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:

Captain Otto Ites, Class of 1936, was previously Skipper of U-146 and prior to that, II.W.O. aboard U-48 together with Teddy Suhren, Class of 1935, who was the I.W.O. where these two chaps served under three captains on U-48, known as a ‘bunch of pirates’ amongst those on the inside. Otto Ites also became a P.o.W. His brother, Oberleutnant d.R. Rudolf Ites got killed as C. O. of U-709 when it was lost on 1 March 1944, sunk with all hands. Otto Ites likewise was reactivated for the Bundsmarine and retired as Rear Admiral and passed away in the early 1990’s.

HEINRICH LEHMANN-WILLENBROCK (120-+-1985), Class of 1931, formerly Skipper of U-8, U-5 & U-96 - taking over the beat up and almost derelict U-256 in Brest to have it patched up and very superficially repaired with band-aid arrangements to bring U-256 out from Brest after that port was encircled by American forces in the late summer of 1944 to reach Bergen, Norway with this floating wreck which appeared preferable to become a P.o.W. once Brest was occupied by American and French forces.

This was a considerable feat of both great seamanship as well as engineering on the part of the Flotilla Engineer of the 9th U-Bootflottille who traveled as L.I. on U-256 when it departed on 4 September 1944 to arrive in Bergen on 17 October 1944 after this rust bucket had already been officially decommissioned.

EDITOR NOTE – His U-96 was the famed boat of the ‘Smiling Sawfish’

U-219, another minelayer Type X-B commanded by Korvettenkapitän z.V. (Reserve standby) did also carry an additional supply of torpedoes because there was still a shortage of torpedoes for Far Eastern U-Boats as only one of the Type VII-F torpedo carrier U-Boats had managed to reach Penang and Singapore. U-219 was taken over by the Japanese and put into service as I-505 in July of 1945 proceeding to Indonesia and surrendering in Jakarta in August of 1945.

EDITOR's NOTE – this boat was broken up for scrap in 1947.

One important factor in the sinking of U-99 which prevented Commander MacIntyre to attempt the grabbing of secret material, particularly the Enigma Machine M-3 and connected items. When realizing that U-99 was sinking too slowly due to bent control rods from depth charge effects, OTTO KRETSCHMER (122-+-1985) discussed the matter with his Chief L.I. Oberleutnant Schröder who thereupon descended again into the Controlroom in order to further loosen certain valves, in order to expedite the sinking. KRETSCHMER told his L.I. specifically to only open them a tiny bit more, so that he in turn would have time to get back up on the bridge – but this was not to be and Schröder drowned with the quickly sinking U-99 and OTTO KRETSCHMER was swept by the water currents off the bridge into the ocean.

Donald MacIntyre had likewise been instructed in secret about the requirements and needs of Bletchley Park’s codebreakers and had a boat ready to launch, should it be considered feasible to enter or capture U-99 or whatever U-Boat they might be able to catch.

Thus OTTO KRETSCHMER was spared the events and happenings that occurred less than two months later when U-110 was captured and Fritz-Julius Lemp, former Skipper of U-30, did act so irresponsibly that the Enigma M-3 and boatloads of other important secret material were consequently captured from the abandoned but still drifting U-110, by the Royal Navy, permitting the general across the line break into German Navy and especially submarine radio signals.

EDITOR NOTE – PETER is not suggesting that KRETSCHMER would have acted in the same manner that Lemp did. In fact, OTTO told us that he had no respect for Lemp over the way he abandoned U-110 when almost everyone in the U-Bootwaffe knew that the bigger Type IX boats with their large and flat foredeck, tended to ‘hang’ on the surface for too long even during normal diving. OTTO said that Lemp was in too big a rush to get off the boat and did not take the necessary measures to prevent its capture.

Hitler's Meddling

Hitler interfered directly only rarely with naval operations and orders while Erich Raeder was still in charge of the Kriegsmarine, however there were at least three direct consequences upon the Battle of the Atlantic and the so-called ‘tonnage war’. Hitler initially only backed the Navy proposed and initiated Plan Weserübung for the occupation of Norway, when lateron Denmark was also added to that plan upon the insistence of Fatman Hermann Göring to obtain airfields in Jutland for the Luftwaffe. However, Hitler messed up the purely military plans by adding political arrangements and forcing a small Nazi Party civil administration upon Norway instead of permitting a much more low-key cooperative plan with certain Norwegian politicians, including Vidkun Quisling which Raeder had advocated.

The old Party man Terboven was appointed German ruler in Oslo and the events that turned Norway into the most hostile German occupied country occurred. Denmark in turn was governed and directed until the fall of 1942 by the former German Ambassador Renthe-Fink in Copenhagen, but retained a complete Danish government at the same time which only changed drastically when the SS and SD under Werner Best, a former deputy of SS Heydrich, took over in Copenhagen upon Himmler’s insistence, who considered Count Renthe-Fink too much of a gentleman and too inclined to consider Danish interests first.

The second direct meddling happened in the fall of 1941 when Hitler prevailed upon Raeder, after initial resistance on the Navy’s part, to dispatch U-Boats into the Mediterranean, supposedly to relived the British pressure on Erwin Rommel’s supplies and connections. The U-Boats dispatched thereupon through the Straits of Gibraltar to Italy and Greece were effectively removed from the convoy routes in the Atlantic and Karl Dönitz was still so short of operational U-Boats that this resulted in an almost complete disappearance of U-Boats and a drastic reduction in sinkings of merchant ships on the tracks to and from England.

This order, which was eagerly supported by some of the calcified over-age admirals bunched into the OKM in Berlin who grabbed on anything to reduce the influence and power of the U-Boat Command and stopped at nothing to accomplish this, particularly if it could at the same time be camouflaged as absolute military necessity to help the Afrika Corps.

During the summer and fall of 1941, Hitler repeatedly ordered that there must not be any incidents with American Flag ships or interference with American vessels, even though these now traveled to and from Iceland in convoys escorted and cooperation between the US Navy and the Royal Navy on the Atlantic grew constantly closer.

EDITOR NOTE – so much for the tired old propaganda that Hitler was going to invade America and ultimately rule the world.

The third negative effect string of orders concerned Norway. Somehow Himmler had sold Hitler on some part of his fantasy ‘All Germanic’ dreams of an all Germanic Super Reich – this to include most of Scandinavia as well as Holland and the Flemish part of Belgium plus even considerable sections of France.

In this connection Hitler conceived the grandiose plans for a giant super port in Trondheim, Norway for which Albert Speer was ordered to prepare drawings and blueprint plans. An absolute utopia, considering the location of Trondheim and the unstable soil conditions in that area, apart from other consideration. This is why the contemplated U-Boat pens in Trondheim were years behind schedule and never fully constructed, apart from the total lack of local material except gravel and the impossible labor situation with lack of skilled workers in any number. 90% of them had to be brought into Norway from other European countries, including their food and maintenance.

But regardless how unrealistic and technically inane these plans happened to be, Hitler kept pushing them periodically. He finally persuaded even himself and attempted to do so with others, that Norway was the decisive country and must be held and defended at all costs. Therefore the Army kept shipping more troops to Norway with its difficult and costly supply lines, that had practically nothing essential to do and were finally required instead in Russia. However, Hitler ordered also U-Boats to be moved and stationed in northern Norway rather than the ports in southern Norway, to protect the iron ore that was shipped from Narvik and northern Norway in general. Again the U-Boats so transferred had to be taken away from those available to U-Boat Command and the attacks on the convoy routes to and from England, once more leaving those much weaker – if not for lengthy periods, totally uncovered. This deplorable situation was then further aggravated, when only after some lengthy struggle, Karl Dönitz managed to partially lift the OKM order to station U-Boats west of Gibraltar mainly in addition to northern Norway, an absolute strategic and tactical insanity of Hitler’s.

Finally, in order to put into operation the improvised and quickly conceived Operation PAUKENSCHLÄG off the US east coast, the OKM reluctantly allowed U-Boats to be removed from the Gibraltar position lines back to western France for re-equipping and operational use off the US and Canadian east coasts and even that was only possible in stages and step by step, taking much too long and reducing the surprise effect as well as the sinking possibilities too but because of the lousy communications set-up between U-Boat Command in Berlin and northern Norway due to interrupted land lines, that only reached a few ports but by no means all of them and which were primarily concentrated upon the too many admiral staffed positions in central and northern Norway as well as the difficult atmospheric conditions that often stopped radio signal reception or sending for extended periods of time, these U-Boat in order to not sit idle, where placed under the operational command of some of these various German admirals in northern Norway.

In addition, it soon became apparent that the Swedes were able to listen in to the cables of German land line and copy telephone calls as well as teletype messages and read same, sharing this information also with the British Naval Attaché in Stockholm. While the evidence was available, OKM chose largely to ignore it just like the OKW and Army Command. This tapping of the communication lines was directly responsible that many planned U-Boat operations remained just that, & sometimes even backfired.

Finally, Captain Petersen was transferred to Narvik to concentrate upon U-Boat operations but again, under the supervision of these various admirals, all of them feuding for turf and additional authority. Finally Teddy Suhren was posted as U-Boat Director into northern Norway, but really two years too late already, operating finally independently.

But during these two years before Suhren took over, U-Boats as well as available surface ships had to be employed somehow. The surface ships had fuel supply problems and could not sail often at all as a consequence but diesel fuel was easier to obtain, so that the U-Boats and those surface ships that had diesel engines like the heavy cruisers, former pocket battleship ADMIRAL SCHEER, were therefore ordered engaged in many local operations that were largely ‘make work’ to keep them engaged assignments , from placing or fetching weather report stations and their staff to exploration of Spitzbergen and Russian Kara Sea coast and the northwest passage routes to Siberia, which was for weather reasons, only possible in July and August generally.

U-Boats were ordered to attack Russian radio stations on shore with gun action, or even to map certain unknown sea and coastal areas, attempting to find and attack Russian coastal shipping and isolated military posts. Basis Nord was originally the first Trondheim plan, later used for other transactions. Motowsky Bay falls into the exploration operations around Novaya Semleya and on the Kara Sea coast and further east. Also attempts to lay mine barriers were made, generally they turned out to be duds and did not succeed. After Royal Navy ships were stationed later on rotating basis in Murmansk and elsewhere, attack on coastal shipping and small convoys was practically terminated because now Asdic, Sonar and Radar were suddenly at hand, which the Russians did not have before and that stopped effective attack plans, except for occasional single actions

Well, Feuerland and also yacht sailing operations to South Africa, Argentina and Brazil amongst other places are something else again. That is a complete story by itself and calls for an entire book

PETER, we look forward to that information and we hope, soon. We have a lot of information about Operation Feuerland, but PETER will have more – LOTS more!