John,

Thanks for the info.

I don't have all my records at hand, but after Schweichel was promoted off U-126 as 1WO I believe he went to commander's school, then took "command" of U-105 for a month to oversee her extensive repairs, with the idea of commanding her on patrol when complete. U-173, which wasn't in great shape either was finished with repairs first, and since Beuke was removed from command of U-173 due to primarily a lack of aggressiveness (although the death of his brothers may have been a contributing factor) it makes perfect sense to me that they would take the next available commander (Schweichel) and pair him up with the next available U-boat (U-173). I'm good up to this point.

What I don't understand is the fairly unprecedented urgency of switching commands from U-105 to U-173 and sailing off on patrol the next day with no orientation with his new crew and officers. Definitely not the preferred or standard way of doing this, especially in October of '42. Later in the war under more desperate circumstances I could see it.

At first I thought this might be a knee-jerk reaction by BdU to respond to the allied invasion of North Africa since that's where U-173 ended up. But when I received the KTB microfilm, it indicated that U-173 was originally scheduled for another Caribbean patrol. They were off the Azores before they were notified of the invasion and directed to U-turn and head for Morocco with all speed to join Group Schlagetot.

Now perhaps the decision to remove Beuke was a last minute one, and if U-173 was all trimmed out and ready to depart it would have been a major monkey wrench if she didn't leave the "station" on time.

The trouble is there doesn't appear to be any documentation on why all this happened so quick, and it was so unusual that there should have been all kinds of documentation on it that was tied to U-173. Nothing in the Microfilms except the KTB for U-173's first patrol, the nasty-gram on Beuke, and U-173's re-constructed KTB from her second and final patrol. It could be that whatever happened is in Beuke's and Schweichel's personnel files that I will probably never be able to gain access to.

Not the end of the world, it's just an annoying itch I can't scratch.

Thanks for trying though!

Eric