Hi James That U-55 is mentioned in a convoy attack during November 1939 in the BdU KTB provided by uboatarchive.net is clearly a typo. This U-boat was commissioned on 21 November 1939 and made her first and only patrol in January 1940, the U-boat mentioned in the BdU KTB was U-53.
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Hi James Welcome to the uboat.net forum The source for this information is the KTB of the BdU and that of the U-boat itself. It is difficult to bring such events in relation with certainty if the escorts of a convoy were unaware of the presence of a U-boat, so no details about torpedo or depth charge attacks are available for comparison of the German and Allied accounts. Other resear
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Hi James U-53 made contact with a convoy of 18 to 20 merchants, escorted by 5 destroyers west of Lisbon at 09.55 hours on 17 November 1939. When the U-boat approached for a submerged attack, the commander lost situation awareness and this almost led to a collision with one of the steamers while on periscope depth. Another unsuccessful attack with a spread of three torpedoes was carried out wes
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Hi Paul Wolfgang Dähne survived the sinking of U-960 and later became commander of U-349:
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Hallo Walter Thanks for the definitive confirmation that this change of command of U-3010 happened earlier than thought. We have updated our page about this U-boat accordingly.
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U-367 reported the last time at 17h50 on 15 March 1945 while returning to Hela from the front-line training grounds, but failed to arrive. The route it took was "Weg 76" that had been mined by the Soviet submarine L-21 on 13 March, this was not yet known to the Germans and U-367 struck one of these mines. This was confirmed when its wreck was discovered a few years ago less than 3 nm fr
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Hallo Thorsten Sorry for not getting back to you earlier. I did some additional research about this air attack on U-457, was able to identify its attacker and updated our page about this U-boat accordingly.
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Hi Patty The wreck visible on Google Earth is most likely the British steam merchant AYMESTRY, built in May 1891 of 3049 gross register tons and a length of 314 feet, which stranded off Ilé Dépose during a cyclone on 27 February 1898. This is apparently a photo of this wreck:
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Hi Julian I assume that you are researching the loss of Wellington Mk.XI HZ526 of 26 Squadron SAAF, which failed to return to Takoradi from an anti-submarine patrol on 18 December 1943. It was presumed at that time that it had been shot down by a U-boat, but this can not be confirmed from German reports. The only one operating in the area was U-515 which safely returned to Lorient on 14 Januar
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From mid 1942 to mid 1943 the Italian submarines from Bordeaux were sent to the Central or South Atlantic, to operate off Freetown, Brazil or South Africa, because they had a longer range than most German U-boat types but were also less suited for convoy operations.
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30 Italian submarines went on patrols in the Atlantic Ocean operating from Bordeaux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BETASOM).
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U-367 was posted missing effective 15 March 1945 when it failed to return to port as announced in its last radio message. The losses of U-133 and U-3520 were witnessed and there were survivors from U-171, U-526, U-803, U-854, U-1273, U-2323, U-2342 and U-3519, so these U-boats were not reported missing.
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U-745 was posted missing effective 4 February 1945 and U-1020 missing effective 3 January 1945 according to Niestlé. Unfortunately the records of the last few months of the war are incomplete so the dates of the other boats you mentioned are not known.
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Hi Mark It seems the passenger lists I have are complete as they list a total of 1104 people who boarded the ATHENIA in Glasgow, Belfast or Liverpool. Looking through them I discovered the writer of the letter to the aunt of Janice. Her name is Ila Vincent, a US citizen and teacher from Ohio. She boarded ATHENIA in Glasgow on 1 September 1939 on her 41st birthday. After being rescued she we
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Hi Mark You are right. I have copies of the passenger lists from BT27 for the last voyage of ATHENIA and will take a further look. If time permits I will compile them for publication in our database. Have you found any lists of survivors during your research for "Neutral Shores"?
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Hi Janice The writer could be Ina Duncan, a nurse from Musselburgh and born in 1909, who boarded ATHENIA at Glasgow.
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Hi Adam Do you have additional information, like aircraft type, time of the attack or number of bombs dropped? The Luftwaffe grid "5216/27 Ost" is approx. 71°52'30N/25°25E, about 45 nautical miles north of the North Cape. I'm only aware of the British submarine HMS TRIDENT and the Soviet submarine K-2 that were on patrol off Northern Norway on that day, but it is unli
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Hi John The attack made by Catalina 333/C during the night of 17/18 May 1944 was already discussed in our forum: This took place too far from the area where U-240 was supposed to be and is now believed to have been made against U-241 which was sunk shortly thereafter by the Catalina 210/S.
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Hi John According to the report of USS PC-566 the ROBERT E. LEE was torpedoed at 1637R (GMT-5h) on 30 July 1942. The U-boats used CEST (GMT+2h) so the time difference is +7h = 2337 CEST on 30 July.
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U-843 was raised in August 1958 and scrapped in Sweden. Kptlt Oskar Herwartz was present when the U-boat was refloated.
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Hi Platon USS RACINE evaluated the contact as doubtful. No U-boats are known to have operated in this area in February/March 1945, so this contact was probably bogus.
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Hi Platon According to the ESF war diary there were 27 reported contacts of sightings within the Frontier during February 1945. Only two, however, were evaluated as probable, one made by USS TRIPPE in the Gulf of Maine was one of them: USS TRIPPE carried out an independent A/S patrol in the Gulf of Maine when she obtained a definite submarine contact in 43°21'40N, 70°03'W (approx.
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Hi Platon A possible candidate could be U-869 which was sunk off New Jersey on 11 February 1945.
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TRICULA dispersed from convoy E-6 (I updated our page about this ship today) CRISTALES was in ON(S)-92 and DARTFORD was in ON(S)-100. According to Tennent the TWEED was dispersed from OG-57, but her master reported that his ship had been dispersed from OG-55. However, he also stated that they left Liverpool on 11 March 1941 and the convoy was dispersed on 15 March. The sailing/dispersed dat
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I found some more details about the incidents here: According to this source Ofw Sost was the pilot of Do24T-2 CM+IQ WNr 0051 of Seenotstaffel 7 that rescued Lt. Heinrich Hesse who had been shot down by the South African fighter pilot Lt Van der Spuy on 14 June. The other flying boat was apparently Do24T-2 CH+EW WNr 0031, probably also from Seenotstaffel 7.
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Hi Adam The info about the cruiser sunk in June 1942 certainly refers to the sinking of HMS HERMIONE by U-205, but it were two other U-boats that rescued a total of 16 German airmen during the night of 15/16 June 1942. U-83 discovered a disabled Do24 north of Tobruk, went alongside to take off the crew and then scuttled the flying boat with gunfire. Rescued were Ofw Sost, Ofw Jänsen, Uffz F
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Hi Derek The PoW records of Felix Ewald are available at NARA:
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U-103 fired three single torpedoes at EMPIRE JAGUAR: the first at 01h32 and the third at 01h49 struck the ship, while the second at 01h35 missed.
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GOODWIN was a steam merchant of 1928 tons completed in May 1917 by Caledon Shipbuilding & Engineering Co Ltd, Dundee for Clyde Shipping Co Ltd, Glasgow. Upon completion requisitioned by the Admiralty and used as Q-ship armed with three 4in guns under the names BALLANTRAE, MODERLEY and UNDERWING. In May 1919 returned to owners, but requisitioned again in September 1939 and used as armed boardi
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Hi John I already researched this case. Rohwer listed THISTLEGARTH as being part of convoy OB-227 and Tennent in OB-228. In fact, she sailed unescorted from Scapa Flow on 13 October 1940 in order to join OA-228 which had left Methil the day before. However, it seems the ship failed to meet the convoy and proceeded to her destination alone. I've updated our page about THISTLEGARTH accor
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