German Kriegsmarine Vize Admiral Horst von Schroeter Part 1 HORST von SCHROETER attained the highest rank of any of the World War II U-bootfahrer when he was promoted to Vice Admiral in the Bundsmarine, the new post-war German Navy. He earned the Knights Cross for his service in WW II and was a fine Skipper with great honor. Here is his story.

SHARKHUNTERS: Tell me about being attacked by destroyers and depth charges.

HORST VON SCHROETER: Being attacked by destroyers, that changed of course in the ongoing of the war, I remember in my first patrol in April ’41, we started being attacked by a destroyer. We started on a depth of 135 meters. Later on, relatively soon, we started with 180 meters from - - from the very first moment because of the improvement of depth charges and sonars of the destroyers and so on. And, at maximum, I think I was twice with my boat on a depth of 220 meters, but not voluntarily, I must say.

SHARKHUNTERS: How did you get down so deep?

HORST VON SCHROETER: If you get very good position depth charge, then there’s a lot of trouble aboard. The electric goes out, and the boat normally is a bit heavier than the water around the boat so if you have no engines driving, the boat will sink very, very slowly, and then it hit a spot of disaster. The use of the engine, to keep the boat level and bring it up. So when we started at 180 meters and had a very good depth charge. Then the boat went down, at maximum in my case, to 220 meters.

SHARKHUNTERS: What do you think about during a depth charge attack?

HORST VON SCHROETER: Of course, that depends on the position as a watch officer, who was not directly responsible for the measurements. I was looking around, what the others are doing, the Captain, the Chief Engineer, and so on. Being Captain, that’s quite another situation. You are thinking, of all possibilities to get out of the situation.

SHARKHUNTERS: What are those possibilities?

HORST VON SCHROETER: Yes, what you can do, changing speed and course, changing depths or anything else. And later on, there came additional - - for instance, in avoiding destroyer attacks, we had the so called ‘Pillenwerfer’ that was a small lump you could put out on a special part of the boat. And this lump, went over into a croll and put air bubbles in the water, and we hope that the destroyer would pick up this one by it’s sonar, and think it’s a submarine, while we are going away.

EDITOR NOTE – the ‘Pillenwerfer’ was a large pellet that was fired out of the boat into the ocean. When it came into contact with the water, it would produce loud fizzing and bubbling noises, much like a giant Alka-Seltzer for headaches. It did not work too well if the sonar operator was skilled as he quickly realized that the noise was remaining in one place and knew that it was a trick. The ‘Pillenwerfer’ or the ‘Bold’ was fired out of Tube 6 on the Type VII boats and out of Tube 7 on the Type IX boats. Yes, there was a Tube 6 on the Type VII boats and a Tube 7 on the Type XI boats, designed specifically for firing such ECM devices.

SHARKHUNTERS: What was the main limitation of a U-Boat?

HORST VON SCHROETER: In the first part of the war, we preferred to run on surface, because we had the high speed of seventeen knots on the surface. We had four lookouts on the bridge, additionally, to the Captain & the Torpedo Officer. We had a very low silhouette - the highest point on the submarine bridge was the eye of the lookout. Nothing else higher, so, for instance - - we especially caught our targets by night of course. And if you mentioned a man on a steamer, on a height of, on the bridge, say twelve to fourteen meters, and looking down, then the submarine on it’s silhouette was in the dark part against the water, not against the horizon, so we had a good chance to close in for attacking.

All together these were the situations that we preferred to take at night. That changed of course, very much after Black May, when we had to be aware of radar by the enemy, radar in destroyers, in aircraft, etc. Huff-Duff, I don’t know. This was in the equipment on destroyers to take a bearing on any transmission by a submarine in the neighborhood. So he could take the bearing and run directly on high speed to the submarine. So that was absolutely changing of type of attacking after May. We had, of course, some counter measures against radar, but I think, I remember altogether four or five types of anti radar equipment.

And we were all the time behind the development on the side of the enemy. So it was very hard to get into attack position. In the torpedo attack, I shoot at the torpedo speed, especially of the electric torpedo that run silent with no bubbles in the water and the speed was thirty knots. And depending on the distance from to the target, the target is moving the time the torpedo was running, so you must know as exact as possible, course and speed of the target, in order to get to a hit. That, on the other end, what’s necessary to go with a boat in a forward position, to the target because the target was moving at the time the torpedo was on the way.

That all was difficult in attacking and it’s came more and more after our disaster in May, ’43.

SHARKHUNTERS: What did you fear most from the enemy?

HORST VON SCHROETER: I can’t say exactly but I must say, what I felt in this time, because, especially as Commanding Officer, you were so engaged in the following actions of the boat that you couldn’t think much about the poor people aboard the target. A very sad memory, I must say, when I sang a prayer to a submarine. I could see the part of the boat thrown up in the air. I was submerged and I could look through the periscope. I think in that special case, that was a very sad feeling about the men on the other side because they were submariners, as we. But on the other hand, I think it depends on the situation.

For instance, we did sink three ships, only by gunnery. Then we had the possibility to do anything about, for instance, to close the lifeboats and give some water or fruit aboard, and say what they should say, or to get to the next course, and such things.

SHARKHUNTERS: Explain that a little more.

HORST VON SCHROETER: I remember one case, for instance, when we came back from our second patrol to the U.S. East Coast. We met a small steamer out there in the open ocean, and we had no torpedoes anymore, they kept in hiding, tried to get the ship by gun. We were persistent and the ship was sunk, and there was a lifeboat, and then we closed the lifeboats, and gave them some water and food, and showed them the directions they should sail to get to the next coastline.

In the other case, I finished the sinking in my time as Captain, finished the sinking of a steamer, which was torpedoed before. I finished this by gun, and then it was an order in that time, we tried to get the Captain aboard, to take him back to Germany. And we succeeded to pick out the Captain, and he asked me if he could give his people in the lifeboat direction to the next shore, and I agreed, that was the way we could do anything. On the other hand, we were so narrow in space aboard, we couldn’t do more for the people in the water.

EDITOR NOTE – We ran a story about this incident some years ago. The crew of the sunken ship was hunkered down in the lifeboats. When von Schroeter asked who was the Captain, they all said that the Captain had been killed in the sinking. A very smart man, von Schroeter quickly figured out who was the Captain and brought him aboard U-123.

Once aboard U-123, the merchant Captain asked von Schroeter how he knew that he was the Captain. Von Schroeter said that he always looked for the man appeared most worried, and that was the Captain.

SHARKHUNTERS: What’s your most vivid memory?

HORST VON SCHROETER: On the positive side, I should say, that was, as I told you about, the sinking of a British submarine and in those hours, there was coming a steamer on the other direction, from the other direction. He obviously had seen somebody from where we had sank the boat and he turned back, but after some time, he turned again and continued the old way. I tried to get into attack position, but the distance was very long and I had only one torpedo left in the foreship, so I couldn’t just estimate course and speed of the steamer but I fired the torpedo, and the torpedo hit the steamer after the distance of 4200 meters. That of course, was very, very lucky as a shot I should say.

Bad conditions - on our second trip to the U.S. East Coast, we under the command of Captain Hardegen and, I should say normally we are very close to the coastline because the traffic was running very close to the coast. So we went at the morning out, got down on the ground, slept, all the men, and the afternoon we went up and close to shore and then we sunk one ship.

By night, close to the coast, we saw the cars running, and smelled the wood from so close we had been. We were on a depth, a water depth of about twenty meters, thirteen to twenty meters, and then a destroyer came, who is faster and can fight you. They forced us to dive. We tried to get away, but we were forced to dive, and we jumped down on a dept of twenty-five meters, and laid the boat, plump down on the bottom.

And then came the destroyer, and he saw a lot. I don’t know how many one run depth charges. And there was absolutely chaos aboard, I must say. No light, no engine, no power, water was coming and glass was broken, and so on. And then we put on our life jackets, and could do nothing but wait, because if we tried to get up, we would be so noisy that the destroyer would pick up on everyone. So we were down there on twenty-five meters, dark in the boat, life jackets on. And the destroyer cruised overhead, a new one, but it didn’t throw any depth charge. I don’t know why. If he wasn’t sure on our position, or if he had no depth charge anymore, I don’t know, but he didn’t throw any depth charge so we could wait another two hours and then move very, very slowly, and so as little noise as possible outside, and the next day, we were dived to repair our things. But that was a very, very critical position, I must say, and we had to expect that the boat was damaged and we had to go out.

SHARKHUNTERS: What type of person was successful on board a U-Boat?

HORST VON SCHROETER: On the one hand, I must say, we were all very young and sound boys. When I took over command, I was just twenty-three years old. So we could bear a lot of things, and we had to pass the bad air report, it was diesel all around the air. We had not fresh food, we could take food for about two or three weeks, and we depend later on, on canned food and things.

We were very close in space, that is especially to say for instance, forty single seamen. We had a turn of three watches on the bridge by the seamen. And that means for the enlisted men, we only have two bunks for three men, because all the time one man was on the bridge, on watch. And the technicians, they would sit in the watchtower, there were only one bunk for two men. We had not enough fresh water, so there was a possibility to have a seawater shower. Changing of clothes was limited because of the space. And I think this increased in the later time of the war, because of the fact that the boat has to stay submerged for a long time, much longer than former times. And being submerged there was a total of about forty men, only more or less eight to ten men on watch. And the other men had to be ordered to lay on their bunks and sleep, because not to spend too much of the air. I think that was, of course, very, very hard conditions, but as I said, we were young and sound and so we could take it.

SHARKHUNTERS: Do you think they should’ve continued sending the U-Boats out at the end of the war?

HORST VON SCHROETER: Yes, I think that is a very, very good question, because starting with May ’43, when we lost 41 boats within one month, the North Atlantic was given up. But then we came back, and we, as a Captain, were very clearly and frankly informed about the situation. We were all - from that time on, we were behind in the development, and the hunters got hunted. So, we were informed that it is necessary for us to go out and find all the effort of the enemy to get rid of the submarines. The aircraft, who otherwise could fly into Germany and drop the bombs, the destroyers, the convoys for instance, if you take the time a ship needs going by convoy over the ocean. That is to slow the convoy, send marching with the slow speed of the slowest ships of the convoy, arriving on the harbor to be unloaded one after the other. On the other hand, if you could ship - send the ships single, that way they had much more ability and capacity to bring cargo to the other side. That were, all these were conditions that we were convinced and I’m convinced up ‘til now, that it was necessary to go out with our boats, even if it was very dangerous. It was war, what should we do else? Should we go to the East Front? That was very dangerous. It was war.

SHARKHUNTERS: Did you lose friends?

HORST VON SCHROETER: Yeah, sure, of course. The he number of my classmates was, at the beginning of the war, round about 450 and throughout, round about 230 lost their life in the war, and you can’t imagine what it means, that is your comrades missing more and more.

SH: How do you feel about your service on a U-Boat?

HORST VON SCHROETER: I was a professional officer, and it was war. So of course, I am proud to come to the most effective one, and in the navy that was the submarines. So, we had sworn to do our best. It was our duty, I think, being professional soldier and being in war.

SH: Are you proud of what you did during the war?

HORST VON SCHROETER: Yeah, I think so. You asked me about meetings with Admiral Dönitz, and that is one of - I should tell you, when I came back from my last patrol in April ’44, I was told that they intended to put me ashore in the training of officer cadets. In this time, I was three years aboard the boat, I knew the boat, I knew the men aboard, and the men knew me, and in these dangerous situations. So I asked not to get out, but to continue as Captain of the sub. And this was also part of discussion between Admiral Dönitz and me in early May ’44. He knew that I was ordered to get ashore, and he knew that I was not afraid about it. So he told me something for reason why I should go ashore, and after some words about my last patrol, he asked me if I had to say anything, and then I asked him, I would like very much to stay aboard, because of the situation. And in that case, he granted my request - and I was Lieutenant. I told him, and I said him frankly, that the boats are not anymore sufficient against the counter actions. But, being for three years aboard with the crew, I wouldn’t like to go ashore, I would ask very much to stay aboard. Then the boat was put out of commission, and remained in Lorient, France, in the U-Boat bunker, and I went over with the whole old crew to a new boat Type XXI, and that was the best thing for me, I must say.

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