Posted on 05/07/2015 2:30:39 PM PDT by naturalman1975
You have to wonder if Capt. Claudius ever got another ship command after he finished at the naval college.
“Yes. Many U-Boats prowled off the American coast and did huge amounts of damage.”
My father was in Florida at the time and he said they would go down to the beach at night and watch the ships burn after the U-boats attacked them.
best U-Boat movie ever
And can never be beat.
No amount of CGI can beat a short lens in cramped quarters.
Jurgen Prochnow remains one of my favorite actors.
Historically, it is very difficult for us in the present day to put ourselves in the times and mindsets of 1942. The losses in the Pacific just kept rolling on and our British ally looked to be losing the Mediterranean while Russia was equally pressed from Moscow to Stalingrad.
Leaning the lessons of light-discipline took months and the German U-Boats used that time very well on both the Gulf and East Coasts. Small town house lights were enough to betray a ship’s distance and speed to a lurking sub. Off-shore oil wells with their gas flares were of great assist as well. In the early years of any war, the aggressor has the field advantage until the defenders can get up to speed.
I second that. Das Boot is one of those rare movies that can hold up to repeated viewing, no matter which cut is being shown.
A friend of mine is a marine archeologist, and was one of the first involved in the discovery of the U-166. It was discovered in 2001 during a sonar sweep which is required before any operations are performed which affect the bottom of the Gulf, such as the laying of a new pipeline, etc. An image showed up which appeared to be the correct size and shape for a type IX-C U-boat, except that the bow was blown off. The company doing the bottom survey brought their findings to my friend, who works for the government agency who oversees all this, and he agreed that it could be a long lost U-166. The first of many followup missions was done using an ROV, and they indeed found the submarine. According to my friend, for a single depth charge to strike a fatal blow against this type of U-boat, it had to detonate within just a few feet of the hull. He brought over some of the original ROV footage to my house. Just forward of the conning tower, the metal deck was distorted into an unmistakable crater. They speculate that Captain Claudius may have actually landed a depth charge directly on the deck, and it detonated as the sub dove through weapon’s activation depth. My friend said that chances are the torpedoes indeed did explode, as all of the hatches on the submarine were blown outward. The bow section broke off at the forward torpedo loading hatch.
As I mentioned, there were many followup expeditions, and not all of them underwater. A news team either from Germany or Britain tracked down the families of the deceased crew members. It turned out that the captain’s widow had remarried, and though she had passed away, they spoke to her surviving children. One of them brought forth a treasure trove of memorabilia she had, which included letters from her husband, commendations, etc. Incredibly, there was also some undeveloped still and movie film from 1942. They processed the film, and it turned out to be stills and footage of the newly commissioned U-166 touring around the harbor! You can see some of the still photographs here:
http://128.146.17.149/previous-programs/U166/U-166.htm
For many years, the presumed fate of the U-166 was that it was sunk in less than 200’ of water by a depth charge dropped from a Coast Guard patrol plane off of Fourchon, LA, which is west of the Mississippi River. The actual aircraft which made that attack is on display in the Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum.
Link: http://128.146.17.149/previous-programs/U166/WhiteandBoggs.htm
The U-166 gave rise to an incredible number of wild stories, barroom tales, and even at least one book! As a native of New Orleans and a longtime diver, I heard MANY such tales! All of them had a similar plot: “Well, I know a guy that my dad dove with who actually found the U-166, but when he went back to the spot, he couldn’t locate it again! But, he REALLY found it! His camera was broken though.” Stories like this ran rampant in the dive community, from Texas to Florida. I myself heard one directly from my wife’s uncle, who claimed that while in the Coast Guard, they saw a spooky image on sonar of WWII German submarine, drifting along completely silent, like a ghost ship. He said that the U-166 was undoubtedly still partly full of air, and was drifting all over the Gulf! I had to bite my lip in order to suppress my laughter. Supposedly some Rambo wannabe actually published a book describing his amazing secret adventures. They included the nail-biting tale of how he alone discovered the U-166, and actually entered the submarine. He told how the bodies of the crew were still there, preserved by the diesel fuel. Of course, he could not divulge the location of the submarine, “because the government will not allow him to do so”.
The discovery of the actual wreck site in 2001, located east of the Mississippi in over 5000 feet of water put all of this nonsense to rest. However, it also did raise the question of what submarine was spotted and attacked by the Coast Guard airplane. I asked my archaeologist friend about that, and he had the answer, at least with as much a degree of certainty as is possible.
At the same time as the U-166 was on patrol in the Gulf, the U-171 was also. She survived her wartime cruise, but while returning to port, struck a mine off the coast of France. The boat was lost along with much of her crew, as well as the ship’s log. The captain survived and was court martialed. During his trial, he was asked to reproduce the log from memory, to the best of his ability. My friend is fluent in German, and actually read the transcript of his trial. One of the incidents described by the captain was being attacked off the coast of Louisiana by an airplane which dropped a single bomb as they were diving to escape. His testimony noted that no damage was done. The details, location, and time all matched very closely to the Coast Guard pilots’ report, so it is extremely likely that they attacked the U-171.
Be sure to take a look at http://uboat.net:8080/boats/u166.htm
The war would have ended earlier and maybe millions more innocent people would have survived.
Don't waste your sympathy on U-boat crews.
Fairly sure I remember my long gone father telling me of one of his early duty stations being south Florida on a sub-chaser and going after at least one sub. He ended up in the Pacific campaign as a corpsman and luckily survived that. I am sure he would have rather spent the war in Florida.
There was never any doubt that it was sunk. The navy credited a Coast Guard PBY two days later that did attack something, about 100 miles away. The U-166 never radioed back to Kiel after the attack by Claudius (strong evidence favoring his claim). The U-166 was the only u-boat lost in the Gulf of Mexico, and was lost at the time of Claudius’ attack and in the place where he attacked.
By the way, the U-166 had four times the displacement of the PC-566, 1120 - (sf) vs. 280 Tons, and much heavier surface armament. If, instead of diving, the U-166 had turned into the her and surfaced, he could have sunk her by ramming or in an artillery dual. (The PC wasn’t worth a torpedo.) The German skipper seeing a “warship” closing on him in his periscope probably just wanted to get out as fast as possible. He may have been distracted by watching the Robert E. Lee sink in his periscope, and not seen the PC-566 until it was almost upon him and panicked.
The surmise by Ballard and his crew was that a depth charge exploding on the deck of the U-166 my have detonated one its torpedoes, and the rest of torpedoes in that forward chamber were set off by the first torpedo. Far too much damage for a depth charge.
http://www.uboat.net/allies/warships/class/463.html
http://uboat.net/types/ixc.htm
Claudius almost ran over the sub’s periscope. He was escorting the Robert E. Lee, a passenger ship. The PC-566 displaced only 280 tons (not all that much bigger than the Mayflower, easy to ignore). The German apparently did not dive until Claudius was almost on top of him. Claudius rolled one four depth charge pattern on the German, turned around and dropped one more similar pattern, saw oil coming up, broke off the engagement and began rescuing survivors of the Robert E. Lee.
Read this: http://uboat.net/books/item/468
“Operation Drumbeat” by Micheal Gannon, a Florida native and history professor. U-124 plays a prominent part, and was involved in attacks off the coast of Florida, some with gunfire at night. I do not recall reading that U-124 was ever attacked by an aircraft. It did have one close encounter with a Q-ship - which ended the U.S. use of Q-ships after U-124 promptly sunk it. U-124 entered New York Harbor early in the war, as well. Employed in greater numbers, without that idiotic enigma and radioing home every night, the U-boats might have changed the course of the war.
Interesting.
Thanks. Requested it from the library.
I was just a kid during WWII but remember that the government closed off the beaches in New Jersey due to all the oil, wreckage and bodies coming ashore.
How wonderful technology is.
“One ping..Muceli”
Saw it last night - good show, worth watching - “Nova”, I think, because of the technology used to find and reconstruct what happened to the sub.....
It was either another sub or Nessie got out of her pen - it would also explain why modern attempts to find Nessie have been unsuccessful....
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