Whatever the cause, 12 American Merchant Marine sailors died on that day. Waves of other boats then followed. His half-sister was located living in Maryland and within 150 miles, plus 50 nautical miles, from the location of U-869. The men who found U-869 believed it was a victim of its own torpedo, which may have become a "circle-runner". The occupation forces were French in the area of Germany where we were living and working on a farm for our shelter and keep. Like the families of the crew, Guschewski did not know what happened to his fellow sailors until 1999. I also had to have awareness of my location on the sub in order to find my way back to the anchor-line in order to have a controlled ascent to the surface. This problem also affected the US submarine force at least twice, as seen with USS Tang (SS-306) and USS Tullibee (SS-284). Was U-854 there at the time when we sailed out of the harbor? Given the gesture, one might say “at the flick of four fingers” one can wind-up in a jail cell or concentration camp. She was also said to be fluent in German. For many years this attack was assumed to have been its end. U-869 conducted one World War II war patrol without success. When they arrived, we stayed far away from their camp. Both of the ships are designated as official tombs by their respective governments. Successful implementation of this plan would result in Germany winning the war. This occurred only several feet from where I was with my mother, who grabbed me by the arm and quickly walked away from the scene. Another frightening experience was before the war ended. Their casualty rate towards the end of the war was said to be at about 75 percent. “Hitler’s Lost Submarine,” a documentary done by PBS was shown on national TV on NOVA. On one occasion, some Lithuanians in the group, and probably my mother as well, gave the prisoners some food. UC 21 sank nearby. A Hitler Youth group (Hitlerjungen) were rumored to be coming to our area for a jamboree. The submarine was sunk in 1942 by aircraft fire. This added another dimension to the dive. The ships serve as self-enclosed tombs or “Iron Coffins.”. The losses off the US East Coast were overwhelmingly in 1942 during Operation Drumbeat and its successor operations, but the U-boats visited the area throughout the war. In 1990 a diver brought up a skeleton from this sub. Gary Gentile, a noted wreck diver, researcher, and author, rejects Chatteron and Kohler's theory. Courtesy HSPBC. It’s a grave.” This was reported to be said by Bill Palmer who is probably one with the most experience on diving the U-853. U-869 had been previously ordered by Karl Dönitz to move its area of operations from the North American coast to the Gibraltar area. GERMAN U-BOAT ATTACKS OFF THE AUSTRALIAN COAST DURING WW2 . Finally in 1991 a German submarine was discovered 50 miles off the coast in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, NJ in 230 feet of water. She came to the American shore duringWorld War Two on a mission to … Neuerburg went down with his boat. The official records state that U-869 was destroyed on 11 February 1945 by two U.S. destroyer escorts, Howard D. Crow and Koiner. Middle East; German WW1 submarine emerges off French coast. Subsequently, when I skied in Switzerland on two occasions a couple of years ago, I did think of what the eventual outcomes would have been had they crossed the border and remained in Switzerland. It rests at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at 130′ feet in depth. We were jumping up and high-fiving each other. The sub entered the open ocean on October 6. The accustomed routine of turning out the lights and “going dark,” and then descending to a basement or an air-raid shelter. As a recreational New Jersey wreck diver for ten years, I had the opportunity to do two separate dives on german u-Boat 853. I forgot to look to see if there was a swastika on the conning tower. Survey teams from windfarm developers ScottishPower Renewables (SPR) and Vattenfall spotted the wreck in September 2012 while seabed scanning for the development of windfarm projects in the East Anglia … Eagle PE-56, which lost 49 of 62 crew members, was located by a civilian dive team. This map, currently, includes ships lost in the Gulf of Mexico which has its own map. German U-boat off the east coast of Florida, 1942-1943. Nevertheless, he was part of a deadly German submarine force which was at a pivotal point in the future of the war. it pretty much followed “Shadow Divers” with additional information provided on the German and American submarine warfare and the taåctics involved. With thanks to SeacoastNH.com. The only documented World War II sinking of a U-boat close to New England shores occurred on May 5, 1945, when the German submarine U-853 torpedoed and sank the collier Black Point off Newport, Rhode Island. This occurred frequently and was said with derision. He looked at me and said, “I know Karys— my father was a Lithuanian army officer and I spent nine years in Siberia (Gulag).” I looked at him stunned and in amazement. Twelve of the crew died and 34 were rescued. U-853 is one of the most popular wrecks on the East Coast and is heavily dived by East Coast divers. Power over life or death at the flick of a wrist or pointing of a finger. Nicknamed U-Who, the exact identity of the wreck was a matter of frequent debate, and initially the wreck was thought to be either U-550 or U-521. These were positioned up and down the East Coast from Norfolk to Boston. Most Americans do not know that during the winter of 1941-1942, soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany sent five submarines to attack the East Coast of the United States. The Navy doesn't discuss local submarine activity, or acknowledge specific vessel locations. Its keel was laid down 5 April 1943 by Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG Weser of Bremen. Finally, U-234 was torpedoed off the Cape Cod coast in 1947. One of the finest books on submarine warfare is “Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story Of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks Along The American Coast in World War II,”written by Michael Gannon. Its records had its location in the vicinity of Gibraltar. Later, during a Boy Scout trip we found and played in destroyed buildings and abandoned steel wreckage. Robert Kurson chronicled the story of U-869's finding in the book Shadow Divers (2004). Memories of World War II: Lithuania and Germany. It was a sleek German submarine sitting upright at the bottom. As she was desperately trying to run, a German officer confronted her with a drawn pistol and shouted for her to stop. it is one of the best documentaries ever done on the subject. In Lithuania, they could have been both German and Russian at different stages of the war. (Three divers, Steve Feldman, Chris Rouse and "Chrissy" Rouse, died exploring U-869. On 28 February 1945, the American destroyer escort Fowler (DE-222) and the French submarine chaser L'Indiscret conducted a depth charge attack on a submerged contact in the Atlantic, near Rabat, and reported a kill, although little visible evidence was presented to confirm the kill. Merchant ships also used the canal. Based on the information provided, U.S. Indeed, the U.S. Navy and German subs had joined battle months earlier, even before war was declared, when President Roosevelt ordered the Navy to protect allied shipping. Jacques Cousteau could not have done a better job. On 31 August 1997 they concluded that the boat they found was U-869.[6]. Their story is told in the book “Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Lost Mysteries of World War II” written by Robert Kurston, journalist and author out of Chicago. The German gesture certainly must have made a lasting impression on him. From then until early August, German U-boats dominated the waters off the East Coast, sinking fuel tankers and cargo ships with impunity and often within sight of shore. It suffered no casualties to its crew until it was lost in February 1945, with all but one of 56 crew members dead. He watched a program which eventually became the PBS NOVA episode "Hitler's Lost Sub" and contacted the producers shortly afterward, who interviewed him and placed a portion of it in the 2000 American broadcast. Otto Brizius was the youngest of the crew at age 17. Special mixed gases were used by the divers and they had to work in the dark or “in shadows.” The penetration of the wreck by Chatterton, in order to find its identification, is beyond description in terms of danger and excitement to read. German submarine U-869 was a Type IXC/40 U-boat of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during World War II, the wreck of which was discovered off the coast of New Jersey in 1991. Namely: World War II. The attack, codenamed Operation Drumbeat by the Germans, lasted more than six months, killed more than 6,000 sailors and sank more than 300 ships. It could have been a non-delivery error in German communications or radio failure on the sub itself. The wreck was relatively intact and not just a bunch of blown-up metal scattered on the ocean floor. I was told that the fleeing woman was Jewish. For her entire life she had thought that he was missing somewhere in the Atlantic near Gibraltar. 29 German sailors were buried at Hampton National Cemetery on April 15, 1942 after their submarine became the first German submarine destroyed in U.S. waters during World War II. German submarine U-869 was a Type IXC/40 U-boat of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during World War II, the wreck of which was discovered off the coast of New Jersey in 1991. it certainly defines and captures the essence of “iron Coffins” where the casualty rate of German submariners was said to be at about 75%. The crew soon figured out that something was amiss, though: how could a man who didn’t speak German be a German reporter? Chatterton and Kohler based their theory largely on a lack of evidence to support other causes for sinking. This was a close encounter with a German submarine that was only seven miles off the East Coast: deadly, ominous, and stealthy. Later, when I gave the photo to my father, who was the editor of Karys in exile, I asked him to be sure to give the photo a prominent place in the magazine After all, the guy did nine years in the Gulag. That was the warning. My father, a former Lithuanian Army officer, would have been jailed or sent to Siberia when the Soviet Army reoccupied Lithuania in 1944. One of the divers lost was killed by an explosion. U-853 is one of the most popular wrecks on the East Coast and is heavily dived by East Coast divers. In my entire life I never saw this gesture again, anywhere. “We were ecstatic. But nautical charts show a restricted area about four miles east of the port. We reported our find which was turned over to the French military authorities. Later, with several of my friends, I found an abandoned shack in the forest which had a cache of Nazi weapons and Nazi posters on the walls. There were 171 ships sunk off the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Florida, 62 sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, and 141 in the Caribbean. On one occasion in Germany, an Allies’ plane was shot down nearby and people had gone to the wreck which lay in the farm field within walking distance. U-Boat 879, was in the vicinity of Boston. From the start of offensive operations in mid-January through March, 1942, U-boats sank 39 ships. McCobb, which had been sunk by an Italian submarine off the coast of French Guiana just five weeks earlier, they had endured seven days in … He extending two fingers from each hand and then crossed them, depicting a jail window. For penetration divers that enter the wreck, the tight spaces in the submarine, sharp metal edges, and debris all pose hazards. The strike by the German U-boat submarines on the East Coast of the United States was planned to have had the same effect as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had on the West Coast and the Pacific. This discovery was highly unusual. In 1942, U-boats dominated the East Coast’s shipping lanes. Scientists are using submersibles to explore a German U-boat sunk off the Rhode Island coast the day before Nazi Germany surrendered in World War II. [10], Coordinates: 39°19′48″N 73°12′00″W / 39.33000°N 73.20000°W / 39.33000; -73.20000, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Divers Tell Tale Of Mystery Sub: U-Who? "U.S. submarines frequently surface off the coast of Florida," he said. This experience was relevant on two levels: the actual dive itself and the precipitation of a number of memories related to my own life-experiences during and after World War II. On Jan. 13, 1942, German U-boat attacks officially started against merchant ships along the Eastern Seaboard of North America. Anticipating the dive, I knew that I would be encountering a relic of the past: namely a close encounter with an ominous and deadly member of the German war machine. “Das Boot,” a German award winning film, continues to be rated as the best film on the topic of German submarine warfare. 4,776 Views. German submarines, or U-boats, aimed their torpedoes at tankers and freighters along the eastern coast of the United States to disrupt delivery of supplies as well as to lower morale; sinking ships burned within sight of American civilians. As of 1993, at least three divers have died on this wreck. There were rumors in the diving community in New Jersey that there possibly was a submarine off the New Jersey shore. I also learned much later in life from my parents that their goal was to reach the Swiss border. This dive had a personal meaning beyond just being a deep dive in the Atlantic. in combat, a casualty rate of 30% (KiA-Killed in Action) is considered to be exceedingly high. This was a blow by blow accounting of the battle against German u-boats that operated off America’s east coast for much of 1942. In 1942. A total of 2,403 persons were killed and 1,178 were wounded. After fumbling around for months with increasing losses of merchant ships, the Navy finally figured out how to limit the damage by using convoys and eventually starting to sink the subs themselves. The surviving crew member, Herbert Guschewski, was not on board, as he became ill just before the patrol. As I recall, Bremen was still in rubble in 1950 more that five years after the British bombing. It was also an electric submarine of the same class and identical to UBoat 853 in Rhode Island dived by this author. The wreck of a World War One German submarine is gradually resurfacing on … German Subs: Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza for Historians. The idea of such an encounter brought back many memories, both before, after, and during the actual dive. The Lithuanians referred to concentration camps as “Acetates.” If you were sent to the Gulag by the Russians, then you went to “Sibiras.” “Gulag” only came into usage after Solzhenitsyn. The next day 55 German sailors perished in U-853, on the day before Nazi Germany surrendered. I quickly realized that this could have been me. The boat was capable of operating at depths of up to 230 metres (750 ft). As he stepped from his sailboat, I shook his hand, took a photo and told him that it would be the Lithuanian Karys (The Warrior) magazine’s next edition. Was the submarine fleet one of the major targets? [5]) Eventually, the team recovered a knife inscribed with "Horenburg", a crew member's name. It was theorized that the torpedo was initially fired in a turning pattern and when it missed its target, it picked up the sound of the submarine's propeller. This wreck was a german electric submarine which was sunk on the East Coast off rhode Island during world war II. When official hostilities began, top brass recognized the “imminent probability of submarine attack” along the East Coast, thanks in large part to British intelligence. Once back and safe on the boat, I allowed my thoughts to take me back to some experiences of living in Germany during and after World War II. The Enemy Presence: German U-Boats. We found live ammunition there as well. G erman subs sank 600 ships off the coast, often so close to the shore that they could use the glow from US towns to backlight their targets at night. The Wreck of the German Submarine U-701. At least two other German U-boats supposedly have been lost due to their own torpedoes: U-377 in 1944 and U-972 in late 1943. The Russians usually came at night and people just disappeared. The French were deployed in tactical infantry formation and consisted of Moroccan soldiers. When my family, as Displaced Persons, left Germany for America in 1950, we sailed out of Bremen. I was more frightened then than I was during the German officers’ visit at the farm. This was forbidden and German officers arrived the following day on an official visit to issue a warning. In December 1944 an American liberty ship was sunk off the New South Wales coast and another vessel was attacked off the South Australian coast. Otherwise, it lies intact in 100 feet of water. WWII German U-boat found off Massachusetts coast. This increased the significance of the dives, since we were diving both the attacking enemy submarine and also its American victim ship. U-1228 was then sunk in 1946, and U-873 was scrapped in 1948. They claimed there was no reported naval activity in the vicinity, thereby ruling out a sinking by attack. Its keel was laid down 5 April 1943 by Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG Weser of Bremen. It is of further irony and tragic that on the day of the sinking of Black Point, Karl Donitz, President of Nazi Germany ordered all U-Boats to cease offensive operations and a return to their bases. 6-Year Search Nets Answers, Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in February 1945, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=German_submarine_U-869&oldid=1012135198, World War II shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from July 2016, All Wikipedia articles needing clarification, Articles needing additional references from May 2015, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2015, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-LCCN identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 1st patrol: 8 December 1944 – 11 February 1945, 18.3 knots (33.9 km/h; 21.1 mph) surfaced, 63 nmi (117 km; 72 mi) at 4 knots (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph) submerged, This page was last edited on 14 March 2021, at 20:13. It was commissioned on 26 January 1944 with Kapitänleutnant Helmuth Neuerburg in command. NAUTILUS LIVE 2014 | E/V Nautilus is exploring the ocean studying biology, geology, archeology, and more. The submarine base and training facilities were in Bremen, a major German port. This had a lasting impression on me and the memory remained vivid throughout my life. UBoat 853 never received this message. The loud wail of the sirens which relayed the message of imminent danger. History-1900+ (Wikipedia). Several ships were torpedoed within sight of East Coast cities such as New York and Boston. GermanSubmarine. After the unknown sub was identified as U-869, Chatterton and Kholer did some follow-up and made personal contacts with several relatives from the submarine crew. Massive deportations were to follow after the Soviets returned and occupied the Baltic States in 1944. Near the end of the conversation, one of the officers warned my parents that if this should happen again they would find themselves in a German prison. In 1991, Bill Nagle, a former wreck diver and the captain of Seeker, learned about a wreck off New Jersey and decided to mount a diving expedition to the site. He had a German first name but was certainly of Lithuanian descent on the father’s side. She had two shafts and two 1.92 m (6 ft) propellers. [7], The United States Coast Guard, in its official evaluation of the evidence, discarded the circle-running torpedo theory and awarded the sinking to the two destroyers. It was chased later by the U.S. Navy destroyers and was sunk the following day by a direct hit from a depth charge less than four miles from Point Judith, R.I. A team of divers organized and funded by New Jersey lawyer Joe Mazraani recently discovered a German submarine nearly 70 years after it was sunk in a World War II naval battle off the Massachusetts coast. As a result, the U-Boats were called “Iron Coffins.” When they sailed from their ports, most sailors did not expect to return. One day we did sneak up to their campsite and observed them from a safe distance as they went about their business. A few German U-boats were responsible for the sinking of a total of 397 ships in the first six months of 1942. However, they learned at the U-boat archives that U-869 was supposedly sent to Africa, so this piece of evidence was initially disregarded. Most likely to and from the Eastern Front. They were turned away at the border because they would have to pay a large sum of money in order to cross into Switzerland. The submarine was powered by two MAN M 9 V 40/46 supercharged four-stroke, nine-cylinder diesel engines producing a total of 4,400 metric horsepower (3,240 kW; 4,340 shp) for use while surfaced, two Siemens-Schuckert 2 GU 345/34 double-acting electric motors producing a total of 1,000 shaft horsepower (1,010 PS; 750 kW) for use while submerged.
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