Part 2

This is the interview with Captain HELMUT SCHMOECKEL that we did in January of 2000, which became part of the History Channel’s presentation produced by ROB LIHANI (5989-2000) entitled: “Dangerous Missions – the U-Boats”

Captain Helmut Schmoeckel Interview: Part 1

Schmoeckel on the bridge, 1940.

SHARKHUNTERS: What was the main advantage of the U-boat? Were there any advantages of the U-boat when you were captain?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: There was a blockade against Germany from the navies; British and American Navy; total blockade. The British called it hunger blockade against Germany. The only weapon to do something against it was to sink the ships and to make, so to say, a counter-blockade against England and they used big ships. Cruisers, battleships, but it was nonsense. It was too much effort for little efficiency and there was a submarine; the only weapon to do the job.

SHARKHUNTERS: Tell me about the torpedoes on a submarine. Did they work well?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: At my time, yes. The U-Bootwaffe had some trouble in the first year of the war, but in my time the torpedoes were wonderful. Excellent. Worked well and with two different types of torpedoes.

SHARKHUNTERS: Tell me about the torpedoes. Were they good? Were they not good? How did they work?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: How were torpedoes? At our time, they were good. There were two types of torpedoes. One torpedo who could hear and march on a goal which made noise. But the British very soon found out and then made a noise buoy behind the ship and so the torpedo went not against the ship but against the buoy. Then we had other torpedoes, against convoys, so to say. They went straight ahead and then turned at hundred and eighty degrees backward and again after a time backward, turned again hundred and made a zigzag around the field where the convoy should be, but I have no experience in this field.

SHARKHUNTERS: How many torpedoes were on your boat and how were they loaded?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: We had six torpedoes in the tubes and six torpedoes in the boat, inside, to reload from inside and aft also two torpedo here. That is nearly all. There were devices to keep torpedoes on the surface level.

SHARKHUNTERS: How were the torpedoes loaded?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: By hand. Mostly by hand. By chains and they were rolled along some trestles.

SHARKHUNTERS: Tracks?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: Yeah. Double tree, and they rolled and were loaded through the hatch.

SHARKHUNTERS: Were the torpedoes accurate? Were they hard to fire?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: I think easy to fire, but always it was necessary to guess the speed of the goal. The speed and the way - the course of the goal and if everything was correct, they would have pushed the goal. If something was wrong, we went the wrong way. But they did what they should. They obeyed the orders.

SHARKHUNTERS: Were you ever in a depth-charge attack?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: Yes. In the Saint Lawrence Gulf, the only ships I saw were three destroyers and they detected me and I fired on one of them with torpedoes which they hearing device and I thought I had hit the destroyer and went down very fast, but in the Saint Lawrence Gulf, there is a mix of salt water and sweet water from the river, so the sonar device of the destroyers did not go deep. When I had reached hundred meters or two hundred meters down I was safe. They lost me and the bombing - the depth charging stopped. But I found out that my battery was absolutely empty. I had to go to the shore of the Saint Lawrence River and lay down on the coast about several hundred meters away from the coastline. We could see the cars moving on the street so we went to hundred meters and lay down. Be quiet. Sleep for several hours, but because there was a stream, it brought us away deeper and deeper and deeper and then when we reached again two hundred meters, I had to lift up the boat and try to take on some turns of the propellers. The last turns I was able to produce. We tried again to lay down at hundred meters and then this happened the same after some hours again. So, I was forced to come up to recharge the batteries; to surface, or to snorkel several hundred meters away from coast. And when we came up, they were absolutely foggy. And that was why I came back. The fog.

SHARKHUNTERS: Was it a hopeless mission to set out in a submarine?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: No. We never thought that we wouldn’t come back. We were absolutely optimistic at that time. The figures how many boats were lost, we found out after the war. We knew that more very submarines didn’t come back, but these high figures nobody knew at that time. For instance, I married in January ‘44 and two weeks later I went to sea and we said when I come back in May, we will celebrate our marriage in the church.

SHARKHUNTERS: So everyone expected to come back, then?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: Yes. Absolutely.

SHARKHUNTERS: Were you not aware of how many subs were going down? Do you think they purposefully kept it from you?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: I think we all didn’t know.

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: We all didn’t know the reality; how many were lost. But even if we would have known that, that wouldn’t have any change for our spirit because it was necessary and even in the last months, there was often said - stop submarine warfare, the efficiency is too low, but then it said we have to keep on as we have to bind (tie up)about two thousand airplanes and seawarfare (warships). Otherwise these would join the squadrons bombing German towns. That was the reason to continue with the submarine warfare.

SHARKHUNTERS: Do you think it was right to keep sending submarines out in to this dangerous situation and why?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: Yes, because it was necessary to keep the airplanes a defense effort of the Allies in the Atlantic instead of letting these airplanes bomb our German towns. I would like to add one thing. There would never have been any political discussions in our submarine. We did what we had to do for our fatherland, but there was never any Nazi ideology or idealism or never anti-Semitism discussions. Not at all. We fought for the country and nothing else. That I would like to express.

SHARKHUNTERS: What were the politics on a U-boat? Was it a fervent Nazi environment or a Naval environment?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: We were just a naval environment. We did our duty there and we had a good comradeship involved and we knew what we had to do. We hated, of course, the bombing of the German towns and the bombing prolonged the war instead of shorten it and we didn’t know any other way out than to go on with fighting. There were no political discussions on board. There was no pro-Nazi idealism or there was no anti-Semitism. This subject didn’t exist on board.

SHARKHUNTERS: Are you proud of your time as captain of a U-boat and why?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: Yes. I’m proud because I think we fulfilled our mission and my crew, though we had been distributed in the British camps for three years after the war, they still meet every year and are together for vacation week every year. That is, that shows the spirit we had.

SHARKHUNTERS: Did you lose friends in the submarine wars and how do you think of them today?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: I lost many friends in the war. Many comrades of my school, but not especially in the U-boats. It is very difficult to answer this question.

SHARKHUNTERS: Do you ever think about all the U-boat sailors that died in the war?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: No, we didn’t think that this was possible to die. Well, that was out of the question, yeah? There was one funny situation when we had to start our last trip. That was the 3rd May, 1945, three days after Berlin was conquered. Hitler was dead. Dönitz had took over and there was a funny situation when I got the order to go to the harbor of New York.

SHARKHUNTERS: Tell me again. There was a funny situation.

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: There was a funny situation when we got the order to go to the harbor of New York. Some days later, the war was over and there was an agreement between the Allied military authorities with the German Army Dönitz that Dönitz became some more days to keep to pulling back the maybe hundred thousand peoples from is Prussia to the west and on the other end the submarines at sea had to had to go to Allied harbors. And so we did, but it lasted three years. We were one week after war had ended, we became prisoners and had to stay there for three years and it was only in October, 1945, half a year later, when my wife learned that I am still alive.

SHARKHUNTERS: Why do you think you still get together with your crew?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: We were soldiers. We were naval, uh, sailors and it was our job and everybody was nice men...and we had to do our duty for our fatherland.

SHARKHUNTERS: Why do you think you’re still friends today?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: When you are in such a special situation, you keep much more together than in the other place. I also was some years naval attaché in Washington and the people we met there, we still keep together. That is a special situation and that binds, I would like to express.

SHARKHUNTERS: Do you think you were lucky to survive and why do you think you survived?

CAPTAIN SCHMOECKEL: Thinking about that all, I was very, very lucky that I came home. Very lucky. And it depended in most part, not only of luck, but of skill of all the men on board my ship.

HELMUT, Vielen Dank for this great interview. Members may have this interview in its entirely – check your catalog.