This is continued from the story we ran in KTB #136 last month.

The higher such ridiculous orders originate, the more unrealistic they usually are. With other words, things started to get rolling just after the North Atlantic had to be practically vacated by U-Boats in the summer of 1943 and thereafter but of course, Type VII boats could not reach the Far East even with two or more refuelings generally. However, as there was a clear problem of not having a sufficient resupply of torpedoes available, the few at hand had largely been removed from various auxiliary cruisers and a few came aboard supply ships from Europe, operating as blockade runners to the Orient in reverse.

The torpedo resupply U-Boat Type VII-F was quickly designed to remedy this serious handicap. This was done by adding one full section to the boat, increasing length accordingly and adding about 400 tons carrying capacity to this modified VII-F.

They were built by the Krupp-Germania Yard in Kiel. Only four were constructed:

U-1059 commissioned May 1st 1943 was under command of Oblt. Gfinther Leopold, Class of 1938. It was sunk on 19 March 1944 near the Cape Verde Islands by the hunter-killer group of the aircraft carrier USS BLOCK ISLAND.

U-1060 commissioned 15 March 1943 was under command of Oblt Herbert Brammer. It was sunk on 27 October 1944 in the Trondheim Fjord area of Norway by aircraft of the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS IMPLACABLE.

U-1061 commissioned 25 August 1943 was under command of Oblt Heinz Gerhardt Jager. It was surrendered at the end of the war (late May 1945) in Bergen, Norway and ended up in Operation DEADLIGHT on the bottom of the sea off the northwest coast of Ireland.

U-1062 commissioned 19 June 1943, was under command of Oblt Karl Albrecht, Class of 1938. He managed to sail from Christiansand, Norway on 3 January 1944 all the way to Penang on 19 April 1944 with a load of 39 torpedoes. With other words, he was the only one that reached Penang, while U-1059 was sunk in middle-Atlantic on the way south.

U-1062

U-1062 departed again from Penang on 15 July 1944 for a return to Europe around South Africa. However, it was sunk on 30 September 1944 southwest of the Cape Verde Islands by the American destroyer USS FESSENDEN, belonging to the auxiliary aircraft carrier group USS MISSION BAY which located U-1062 after ULTRA originated and directed orders, when it sent its radio short-signal, reporting its last position, was picked up and read by Bletchley Park and the Tenth Fleet Submarine Tracking Room.

Because U-Boat Command so often based their routing instructions on outdated, obsolete materials such as periscope observations in 1941 and 1942 of the islands and ports of Asuncion, St. Helena and other such anchorages, many of the Monsun Boats were already destroyed in the Middle and South Atlantic, usually with ULTRA directions towards their locations on the way towards South Africa and the Far East. Several U-Boats that managed to pass that area were later on sunk in the Indian Ocean or the Gulf of Araby.

Finally a few that did reach the Southeastasian bases without being sunk on the way somewhere, did not manage the equally dangerous long return voyages to Europe. It would lead too far and become too lengthy to list and mention all of these U-Boats that did not succeed in their intended plans and the details of their losses and sinkings they themselves did achieve, as this would be a long task by itself actually.

Round Trips

Consequently, I shall only reflect either those that reached Penang or Japan, usually Sasebo or Kure somehow, and operated some patrols on circular basis from the Far East or in the Pacific and those that almost did make it back, in addition to those U-Boats that did indeed manage the complete round trip.

U-510

Type IX-C40 U-510 under Alfred Eick, Class of 1937-A(IV-37) departed Lorient on 3 Nov. 1943 and arrived at Penang on 5 April 1944. U- 510 proceeded eventually to Japan, arriving there for overhaul because the Singapore drydock, the only one available, could not be obtained due to the Japanese own needs for it.

U-510 first sailed from Japan on 26 November 1944, but had to return due to mechanical problems. She departed again on 3 December 1944 and finally reached the besieged sea fortress St. Nazaire in France on 24 April, 1945. Because no refueling was possible anymore in the Atlantic and U- 510 could not reach Norway due to lack of fuel, it was surrendered to the French on 12 May 1945.

The French put her into service under the name BOUAN and kept operating until 1959. Alfred Eick reached St. Nazaire in preference to Lorient, which was at that time surrounded, because it had deeper water approaches and required fewer navigational beacon aids.

U-532

U-532 under the command of FregettenKapitan Otto Junker, Class of 1924, departed from Lorient on 3 July 1943 and reached Penang on 31 October 1943. U-532 left Penang again on 4 January 1944 for a patrol in the Indian Ocean and returned to Penang for the second time on 19 April 1944. Thereafter U-532 traveled to Japan for final loading and left Japan on 13 January 1945, reaching European waters at the beginning of May 1945, when U-532 went to Liverpool for surrender on 13 May 1945, where U-532 was immediately inspected by Admiral Sir Max Kennedy Horton, the Commander of the Western Approaches, and his staff.

Captain Junker had been the aide-de-camp of GrossAdmiral Raeder at the OKM carried on for a few weeks after Karl Donitz replaced him before taking command of V-532 after Jan Heinrich 'Hanschen' Hansen- Nootbar in turn became the new adjutant of Karl Donitz.

U-178

U-178, Type IX-D2 departed from Bordeaux on 28 March 1943 under Wilhelm Dommes as already mentioned. It reached Penang on 29 August 1943. U-178 departed from Penang under Wilhelm Spahr on 27 November 1943 and reached Bordeaux France on 24 May 1944. It was never repaired and overhauled fully again, and stripped for parts before being surrendered in the Bordeaux pen to the French when Bordeaux fell to the Allies.

U-188

U-188, Type IX-C40 boat under the command of KorvettenKapitan Siegfried Ludden, Class of 1936, left Lorient on 30 June 1943 and reached Penang on 31 October 1943. U-188 left Penang on 9 Jan. 1944 and returned to Bordeaux on 19 June 1944 where it was also surrendered in Bordeaux on 20 August 1944 when the French took this base that had been vacated by the Germans. Supposedly both U-178 and U-188 were non-operable and stripped down as much as possible before the staff retreated to the Fortress LaRochelle.

U-861

Finally U-861, under the command of KorvettenKapitan JURGEN OESTEN (1681-1990), another Type IX-D2 boat, sailed from Kiel Germany on 20 April 1944 and arrived at Penang on 22 September 1944, somewhat earlier than anticipated so that the British submarine 1IMS TRENCHANT sunk U-859 instead as TRENCHANT arrived delayed at the assigned position in the Penang Channel. U-861 departed from Penang on 14 January 1945 and reached Trondheim, Norway on 18 April 1945. Here it was moored outside the bunker, next to U-953 which HERBERT A. WERNER (18-C-1983) brought into port on 4 April 1945. U-861 was surrendered there and scuttled in Operation DEADLIGHT by the British in 1945-1946.

U-843

Finally the almost roundtrip boat, U-843, also a Type IX-C40 boat under the command of Oskar Herwartz, Class of 1935 which departed from France on 19 February 1944 and traveled directly to Japan, arriving there on 11 June 1944. U-843 left Japan again on 10 December 1944 and traveled past Norway, entering the Kattegat area between Denmark and Sweden, proceeding to Germany when U-843 was bombed on 9 April 1945 off Frederickshaven Denmark by British aircraft, and sunk in shallow water. Herwartz traveled by surface means to Kiel and literally besieged RAdm EBERHARD GODT (344-+-1987) in U-Boat Command to ferret out heavy duty lift tugs. But GODT told him.

"It is too late, we just cannot find anything like that anymore. The British have bombed everything to pieces already."

Herwartz wanted to recover the extremely valuable load, but nothing was done anymore in that respect as the handwriting for the end was clearly visible! But 'A' for effort should be given to Oskar Herwartz anyway.

I hope you are enjoying this unique history as much as we enjoy bringmig it to you. PETER has so much history that no one else knows and we are bringing it to light for the first time on the pages of our KTB Magazine.

On Sunday, 31 Jan. this year, I spent almost an entire day with PETER in a town nearby and learned a lot more of the inside stories of the U-bootwaffe during World War II. In KTB #138 we will read the full story, updated with new information PETER dug up, about one of the worst disasters to befall the U-waffe - the story of U-570, the boat that surrendered to an airplane! This single incident probably sent more U-Boats and crews to their deaths than any other single action in World War II.

Many people, even serious researchers are completely unaware of this occurrence and the unfolding results that haunted every boat for the rest of the war, and killed so many of them. You will learn why this single bad decision caused great numbers of U- Boats and their crews to be destroyed. Watch your mail for KTB #138.