Thankfully, for the Allies! At this juncture yet another U-Boat was reported astern by reliable witnesses in “Walker.” The Captain of “U 99” called out to his men that their U-Boat was sinking.
He served on surface ships such as the ‘Köln’ and ‘Emden’ but in 1936 Kretschmer transferred to the submarine service. Author Larry Paterson joins us to discuss his new book, Otto Kretschmer: The Life of the Third Reich’s Highest Scoring U-Boat Commander. These excerpts are from that first interview and you can hear some of the hubbub in the background as we sit at his table and discuss his life and wartime experiences. Why am I fascinated with U-boats? And was this a problem throughout the entire war?, they were extremely ineffective sometimes! The same loadout as a Seehund midget submarine — and not really of much greater endurance. He therefore climbed out at once, and found the whole crew gathered together on the bridge. Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
and were waiting to trap the U-boat, U536, that had been sent to rescue them. The Type XXIII electro-boat saw service and was an effective machine, but carried only two torpedoes!
The loss of [permalink id=10537 text=”U-47″], U-99 and U-100, during March was a substantial blow against the U-Boat arm. Otto Kretschmer - The most successful Ace 6 audio tapes in which he talks about his pre-war training, his war at sea and he also shares with us some amusing points from POW camp.
By Christopher Nelson.
However, not only did Allied degaussing provide a problem for them but geographical variations in the earth’s magnetic fields rendered them inoperable — as in Norwegian waters during 1940.However, even if they had worked, the triggering of a magnetic detonator required the torpedo to pass beneath a ship’s keel at a set depth and German torpedo depth keeping was compromised by a leaking balance chamber. HMS Vanoc rammed U-100 – her commander Joachim Schepke was crushed against the periscope mast and was not one of the six survivors.U-99 was commanded by Otto Kretschmer with a long list of sinkings to his name, among them the [permalink id=8537 text=”attack on convoy SC7″] and the [permalink id=9358 text=”torpedoing of HMS Forfar”]. But there were more deadly examples of the lack of cooperation between the two services such as when two destroyers were sunk as a result of a German bomber attack. Proper air and sea coordination between better led, better equipped, and better-supplied His preference was to penetrate the convoy body itself, at night and on the surface. It was then about 0350. It was tested only So, U-boat skippers were advised to use magnetic pistols. Watch Queue Queue. The crew of “U 99” heard the destroyer passing overhead, and then came the explosions of six depth charges, thought by the Germans to have exploded beneath the U-Boat which was then at depth of 120 metres (393.7 ft.). But, I don’t want to guess at his thoughts on the matter, as it is indeed a complex area which is also, of course, very sensitive for people.
Il passe huit mois à Exeter, Angleterre où il apprend l'anglais. Part of the crew, among them Lieutenant Commander Kretschmer, was taken prisoner. The German U Boat 'ace' Otto Kretschmer, pictured in U-99 during January 1941. Göring, on the other hand, wanted tight control of everything that flew in Germany and frequently engaged in the kind of petty political maneuvering that was rife within the upper echelons of the Wehrmacht and Third Reich as a whole, often at the expense of operational necessity.Kretschmer’s U-boat was actually attacked by a floatplane from the search and attack radius given by the battleship’s reconnaissance aircraft who were guarding against British submarines. Interview about Otto Kretschmer May 31, 2018 Books , Interviews , Latest News Very pleased to have done an interview with US Naval officer Chris Nelson for the Center for International Maritime Security. I do not for one minute subscribe to the ‘all Germans were Nazis’ idea that people keep saying, as that provides purely political motivation as a driving factor. That example was a combination of faulty Luftwaffe navigation — most of their crews not properly trained in nautical navigation — and lack of communication between Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine commands as neither was made fully aware of the other’s movements in time to brief operational crews. But the Battle of the Atlantic had a long time still to run.The Nazis eventually revealed the fate of U-99 and U-100 on the 25th April:The submarines under the command of Lieutenant Commander Kretschmer and Lieutenant Schepke have not returned from patrol. The First Lieutenant connected the hand steering gear. This was the first confirmed British surface ship radar sighting of a U-boat. On the surface it was fast, well-armed, maneuverable and hard to see as he would sail with the hull trimmed as low as feasible providing very little silhouette.
But everything, including the fuel tanks, had been smashed. I’ve been diving since I was a teenager, and I became an instructor, eventually running my own little operation in Brittany, France, which is littered with Kriegsmarine wrecks. Rather than create a completely new design, modifications to the existing frames were made so that by 1943 the boats were virtually obsolete. Enter Donation Amount
You write that on one deployment, the Luftwaffe attacks Kretschmer’s boat. Then in the early hours of the morning HMS Vanoc spotted U-100 on her recently installed Type 286M radar. The German Captain’s intention was to try and get away on the surface but the Quartermaster reported that the steering gear was out of action; the electric motors were also out of action.
U-99 had used up all her torpedoes and was about to leave for her home port, creeping away on the surface. The Nazi’s U-Boat Ace. Things like the snorkel helped briefly but were never going to swing the tide of war, much as the German attack that became the Battle of the Bulge was never going to alter the outcome of the war but gave the Allies a momentary fright. “Walker,” in approximate position 61° 16′ N., 12° 56′ W., was circling H.M.S. This 1941 painting is by German artist Adolf Bock (1890-1968).