Dud Torpedo!
- From KTB 153
As our long-term Members know, that means we made an error, and this time it was a doozy! The recent interview under `The Way It Was' some of the history attributed to GUNTHER HEINRICH (1945-LIFE-1991) was in reality, that of JURGEN OESTEN (1981-1990). Somehow, the transcribing company got the tapes mixed up and that's how it happened. We are sorry for the error.
This is not an excuse! This is merely the reason the error happened. We should have caught it here and again, we apologize. The corrected text will appear in a future issue of our KTB.--Harry Cooper
Note: This correction appeared in KTB 153. It did not say which part was in error. RL
As we remember from KTB #150, HEINI was Skipper of U-960, the last U-Boat to make it through Gibraltar in WW II. No other German U-Boats made it through the ‘Gates of Hell’ afterwards. Here are more of his memories of this combat from our interview of January 2000. Remember, this videotape is available for you. Here is the balance of his interview with us.
SHARKHUNTERS: What was your greatest fear as a captain?
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: The greatest peril was, my opinion in this time, airplanes. Airplanes with radar because they had a great radius to find out any vessel on the surface and we had to emerge each day or each night to load our batteries and I had no snorkel. I had to go on the surface each night and that was great danger.
Top: The convoy of U-boats and minesweepers
Bottom: The gun crew of U-960 before the attack.
SHARKHUNTERS: Tell me about any attack while surfacing at night.
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: My fourth patrol, a short patrol, crossing the Biscay Bay and going back because of an order of the supreme command, I came in contact with two bombers and six MOSQUITO airplanes of the Royal Air Force near the coast at the harbor of LaPallice. There were two U-boats and three mine sweepers. The two U-boats escorted and one of the airplanes attacked my boat and made a hit from her with her big gun. These airplanes had a five point seven centimeter gun aboard that was a gun determined for a British tank. But they did it in an airplane, a MOSQUITO airplane, to attack ships, especially U-boat. The shells from this airplane went through the conning tower in the attack and exploded there. All men on the bridge and behind the bridge and on the anti-aircraft guns were wounded too severely.
We had made also a hit on this attacking airplane piloted by a man now a good friend of me but at this time, it was my opponent. The news of his airplane was also hit and he lost a part of his nose, but could went as a last drops of gasoline to his air base at Cornwall. We became friends and are now best friends.
SHARKHUNTERS: What type of man could succeed on a U-boat?
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: You must be a good seaman and you must have a good health because we had always airing the U-boat with higher pressure, especially in the years after 1942. You must like to stay on the U-boat and like other U-boat members because you have to stay with them together sometimes, some weeks, as I did with my third patrol. We were over eight weeks in the North Atlantic. In this time, some boys do not see fresh air and if any man aboard passes you, you could smell him. You did not look at him, you smell him. Everybody aboard a U-boat knows that his station where he serves is also important as a commanding officer’s station is. So we had to create comradeship aboard U-boats and I like this.
SHARKHUNTERS: Looking back, how do you feel about it?
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: I was happy I could serve on a U-boat because other German Navy ships had no more influence in this war. The only influence you could have take their part to decide the war were U-boats. Therefore, I was proud to be a U-boat man, a U-bootfahrer, as we say. I think now about my last patrol along the coast of Spain and Portugal through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean where I met an American convoy with troop ships, six big troop ships - all those ships and I was in the mid of those ships and I could not fire a torpedo because my torpedo tubes were not flooded. It was too late to do it. And I saw the GI’s standing on the railing and had their helmets on and were laughing and smoking, only two to three hundred meters away. But I couldn’t sink the ship. Nowadays after the war, I say, it was good I could not because war, to this times, it was in May 1944, was lost for Germany and because I could not torpedo those troop ship, maybe some hundred men had their lives still.
SHARKHUNTERS: Was the naval command sending you on hopeless missions at the end of the war?
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: In February, 1944, I had report to our highest command officer, to Admiral Dönitz, of my last patrol and I saw Berlin was bombed and I know the difficult situation we had in the Atlantic. In this time, I heard at first of the new U-boat we would have. U-boats that were really submarines and had not each day to emerge and have a higher speed and deeper diving. That was a great hope for me to stay till there were coming a few months. There was another officer in the Navy staff who told me as a secret, we have a new weapon - a new weapon that is superior to all others we still had. And I told him okay, if we will have a new weapon, there will be in a few days a counter weapon. And he said, no. There is no counter weapon for this, and he means the new rockets. But in this time, I don’t know anything about rockets. Therefore, I had a little hope that there could be a change in this war. But only a little hope. But it was my duty to fight for Germany and I had still a little hope it was not hopeless to the start. Even I had the chance, if I was going from the Atlantic along the Spanish and Portuguese Coast, only emerged during my time as close under the coast as possible. Sometimes only ten to fifteen meters under the boat but I had the mountains in the back and I knew that was bad for airplanes.
SHARKHUNTERS: Why did the naval command continue to use U-boats?
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: I think to this time, and also now after the war, they had also a little thought that they also meant there is a little chance to have a change in the war picture because of new weapon, of the new U-boat. The Type XXI, you know. And so they could have the hope. I did not know that they defended the Führer’s bunker in Berlin. When the Russians went into Berlin and when the Allied forces went into Germany and there was no great resistance possible. I think that the government should have done a good work to finish the work at this time, otherwise there were many Germany people, especially the wives and children, caught in the East by the Russian troops. And we all know that the Russians were cruel in their handling with civilians, especially with wives and children. It was a good thing that our highest commanding officer did not stop the war at this time and give those people, especially wives and children and girls, the chance to escape. I think there are some refugees who could escape by German Navy and merchant vessels from the eastern parts of Germany and stay alive.
SHARKHUNTERS: Did you lose friends during the war?
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: I lost many friends and we know all the commanding officers, know when we sit together and we know there were three U-boats are going out in the sea, perhaps one returns. Such we know that was terrible and you perhaps knows also that the highest lost during World War II, that was the U-boat men. Especially the officers - that were about eighty percent of all of the U-boat officers lost their lives during the war. And I am the one of the happier who could be fished out when I lost my U-boat.
SHARKHUNTERS: Did you talk about the odds?
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: No, we did not ignore this but we talked about our experience and so we changed it and we said, oh, it happened this and it happened that and so on. And that was all our talking. But we had always a little hope that there could be a change in the war and Germany could be successful. That was still our hope in 1944. When I was a prisoner of war and I stayed for some months in the hospital, in an American hospital because I was badly wounded. I found out that there could be no change in the war because of the great superior might of the Allies. I saw later if I was transferred by a ship to the United States, the many logistic the Allies had.
SHARKHUNTERS: Explain the dangers of a U-boat.
CAPTAIN HEINRICH: To serve on a ship can be dangerous if there are heavy storms in the oceans or strong, heavy seas and so some ships are lost in former times, sailor ships. And even good build ships. I remember the United States destroyer went down during a storm but there also can be a failure if you are submerging. You make a failure during the phase of submerging. If you go too straight in a strong angle with a high speed on the deep. I am sure some submarine went too deep, couldn’t stop going in the deep and was defeated by the water pressure. That is one possibility, I think. Another is that inside the iron coffin, there could break out a fire and you cannot stop the fire and still you are - - all men are burned or have not enough air for their lungs. That’s also a special peril in U-boats. The other side, the men in the U-boat are well trained. If they make a failure in handling something, then it can be corrected. It occurred when I made an alarm diving, the U-boat that is built to dive to 200 meters, that U-boat, my U-boat, went down till 268 meters and there was noise inside all because of the high water pressure. But some water came in but not enough, and I could stop going down and bring the U-boat in a higher position. Exits were not possible also. You have a crash and you have to die in the - - in the iron coffin.
Many thanks HEINI, for another great insight into the details of the war at sea. Who will it be in KTB #152 next month? You know that the memories of another U-Boat Skipper will be here and the article will put you right in the Zentralle with the crew.
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© Copyright 2001 by Harry Cooper, Sharkhunters International, Inc.
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