The Surrender of the U-Boat Fleet 1945

328 pages

Dr Andrew Boyd

 Derek Waller’s fascinating book records what happened to the 156 U-boats (including one ex-Dutch submarine) either deployed in the Atlantic or present in European ports when the Germans formally surrendered on 7 May 1945, along with a further seven boats transferred to Japan. Based almost entirely on primary sources, it is a labour of love drawing on over 50 years of research. If you want to know when and where a specific boat surrendered, and its subsequent fate, you will find it here. Although the vast majority of boats surrendered on or shortly after 7 May, a handful disobeyed orders with two remaining at sea until they belatedly reached Argentina in July and August, thus contributing to subsequent conspiracy stories regarding escaping high ranking Nazi leaders.

The book is inevitably mainly for the specialist reader but it is much more than a dry accounting record. Its first third describes the evolution of Allied policy and planning for the disposal of the U-boat force from late 1943 to final agreement at the Potsdam summit in July 1945. It also underlines that, even in the first days of May, Grand Admiral Dönitz, now Adolf Hitler’s successor, hoped to continue the U-boat war from Norway while adopting a ‘scorched earth’ policy for the German navy elsewhere.  Potsdam confirmed that 30 U-boats were to be divided between the three wartime allies, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, and the remainder destroyed. 116 U-boats were duly sunk that autumn under British supervision in Operation DEADLIGHT, thus achieving Dönitz’s goal if not as he intended!  Several Allied motives were in play here. There was broad agreement, that, in contrast to 1919, the German navy should be completely eliminated.  But, over the last year of the war, all three powers had intelligence on the novel electro-boats (Type XXI and XXIII) and high-test peroxide (HTP) prototypes (Type XVIIB) and wanted to acquire samples. Agreement had to surmount some Anglo-American differences and characteristic Soviet suspicion of Western motives. In the run-up to Potsdam, the descent into the Cold War was not yet inevitable but Britain, and to a lesser extent the United States, were anxious that the Soviets should not acquire a substantial addition to their submarine fleet. Waller speculates convincingly that Soviet leader Josef Stalin acquiesced in Western proposals because he already had what he needed.  The Soviets had captured eight almost complete Type XXIs, along with building jigs and design data, in the eastern Baltic. This haul made a valuable contribution to the design of their future Whiskey-class boats, the mainstay of the Soviet submarine fleet in the 1950s.

Waller describes how the substantial intelligence on the novel U-boats obtained by the two Western allies by early 1945 drove a determined and successful operation to capture the ‘Walterwerke’ at Kiel, the HTP research centre led by Dr Helmut Walter, before the Soviets reached it or the Germans destroyed it. He also implies, but does not fully explain, why both the British and Americans were ultimately less interested in the electro-boats than HTP. A notable gap here is reference to the work of Malcom Llewellyn-Jones who has described the intense effort by the Royal Navy to address the threat posed by the ‘fast submarine’ during the last months of 1944.  This included conversion of the submarine Seraph to mirror electro-boat performance, enabling the trial of new anti-submarine tactics. How effective these would have proved in real combat can be questioned but the Royal Navy evidently judged it would cope with the Type XXI.

Although both Western navies remained keen to conduct trials with electro-boats, they found those selected to be plagued with defects. Dealing with these required major dockyard investment which the British were not prepared to make. The Americans persisted, incorporating lessons in their own new generation boats, but they also noted that, in addition to unreliability, the German boats had significant design flaws.  Indeed, a key message from the book is just how distant the electro-boats were from effective operational status.  The idea, still propagated by some popular historians, that the Germans were on the cusp of transformation in the Battle of the Atlantic is fanciful.

The ‘Walterwerke’ seizure revealed that the HTP programme was still at an early stage.  Only three boats intended for operations had been completed and begun initial trials and all were illegally scuttled at the time of the surrender. Two were eventually located and raised with the Western allies taking one each. The British invested significant effort in refitting U-1407 with help from Walter and she began trials as HMS Meteorite in early 1948. These were successful enough to convince the Admiralty that HTP offered high speed endurance that no conventional drive submarine could match. Two new build prototypes were accordingly authorised although HTP ultimately proved a dead end. The Americans reached this conclusion much earlier, did not invest in their boat U-1406, and soon took the nuclear path.

The final quarter of the book provides a detailed account of those U-boats which surrendered in or were later acquired by Russia, France, Canada, Norway, and nine other countries including of course Japan.

There are two tantalising points which the book might have explored further. The only Type XXI to conduct a war patrol, from Bergen between 30 April and 8 May, was U-2511, commanded by Adalbert Schnee, who supposedly and famously conducted a successful undetected mock attack on the British cruiser Norfolk after the order to surrender. As the only boat with a claim to be operational it is surprising she was not selected for trials, and it would be interesting to know why.  UD-5, the ex-Dutch boat, was returned to the Royal Netherlands Navy. She was being equipped with a schnorkel when captured on her building slip in 1940, yet the Germans were surprisingly slow to capitalise on this Dutch initiative, only commencing a serious programme to introduce schnorkels across their own fleet in 1944 when it was far too late. Again, this issue merits more study.

Unusually for a Seaforth book, there is no index, a regrettable omission in what will become an important reference work. It also lacks a bibliography, making it impossible to know what secondary sources have been consulted beyond the comparatively few cited in the endnotes.