PETER HANSEN (251-LIFE-1987) spent time working for the ABWEHR (the German Secret Service) during WW II and he has information that is known to a mere handful of people. He gives this secret information especially to SHARKHUNTERS. Here he tells us:

In KTB #151 last month, we covered the lucky break that I.W.O. HORST KLATT (4234-1995) had to answer the call of nature and was excused from an officer's conference to go to the head at the precise moment the Royal Navy submarine HMS TRENCHANT fired a torpedo at his U-boat from ambush outside Penang and thus wind up the only officer of U-859 to be saved.

More from PETER: I believe it is best to cover the balance of the Far Eastern patrols as well as the losses incurred in a sequential way, to minimize the confusion of those who are not intimately familiar with these operations I shall not include those U-boats that traveled into the Indian Ocean and turned around there again for Europe without being scheduled to proceed onward to Penang and the Far East as otherwise this gets much too long.

In order to avoid possible confusion with Japanese submarines operating in the Indian Ocean, Vice Admiral Wenneker's Tokyo office agreed to operational areas and shifting dividing lines, depending upon the availability of submarines and U-boats, thus a certain alteration of geographical assignments took place. Some of the German U-boats were referred to as `Monsun' boats but again, not the entire lot over the complete operational time. While the initial sailing U-boats, regardless if coming from German, French (usually Bordeaux) or Norwegian ports had orders to sink whatever ships they encountered in the North, Middle and South Atlantic. After many were lost in those areas of the various `waves' or groups, it was suggested that only larger ships traveling independently should be attacked - if the skies were clear and to rather proceed safely but unseen, than to provoke counter attacks and damages.

Naturally, this applied fully to the cargo-carrying U-boats that often had only a few torpedoes and no reserves. U-180 was the first U-boat that only made a partial journey to an area off Madagascar where it met the Japanese U-cruiser I-24 and handed over Subhas Chandras Bose and his companion (Dr. Abid Hassan), plus most of the load -- and they took on gold bricks that were used as balancing weights (ballast) in the bilges, samples of Japanese one-man torpedoes and other equipment plus two Japanese ship building specialists Fregattenkapitan Tesuhiro Emi and Korvettenkapitan Hideo Tamonaga, both of whom returned to Europe with U-180 and its load of raw rubber, quinine, tin, wolfram and other precious metals and the gold, of course.

EDITORS NOTE - OTTO DIETZ (209-+1986) was a medical guy on this boat, and he had many long talks with Bose on this voyage. OTTO also got caught drunk too many times ashore and was sent to a 'punishment' battalion where he was shot by a Russian sniper. He recovered from his wounds and was a corpsman in a German hospital when the former I. W.O. of U-180, Harald Lange, came in to visit one of the nurses and saw OTTO. Lange was on his way to take command of U-505, and he took OTTO with him for his crew.

U-195, the second Type IX-D1 boat also traveled to the Far East under Oberleutnant d.R. Friedrich Steinfeldt, but U-195 remains in the Orient and is taken over by the Japanese Navy on May 10th 1945. Only two U-boats were built of this rather clumsily diving Type which also dives too slowly and is extremely difficult to maneuver under water. All others constructed thereafter are of the improved Type IX-D2 where a total of 22 were constructed but only 20 were actually put into service, two being destroyed in the shipyards plus two other orders that were totally cancelled as they could not possibly be finished any more before the capitulation.

EDITORS NOTE - U-180 and U-195, the only Type IX-D1 boats ever built, were both equipped with six fast-running Mercedes diesel engines, three per shaft, producing a total of 9,000 hp and giving the boats a surface speed of almost 21 knots. In fact, the conning tower emblem of U-180 was the three-pointed star of the Mercedes Corporation. However, these diesel engines gave a lot of problems and were later removed and replaced by two M.A.N. diesels of 2,800hp each. This naturally, caused a marked reduction in surface speed, down to a little less than 16 knots.

Only after ten months of planning and constant struggle in Tokyo, permit the Japanese that the Marine Sonderdienst Auslands that operated under Vice Admiral Wenneker in Tokyo and was busy with loading and manning the German Flag merchant ships that had become marooned in Japanese ports with valuable cargoes that the German industry needed urgently, the so-called `black' ships or blockade break ers/runners which was a rather successful operation initially until Radar improved and air surveillance of the South and Central Atlantic made these sailings a hopeless proposition.

Because 90% of their cargo originated in and was loaded at ports in Indonesia and Malaysia, this saved the long and dangerous steamer voyages between Japan and the former Dutch East Indies, but from Tokyo communications were generally lousy and instructions were frequently ignored in these occupied ports by lower Japanese staffs who rather did instead what they preferred locally. With other ' words - a frustrating situation where any curly-haired chap could tear out his hair and being bald as a consequence! Without payola and greasing numerous paws -- no loads, no dock space, no piers available, no loading cranes and equipment, no native stevedores even to load. Again, without the Chinese trade connections, these ships would never be able to sail loaded and get underway as scheduled.

Several of the hardest heads had to be cracked to impress the rest that business was indeed meant to be performed, as words alone could not convince the Japanese sufficiently. Everything was blamed on the natives resistance people and the communist Chinese underground fighters, without the Japanese ever being able to prove otherwise unless they wanted their own throats cut if they became too obstreperous and uncooperative, Particularly difficult was the communication set-up between Tokyo and Vice Admiral Wenneker's staff and the three bases because the Japanese would not initially permit foreign radio stations & circuits. The Japanese Navy circuits had to be used because the Army refused for a long time, even reception equipment for German bases as only Tokyo had sending equipment. This was partially circumvented by using the radio room of the merchant liner QUITO clandestinely, because the delays in transmitting and receiving messages through Japanese nets. Finally, by hook and by crook with plenty of payola, local sending and receiving stations could be constructed in Penang, Singapore and Jakarta, largely by German technicians with supplies from Chinese black market sources to overcome these problems. The joker turned out to be that the Japanese Army people never realized that this development had taken place, as their triangulation equipment was very inferior and the distances vast in Southeast Asia, with Tokyo even further away.

The Port Captain in Singapore became Korvettenkapitan Max von Zatorski, who had been captain of the Navy supply tanker UCKERMARK which was destroyed by an explosion in Japan, which also destroyed the auxiliary cruiser MICHEL which was tied up next to UCKERMARK (formerly ALTMARK) in Yokahama, when it exploded and caught fire on November 9th, 1942.

The Penang Port Captain became Korvettenkapitan Ehrhardt, the former First Officer of the auxiliary cruiser MICHEL. After KK von Zatorski was reassigned, Ehrhardt took over in Singapore and Kapitanleutnant Konrad Hoppe, the former pilot and aircraft observer of the auxiliary cruiser MICHEL replaced him at Penang.

The German transporter QUITO reached the Southeast Asian bases during May of 1943, coming with supplies and personnel from Japan, so that things can get going finally, including the rapid communications with Tokyo and sometimes Germany direct by means of the radio equipment aboard QUITO. The 3 bases reported ready for operation and reception of U-boats as well as loading the blockade runners, also known as `rubber' ships in June of 1943.

Kapitan z.S. WERNER VERMEHEREN (955-+-1989), who reached Japan aboard the blockade runner REGENSBURG from France, took over in July as Direktor of the Marine Sonderdienst Ostasien and Chief of Staff for Vice Admiral Paul Wenneker, being thereafter directly responsible for the supplying, reception, loading and sailing of the surface blockade runners and lateron, the U-boats once they reached the Southeast Asian ports.

While the other boats of Group Polar Bear returned from the Madagascar and South African area to France, U-178 under Wilhelm Dommes is ordered to proceed to Penang instead, where it arrives in Asian waters as the second U-boats - after 156 days at sea. The first German U-boat was the Type IX-C40, U-511, under Kapitanleutnant Fritz Schneewind, which had departed from Lorient on 5 May 1943 and reached Japan directly with Vice Admiral Nomura aboard. He was returning from his assignment as Japanese Naval Representative in Berlin and also as the Tripartite Pact. U-511 was given to Japan after arrival as a sample submarine and was renamed Ro 500.

EDITOR NOTE - Even though this submarine displaced more than 1,000 tons, she received the designation `Ro' which indicated submarines of less than 1,000 tons. To circumvent the treaty, Germany listed the Type IX boats as 760 tons rather than their actual of more than 1,000 tons.