.com, dealing with the discovery. The boat apparently lies in 75 meters of water. You can also see our map of the South Atlantic for its position.


    • Modified personal info for Commander Rupprecht Stock
    • Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich-Wilhelm Wissmann
    • Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich Markworth
    21 June 6 June

    • 22:55 - U-boat Commander photos added
      Just added 63 photos of German U-boat Commanders from Crew of 1936, the famous Olympiacrew. This class of naval students delivered the largest number of U-boat Commanders, 165 men. Now we have 597 photos of U-boat Commanders.


    • Modified personal info for Commander Hans-Günther Kuhlmann
    • Modified personal info for Commander Leonhard Auffhammer
    • Modified personal info for Commander Otto-Ulrich Blum
    29 May

    • 21:15 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
      We've just added 2,957 more names of people on ships hit by U-boats. Now there are 29,531 names of Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats.


    19 May

    • 11:05 - Combat strength of the U-boat force
      I've added a new page showing the timeline of the combat strength of the U-boat force during WWII. This page includes a graph showing number of U-boats at sea during the entire war. I plan to improve and add new material to this page over time.


    16 May 11 May 5 May 21 April

    • 18:23 - Improved Patrol display for the U-boats
      Made some changes to the way U-boat patrols of WWII are displayed. Now the full info patro on each patrol will also detect if the patrol had layovers (i.e. the patrol was split into several 'legs') or not. Example of this is the 5th War patrol of U-586 which had a short stop before continuing on the patrol. All events, notes etc. on the patrol pages will show all entries for the entire patrol.


    • Modified personal info for Commander Werner Czygan
    16 April 13 April 12 April 11 April

    • 00:00 - Our Feed had a problem
      I've fixed a problem in our RSS feed which caused problems in some instances. The issue was with the extended characters (Icelandic Á and á for example). This has been solved now.


    5 April 2 April 29 March

    • 23:58 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
      We've just added 418 more names of people on ships hit by U-boats. Now there are 26,427 names of Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats.


    28 March 22 March

    • 15:56 - More on the discovery of U-boat U-106
      There is a video on Youtube, in Dutch, that shows more on the discovery and the wreck. Very interesting.


    20 March 16 March

    • 12:20 - U-boat located off Netherlands
      The German WWI U-boat U 106 lost in 1917 with all hands has been located and identified off the Dutch coast according to numerous reports. Check out its page for links and sources.


    14 March 13 March

    • 13:39 - New article published
      Published another article by Mr. Derek Waller: The Fate of the U-Boats which Surrendered - Sink or Scrap?. This one deals with the discussions between the Allies immediately post war on what to do with the surrendered German U-boats.



    • 12:18 - U-boat Commander passes away
      Oblt. Walther Ehrhardt, commander of U-1016 and U-637 passed away on 3 March 2011 at the age of 91. He also commanded the Bundesmarine boat U-Hai in 1957.


    8 March

    • 18:00 - New server is now online
      After spending many weeks and loads of time the new site is finally online at a new server. This new server gives us more opportunities to improve things further and adapt to our needs. This is one of the largest overhauls we've had in almost 16 years. Technical design of the site is much improved and this should result in better performance among other things. Now, I can re-focus on the content and e-mail again :)


    12 February

    • 19:08 - Mystery submarine seen on Top Gear
      The rusting submarine marked "U24" seen in Albania in latest Top Gear on BBC was not the former German U-boat U-24, scuttled at Konstanza, Romania in 1944, but rather a Soviet Whiskey class boat decommissioned in 1991 :)


    9 February 2 February
    • Modified personal info for Commander Herbert Brünning

    • 01:39 - Kriegsmarine replica map for sale
      We can now point you to a very nice Kriegsmarine U-boat replica map that we've played with and thought you might like as well - I certainly do! :) Please note that uboat.net is only hosting the promotional page for the map and sales go directly to the third party. Check out it, it's a lovely map for only $5,90 plus shipping.


    30 January 27 January 25 January

    • 01:26 - Wreck of UC 42 found off Cork, Ireland
      The wreck of the German mine-laying U-boat UC-42 of World War One was found in late 2010. The boat was lost off the harbour of Cork, Ireland on 10 Sept 1917. See photos at rte.ie


    23 January 19 January 15 January

    • 19:40 - The Sinking of the Laconia on BBC
      The two part drama movie aired on BBC in early Jan. I was not able to watch is being in Iceland but reports on it are good. you can grab it on the BBC iPlayer if you are in the right area. This is the page on the Laconia and its sinking in the mean time.


    13 January

    • 22:07 - Crewlist for Ships attacked
      Added 4,269 new names to the Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats. 4,024 of them were US Navy personnel. Now there are over 25,000 people listed there.


    11 January 10 January
    • Modified personal info for Commander Paul Just
    9 January

    • 23:16 - New maps uploaded
      Two new and vastly improved maps have been introduced; convoy routes (example: HG convoys and individual Wolfpacks positions (example: Wolfpack Seerauber). Each shows the info we already had in much better format, the Wolfpack map is especially improved.


    7 January 6 January

    • 01:26 - New photo gallery added
      Just added a very cool gallery showing the U-861 being dived on off Ireland recently. The boat was scuttled north of Ireland during Operation Deadlight after the war.


    3 January 1 January

    2010


    31 December 30 December 29 December
    • Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich Mumm
    • Modified personal info for Commander Wolfgang Leimkühler
    • Modified personal info for Commander Heinz Bentzien

    • 00:59 - Site improvements
      Good day. I am working on various site maintenance and future-proofing elements of the site. Spent 4 days (with breaks) on a single problem over the holidays before it finally clicked and now very few problems remain. If I do this properly you should not see much change :) I hope to finish this around the start of the new year. Then regular content work resumes at full speed.


    23 December

    • 19:01 - Seasonal greetings
      Merry Christmas and may you and your family have a great holiday and a great new year!


    13 December 5 December
    • Modified personal info for Commander Peter Lohmeyer

    • 15:45 - Experimenting with twitter
      I've been experimenting with Twitter and just submitted the first tweet from uboat.net. You can follow this through http://twitter.com/uboatnet or by following @uboatnet. I will test this out some more (making sure only interesting stuff goes in there - not all our minor updates). Could be helpful to some of you.



    • 15:32 - World War One section improvements
      Just added photos of 59 additional ships hit by U-boats during WWI. Now we have photos of 630 of the more than 7000 ships hit during the war.


    4 December

    • 22:59 - World War One section improvements
      Just added photos of 65 additional ships hit by U-boats during WWI. Replaced two older WWI ship photos with better copies as well.


    1 December 30 November

    • 22:15 - Back to proper site updates
      After a brief break where I happened to turn 40 last weekend (!) I'm now back to the regular work, and then some. More book reviews are upcoming, as well as more work on the WWI section and general improvements all over the site, including various map work. Stay tuned.


    29 November 26 November 22 November

    • 11:44 - Site outage
      The site was down for about 10 hours from roughly midnight GMT on Nov 22.


    21 November

    • 13:10 - Book review published
      Just added the review of Geirr H. Haarr's fantastic book The German invasion of Norway. He splits the events in Norway in 1940 into two titles, first the invasion in April and then the resulting battles until June. This title deals with the invasion itself in great detail.


    Check out the Archive for previous months!