VOLKMAR KONIG was a midshipman (Fahnrich) on the last patrol of U-99 OTTO KRETSCHMER (122-+-1985). This was to be the final patrol of `Silent' OTTO as he was to be posted as an instructor at the U-boat school. As it turned out, it was indeed his final patrol but he became `guest of the King' rather than an instructor at U-boat school. KONIG got his promotion to Oberfahnrich by being a P.o.W. Here is his story, done in Germany in 2000.

SHARKHUNTERS: What is your name?

KONIG: My surname is Koenig. In German it means `King'. My first name is Volkmar in German. All my friends call me King.

SHARKHUNTERS: What was your rank at the end of WWII?

KONIG: The end I was Oberfahnrich which means upper ensign or something. It is not quite an officer but has passed the officers examination and is becoming an officer.

SHARKHUNTERS: Should we refer to you as a midshipman?

KONIG: 1 was a soldier and a cadet and a midshipman and the way it goes, yeah. And according to the Geneva Convention, there is one promotion allowed to every officer behind barbed wire so all of midshipman went to Over midshipman.

SHARKHUNTERS: How did you come to be aboard a U-boat?

KONIG: By accident - you see, I finished my officer's training in the German Navy and at that time, you have a post somewhere in the fleet somewhere, some can go to battleships or to destroyers or to whatever, the torpedo boats. I was very proud. I came onboard a submarine without any submarine training. At that time, for the first time, the theory, nowadays quite normal, learning by doing. So when I reported to my captain, and he asked, well, what do you know? I couldn't give any answer so he looked at me and I think he thought, my goodness, what have I aboard?

SHARKHUNTERS: What was your job?

KONIG: Well, to tell you the truth, no position at all Learning by doing means looking here, looking there and as I already had passed as a young boy, wireless operators test interested me to make dots and dashes and I spent a lot of time in the wireless room. And navigation was very interesting to me and I looked over the shoulder of the chief navigator and, well, and then someone felt a little bit ill so I took his watch in the conning tower. And, well, all kinds of job and this worked out quite well with other boats because these young fellows later on became officers without going to submarine training school. They needed at the time at a lot of young fellows to do this job and this worked out quite well for many months and many years midshipman.

EDITOR NOTE - When I was in the US Air Force, it was called `On the Job Training' or abbreviated, it was OJT.

SHARKHUNTERS: Describe life on a U-boat.

KONIG: Well, the first impression is, it's a very familiar atmosphere `cause the light is the low and there are noises and humming of some machines and they're many smells and you know your fellows and they are laughing, and the smell of oil and of human beings that haven't washed for some time. And the music is coming over the radio, the loud radio. And it's not a sterile atmosphere. It's familiar. It's cozy somehow, yah. We nowadays have a museum submarine at the beach here, at the Baltic. And everyone goes through there, ooh, terrible atmosphere. Your first impression - it's painted and light green. Gives you a shudder in the first place. It's quiet. No smell, no noise, yah. It's - it's like a coffin from inside. It's in such a museum and here you are in it, embraced somehow. They're the fellows who say, hello, and they make jokes with you and I was lucky to come aboard a boat with a crew that had a lot of experience. They were old hands, so, yah, old hands and they all youngsters, yah. And the captain was twenty-eight, twenty-eight years and he was the old man and I was twenty.

SHARKHUNTERS: How did you eat and sleep?

KONIG: Well, depended on your rank. You see you have the other ranks that crammed in the forward room and this was rather primitive life, I would say. And the officers mess, yah, okay, they had a small table and they had their bunks there and it was - it was not very comfortable but the chief petty officers had a little room, you might call it a room but it was not closed. Everyone could go through there. And they pass all the time - were people passing back and forth. And there was the room for the petty officers. Not the chief petty office - - petty officers.

These were the old hands that were petty. They were already married and this is where put the mid-shipman because we were more or less petty officers at that time. And I had my bunk there and had a little place where you put some shirts and some underwear in there and some socks that was all, yah, nothing more. And some books that you had your bunk. But most of them only had to share their bunk with another one. One was on watch and the other one was sleeping.

EDITOR NOTE - It was called `hot bunking' for the obvious reasons; the bunk never had time to cool down.

And there was a table in the middle of this room and there are we sitting and eating. It was crammed and crowded and well, you were on a submarine and not in a hotel - a four star hotel.

SHARKHUNTERS: Talk about the camaraderie.

KONIG: Well, those on board were already a group of fellows that had gone through many dangerous situations. And if the man gets along with others quite well, and I think I am such a person, then you are one of those as very soon. And without getting too chummy but you're one of them and they accept you and despite being very young among those petty officers, they accept you. I had no difficulty there and, of course, they make you jokes of you but they cover up if you have done anything wrong but you can do because you are young and the youngster aboard the boat and you don't know this or that. And they come we take responsibility for that and but you still had this comradeship although only a very few are still living after sixty years, yah.

SHARKHUNTERS: Describe a typical patrol.

KONIG: Well, this is different from day to day and from year to year and how the development of the war is the development of the technique. When I was a young boy of twenty and was aboard of this famous submarine with this famous captain, we had conditions ' that were easy compared to conditions later on. Of course it was ' dangerous and many subs were already destroyed at the first month of the war. But nevertheless, it was quite different from later on.

And normally, it was rather tedious. You were on upper deck, as we say, driving along the ocean and looking for smoke at the horizon. And waiting for hours and days and waiting for a wireless message that came as some submarine had detected a convoy and you were ordered to come get as closely as possible to that convoy as soon as quickly as possible. And there was tension and excitement. Then again there were days, nothing happened. And when he was attacked by a destroyer it was a tense situation because you heard the noises of the propeller of this - this destroyer that went overhead and just swish, swish, swish, swish, swish of the destroyer. And when they had you in the range and the noise of the detonations on the hull of the boat, you could hear so loud. And so there's always a change between tense situation and quiet situation, And well, to answer your question, it's quite different. It's quite different from day to day and hour to hour. However, suddenly there comes alarm from the conning tower they have sighted an airplane and so it's - it's different from minute to minute.

SHARKHUNTERS: Tell me about crash diving.

KONIG: As I already told, I came aboard of a sub with a trained, experience crew. And everything they had to do with valves, levers that was necessary and the alarm sounded from the conning tower, everyone knows what to do. There is no noise. And everyone is trained and quiet and this is routine. And as a newcomer, at first you are very astonished how all this works because you never experience this so far. Yah, you haven't been to training school.

This is the first time you see. The first time you dive, you say - oh, boy, and every noise what you hear it - it cranks here and - water makes some gurgling noises. It's strange to you but in a few days, everything is familiar to you, yah. And crash dive is - is a crash dive. It's normal routine. And you know everyone knows what to do perfect.

SHARKHUNTERS: Describe attacking a convoy.

KONIG: Yah, this is quite different whether you attack from underwater or with a periscope and, that's the periscope and the men responsible for the computers at the bow of the boat, they wait for orders. And you hear when to put a shot and when you have your station aboard, somewhere. And of course you listen to what's going on wherever you are on the boat, you notice what's going on. But it's routine for such a boat. Of course, then you wait whether the torpedo really hits and it gives a bang. Takes some seconds to detonate or whether it runs, just in the open and nothing happens and everyone is dismayed because you haven't had any success, you see.

And when you attack at night time, at the time especially it was the tactics of Kretschmer to go into the convoy on upper deck - not dived, not underwater but on the water in from the dark side into the convoy. Because he had discovered during the training in the Baltic that a submarine is not seen because you see not against the horizon but you see from a ship or protecting ship or what else, a destroyer or some other ship, even from a bridge of a merchant vessel, you see up to the water and you don't see a boat which is not against the horizon but somewhere in the water. It's dark and you don't see it. So you can sneak into the convoy and at that time, was the reason for successes of submarines going into the convoy at night, not underwater And then situations were different because the orders come from the conning tower and it's not the captain who does the attack but the First Watch Officer of the watch. And he gives the data into the to the calculating - the little calculating machine you have aboard. And the torpedo is fired and you wait till the bang comes, yah. It's the same as with an attack underwater.

SHARKHUNTERS: Can you hear the ships break apart?

KONIG: Of course, yeah. It's a, yah, if you would be a poet, it's the crying of a dying, uh, creature, yah. And it's a lot of more different noises when parts of the ship break or if the water comes into certain areas of the ship and swishes down and. . .... Of course, you are glad you had a success. But it's a ship - but a ship for a sailor is something living. Ws not a dead thing but it's something living and well, it's a little bit poetry I'm talking about here.

SHARKHUNTERS: Is it a personal or impersonal battle for you?

KONIG: Well, 1 would say war at sea is impersonal anyhow. At all times, it has been - well, in former times of course, you fought man to man. You entered another ship and you fought it with the shot and whatever you had in your hands, and the knife. But with warships, with battleships or submarines where you send torpedoes to another target, it's completely impersonal.

And you don't think of the people aboard the battleship over there. You think of the ship and you think of the merchant ship you want to sink. And you don't think of the poor people that perhaps have to jump into the water from a burning tanker into the burning oil, yah. You don't think of that. And so to your question, warfare aboard a ship is impersonal. And aboard a submarine - aboard the ship, you have y our station where you do your job, whether it's the artillery on a battleship or whether it's a torpedo room on the submarine. You have your comrades. They do the job together with you and it's just taking your - it's something you're trained for and you do more or less as routine work. SHARKHUNTERS What technology allowed the U-boats to rule the sea?

KONIG: Well, they were unseen at night above water. They couldn't take underwater at daytime. They were to a sailor on a battleship; it was a mean way of doing warfare. Ah, they sneak around here somewhere underneath and they should come and stand it and we shoot it out. So this is different, yah. And the first submarines in history were looked at with this kind of opinion from sailors on battleships and other craft.

Nowadays, one of the main tasks of a Navy is submarines doing some job Submarines are very capable and very powerful part of naval might and naval warfare nowadays against former times. And the German U-boat force was so successful because it first stages of the war, the measures against the submarines were not so effective as they were later on. They didn't have enough guarding vessels, destroyers or cutters, or whatever it was. The radar was not really in operation so far on destroyers or smaller ships. The detection and the deciphering of wireless messages was not really working yet. And the planes could only fly certain distance from the coast, so there were stretches on the Atlantic that were uncovered by air protection So there were a lot of plus points for the submarine at that time But all these points changed from months to month later on

SHARKHUNTERS: What were limitations?

KONIG: The limitation was the speed. You couldn't escape a • destroyer or something and when you are underwater, the speed was still lower so if you were really forced to go under the water level - the surface level, then- you were not as fast as the convoy. And the advantage was invisibility as night as long as radar was not operating on these protecting ships. And well, this is answer to the question, is it?

SHARKHUNTERS: What about disadvantages with having to surface, etc.?

KONIG: At that time of the war, this period, the submarines were not really submarines. They were boats that could go underwater and stay underwater for a certain time. That's all they could, you see. They were, nowadays they are real submarines, but not at that time. You went underwater in case of danger and otherwise you stayed up on the surface.

SHARKHUNTERS: What is a U-boat ace?

KONIG: Well, a U-boat ace is a PR - nowadays you say PR, public relations invention, yah.

SHARKHUNTERS: Public relations?

KONIG: Public relations, yah. Public relations. You see, if the press is around, media, they look for strong points, high points they can arouse their readers or whatever it is with. So someone who has successes always better than someone who has no success. So if one is really successful, he is built up.

Especially during wartime if you have what's called propaganda. And then everyone is an ace who is successful. And the more successful, the better the ace. And the better this successful ace can present himself, the better the ace still is So you need aces in case of war to give a lift up to others who perhaps are forced to take part in the tight later on.

SHARKHUNTERS: What was Kretschmer like as a captain?

KONIG: Kretschmer became an ace because he was successful. And he was successful because he was cold-blooded and he was very intelligent. These two factors were the main reason for his success. And you had to have success on the submarine. As a submarine captain, you have to calculate very clearly what to do, what you can do, what you cannot do and what risk you can take. This is a question of intelligence. And it is a question of cold-blood in a situation that you stand something through when your calculation says, this goes clear because your intelligence says it goes clear. So you need the cold-blood to go through this. And in my opinion, this was the main reason for his successes. It was not so much the ability to lead others. You need some have this certain freedom of be leaders. It can be very successful, being captain of a submarine. But if you have others who take this role aboard the ship, the captain does not necessarily have to be a leader.

SHARKHUNTERS: Was he a leader or intelligent?

KONIG: Kretschmer, I would say, never really was chummy with his crew. You have captains who are chummy and everyone feels he is my father, you see. Kretschmer was the captain.

Kretschmer was a captain and he was an authority and I never would think that he got really close to one of his subordinates. He was in charge. Everyone knew it. And he had others who took over this rote. His officers kept a crew together and got a little bit chummy and everyone needs someone as superior who is a little bit chummy. If you only have authorities aboard a ship or whatever it is, and even in a company of business, you have to have someone to be chummy with. And you have someone - you have to have someone who is authority and where you can say, yes, sir and the order is - and you have to be obedient, you know this. And Kretschmer -- Kretschmer was never chummy. He was an authority for us. And he was successful. Because he was successful, they liked to be aboard.

SHARKHUNTERS: What did Kretschmer fear most from the enemy?

KONIG: I don't know. I don't know what Kretschmer feared as a danger He knew he was in a war and he was commanding a little boat in the wide open spaces of the Atlantic. Like a little Viking boat in former times. And he knew what risks to take and he knew he could rely on his crew. He trained them very hard in the training period of the boat so they really knew what to do, per second, and he was very stiff on regulations and everyone knew, come on, don't let the old man see it.

EDITOR NOTE - Kretschmer was certainly a Prussian Officer, and very proud that he was. However, he was so well loved and respected that his men would have followed him anywhere. He was a great man.

SHARKHUNTERS: What did you fear, or were you confident?

KONIG: Well, being aboard such an experienced boat with experienced crew, you feel absolutely safe - what shall happen with such comrades and everyone knows what to do. And nothing can happen, more or less. And you feel confident. It's quite different probably if you get out of the crew not trained and first trip and everyone is nervous. And from the captain down to the last man, they all don't know what really is going to happen. You have an experienced crew. And if you really would be a little bit afraid, you wouldn't let it know to someone else because they all look comfortable and if really there's a tense situation, there's always someone who says, come on, come on. It's not so bad at all. And, uh, such a crew of an experienced boat, this is something wonderful and - - and perfect.

Many thanks KING. We appreciate this glimpse into more U-boat history. This interview is taken from the videotape we did with so many U-Boat skippers and officers in Germany in January 2000. This videotape is Tape H-80, available from your catalog.

Volkmar Konig Part 2 [KTB 153]