This was an interview we did with GERD THÄTER in 1994. As you will learn in the interview, he transited the “Gates of Hell” at Gibraltar not once, but twice. His father retired as a VizeAdmiral (three stars); his brother retired as a KonterAdmiral (two stars) but he retired as a Fregattenkapitän, which is a rank between the USN’s Commander and Captain. The rank of Fregattenkapitän has three and a half strips on the sleeve. With a twinkle in his eye, he always said that he was the black sheep of the family – but he was loved by everyone who ever met him, as you can tell by the letters we received upon learning of his departure on his “Eternal Patrol”.

SHARKHUNTERS: Please tell us about the Type XXI. This was a radical change in U-Boat technology.

GERD: Certainly – the Type XXI was a big change. As I told you before, the Type VII, Type IX and so on – these boats, they are no U-Boats. They were boats able to dive, but the Type XXI was really a U-Boat because when you went down, you could stay for weeks underwater with that boat because that boat had a snorkel, had tremendous bigger batteries than the other boats – for example, the Type XXI batteries were three times as big as on the Type VII boat which meant that the speed underwater was much higher on the XXI boats than the Type VII.

For example, the Type VII at that time had 7 knots as highest speed underwater but the Type XXI, my boat, had nearly 16 knots; 15.8 to be exact. It was quite a difference. During the training time, I have attacked a convoy a few times because I was always able with that boat to go in front of the convoy again because my boat was faster than the convoy was going. So there was a big difference – no question about that.

SHARKHUNTERS: Do you think, that had there been enough Type XXI boats, that the Battle of the Atlantic might have ended differently?

GERD: We had ready………..more or less ready, let’s put it this way – we had commissioned approximately 140 boats and on a patrol just one boat, that was U-2511 under Captain Schnee, he went out for a mission but he didn’t attack any ship any more because then the war is over and he was close to Norway at that time, on the 5th of May…..so no boat has been on a mission but as Churchill has said, he would have been very angry if these boats had come to missions in a bigger number.

SHARKHUNTERS: Can you tell us how you came to be in the Navy and how you went into the Submarine force? Did you always want to be in the Navy?

GERD: That is a very, very easy to answer question because my father was an admiral in the Navy – but not at that time. He became admiral in 1942 and I joined the Navy already in 1936 but I never in my life, even when I have been a little boy, I had any other idea than to go into the Navy. Even when the Navy wouldn’t have taken me for any reason, I wouldn’t have known what to do. There was just no other idea for me at all than to become a naval officer. Even with my father it was the same and my other brother was in the Navy and my son too was a submarine commander in the Bundsmarine so we were all naval people.

SHARKHUNTERS: Do you remember any special moment that you recall while you were in training?

GERD: Jah….a nice story for example – one day I got the order to take officers from the Air Force and from the Army for a trip in the Baltic and so I decided we show them something about the submarine and we made an echolode…..I don’t know if you know what that is. It is a thing you use to figure out the depth of the water - it explodes and the echo tells you how deep the water is.

I put three of these little charges on my periscope and I made an ALARM dive and put my periscope up and the charges came on the tower and so there were explosions. At the same time, the lights went out, water came through somewhere and I ran the boat right onto the bottom and then she stuck and I couldn’t get the boat out. Then one of these Air Force officers came to my quartermaster and said, “Look, how deep is the water here?”

I had pressed air in the boat to change the depth gage, and it showed 200 meters you know, and the Air Force officer looked at the chart and he found out that it was just 60 meters. I looked at him and saw that he had the Submarine Badge from World War I! So he was a submarine officer originally and went to the Air Force in 1935 or something like that and then I had it, you know. I had quite a time getting that boat out of the mud, but we made it and I was happy I could get up again. It was a real nice, interesting story. We all had our fun first and later on we made long faces.

EDITOR NOTE – Here GERD refers to his earlier Type VII-C boat, U-466 which he commanded through the Baltic trials, many patrols in the Atlantic as far down as Brazil and into the Mediterranean.

SHARKHUNTERS: You were a submarine Skipper and a new submarine Skipper. This is a difficult job to do, especially under the conditions you had to do it. What qualities do you think a good submarine Skipper should have, a good U-Boat Skipper?

GERD: I wouldn’t say that a submarine Skipper should especially have more qualifications than any naval officer has to have normally, but in my opinion and most important thing for a Skipper on a submarine is that you have the crew in your hands and you have to be able to show the crew what to do. On a sub, there is just a small crew…….52 or 53 men on a Type VII for example, and there must be a friendship, a big family is what I used to say. They always have to stick together and that is the main thing – and that is what you have to tell them and you have to get them into this idea. That became always a little more difficult as longer as the war went because a person was desperate then. The first time, it was all volunteers who came into the submarine service. I tried to get into the service in 1939 after the war started….I tried to get but at first they put me on patrol boats, on E-Boats and later on in 1941 I came into the submarine service. It took a longer time because at first, there were lots of volunteers but later on it became worse.

SHARKHUNTERS: Assume that we are another Skipper. It is 1943 and you have just been given orders to go from Brest or Lorient and go through Gibraltar into the Mediterranean and he knows that you have been through twice and he is asking you, how we do it – what do we need to know?

GERD: I would tell you the same thing – you should do it like I had done. I went in the Spanish area, in Spanish waters – you know the three mile limit and inside was the Spanish Territory, and I was going already in Spanish waters and dove down all the way until to Cadiz……….all the way around Spain in Spanish waters and that was the best possibility to avoid the airplanes because we were a little bit under the coast and there was lots of fisher traffic, fishing boats and so on, so that was the best thing to go down the Strait of Gibraltar unhunted. Then to go through there, that was just luck or not luck. That has nothing to do with a good Skipper or a worse Skipper or whatever it is – that is luck if you can make it, can go through there.

SHARKHUNTERS: Can you tell us where you were when you heard the war was over and how the people around you responded or how you all felt? It had been a long war, a hard war. Where were you when it ended and your reaction?

GERD: When the war ended, as I told you before, in the Guard Battalion of Grand Admiral Dönitz and Dönitz was still on the job until the 23rd of May 1945 and at that time, the Brits took the whole German Government including Dönitz. That meant for us, that meant that our job was over too and so they tried to get us into prisoner of war camp but I decided after the war was over, it was better for me to go home and not to go into a camp – and so I did. I took my duty car I still had and went to Hamburg where I lived at that time. I lived with my family in the house with Captain Cremer, we lived together in one house, and then I went to – there still was a German office and an admiral in Hamburg and I went to see him and ask if he had a job for me. He said yes, I can use you, and I took over a patrol boat flotilla in Hamburg but on orders of the Royal Navy but under a German admiral. They were all German fishing boats that had to go back to their point of origin and the last boat was originally built for the Russian fisher fleet and then I had to bring, by order of the Brits, to the Russians and they took over that boat in Swienemünde where I went with that boat and then when I came back, I started work for the Brits somewhere – the British Navy in Kiel and then I went to the American Army and I became Deputy Officer in the Guard Battalion in the Army – a German outfit but I decided it was time now to look for a blue uniform again and I went back to the US Navy and then I went with a mine sweeping unit in Bremerhaven and then I took over later on the German side from the US Rhine River Patrol at Karlsrühe. From there I went back into our Navy.

SHARKHUNTERS: During the time you were serving in Type VII boats, patrols became increasingly difficult. You undoubtedly that there were new machines coming; that there were better submarines coming – what was your reaction when you first saw the plans or you actually first saw the Type XXI? What was your reaction? How did you think that would change things?

GERD: They all said that when we have these boats that we probably could win the war, and the feeling was then that according to the strength of the mainly US Air Force which damaged all our outfits where these boats were built, that it was taking longer and longer to get these boats to war patrols and as I told you before, not one has done it at all. But we felt that, with that boat, there was still a chance to win that war.

SHARKHUNTERS: At the time the war began, were you expecting war? Was Germany prepared for the war with the submarine force?

GERD: You mean when the war started in ’39? No, we were not. As you know, we started out the war with 57 boats and that included all Type II boats too, which are normally coastal boats and not useful for Atlantic or something like that. Then either there was some problems – one admiral wanted to have big ships, Dönitz wanted to have submarines and to get that as a whole, took quite some time and in my opinion, it took too long until we got that number of submarines that we really needed, then the success would have been more if it was so.

This concludes the interview we had with GERD in 1994. you may have this videotape for your own viewing if you wish. Order Tape H-54 Only $30 (plus $5 shipping)

Gerd Thater Interview

Gerd Thater Part 1
Gerd Thater Part 2