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: This should have been in KTB #169 as continuation from Peter’s report in KTB #168. Sorry – we ran tight on space in KTB #169.

In my case, ‘volunteering’ worked as follows – after passing final examinations at the Naval Academy in Flensburg, my group-officer handed everybody a blank sheet of paper and requested that each midshipman ought to put down three different sea duty type of assignments in order of preference, as the K.M. could not always manage to comply with each one’s single choice. So I wrote down:

1. S-Boats (MTBs)
2. Torpedoboats
3. Destroyers

My group officer told me I ought to really amend this list, hinting strongly that U-Boats should also be included. I told him, ‘I don’t care for minesweepers and harbor patrol boats much, most of them converted fishery vessels anyway and certainly disliked anything larger like cruisers or worse.’

Finally one of the staff captains also was called into the hall and he likewise started to sing the praises of those glorious U-Boats. Nevertheless, after being called rather pig headed for not changing my requested list, it was finally accepted. Three days later I got my orders, rail tickets etc. to proceed without delay and to report promptly in Lorient to the Second Flotilla for immediate U-Boat assignment. The orders and tickets had already ‘providentially’ been prepared and made out ten days prior to actual handing over, consequently also a week earlier to this ‘charade of choice’ also.

Enough said! I was not exactly enchanted, anticipating U-Boats, about which I literally knew nothing at all, would no doubt give me some sort of claustrophobia. But I quickly adapted myself and made the best of things, so to speak, having really very little choice to do anything else because the U-Boat Commands were straining at the seams and did not have enough spots for students/trainees available. Midshipmen then were immediately assigned to front boats (combat submarines) without any training or preparation whatsoever, to learn by doing because the increasing number of newly constructed U-Boats called for rapidly growing numbers of people to man them and the schools could not actually meet the rising demand for some period of time, until correspondingly expanded eventually, then finding suddenly they had too many trained fellows for insufficient positions, except engineering officers and certain technically specialized petty officers, that were short of actual demand right to the very end.

Naturally, there always remained a substantial gap between front service experienced men and men only trained in the various Baltic Sea training facilities and even on school submarines.

The rapidly rising losses could never overcome this situation, no matter how hard Admiral von Friedeburg tried by means of the various organizations and commands that he managed. As you know, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg was supposed to relive and replace Karl Dönitz as BdU in Command of U-Boats in the late fall of 1939 and had been consequently posted as understudy for an orderly transfer on 1 Oktober 1939, because Karl Dönitz had been in that position for four full years and was therefore due for rotation into another assignment, but this decision was cancelled because of the developing war, when it was considered as negative for the morale of the U-Boat men to have to change horses in midstream, as the comparatively small numbers of people all were acquainted with the then most senior Captain on the rankinglist, Karl Dönitz, from four years of exhaustive training.

This is a good place to end PETER’s PERISCOPE for this month, as his letter now begins a totally different topic, namely he goes into detail about U-116 and some of the other boats with more than some unusual facts in their background.

Nobody better than PETER to dig out the secrets of the war years.