Hi Ron,

It’s impossible to tell from the example.

A number of U-boats had elephants in their conning tower emblems and one had a mammoth. Cap emblems depicting the same animal as their conning tower emblem did not always exactly match the conning tower emblem either. Some details in the conning tower emblem might be missing from the cap emblem. For example a boat with a whole elephant in their conning tower emblem could have just a head in its cap emblem and a boat with an elephant and some other object(s) in their conning tower emblem might just have the elephant (or just the other objects) in its cap emblem etc. Many boats that had conning tower emblems had no cap emblems at all and others had cap emblems not related to their coning tower emblems.

That said, assuming the cap emblem in your example is just an elephant head U-654 (Hans-Joachim Hesse and Ludwig Forster) looks the closest to me. I don’t have photos of either of the two men to compare to your example though.

Additionally if the emblem is actually from U-654 and not just made up by the model maker, I have no idea which of the two commanders originated the emblem. It could have been used by either or both of them.

See: [www.uboataces.com] for U-654’s conning tower emblem.

Please let us know if you ever find the answer.

Regards,

Ken Dunn