Steel and Ice E-Book

Lawrence Paterson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 459

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Germany's U-boat war against Russia was as fierce and unrelenting as the land war that raged along the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945. From Wolf Pack attacks on Russian convoy traffic and military vessels to close-quarter combat undertaken by small U-boats transported by land and river to the Black Sea, the Kriegsmarine wrestled for control of the seas fringing an embattled Soviet Union. Previously untold in English, Lawrence Paterson explores the tremendous clash between the Kriegsmarine's U-boats and the Red Navy – a struggle that lasted from the opening salvos of Operation Barbarossa to the final chaotic days of Germany's defeat. Containing rare colour and black-and-white illustrations, this fascinating book is one that no one interested in the Second World War should be without.

Leseprobe

First published 2016

This paperback edition first published 2022

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Lawrence Paterson, 2016, 2022

The right of Lawrence Paterson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 75096 896 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Introduction

Comparative Rank Table

Glossary

1   Allies: 1922–41

2   Barbarossa: The Baltic 1941

3   The Arctic: The Polar Seas 1941

4   Strengthening the Northern U-boats: The Polar Seas 1942

5   The Black Sea: War in the South 1942–43

6   The Fighting Retreat: Defeat in the South 1943–44

7   Frozen Hell: The Polar Seas 1943

8   ‘Remember your comrades on the Eastern Front’: The Polar Seas 1944–45

9   To German Shores: The Baltic 1944–45

Appendix: U-boat Combat Flotillas on the Eastern Front

Bibliography

Introduction

The U-boat war that raged between 1939 and 1945 has been a subject of intensive study almost since the end of hostilities. The famously titled ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ is seen as one of the seminal campaigns upon which hinged the Western Allies’ attempt to defeat Nazi Germany. While the actual effectiveness of Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz’s U-boats within the Atlantic remains debated to this day, there is no denying that the U-boats’ primary directive was the sinking of Allied merchant ships – a so-called ‘tonnage war’ in which Germany attempted to outpace the available collective transport power of the Allied mercantile convoys by destroying ships. It was a matter of simple maths: if more shipping tonnage could be sunk than was required to keep Great Britain functioning, then Germany would prevail.

However, there were other arenas of U-boat combat. These have gone largely ignored: seen as peripheral to the primary Atlantic battle, even by Dönitz himself. Among these ‘forgotten campaigns’ are the ones fought at sea against the Soviet Union.

There were three primary areas in which U-boats were pitched into combat against Russia: the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Arctic Ocean. The latter has gone down in history as the U-boat campaign against the Arctic convoys, though Hitler’s perpetual fear of Anglo-American landings in Norway also kept the Kriegsmarine pinned to the area for the task of invasion defence; something to which U-boats were completely unsuited. These western convoys provided the Soviet Union with the weapons and material needed to keep the nation battling against the Axis invasion, Operation Barbarossa, in June 1941. Statistical history shows us that the actual Soviet import of materials through the Arctic route was far from a deciding factor in the Red Army’s ability to eventually prevail over the Wehrmacht; but nor was it insignificant. Moreover, the terrible conditions endured by those people of all nations that fought through an incredibly inhospitable geographical area deserve immediate recognition as an example of both human tragedy and triumph. Although not strictly a battle fought against the Russians – the majority of Allied combatants being western merchants and warships – it was a war fought by U-boats in direct support of Axis forces fighting within the expanse of the Soviet Union and so I regard it as a battle against the Russians, as much as it was against other Allied nations.

The Baltic Sea provided a corridor from Germany into Soviet satellite states such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as deep into the Soviet Union itself. Oddly, it was never fully utilised by either side during the years of war; the Russian Baltic fleet vastly outnumbered their opponents and the Kriegsmarine failed to grasp the potential strategic advantage provided by sea-lanes that could have allowed direct attack behind a fiercely contested frontline. This was a U-boat war primarily fought against warships: generally small vessels used for patrolling and minelaying.

So too was the campaign within the Black Sea. The Kriegsmarine was employed in direct support of the forces ashore, probably the clearest example of U-boats used to influence fighting on land. Although tasked with the interdiction of military vessels, the six small boats despatched to fight off the Caucasian and Crimean coast were initially envisioned as able to stop the supply and reinforcement convoys needed for the Red Army.

Peripheral theatres of action they may have been, but the bitter battles fought in the blazing heat of a Crimean summer and the darkness and ferocious cold of Arctic winter remain among the fiercest conducted by Dönitz’s ‘Grey Wolves’. This is their story.

Comparative Rank Table

German

Russian

British/American

Grossadmiral

Admiral of the Fleet/Fleet Admiral

Admiral

FlagmanFlota 2ranga

Admiral

Vizeadmiral (VA)

Flagman 1ranga

Vice Admiral

Konteradmiral (KA)

Flagman 2ranga

Rear Admiral

Kapitän zur See (KzS)

Kapitan 1ranga

Captain

Fregattenkapitän (FK)

Commander

Korvettenkapitän (KK)

Kapitan 2ranga

Commander

Kapitänleutnant (Kaptlt)

Kapitan 3ranga

Lt Commander

Oberleutnant zur See (ObltzS)

Kapitan-Leytenant

Lieutenant

Oberleutnant der Reserve (ObltdR)

Lieutenant of the Reserve

Leutnant zur See (LzS)

Leytenant

Sub Lieutenant / Lieutenant (jg)

Fähnrich

Midshipman / Ensign

Stabsobersteuermann

Senior Quartermaster / Warrant Quartermaster

Obermaschinist

Senior Machinist / Warrant Machinist

Bootsmann

Boatswain

Oberbootsmannsmaat

Boatswain’s Mate Second Class

Bootsmannsmaat

Coxswain

Mechanikermaat

Torpedo Petty Officer

-Maat (The man’s trade inserted at dash)

Petty Officer

Maschinenobergefreiter

Leading Seaman Machinist

Funkobergefreiter

Leading Seaman Telegraphist

Matrosenobergefreiter

Leading Seaman

Maschinengefreiter

Able Seaman Machinist

Matrosengefreiter

Able Seaman

Glossary

ASDIC

Term applied to the sonar equipment used for locating submerged submarines. A powerful and effective weapon, it emitted a distinct ‘ping’ when locating the target. ASDIC is an acronym for Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee, the organisation that began research into this device in 1917.

BdU

(German) Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote; commander of U-boats.

Eel

(German) aal; Slang expression for torpedo.

Enigma

(German) Coding machine used by German Armed Forces throughout the Second World War.

FdU

(German) Führer der Unterseeboote; flag officer for submarines, responsible for a particular geographical region.

G7a

German torpedo propelled by compressed air.

G7e

German torpedo propelled by electric motor.

GRT

Gross Registered Tonnage (one ton equals 100 cu ft cargo capacity), a standard way of judging merchant shipping size.

HMS

His Majesy’s Ship (Royal Navy).

HMT

His Majesty’s Trawler (Royal Navy).

Ing.

(German) Ingenieur, engineering trade, e.g. Kaptlt (Ing.).

Kriegsmarine

(German) Navy of the Third Reich.

KTB

(German) Kriegstagebuch; War Diary. Kept by the commander during a U-boat’s patrol, and later entered into official records.

LI

(German) Leitendre Ingenieur, chief engineer.

Luftwaffe

(German) Air Force.

OKM

(German) Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine; Supreme Navy Command.

OKW

(German) Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; Supreme Armed Forces Command.

Ritterkreuz

(German) Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.

SKL

Seekriegsleitung; Naval High Command.

Sperrbrecher

(German) Mine destruction ship, generally converted freighter filled with buoyant material. Designed to escort U-boats and other vessels through potential minefields.

U-Bootwaffe

(German) U-boat service.

Vorpostenboot

(German) Coastal patrol vessel and escort, usually a converted trawler.

Wachoffizier

(German) Watch Officer. There were three separate U-boat watch crews, each consisting of an officer or senior NCO, petty officer and two ratings. The ship’s first watch officer (IWO) would be the executive officer (second in command), the second watch officer (IIWO) the ship’s designated second officer, and the third watch officer (IIIWO) often the Obersteuermann (navigation officer). The duties of the IWO included torpedo and firing system care and maintenance as well as control of surface attacks; the IIWO handled administration regarding food and supplies as well as the operation of deck and flak weapons.

Wehrmacht

(German) Armed Forces.

Wintergarten

(German) Nickname given to the open railed extension astern of the conning tower, built to accommodate increased flak weaponry. Known to the Allies as a ‘bandstand’.

Chapter 1

Allies: 1922–41

In June 1941 Germany launched its invasion of Soviet Russia. Coupled with ideological and racial principles that Hitler’s Third Reich had enshrined as law, the battle on Germany’s eastern front was for land and the subjugation of people deemed ‘inferior’: the conquering of lebensraum, ‘living space’. Though it appears probable that Stalin himself would have launched his own attack towards Germany, possibly as early as 1942, Hitler forestalled any such plan as Operation Barbarossa battled eastward for his Reich’s ultimate prize. The titanic struggle raged for less than four years during which Russia suffered the loss of approximately 27 million people while inflicting nearly 90 per cent of Germany’s 5.3 million military Second World War casualties. Beginning with stunning German battlefield success, it ended in the destruction of Hitler’s capital and his suicide in the depths of the Führerbunker.

While the war between these two great nations was predominantly fought on land and in the skies above, the Kriegsmarine were also involved in the struggle at either end of the straggling front line. In the Arctic wastes of the Kara and Barents Seas, U-boats patrolled against Russian military and commercial traffic in some of the most inhospitable conditions experienced by Germany’s submariners. They also intercepted the vital western convoys that braved the convoy route from the United Kingdom to the Kola Bay. Fringing Germany’s northern coast the Baltic Sea was a naval front line between Germany and the Soviet Union, while further south the Black Sea bordered the battlegrounds of Army Group South: the Kriegsmarine involved in the struggle for control of the Crimean Peninsular and the southern flank of the German invasion.

Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union were tenuous allies after signing a non-aggression pact during August 1939. Both nations focussed on the forthcoming conquest of Poland and division of what they deemed stolen territory. This was a hangover from the Brest–Litovsk Treaty of 3 March 1918 that had ended German–Russian hostilities and granted the victorious Germany territories in the east. Russia’s new Bolshevik government, that had seized power the previous year, ceded control to Germany of the Ukraine and Baltic States as well as Poland; the latter was not even recognised as a country under the treaty terms. The German surrender in November 1918 abrogated the German–Russian treaty and once again the borders were redrawn in the east. Two years of fighting between Bolshevik Russia and the Polish Republic followed, ending in the uneasy peace of the Treaty of Riga in 1921.

Trade agreements between Germany and the Soviet Union during the 1920s helped Soviet industry to modernise in return for imports of the natural resources that Germany desperately lacked. On 16 April 1922, Germany and the Soviet Union entered the Treaty of Rapallo, renouncing any territorial or financial claims against one another: later signing a document promising neutrality in Berlin during 1926. Military cooperation also steadily increased; German engineers assisted in the establishment of tank production lines at the Leningrad Bolshevik Factory and the Kharkov Locomotive Factory. For their part, the Soviet Union provided facilities for the Reichswehr to begin military training away from observers enforcing the austere limitations of the Versailles Treaty. A training school for the fledgling armoured corps was established at Kazan (Panzerschule Kama) in 1929, equipped with six heavy and three light tanks and hosting up to a dozen German panzer officers at any one time. The firms Daimler, Krupp and Rheinmetall also used the Kama school as a testing ground for new designs. A school for fighter pilots (forbidden under Versailles terms) was also established at Leipetsk, training up to 140 German pilots and ground personnel at any one time, and, finally, a gas-testing centre was operated in Tomka where thirty-three German chemists continued to develop and test poison gas. Valuable as these facilities were, the Kriegsmarine did not benefit from such arrangements. An initial offer of a U-boat base in the Black Sea was declined. Soviet naval planners placed an order for a submarine with Dutch-registered Ingenierskanstoor voor Scheepsbouw (IvS) shipbuilders – a dummy company established by German shipyards AG Vulcan and Germaniawerft to allow development of U-boat prototypes. Funded by the Reichsmarine, IvS developed designs for Spain and Finland as well as the S-class Soviet submarine that later became the most successful wartime Soviet model.

Relations between the two countries soured during 1933 until Hitler’s Nazi Party ascended to the highest level of German government. Although Hitler agreed to the renewal of the 1926 Treaty of Berlin, he was already spelling the end of Russo-German cooperation with his anti-communist rhetoric: equating communism with his arch enemy, ‘international Jewry’, and written confirmation of his belief that Germany was ‘chosen by fate’ to expand to fresh territory in the east – lebensraum gained through conquest.

During August and September, the Soviet government terminated German access to the three established training grounds and began issuing their own anti-Nazi broadcasts. Ideologically opposed to one another, the Nazi and Communist regimes thereafter began forging new separate alliances with various European countries, visibly precluding each other’s interests. Years of tangled European treaties and pacts followed as countries jostled to assert control and stability over their borders. In Berlin, Hitler agitated the continent like no other leader, prompting his neighbours to seek rapprochement with the irascible Führer.

During the Spanish Civil War fascism and communism clashed openly on a scale hitherto unseen and both German and Soviet forces became embroiled in a secret de-facto conflict as each supported their ideological comrades both indirectly and on the battlefield. The German battleship Deutschland anchored off Ibiza on 29 May 1937, ironically taking part in the international ‘non-intervention’ patrol, was bombed by two Tupolev SB-2 bombers of the Republican Air Force, piloted and crewed by Russians. The pilots had intended to hit Nationalist cruiser Canarias and mistook the German for their target; thirty-one Kriegsmarine men were killed and seventy-three wounded. The Deutschland’s onboard sickbay was unable to cope and she sailed for Gibraltar where the Royal Navy hospital was used to treat casualties. They too struggled and further nurses were sent from England. On 31 May the British military held burials for the dead Kriegsmarine personnel, attended by British, Dutch, American and Turkish personnel from ships moored in the harbour while the Royal Marines band played the funeral music.

Hitler’s aggressive stance against Soviet Russia was motivation for both the French and British governments to exclude Soviet diplomats as they sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia with the 1938 Munich Conference. This was a master class in futile appeasement as Germany annexed the Sudetenland and then broke the agreement by invading the remainder of Czechoslovakia while Poland and Hungary opportunistically occupied their own small pieces of the doomed country.

Ironically, the German occupation of Czechoslovakia provided an impetus for Joseph Stalin to seek a closer relationship with his bitter opponent Hitler. Fearing that the western powers were promoting German expansion to the east he sought fresh diplomatic relations with Germany. On the opposite side of that fence, Hitler was aware that France and Britain had both realised that no manner of appeasement would stifle German territorial ambitions. With few resources for his growing military industrial complex, closer ties with Soviet Russia would not only safeguard his eastern borders but also allow free and increased trade with the Soviet Union’s huge stockpile of raw materials. Britain and France likewise engaged Stalin in negotiations, but it was the German discussions that proved most effective, with common ground at least found in both nations’ anti-capitalist stance and a desire to return to the close relationship of the early 1930s. Germany had technology to trade with Soviet materials, not least of all naval architectural designs that would enable the Soviet Navy to finally field an effective ‘blue-water’ fleet. On 24 August 1939 Germany and Russia signed a ten-year non-aggression pact: secret protocols within the pact dividing Eastern Europe into ‘spheres of influence’ in the event of hostilities, the primary target of Poland to be divided between the two powers. The following day, Britain entered into a defence pact with Poland, which guaranteed Polish sovereignty in the face of what now appeared to be inevitable invasion. Nine days later Britain and France were at war with Germany, and Poland was just over a month away from surrender, despite inflicting serious losses on the invaders. As German forces thundered through Poland from the west, Russian forces invaded on 17 September.

During the last days of peace the Kriegsmarine’s training Type II boats had prepared U-boats for action in both the Atlantic and the Baltic. By 19 August all available Type II boats of the Lohs and Emsmann flotillas had been assigned patrol areas off the Gulf of Finland and within the Irben Strait. Three Type VIIs of the Saltzwedel flotilla were tasked with minelaying and patrolling off Hela while three training Type IIs of Neustadt’s U-boat school (Unterseebootsschulflottille) were ordered to patrol the Kattegat. While the watch on the Kattegat was designed to thwart potential British intervention in the invasion of Poland, the remainder were of dual purpose. Firstly, they were to obstruct the potential departure of major Polish naval units from the Baltic. Secondly, they were on hand to operate defensively against the Soviet Baltic Fleet in the event that conflict in Poland prompted hostilities with the Soviet Union.

With the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, the spectre of Soviet belligerence receded and tension within the Baltic reduced. The U-boats were reshuffled, the majority instead tasked with North Sea patrols, leaving ten small Type IIs to sail to their planned positions within the Baltic. The Type VIIs that had been earmarked for minelaying were also redirected after lookouts aboard U31 sighted three Polish destroyers slipping through the Kattegat on 30 August and already headed for Great Britain.

When war was declared on the morning of 1 September 1939, two Type II boats were in the Gulf of Danzig, three near Læsø in the Kattegat, one in the Irben Strait and the seventh and final boat off Libau. At 8.22 p.m. on 3 September Kaptlt Horst Wellner’s U14 attacked Polish submarine ORP Sep with a torpedo, an explosion clearly heard and wreckage found on the spot as well as oil from a damaged tank aboard the Polish submarine. Wellner claimed the first attack by U-boats against an enemy warship as successful, although the torpedo had in fact exploded prematurely, the first instance of a recurring problem that would plague the U-boats for months. Four days later Kaptlt Werner Winter’s U22 also attacked a submarine, ORP Zbik, and likewise claimed it erroneously as destroyed. Before long the U-boat patrols of the Baltic were curtailed and the emphasis returned to the war against Great Britain.

The last Polish combat units surrendered on 6 October 1939 and, in the west, the so-called Phoney War began on land and in the air. At sea, things were different. An out-numbered Kriegsmarine – ill prepared for a war that they had been assured by the Führer would not come before 1944 – had taken the fight immediately into the Atlantic Ocean via raiding warships and U-boats. The majority of the feeble German U-boat strength was comprised of small Type II coastal craft of limited torpedo capacity and range, although a growing contingent of Type VIIs and the larger ocean-going Type IXs were becoming available. Two of the unsuccessful Type I designs that would see action within the Atlantic were also on a combat footing, though neither would survive combat for long.

With the Soviet Union now a tacit ally, the major threat within the Baltic had been removed and the sea became the primary training ground for Kriegsmarine forces. Soviet Russia had also offered the use of a northern naval base for the Kriegsmarine as a part of their new military alliance. Soviet neutrality towards Germany’s wartime opponents required that such a base be remote and outside of Allied accessibility. The ice-free port of Murmansk was therefore impossible as it regularly received foreign shipping and thus was not isolated enough. Though the port had access to the White Sea–Baltic Canal, it was also still in the throes of construction by Gulag forced labour during 1940. The Soviet Union’s covert role in assisting Germany had already come under severe scrutiny due to incidents surrounding the American ship City of Flint taken as prize by the pocket battleship Deutschland as well as the blockade runner SS Bremen – both having openly used Murmansk and Polyarny to avoid Royal Navy interception, the former without ultimate success while the latter completed its journey to Germany.

An original proposal made via the German naval attaché in Moscow, KzS Norbert von Baumbach, was for the Kriegsmarine to use Teriberka Bay east of Murmansk, although the bleak anchorage lacked suitable facilities and Kriegsmarine officials deemed the difficulties in establishing a functioning base there as severe at best. A fresh Soviet offer of the small fishing port of Zapadnaya Litza, 120km west of Murmansk in the Motovsky Gulf, was made in October 1939 with absolute freedom to use the base for whatever craft and in any way the Kriegsmarine saw fit. The location itself was ideal; it was ice-free all year round and impossible to approach unseen. The port lay at the mouth of the Zapadnaya Litza River where it enters a 10-mile long inlet, completely undeveloped and isolated from all but sea communications, leading to daunting logistical issues. Nevertheless, the Kriegsmarine began the creation of Basis Nord utilising ships that had been interned, at the outbreak of war, in Murmansk.

Although clearly impossible to furnish the small port with the type of installations later built by the Kriegsmarine in ports throughout German held territory, supply ships would be moored at Basis Nord to enable both U-boat and surface raiding missions. The Soviet Navy in turn promised defending forces as part of their general presence in the Kola Bay. At U-boat headquarters, BdU Admiral Karl Dönitz was particularly enthusiastic as the northern port would extend the reach of his U-boats and he planned to have communication equipment immediately despatched by U-boat. He surmised – correctly as it transpired – that the base’s existence could not be kept secret indefinitely and aimed to have a small, manoeuvrable U-boat depot ship stationed there which could move unobtrusively within the region to resupply combat boats: a small complement of specialised U-boat support personnel stationed aboard.

In Murmansk the cargo vessels Cordillera and Phoenicia were taking aboard supplies from other interned German freighters in preparation for beginning to establish Basis Nord. A third support ship, Jan Wellem, was requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine and despatched from Germany carrying supplies and a medical complement. In the meantime, Dönitz ordered a U-boat to the region to conduct its own feasibility survey, as maritime charts were sparse for the entire area. Elaborate arrangements were made with the Soviet Navy for Kaptlt Wilhelm Frölich’s Type VII U36 of the Saltzwedel Flotilla to establish contact with Russian vessels and be guided into the inlet entrance to Basis Nord. Unfortunately, after departing Kiel on 2 December 1939, U36 was sunk two days later by a torpedo from HMS Salmon south-west of Farsund, Norway: lost with all hands. The Type IXA U38 was instead diverted to conduct a clandestine reconnaissance of the Kola Bay. Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Liebe of the ‘Hundius’ Flotilla had sailed from Wilhelmshaven during November and successfully diverted to conduct his stealthy mission: Liebe reporting Soviet patrol vessels operating efficiently with navigation lights burning brightly to display their neutrality. The U-boat was also detected while observing Soviet vessels by periscope, though no attack was made. This was the confirmation that Dönitz needed, illustrating that any kind of Allied approach would be difficult at best in the face of strong Russian defences.

Meanwhile, despite bureaucratic wrangling between the German naval attaché and the NKVD in Murmansk, the two German supply ships departed port with as much as they could obtain from Soviet sources and other internees on 11 December, arriving at Basis Nord three days later. A third vessel, Sachsenwald, joined them shortly afterward, though the anchorage was found to be extremely poor with little protection from the harsh winter weather. Nevertheless, Basis Nord was at least semi-operational and FK (Ing.) Karl Nieschlag was appointed as Kriegsmarine commander during January 1940, holding the post until October.

As Dönitz had predicted, knowledge, or at least suspicion, that the Kriegsmarine had established a U-boat base at Murmansk began to surface in Danish and French newspapers and the Soviet government was forced to make a series of strong denials of any cooperation in the German war against the Allies. The base itself was constantly beset with problems arising from the Soviet need to retain total control – despite assertions to the contrary – and German desire for absolute autonomy. Basis Nord’s first operational use was as support for the cruiser Admiral Hipper: finally cleared by Soviet authorities for access to the base in order to resupply.

Grossadmiral Raeder suggested on 23 February in conference with Hitler the possible use of Basis Nord as a forward staging post for the invasion of Narvik, stating that ‘transports carrying material, perhaps also troop transports, should proceed first of all to Basis Nord since from there the approach route is shorter’. After consideration, the idea was shelved and the April invasion of Norway, Operation Weserübung, involved only a single ship from Nieschlag’s base. The tanker Jan Wellem sailed to Narvik, arriving on 8 April under false pretences in order to supply fuel for German destroyers planned to arrive as part of the impending invasion. The ruse was successful and Jan Wellem was able to begin refuelling the destroyers after they had initially taken the port, though within days every destroyer had been sunk by the Royal Navy while the battle for Narvik raged.

Despite their fierce resistance to the German onslaught, Norway was eventually subjugated and with all Norwegian ports in German hands, the need to maintain their Russian base was removed and by October 1940 Basis Nord ceased to operate.

Soviet authorities had in the meantime opened the Northern Sea Route by which German shipping could sail to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. An agreement was reached by which a maximum of twenty-six ships could traverse the route skirting the Soviet Union’s northern landmass, including provision for four armed merchant cruisers. In reality only a single vessel used the route; the raider Komet departed for her maiden raiding voyage from Gotenhafen (the seaport of Gdynia renamed by the Germans in 1939) on 3 July 1940 and headed to Murmansk disguised as Soviet icebreaker Semyon Dezhnev. By September Komet had crossed the Bering Strait and reached the Pacific Ocean. There she worked alongside raider Orion, the pair sinking merchant ships, shelling the phosphate processing and loading facilities on Nauru and capturing the Dutch 7,300-ton freighter Kota Nopan, sent as a prize to Bordeaux. Komet returned to Hamburg on 30 November 1941 after 516 days at sea during which time she had circumnavigated the globe. The Soviet Union’s covert assistance with German naval warfare was obviously in contravention of the nation’s neutrality, but barely matched the actions of the United States in support of the British war effort. Contextually, their level of useful naval aid remained relatively minor.

The Kriegsmarine had also sealed their status as Soviet allies following a request during October 1939 to purchase the then incomplete cruisers Lützow, Seydlitz, and Prinz Eugen, as well as blueprints for planned capital ships, naval artillery and further items of Kriegsmarine technology. The request for Seydlitz and Prinz Eugen were denied but Lützow was sold for the sum of 150 million Reichsmarks, which was nearly double the original cost of the vessel. Renamed ‘L’ for transfer to the Soviet Union (with the name Lützow later bestowed on the cruiser Deutschland following fears of the potential blow to morale if a vessel carrying the country’s name was sunk), the cruiser was towed to Leningrad on 15 April escorted by German destroyers and smaller units. Vizeadmiral Otto Feige commanded the operation and then headed an advisory commission assigned with assisting Soviet shipbuilders in completing the vessel.1

While the war against Great Britain grew in scope and ferocity, the demand for higher output of trained U-boat men grew accordingly. U-boat production lagged behind the demands of Dönitz’s branch of service and despite the mythology, there was very little happy time for U-boats within the North Sea and Atlantic. While they may have begun accruing success against the vital convoys that ploughed their way through the Atlantic Ocean they also suffered an alarming casualty rate: something that would only increase as the war dragged ever on. Training within the Baltic was vital and its tempo increased dramatically. Where once there had been a single U-boat school at Neustadt (Unterseebootsschulflottille), by June 1941 the training establishments had significantly multiplied and diversified. On 1 June 1941 the U-boat service operated the following training units within the Baltic: 1st ULD (Unterseeboots Lehrdivision), Neustadt (the old U-boat school with 21st U-training flotilla attached) and 2nd ULD, Gotenhafen (training school with the 22nd U-training flotilla attached). For personnel that were fully trained and awaiting transfer to a combat unit both the 1st UAA (Unterseeboots-Ausbildungsabteilung) and 2nd UAA, at Plön and Neustadt respectively, were established where skills continued to be honed alongside general military training.

Further training flotilla had also been established:

4th U-training flotilla (Ausbildungsflottille), Stettin, and 5th U-training flotilla, Kiel; both of which were responsible for the final fitting out of boats awaiting combat deployment.

24th U-training flotilla, Memel: specialising in submerged torpedo firing.

25th U-training flotilla, Danzig: specialising in shooting torpedoes and gunnery.

26th U-training flotilla, Pillau: also specialising in shooting and gunnery.

27th U-training flotilla, Gotenhafen: specialising in tactical training.

Training facilities had moved progressively eastward to minimise the risk posed by RAF bombing although, on 22 June 1941, the Baltic was once again thrust into the front line as Hitler ordered the commencement of his most daring gamble yet: the smashing of the non-aggression pact and invasion of the Soviet Union.

Notes

1 Feige was apparently the target of an NKVD attempt to blackmail him into cooperation with Soviet Intelligence. Compromising photographs of Feige with a Soviet woman failed to make any impression on him. Hearing the click of the camera Feige discovered the trap and later made a formal protest despite the fact that, as Nikita Khrushchev later claimed in his memoirs, the admiral and his superiors ‘didn’t care’ about his dalliances (see Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918–1945, Volume 1, p.258). On 6 June 1941 Raeder was given permission to outline Barbarossa to Feige so that he could withdraw ‘valuable personnel’ from Leningrad.

Chapter 2

Barbarossa: The Baltic 1941

Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 was launched on land, air and sea, although the latter elements of the German assault began the battle already hamstrung by a meagre fighting strength. The head of the Kriegsmarine, Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, considered the opening of a second front against Soviet Russia pure folly while the United Kingdom remained undefeated. The Soviet–German non-aggression pact secured the Baltic iron ore exports that trailed those waters from Sweden were sheltered and whatever naval strength was available could remain focussed on the Atlantic. Raeder even argued persuasively for the opening of operations within the Mediterranean, emphasising the importance of the Suez Canal to British trade. Furthermore, he reasoned, any advances by Axis land forces – with naval support – within the Mediterranean basin would bring North African trade to Europe and also serve to remind the Soviet Union of German military power in relative proximity to the oil fields in the southern Caucasus. In a private meeting with Hitler on 26 September 1940, Raeder laid bare the situation as he saw it, supported by a memorandum prepared by SKL to support his case:

Finally, I pointed out that although a war with Russia would be primarily an Army and Air Force affair, the Navy would unavoidably be affected by it. Extension of the war to the Baltic would call for numbers of our lighter units – minesweepers, minelayers, S-boats, R-boats and patrol craft etc. – to be sent to that theatre to protect our ports and our transports and escorts against Russian attacks. And we were already short of these craft, so badly needed to protect our new Atlantic bases which were essential for our decisive war on Britain’s commerce … Under no circumstances should we go to war with Russia.

Apparently impressed with my detailed analysis, Hitler told his staff that from my unvarnished facts he could figure whether or not he was on the right course. It seemed that I had talked him out of his Russian gamble, for I heard nothing more about it for some time.1

Although Hitler appeared conciliatory to his naval chief, his mind had long been made up. Adolf Hitler, as supreme commander of the German Armed Forces, had formulated the principle of the attack: an ideologically based struggle over land. His grasp of the importance of naval power was tenuous at best, despite a remarkable ability to remember statistical figures regarding the Kriegsmarine with which he frequently dazzled naval officers. Correspondingly, while the concept of surrounding the United Kingdom and starving it into submission with U-boats was not lost on Hitler, the value of using the Baltic as a potential salient into Soviet territory was. Hitler’s theory was that the land war would be so swift and decisive that Leningrad would soon fall and whatever Soviet Baltic Fleet remained would be bereft of bases and supply, and able to be destroyed piecemeal. The principal tasks allotted the Kriegsmarine during Operation Barbarossa were outlined in Hitler’s Directive 21, issued in December 1940:

During the war with Soviet Russia it will be the task of the Kriegsmarine to protect the German coast line and to prevent any hostile naval force from breaking out of the Baltic. Since once Leningrad has been reached the Russian Baltic fleet will have lost its last base and will thus be in a hopeless position, major naval operations are to be previously avoided.

After the destruction of the Russian fleet it will be the responsibility of the Navy to make the Baltic fully available to carrying sea traffic, including supplies by sea to the northern wing of the Army (Minesweeping!).

Thus, any use of the Baltic as a troop carrying ‘highway’ into Russian territory was ignored, although the Kriegsmarine surface fleet was already flagging after less than two years of war. On paper the fleet seemed still in rude health during the summer of 1941 but this is misleading. The mighty Bismarck had been sunk on 27 May, and sister-ship Tirpitz engaged in gunnery trials off Rügen Island which would show defects requiring an extended stay in harbour until September. Both pocket battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst as well as the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen were penned in Brest, France; heavy cruiser Lützow (ex-Deutschland) was scheduled for six months of repair having suffered a British torpedo hit in Norwegian waters. Heavy cruisers Admiral Hipper and Admiral Scheer were also in shipyards; light cruiser Nürnberg was relegated to training duties; Köln undergoing modification and Leipzig and Emden the only pair in active service. The Kriegsmarine’s destroyer service had taken severe casualties in the invasion of Norway during April 1940 and would also play little part in the opening of the Russian campaign. Grossadmiral Raeder also feared the potential risk to major surface units in the face of the Soviet Navy’s vast – if untested in battle – submarine fleet.

Opposing the Germans the Red Banner Baltic Fleet – the largest of four fleets that made up the Soviet Navy – was formidable in June 1941, comprising two Gangut-class battleships (dreadnoughts built before the First World War), two modern Kirov-class cruisers, two flotilla leaders, nineteen destroyers, seven torpedo boats, forty-eight MTBs, sixty-nine submarines, six minelayers, thirty-three minesweepers, one gunboat and 656 aircraft of a dedicated naval air arm, though a majority were obsolete biplanes.

A relatively sparse German naval force was assembled for Barbarossa, whose primary offensive cutting edge comprised twenty-eight S-boats. Alongside these were six minelayers made from converted passenger liners, three flotillas of M-class minesweepers, three flotillas of requisitioned trawler minesweepers, two flotillas of R-boats, two flotillas of Vorpostenboote, three Sperrbrecher and four auxiliary minelayers. The obsolete battleships Schliesen and Schleswig Holstein were also earmarked for Barbarossa, but played no active part. Additionally, five U-boats were assigned to active service within the Baltic for Operation Barbarossa.

While on land the Wehrmacht began what would be some of the largest offensive sweeps of the war, at sea they probed enemy defences cautiously while sowing prodigious quantities of mines. The schwerpunkt of Dönitz’s U-boat campaign remained within the Atlantic, strangling Great Britain by convoy interception, much as it had been during the previous world war when, during 1917 and before the wholesale implementation of merchant convoys, U-boats had managed to destroy 25 per cent of all Britain-bound shipping and reduce the nation’s supply of wheat to a six-week stockpile. In February 1917, the Germans could field 105 U-boats at any given time: sixty-nine within the Atlantic and off the Flanders coast, twenty-three in the Mediterranean, ten in the Baltic and three at Constantinople. In June 1941 Dönitz possessed only thirty-eight boats in action; twenty-eight of them were within the North Atlantic. While total U-boat strength lay at 150, 112 of these were either training vessels or in the process of sea trials before active deployment. June had proved a particularly barren month for U-boat success within the Atlantic. Only a single convoy, HX133, had been successfully intercepted and engaged by a wolfpack of boats from Brest. Six ships were sunk out of a total of sixty-four merchants and twenty escorts. The most successful boats at that time were free-roaming Type IXs operating independently off the Azores and West Africa, which were far beyond the reach of concentrated anti-submarine forces. But it was not only the strength of the U-boat arm that inhibited success. In May, U110 had been sunk, but not before priceless intelligence material was captured – including an intact and fully rigged Enigma machine. Once the machine had been transferred to Bletchley Park and into the hands of the extraordinary group of cryptanalysts that the British had gathered there, all U-boat transmissions were intercepted and decoded, betraying Dönitz’s operational plans in every detail.

However, the Kriegsmarine were oblivious to that fact and Dönitz’s primary concern was the diversion of any strength from the Atlantic and into the Baltic at exactly the moment that he could feel the balance of the Atlantic convoy battle tilting in his enemy’s favour:

When war against Russia broke out, eight boats were dispatched to operate in the Baltic. There they found practically no targets and accomplished nothing worth mentioning. They were accordingly returned to me at the end of September.

In the same way, from July 1941 onwards four to six boats had to be detached for operations against the Russians in the Arctic, although of course at that time there were not yet any Allied convoys carrying supplies to Russia. These U-boats, too, roamed the empty seas … the decisive factor in the war against Britain is the attack on her imports. The delivery of these attacks is the U-boats’ principle task and one which no other branch of the Armed Forces can take over from them. The war with Russia will be decided on land, and in it the U-boats can play only a very minor role.2

He was, of course, correct. As BdU, Dönitz was responsible for the U-boat arm, overstretched since the war’s beginning and suffering casualties in a war of attrition that could never be won. Although in later years U-boat production would increase, the veterans dwindled in number and whatever window of opportunity had once seemed open for success was eventually closed completely. Raeder had ordered the diversion of U-boats to the Arctic in anticipation of a British attempt to open a northerly supply route to the Soviet Union, but in this he was premature.

The reality of U-boat employment as part of Barbarossa saw a handful of small Type II U-boats shifted from training duties to offensive operations that tested new commanders and crew alike and yielded several small successes. Although the first OKW directive regarding the planned invasion of the Soviet Union (Directive 21) stated that ‘the main employment of the Kriegsmarine remains, even during an Eastern campaign, clearly directed against England’, a small scale U-boat support operation was mounted and eight training boats placed on an operational footing. On 21 June the SKL war diary recorded the dispositions of five boats that they termed the ‘Barbarossa boats’ in the Gulf of Riga and Gulf of Finland: U140, U142, U144, U145 and U149. Three others – U137, U143 and U146 – were assigned to the North Sea to patrol north and west of the Orkney and Shetland Islands in case of British intervention.3 The unusual step of removing the Baltic boats from the operational control of BdU was also taken, the five boats passing instead into the jurisdiction of Befehlshaber der Kreuzer (Commander in Chief Cruisers) Vizeadmiral Hubert Schmundt who, subordinate to Generaladmiral Carls’ Marinegruppenkommando Nord (MGK Nord), exercised operational control over all naval craft employed in Barbarossa. The three North Sea boats remained with BdU, transferred to the administrative strength of Kiel’s 3rd U-boat Flotilla, under the command of KK Hans-Rudolf Rösing at that time, during their relatively uneventful forays into the North Sea. Somewhat ironically, the sole combat sinking by these boats during these patrols as part of the flanking force for Barbarossa was the torpedoing of 3,496-ton Finnish steamer SS Pluto on 28 June northwest of the Butt of Lewis. The cargo ship was sailing from Buenos Aires and New York for Kirkwall and Petsamo, Finland, carrying a cargo of 4,000 tons of grain, 1,114 tons of coal and 237 tons of oil. Three of the thirty-nine crew were killed.

The U-boats were all part of Gotenhafen’s 22nd U-training flotilla, established in January 1941 under the command of KK Wilhelm Ambrosius. Ambrosius was one of the early breed of U-boat commanders having commanded his first boat, U28, in 1936. After participation in non-interventionist patrols during the Spanish Civil War he had skippered U43 from the outbreak of war until October 1940. Despite having sunk eight ships during this time, he was judged by Dönitz to be better versed in theoretical operations than combat missions and was transferred to head 1st Abteilung, 2 ULD, before taking command of the 22nd U-training flotilla during January 1941. It was Ambrosius who passed on operational instructions to the five Type IIDs destined for the Baltic battle. During May they travelled to Kiel for degaussing and preparation of the boats for Barbarossa. Operational orders were received by the five captains as systems were checked and weapons and food loaded on the eve of departure. Kaptlt Gert von Mittelstaedt’s U144, Kaptlt Rudolf Franzius’ U145 and Kaptlt Horst Höltring’s U149 all sailed from Gotenhafen on 18 June, ObltzS Hans-Jürgen Hellriegel’s U140 following the next day and Kaptlt Paul-Hugo Kettner’s U142 putting to sea on 21 June, one day before the invasion began.

Theirs was not the sole Axis U-boat presence. Finnish submarines had also moved to advance staging areas in preparation for Barbarossa. Following the end of the Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939–40, which had proved a humiliating defeat for Soviet prestige despite Stalin’s numerically superior forces emerging victorious, Finland, who had previously viewed Germany with suspicion, aligned itself closer and closer with the Third Reich. Having been forced to cede territory to the Soviet Union, the peace agreed in March 1940 was viewed by many as merely temporary. After failed attempts at establishing mutually beneficial defensive pacts with Great Britain and Sweden, Germany appeared the most attractive proposition.

The Finnish Navy was relatively small; adoption of a defensive doctrine was the most practical application of whatever power could be mustered. Discussions between OKW and the Finnish High Command had begun as early as April regarding joint operations for Barbarossa – Raeder being unable to begin strategic conferences with the head of the Finnish Navy Kenraaliluutnantti Väinö Valve until late May due to Barbarossa’s strict secrecy. All five available Finnish submarines were dedicated to the offensive; they had been built, somewhat ironically, by German designers during the interwar years. During 1926, after two years of strong recommendations by German naval advisor Karl Bartenbach, Finland had placed orders for three torpedo-armed minelaying submarines to be built by IvS. Based on the UBIII and UCIII designs of the First World War, the first of these boats was launched in June 1930 from the Crichton-Vulkan shipyard at Abo (now Turku), Finland. The construction had been fraught with difficulties at first caused by inexperienced Finnish shipyard personnel, difficulty in moving material to the remote location and delays from severe winter weather. While experienced U-boat designer Georg Behrmann opened a drawing office in the shipyard three other German IvS engineers were brought aboard, all previously part of Germaniawerft: Hugo Peine, responsible for overseeing construction; Edgar Rickmeyer, responsible for machinery; and Wilhelm Etzbach as torpedo and submarine specialist. Eventually, in order to ease construction difficulties, German shipyard workers were also hired to augment the Finns.

The first boat launched was designated CV702 Vetehinen, followed by CV703 Vesihiisi and CV704 Iku-Turso shortly thereafter: this trio of 500-ton boats forming the backbone of Finland’s only submarine flotilla. Due to Abo’s remote location, German U-boat personnel took part in trials, among them ObltzS Hans-Rudolf Rösing, later destined to become FdU West. Alongside these 500-ton medium-sized submarines, Finland had also asked for a small minelayer, which took the form of IvS-built Pu110 Saukko, weighing only 99 tons and the smallest submarine in existence at the time of her launch in July 1930. Saukko was designed to work in the constricted waters of Lake Ladoga where international treaties forbade shipping that exceeded 100 tons’ displacement:

I had joined the navy almost as a family tradition; my father, grandfather and uncles were all in the navy. My mother’s brother was Kaptlt Otto Wünsche, a U-boat ace from the last war. I joined the navy in 1924 and served first aboard the cruiser Königsberg for a while following my officer training. I was taken as a Spanish interpreter in 1928, going to the World Exhibition in Barcelona. U-boats were, of course, banned at the end of the First World War and I was part of the covert U-boat training programme, some sent to Spain, Finland and Sweden. The cover story was that we were teachers in ASW tactics from the ASW school in Kiel, because to fight submarines you, of course, must know all about them. I went first to Finland in 1930 to help with the two 500-ton boats and the small Saukko. That really was the first gang of new German U-boat commanders. We learned a great deal, even aboard the tiny 99-ton boat, although it was too small for Germany’s purposes. The 250-ton Vesikko became one of our models.4

In the meantime IvS had also completed the 750-ton Spanish boat E1, whose capabilities exceeded that of the 500-ton Finnish model and would later form the basis of development of the German Type VII U-boat. The final Finnish boat constructed by IvS was a 250-ton coastal model known as CV707 Vesikko, launched in May 1933 and later forming the basis for the Type II U-boat: the first vessels constructed for Dönitz’s new U-boat fleet.

The five German U-boats that sailed into the Baltic from Gotenhafen – and the three that took station within the North Sea – were Type IID coastal boats; the final production version of the design was based on Vesikko. Single-hulled, they were strong and manoeuvrable, the D-variant possessing the greatest combat range of any Type II; capable of 5,650 miles at a cruising speed of 8 knots and 56 miles at 4-knots submerged, the Type II variants having gradually increased from the original Type IIA’s 1,600 miles surfaced at 8 knots and 35 miles submerged at 4 knots. This allowed a small number of Type IIDs to actually patrol into the North Atlantic from the captured French port of Lorient before being replaced with the mainstay Type VII workhorse and relegated to training. Built at Kiel’s Deutsche Werke yards, the Type IID possessed only three bow torpedo tubes, carrying a weapon load of five torpedoes in total (three loaded and two reloads stored within the forward compartment), a single 20mm flak weapon mounted on the conning tower’s Wintergarten for surface shooting. In January 1941, Peter ‘Ali’ Cremer took command of one such boat as he began his U-boat career:

After six months training, which included a simulated escape with life-saving apparatus from a sunken U-boat, I was appointed commander of U152. It was the last boat in the IID series, an improved coastal U-boat of 314-tons displacement on the surface. These boats, 44 metres long, were on the small side and were known in naval jargon as ‘canoes’. They could dive to 150 metres, were very well designed and seaworthy.5

Finland also played host to German minelaying vessels while adding their own barrages to the minefields planned to inhibit the Soviet Baltic Fleet. Finnish forces remained firmly outside of the German command structure and Finnish submarines were tasked with operating to the east of the formidable fields, laying mines in Estonian waters and engaging enemy capital ships if at all possible.

During the Winter War against the Soviet Union, Finnish submarines had achieved little, firing no torpedoes and sinking one small vessel by a mine – somewhat ironically the 172-ton German trawler Dietrich Hasseldieck, sunk as she approached Paldiski in Estonia on 11 January 1940. Inadequate training and harsh winter conditions had made Finnish operations extremely difficult. For Barbarossa, Kapteeniluutnantti Arto Kivikuru commanded Finland’s submarine flotilla that began sailing from 21 June: Vetehenin slipping from Hamnholma at 10 p.m. on 21 June to lay twenty S/36 mines between Louna-Uhti and Letipää – Vesihiisi also putting to sea from Svartbäck at 9.45 p.m. that same evening to lay another twenty mines in the area between Vaindlo and Kalkgrund, destroying 56-ton Russian ASW patrol boat MO143 on 30 June 1941. After Barbarossa began on 22 June, Finland had still not declared hostilities and continued covert preparation and participation on both land and sea, Iku-Turso slipping from Vahterpää just before midnight on 23 June, laying twenty mines north of Mohni. Two days later the Soviet Union began a series of air strikes against Finnish targets in an attempt to pre-empt their entry into the conflict. Targeting airfields, poor Soviet intelligence resulted in bombs falling on Finnish population centres causing heavy casualties. As Soviet artillery in Hanko – the Finnish peninsular occupied since the end of the Winter War – opened fire on Finnish targets, Finland formally declared war on the Soviet Union. Vesikko sailed from Ångisö that night and the tiny Saukko from Kirkonmaa at 9 p.m. the following evening, both on torpedo patrols that sighted nothing. By the time the Finnish submarines were fully engaged, the Kriegsmarine U-boat service had struck its first victory against the Soviet Navy.

When the German offensive began, the sixty-nine submarines of the Soviet Red Banner Baltic Fleet were organised into two active Brigades and a separate training Division. Boats of the 1st Brigade were intended to patrol the southern and central Baltic, the 2nd Brigade taking the waters off Finland and within the Gulf of Bothnia. Within the Training Division were those boats newly commissioned into the navy or recently repaired and undergoing sea trials once again. Forward ports of Libau, Tallin and Hanko – the latter small Finnish port leased to the Soviet Union as a military base for thirty years as part of the Moscow Peace Treaty of March 1940 – hosted Soviet attack boats, while the Training Brigade was spread between Leningrad and Kronstadt, its boats broken into three categories: fully combat-ready; recently repaired or having had significant personnel replacements; and unserviceable.

As the fighting began, several Russian boats were already at sea, but they adopted a particularly defensive stance from the outset, much as their Kriegsmarine opponents did. Not until the second day of the invasion did large-scale submarine deployment really begin, and even then predominantly in reconnoitring picket lines. Minelaying off Memel was undertaken by A3 though without significant results. Russian vessels had also laid defensive minefields across the entrance to the Gulf of Finland during the night of 22 June covered by the heavy cruiser Maxim Gorky and three destroyers, all of which blundered into German mines, the cruiser losing her forecastle and the destroyer Gnevnyj sinking. Maxim Gorky was towed to Tallinn, made seaworthy and moved to Kronstadt a few days later.

By the evening of 22 June, the naval base at Libau, defended by the Soviet 67th Infantry Division, was already under severe threat of falling to German troops of the 291st Infantry Division. Fifteen submarines, a destroyer, six torpedo boats, twelve patrol boats and a minesweeper were still in the port over which a pall of smoke hung. Unseaworthy submarines S1, M71, M80, Ronis and Spidola were eventually all blown up in the shipyard to prevent capture; two other submarines, M77 and M78 put to sea together on 21 June to escape possible capture by German forces.

Starshiy Leytenant Dmitriy Shevchenko’s M78 had been built at Zavod No 198 in Nikolaev on the Black Sea during the mid 1930s; this was part of an ambitious submarine building programme begun by the Soviet Union in 1933 that resulted in possession of the numerically strongest submarine fleet in the world by 1941. The small single-hull coastal M-class boats – the first Russian design to use welded construction – were built in sections to facilitate transport by rail: M78 shipped to Leningrad and completed in June 1936. One of six vessels that comprised the 4th Division, 1st Soviet Submarine Brigade based in Libau, M78 also carried the Division commander, 38-year-old Kapitan-Leytenant Stepan Ionovich Matveyev from threatened Libau, evacuating him to Ust-Dvinsk, a neighbourhood of northwest Riga. They had departed Libau alongside M77 to join five other Soviet submarines escorting transport ship Zhelznodorozhnik and eight steamers to Ventspils, Latvia. Attacked by Luftwaffe aircraft at 3.36 a.m. off Uzava on the morning of 23 June, M78