U-boat losses

[RitterKreuz]

Here is my little project i am almost finished with... should be finished by tonight at the latest.

I am using google earth to plot all of the German U-boat losses by month and year from September 1939 to May 1945 with a brief description of...

U# Designation, Date of sinking, How it was sunk, known or last known position, how many patrols it completed, how many ships it sank or damaged, and any interesting side notes to some of the boat's individual trivia type facts.

It is arranged as i said by month so you can turn off all the plot points and then bring them up one month at a time to get a big picture of just how the U-boat war was going for Germany on a month by month basis.

I have the file saved so that it will open for anyone using Google Earth, if anyone is interested i can send it to you, just let me know.

Looks good so far, kinda fun to read about the interesting history behind some of these subs. and to go through each month and watch the atlantic and the Med slowly - then quite quickly fill up with little dots representing lost subs!

[dcunning30]

That seems interesting.

John Parshall has compiled what he calls Tabulature Record of Movement for hundereds of Japanese ships over at www.combinedfleet.com

Obviously most of the ships were losses which he records, but he doesn't have a google earth plot like you.  That seems pretty cool.

[Woodlouse2002]

Seems an interesting project. One interesting fact though, due to the fact that the U-boats were under orders to maintain a strict radio silence when at sea it's difficult to know which one was sunk where. One notable example is of a U-boat that was believed to have been sunk in the mediteranian, but was found by divers off the east coast of America 50 years later.

[RitterKreuz]

yeah "U-who"... the U-869 i think it was, off the coast of New Jersey. I read the book entitled "Shadow Divers" it was an awesome book but none the less; what one ends up with on a plot like this is something like the following: (plot point reads)

"U-XXX last known position reported to BdU on 8 Jan 1942, at coordinates XXXN XXXW the ship was ordered further out to the Atlantic to another patrol grid. The sub was never seen or heard from again. It was probably sunk by mines since a plot of its course from the last known contact point to its new patrol area has it passing directly through a mine field..."

then again you also end up with a surprising number of survivors who surfaced the submarine by blowing ballast during a heavy depth charge attack only to escape into the pitching sea to watch their U-Boat sink. These survivors were almost always gathered up and taken prisoner therfore the attacking ships could quickly plot the location where they attack and sank a particular U-Boat.

Another thing that has surprised me is the number of U-Boats that were lost on their mayden patrols having never fired a single shot at anything.

The number or wrecks are quite litterally scattered from near polar regions to the panama canal area down to the southernmost tip of Africa and beyond.

Some of the plot points are repetative as little information is available for a particular wreck, other plot points offer a rich history touching on stories like what became of Gunther Prein's (Scapa Flow Raid Commander) weapons officer as he took his own command, What happened to downed Luftwaffe pilots who were rescued by one of the ill fated subs... or the story of a sole survivor's 10 day struggle to survive on the open sea on a life raft dropped on him by the plan that sunk and killed his crew.

[H]

I read a newspaper account from a long time ago but have forgotten where on the east U.S. coast it was at (I'd make a very wild guess it was near the Chesapeake). I think they were about to span a new bridge across where a railroad bridge had collapsed, while the train was crossing, during WW2. When examining the wreckage, they found a U-boat beneath it and then questioned whether or not the collapse had actually been engineered.

8)

[dcunning30]

I think there might be more cost effective and far easier ways to sink a sub than engineering the collapse of a bridge to fall ontop the sub.

[Woodlouse2002]

I think there might be more cost effective and far easier ways to sink a sub than engineering the collapse of a bridge to fall ontop the sub.

The submarine might have fired a torpedo at one of the supports. I think thats what he means by engineered instead of the other way round.

[dcunning30]

So the u-boat captain either ordered or allowed his sub to manuver under the bridge, then fired a torpedo at one of the bridge's support?

[Woodlouse2002]

So the u-boat captain either ordered or allowed his sub to manuver under the bridge, then fired a torpedo at one of the bridge's support?

To be fair the whole thing sounds highly unlikely to me. I was just trying to put forward a more reasonable explaination than someone blowing up a bridge (and the train on it) to sink a submarine.

[H]

It would have said something about our superb intelligence abilites to even know that a U-boat would have been in the area, let alone engineer the collapse at the exact moment it arrived beneath the collapse.

The only (il)logical way a U-boat may have been under the collapsing bridge after a torpedo attack would have been if the bridge hadn't initially collapsed and it went in for a closer look (the U-boat, not the bridge). Unlikely.
The main thought was that sabateurs had placed percussion triggered explosives on the bridge, perhaps not even knowing a train was coming. The train came along before the U-boat got away with the retrieved sabateurs.
That, or else the bridge just happened to give way in a mad fit of miraculous fate.

[RitterKreuz]

Intel for naval operations in the atlantic was far from the issue. Though i have not heard about the bridge collaps in my research - i'll see if i come across anything - but keep in mind NEARLY every U-Boat loss has been explained or accounted for and nothing about a bridge busting sub has turned up yet.

U-boats routinely operated off the U.S. East coast close enough to the shore to view sunbathers and make out street signs through the periscope and even layed mines in the traffic heavy inlet of Cape Hatteras. There are even a hand full of wrecks strewn about the U.S. coast from the Mississippi river delta area to Jersey shore. The big issue at hand was the lack of fighting ships devoted to Anti Submarine Warfare in January - August 1942. There were literally only a couple of destroyers and a hand full of coast guard cutters (which had been modified to use depth charges) that were given the responsibility of keeping the US East coast safe from U-Boats from the Gulf of Mexico to Canadian waters north of maine... and they didn't get a lot of assistance in their struggle until mid to late summer 1942... but that was after the U-boats had already sunk over 285 merchant ships damaging numerous others at an average rate of 36 per month from January 1942 to August 1942. Many ships were even attacked in broad daylight within viewing distance of beach bums. America didn't wise up and use the convoy tactics and devote more planes and ships to the U-Boat war until mid summer despite constant requests from Rear Admiral Andrews but when the numbers improved for the US Navy at least seven German U-boats were lost off the U.S. East coast during the period.

the project is quite behind schedule but not too badly - i just had to leave home for a week... gotta love work!

[H]

I read that a long time ago -- I was probably @ 9 or 10 -- when I was totally inept at retaining sources and authors ( not that I'm so great at it now ). I can't verify that whoever wrote it even verified his source but his is out there somewhere. Would be nice to know, one way or the other. Good luck on your continued quest.

8)