20 Years Ago

WOW! Who could have thought, back on 2 February 1983, that this little group of about six people would eventually evolve into the world’s largest (outside of Germany) and most respected source of information on the history of the U-Bootwaffe?

It was never expected to be anything more than a small hobby, as HARRY COOPER (1-LIFE-1983) was a corporate executive with a major company in a large metropolitan city. He soon realized that the history of the U-Bootwaffe was terribly distorted and actually falsely reported – machine gunning men in the water, hating God and praying to Hitler, raving Nazis – all wartime propaganda, but it was still widely believed because there was no place where the honest history of these brave men was being told.

It wasn’t long after this realization that HARRY just walked off his very high-paying job – walked off with no pension, and moved to Florida to turn SHARKHUNTERS into the world’s leader in this history…..and he does not even take a salary.

Okay, so what was in our first newsletter – it wasn’t even called the KTB yet…..it didn’t even have a name. Turn the page. We’ve reproduced the ENTIRE first SHARKHUNTERS newsletter.

The First Issue (very slow: 215K)

15 Years Ago

In KTB #33 we announced that Members (at that time) HANS GÖBELER (3-+-1983) and Erika had been arrested as illegal aliens in the U.S. We put the weight of SHARKHUNTERS into helping them remain in the U.S.A. and got letters of support from many Members, which were sent to President RONALD REAGEN (1858-LIFE-1991). Thanks to President REAGEN, a meeting was arranged between the Regional Director of the I.N.S. and SHARKHUNTERS President HARRY COOPER (1-LIFE-1983) to gather further information. In this one-hour meeting, HARRY pleaded for the I.N.S. to allow them to remain in this country and to dismiss any charges against them. It worked.

TOM HATTON (20-+-1983) enjoying his new home in North Dakota, finding many artifacts of Lt. Gottzleben, a WW II American flier with his Kingfisher plane.

JIM VIZIGIAN (29-1984) was trying to find information on the German U-4000 series boats. He was Leading Signalman at Portsmouth when the U-Boats came in after the war, and he saw several very advanced U-Boats which he insists were NOT of the Type XXI design – something even more advanced, and he was looking for more information on them.

We had exposed a guy named Heinz Houben in California who claimed to have been I.W.O. on several U-Boats and Skipper of a Type XXI on war patrol in the South Atlantic when the war ended. All total baloney! He was never in any branch of the Wehrmacht, never in the Kriegsmarine, never on a U-Boat and certainly NOT on a Type XXI in the South Atlantic when the war ended because there were no Type XXI boats on patrol anywhere (except U-2511 outbound). Capt. OTTO GIESE (45-+-1984) wrote that Houben is an insult not only to U-181 (one of the boats he claimed to have been on – wasn’t!) but to submariners of all navies – he is a fraud.

OTTO told us that his son Jon was due to graduate from the U.S. Air Force Academy that month.

We sadly announced that Korvettenkapitän HEINRICH LEHMANN-WILLENBROCK (120-1985) had begun his ‘Final Patrol’. He was Skipper of U-86 of the ‘Smiling Sawfish’.

Another sad announcement – Frau Schulz told us that her husband WILHELM SCHULZ (162-1986) was gravely ill in the hospital. Captain SCHULZ was one of the best liked Skipper in the U-Bootwaffe, and one of the best.

KTB #33 was only 8 pages long, and done on that old manual typewriter. I guess that is about as high-tech as it got back then.

10 Years Ago

The cover photo of KTB #72 included a photo of one of the three DAPHNE Class submarines in their fleet and some other items we were given during our Operation ‘Sub-Afrika’. We visited South Africa & found it to be a beautiful country, not at all like the press reported. Much of KTB #72 was taken with our trip report.

Some of the high points of our Operation ‘Sub-Afrika’ included our lunch with the Admiral Commanding the South African Navy; our (VERY!) low altitude ASW flight in a South African Air Force DC-3; our two hour long low level flight in a Super Frelon troop carrying chopper – and the highlight of the tour was our patrol on board SAS EMILY HOBHOUSE, the submarine on the front cover of KTB #72. Departing the submarine base with HARRY COOPER (1-LIFE-1983) in the periscope shears (video camera running all the time) and Captain HERMANN HOFFMANN (1365-1990) on the bridge – he had been to Capetown once before, but aboard U-172 and it was not a friendly visit. The Skipper dived the boat and popped the periscope up to look at Table Mountain – in exactly the same spot where HOFFMANN took a photo through the periscope of U-172 so many decades before.

There were more of the stories by OTTO GIESE (45-+-1984) and BOB MAHER on the life and death of U-405 and USS BORIE as well as the excellent piece on U-Boat Disarmament by CHARLES GUNDERSEN (205-1986). And there was a story on the WW I UC-97, sunk in Lake Michigan some 20 miles north of Chicago.

KTB #72 had grown – it was 28 pages long, but still done on that typewriter. Today’s new computer technology allows us to do so much more with our KTB Magazine.

5 Years Ago

The front cover of KTB #118 featured Nicolai Claussen, Skipper of U-129. There was an excellent interview with Captain REINHARD HARDEGEN (102-LIFE-1985) and we ran the story of the ill-fated Convoy PQ.18 taken from U.S. Navy files. At this time, there were SHARKHUNTERS Members in 56 countries – today 70 lands are represented.

In our ‘German Secret Weapons of World War II’ section we discussed the Me 163 KOMET rocket propelled fighter. There was more of the doctoral thesis of PHILIP ATTENBOROUGH (440-1988) covering military collaboration between Imperial Japan and the Third Reich and in another section; we covered Tokyo Rose, Axis Annie…..and Commander Norden. We also covered the interrogation of Vice Admiral Paul Weneker, former German Naval Attaché in Tokyo. There were hints that Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller had made it to America after the war, under the special protection of the O.S.S. (later the C.I.A.).

TORA, TORA, TORA……I-16 TAU

This meant that one of the midget submarines launched from I-16 made a successful attack inside Pearl Harbor – before the planes! That report was in KTB #118 as well.

KTB #118 was 36 pages in length.

Here is an article that appeared in KTB #118

Interview w/ Capt. REINHARD HARDEGEN (102-LIFE-1985)

Did you know Captain HARDEGEN did NOT volunteer for the U-Boats? Did you know that his heart was in the air? Even so, he became one of the most successful submarine Skippers of WW II; sank the first ship in U.S. waters; won the KNIGHTS CROSS and was one of only 28 U-Boaters to win the OAK LEAF.

In battle, he was known as a fire-eater. But he was a decent Skipper, once putting his boat into shallow waters between shore (Jacksonville Fl) and his target (the tanker GULFAMERICA) so any over-shots from his deck gun would go out to sea and not hit the cars and houses on the shore. He tells us:

“I entered the Navy in 1933 and in 1935, I came to the Naval Air Force where I spent four years, through the Polish War. In November 1939, I was ordered into submarines. The reason for this being that as a German officer, I have already volunteered - so in being directed elsewhere, a German officer has no other recourse but to obey his new orders.

On 12 January (1942) we were off New York Harbor, and I thought that it would be a big surprise for the Americans that a submarine would be there. But it wasn’t because what I didn’t know then was that the British had broken the German Navy cipher then plotted my position every day and then had given that position to Admiral Ernest J. King - who did nothing!

EDITOR NOTE - the Brits had the code; they knew where each of the ‘DRUMBEAT’ U-Boats were each day and they gave this information to the US - but nothing was done by the Roosevelt Administration to head off the boats or to take any protective steps along the US east coast at all. Why this was done; why these ships were allowed to lumber into the waiting arms of the patrolling German U-Boats is an ongoing subject of research today.

There was no blackout or dimming of the lights. All lights were fully on, on both the light ships and regular shipping. Also, on Coney Island I could easily see both individual houses and cars. It was very easy.

I waited off the Ambrose light ship as ships came out of the inner harbor of New York. The first night (13 January, 1942) I torpedoed and sank the (Panamanian registered) tanker NORNESS 40 miles west of the Nantucket light ship. At first she radioed that she had hit a mine, but I sent another torpedo to fulfill my business. NORNESS then transmitted that it was a submarine.

The next day, I sank the British tanker COIMBRA. All of this in the area of New York Harbor.

WATCHING THE DANCERS?

But in the United States, newspapers said that I was so near New York that I could see Manhattan, and see the people dancing on the roof of the Waldorf Astoria - which was nonsense! It was just a story because I didn’t pass the narrows and was not in the upper bay. Besides, even if I were, I could never have seen the people dancing on the roof of the Waldorf Astoria.

U-123 was sunk nearly every day.

I then went southward, and the Americans sank me nearly every day. We heard the radio broadcasts. They said that ‘A German submarine sank a tanker, but our air force sank the submarine’.

Then the next day, the same thing, which we were just laughing because there were some airplanes which did drop some bombs, but they were so far off. So three times I learned from the radio that I had been sunk. Always the same submarine, because in Operation ‘DRUMBEAT’ we had only 5 submarines sent over, and only one was off New York, and that was U-123, my boat.

Then we went south along the coast to Cape Hatteras, where I sank other ships on this patrol. Also, when my torpedoes were out, I sank ships with artillery.

On the next patrol, I started at Cape Hatteras, went down to Key West and sank one more ship. But some of these ships were sunk in shallow waters, and their masts and funnels showed above the surface. So they were refloated and repaired, then sunk again by another submarine.”

There was more to this interview, but this feature from 5 Years Ago is only meant to relive a portion of the entire KTB Magazine and not to republish the entire issue. You may have this entire interview on videotape. Just order Tape H-52, REINHARD HARDEGEN 1994 and you can watch it over and over again. The cost is only $30 per tape (plus $5 shipping).