Posted on 07/27/2012 4:03:08 PM PDT by robowombat
BOSTON (AP) -- Divers have discovered a World War II-era German submarine nearly 70 years after it sank under withering U.S. attack in waters off Nantucket.
The U-550 was found Monday by a privately funded group organized by New Jersey lawyer Joe Mazraani. It was the second trip in two years to the site by the team, some of whom had been searching for the lost U-boat for two decades.
Using side-scan sonar, the seven-man team located the wreck listing to its side in deep water about 70 miles south of Nantucket.
Sonar operator Garry Kozak said he spotted the 252-foot submarine during the second of an exhausting two days of searching. Kozak said the team asked him if they'd found it, then erupted in joy without a word from him.
"They could see it with the grin (on my face) and the look in my eyes," Kozak said.
On April 16, 1944, the U-550 torpedoed the gasoline tanker SS Pan Pennsylvania, which had lagged behind its protective convoy as it set out with 140,000 barrels of gasoline for Great Britain, according to the U.S. Coast Guard website and research by Mazraani.
The U-boat slipped under the doomed tanker to hide. But one of the tanker's three escorts, the USS Joyce, saw it on sonar and severely damaged it by dropping depth charges.
The Germans, forced to surface, manned their deck guns while another escort vessel, the USS Gandy, returned fire and rammed the U-boat. The third escort, the USS Peterson, then hit the U-boat with two more depth charges. The crew abandoned the submarine, but not before setting off explosions to scuttle it. The submarine hadn't been seen again until Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
I know it’s modern, but thought you’d like to see this anyway!....at any rate, it’s certainly sunken!
Wow. Just wow.
I cannot cite the source, but IIRC, Winston Churchill was confident of eventual victory against the Axis powers, as long as the Allies won the Battle of The Atlantic against the superb German U-Boat fleet.
I wonder how many German crewman got off the boat alive and were captured. They were some of the luckiest Germans in World War II.
Both Churchill and Eisenhower gave much credit to the merchant marine, both US and British for winning the war in Europe.
None of us can imagine what it must have been like crossing the North Atlantic (this story being from a different place) at 6 or 7 or 8 slowpoke knots...knowing that the convoy would not stop if your ship got blasted out from under you.
But then...I’d bet few of us can imagine flying in a B-17 with all manner of ordnance flying at you. Or Omaha Beach. Etc; Or Iwo Jima. Or a thousand others.
Get the book “shadow divers”. It is excellent.
According to the Coast Guard, 12 survivors captured, 44 dead.
Being a crew man on one of those U-boats was darned
near being a suicide mission.Yet there was never a
shortage of men signing up.
Good thing the war ended before the electro boats
got going
And now...the Merchant Marine in the USA is for all practical purposes non-existent.
Saga of the U-550
German submarine U-550
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Crewmen of U-550 abandon ship after being depth charged, rammed and shelled
Career (Nazi Germany)
Name: U-550
Ordered: 5 June 1941
Builder: Deutsche Werft, Hamburg
Laid down: 2 October 1942
Launched: 12 May 1943
Commissioned: 28 July 1943
Fate: Sunk, 16 April 1944[1]
General characteristics
Type: Type IXC/40 submarine
Displacement: 1,120 t (1,100 long tons) surfaced
1,232 t (1,213 long tons) submerged
Length: 76.8 m (252 ft) overall
58.7 m (192 ft 7 in) pressure hull
Beam: 6.9 m (22 ft 8 in) overall
4.4 m (14 ft 5 in) pressure hull
Height: 9.6 m (31 ft 6 in)
Draft: 4.7 m (15 ft 5 in)
Propulsion: 2 × MAN M9V40/46 supercharged 9-cylinder diesel engines, 4,400 hp (3,300 kW)
2 × SSW GU345/34 double-acting electric motors, 1,000 hp (740 kW)
Speed: 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph) surfaced
7.3 knots (13.5 km/h; 8.4 mph) submerged
Range: 25,620 nmi (47,450 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) surfaced
117 nmi (217 km) at 4 kn (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph) submerged
Test depth: 230 m (750 ft)
Complement: 48 to 56
Armament: 6 × 55 cm (22 in) torpedo tubes (four bow, two stern)
22 × torpedoes
1 × Utof 105 mm (4.1 in)/45 deck gun with 110 rounds
German submarine U-550 was a Type IXC/40 U-boat of the Kriegsmarine (the German Navy of Nazi Germany) built for service during World War II. She was laid down on 2 October 1942 by Deutsche Werft in Hamburg as ‘werk’ 371, launched on 12 May 1943 and commissioned on 28 July under the command of Kapitänleutnant (Captain Lieutenant, or Lieutenant Commander)[2] Klaus Hänert.
After training with the 4th U-boat Flotilla, she was assigned to the 10th U-boat Flotilla on 1 February 1944 in Lorient in occupied France.
Contents [hide]
1 Patrol
2 Loss
3 Attempted escape
4 Discovery
5 References
6 External links
[edit]Patrol
She sailed from Kiel on 6 February 1944, heading for the North Atlantic, via the gap between Iceland and the Faroe Islands and conducted weather reporting duties before sailing for Newfoundland and subsequently the northeast coast of the United States. On 22 February the boat was unsuccessfully attacked south of Iceland by a Catalina flying boat of No. 162 Squadron RAF. However, two members of the U-boat’s crew were killed.[3]
[edit]Loss
On 16 April, south of Nantucket Island, she located convoy CU 21, bound for Great Britain from New York City. The SS Pan-Pennsylvania, one of the largest tankers in the world, was unwisely straggling behind the convoy; U-550 torpedoed her. The ship quickly caught fire and began to sink. As the vessel settled, the submerged U-boat maneuvered underneath her hull in an effort to hide from the inevitable counterattack by the convoy’s escorts.
Convoy CU-21 was escorted by Escort Division 22, consisting of Coast Guard-manned destroyer escorts reinforced by one Navy DE, the Gandy (DE-764), which took the place of the Leopold (DE-319), which had been lost in action the previous month. The escort division’s flagship, Joyce (DE-317) and the Peterson (DE-152) rescued the tanker’s surviving crew, while the Joyce detected the U-boat on sonar as the Germans attempted to escape after hiding beneath the sinking tanker. U-550’s engineering officer later said, “We waited for your ship to leave; soon we could hear nothing so we thought the escort vessels had gone; but as soon as we started to move - bang!” The Joyce delivered a depth-charge pattern that bracketed the submerged submarine. The depth charges were so well placed, a German reported, that one actually bounced off the U-boat’s deck before it exploded.
The attack severely damaged U-550 and forced her to the surface, where the German sailors manned and fired their deck guns. The Joyce, Peterson and Gandy returned fire. Gandy rammed U-550 abaft the conning tower and the Peterson dropped two depth charges which exploded near the U-boat’s hull. Realizing they were defeated, the U-boat’s crew prepared scuttling charges and began abandoning their boat. Joyce rescued 13 of U-550’s crew, one of whom later died from wounds received during the fire-fight. The remainder of the U-boatmen went down with their submarine. Joyce delivered the prisoners of war and the Pan Pennsylvania survivors to the authorities in Great Britain.
[edit]Attempted escape
There is a grisly postscript to the sinking of U-550. According to the Eastern Sea Frontier’s War Diary account of the sinking, some of the crew apparently survived the sinking and were trapped in a forward compartment. They tried to leave the U-boat as it lay on the ocean floor using their escape apparatus.
At 1515 on 5 May 1944, the Coastal Picket Patrol CGR-3082 recovered a body from the sea at 39° 51’ NN. 71° 58’ W., about 93 miles (150 km) ESE of Ambrose. The body was clothed in a German-type life jacket. From the markings on his clothing it was possible that the man’s name was “Hube”.[4] A German escape lung was found near his body as well. An autopsy performed on the body indicated that the individual died only five days before his remains were discovered - U-550 had been sunk on 16 April, the corpse was found 19 days later.
Two other bodies were subsequently found. The first, picked up by another picket boat, CGR-1989, at 1730 on 11 May, was fully clothed, had an escape lung and life jacket on. He was found in a rubber raft. Identification marks indicated the man was a German sailor named Wilhelm Flade, aged about 17.[5] The body was transferred from CGR-1989 to CGR-1338 on the morning of 12 May 1944 and was brought to Tompkinsville on Staten Island.
On 16 May a third body was sighted and picked up by USS SC-630. It was stated that the uniform and insignia indicated the victim had been a German crewman, although he carried no identification; he had been in the water more than 18 days.[6]
The War Diary report continued:
“Further evidence is lacking to complete the apparent story of successful attempts made by certain men to escape from compartments in the vicinity of torpedo tubes or escape hatches. Curiously, the area was not entirely deserted by patrol vessels. On the day following the torpedoing of the Pan Pennsylvania, a vessel was sent to the area to effect salvage operations or to sink the derelict [tanker] in order to remove such a menace to navigation. This vessel spent some time in trying to sink with gunfire the still buoyant and burning hulk of the Pan Pennsylvania. No survivors were sighted during these operations. Questions were raised as to the possibility of some survivors having been able to reach the southern shore of Long Island, since the sub sank only 150 miles from Montauk Point; only 70 miles from Nantucket. Although such considerations should not be dismissed, it is doubtful that men aboard the smallest type rubber rafts would be able to cover so great a distance without being detected before they reached shore.”
[edit]Discovery
The wreck of U-550 was discovered off the coast of Massachusetts on July 23, 2012, in waters about 70 miles south of Nantucket. A team of seven divers, lead by New Jersey attorney Joe Mazraani, located the wreck using sonar after a multi-year search.[7]
[edit]References
Notes
^ Kemp, Paul: U-Boats Destroyed - German Submarine Losses in the World Wars, 1997, Arms & Armour, ISBN 1-85409-515-3, p. 183.
^ Paterson, Lawrence - U-Boats in the Mediterranean 1941-1944, 2007, Chatham Publishing, ISBN- 13: 9781861762900, p. 5.
^ http//uboat.net/boats/u550htm
^ “Gfr. Siegfried Zube”. ubootwaffe.net: Kriegsmarine and U-Boat history. Retrieved 23 August 2009.
^ “MaschOGfr. Wilhelm Flade”. ubootwaffe.net: Kriegsmarine and U-Boat history. Retrieved 23 August 2009.
^ “MaschMt. Gunther Heder”. ubootwaffe.net: Kriegsmarine and U-Boat history. Retrieved 23 August 2009.
^ www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/07/27/us/ap-us-german-u-boat-found.html?hp
Bibliography
Price, Scott; Sinking the U-550
Wynn, Kenneth; U-Boat Operations of the Second World War, Volume 2: Career Histories, U511-UIT25, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998), p. 27.
Which ones used liquid mercury for ballast?
In 1942 4 U-boats were sunk off of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
U-85 was sunk on 14 April 1942 by gunfire from the US Navy destroyer USS Roper.
U-352 was sunk on 9 May 1942 by depth charges from the US Coast Guard cutter USCGC Icarus.
U-701 was sunk on 7 July 1942 by depth charges from a US Hudson aircraft.
U-576 was sunk on 15 July 1942 by depth charges from 2 US Kingfisher aircraft and gunfire from the US motor vessel Unicoi.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks TEXOKIE. |
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My uncle was in the radio shack of the USS Utah when the bombs started falling in Pearl Harbor. He then served on one of the early convoys to Murmansk in 1942. Only ten ships survived that trip. He was in the water three times, but he made it. Subsequently, at his request, he served in the South Pacific.
He first related that story to the family some 50 years afterward.
We watched Das Boot last week on TV. I think it is one of the best movies for giving an accurate portrayal of the terror the men on those boats experienced.
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