Branch: Kriegsmarine
Born: 1 May 1912, Heidau, Liegnitz, Province of Silesia,
Prussia, German Empire (now Legnica, Poland)
Died: 5 August 1998, Bavaria, Germany.
Ranks:
Fregattenkapit�n 1
September 1944
Korvettenkapit�n 1
March 1941
Kapit�nleutnant 1
June 1939
Oberleutnant zur See
1 June 1936
Leutnant zur See 1
October 1934
Oberfähnrich zur
See
F�hnrich zur See 1
January 1932
Decorations:
Iron Cross 2nd Class, 17 October 1939
U-boat War Badge 1939, 9 November 1939
Iron Cross 1st Class, 17 December 1939
Knights Cross, 4 August 1940
Knights Cross with Oak Leaves, 4 November 1940
Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Crossed Swords, 26 December
1941
Commands:
U-35
Takes command on 31 July 1937
Ends command on 15 August 1937
U-23
Takes command on 1 October 1937
Ends command on 1 April 1940
U-99
Takes command on 18 April 1940
Ends command on 17 March 1941
Other: Personnel
Articles:
Hitler's
'lost fleet' of U-boats found in the Black Sea
Otto Kretschmer was born on 1 May 1912, Heidau, Liegnitz,
Province of Silesia, Prussia, German Empire (now Legnica,
Poland) and became a German U-boat commander in the Second
World War and later an admiral in the Bundesmarine. From September
1939 until being captured in March 1941, he sank 47 ships,
a total of 274,333 tons. For this he received the Knight's
Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (German:
Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern),
among other awards. The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and
its higher grade Oak Leaves and Swords was awarded to recognise
extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership.
He earned the nickname Silent Otto both for his successful
use of the silent running capability of the U-boats as well
and for his reluctance to transmit radio messages during patrols.
After the war, he served in the German Federal Navy and retired
in 1970 with the rank of flotilla admiral (commodore).
Otto Kretschmer was born in Heidau, Liegnitz. At the age of
seventeen he spent eight months living in Exeter, where he
learned to speak English fluently. He joined the Reichsmarine
in April 1930, attaining the rank of seekadett (naval cadet)
after completing officer training courses as well as three
months aboard the training ship Niobe. He then spent about
a year serving aboard the light cruiser
Emden.
In the second half of 1932 he briefly served on the survey
vessel Meteor for navigation training. In December 1934 he
was transferred to another light cruiser, the
Köln.
Kretschmer remained aboard the
Köln
until he was transferred to the U-Boat force in January 1936,
where he received extensive officer training and was promoted
to oberleutnant zur see.
Kretschmer's first command was the
U-35,
a
Type VIIA
U-boat, in 1937. This appointment coincided with Germany's
involvement in the Spanish Civil War the boat was ordered
to patrol an area off the Spanish coast.
U-35
returned to Germany after an uneventful patrol during which
no ships were sunk. In September 1937, Kretschmer took command
of
U-23,
a
Type IIB
coastal U-boat
The German invasion of Poland found Kretschmer still in command
of
U-23,
he was soon sent into action along with the rest of the Kriegsmarine's
U-boat fleet. His first war patrols ranged across the North
Sea and around the British coast. His initial success came
in the Moray Firth where he attacked and sank the Danish 10,517
ton tanker Danmark on 12 January 1940, using torpedoes. The
British admiralty at that time thought that the tanker had
struck a mine as they did not suspect there was a U-boat in
the area. On 18 February, Kretschmer sank the 1,300 ton British
fleet destroyer Daring off the Pentland Firth while she was
escorting convoy HN-12 from Norway. U-boat crews almost always
avoided deliberately engaging enemy destroyers, so Daring's
destruction was rightly seen as a very skilful attack by both
Kretschmer and
U-23.
In April 1940, after eight patrols, Kretschmer was transferred
to the newly-completed
Type
IIB U-99,
and in a sense began his legacy. After two months' training
and shakedown manoeuvres in German waters, Kretschmer took
the boat into action in June 1940. During
U-99's
first four patrols, Kretschmer commenced attacking convoys
at night on the surface, sinking merchant ships with highly
accurate shots, using only one torpedo per target ship the
quote one torpedo ... one ship is attributed to Kretschmer
around this time. Kretschmer's tactics were widely copied
throughout the U-boat force, although they achieved mixed
results.
His most successful patrol occurred in November and December
1940 when
U-99
sank three British armed merchant cruisers (AMC), HMS Laurentic
(18,724 tons), HMS Patroclus (11,314 tons) and HMS Forfar
(16,402 tons). Laurentic and Patroclus were attacked on the
night of 3/4 November after they responded to distress calls
from the 5,376 ton British freighter Casanare, which
U-99
had mortally wounded about 250 miles west of Ireland. Forfar
was sunk on 2 December while steaming to join up with and
escort the outbound convoy OB-251. The three AMCs totalled
over 46,000 gross tons. These three successes earned Kretschmer
the number-one spot on the Aces list, and was never surpassed.
Klaus Bargsten served aboard
U-99
under Kretschmer, before being promoted to captain himself
and becoming the sole survivor of
U-521
on 2 June 1942. Siegfried von Forstner was another of Kretschmer's
student officers aboard
U-99
who later received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for
sinking 15 ships as commanding officer of
U-402.
Kretschmer was meticulous in his conduct towards the crews
of torpedoed ships. When attacking lone merchantman in the
days before Wolfpack tactics began in earnest, he had been
known to hand down bottles of spirits and blankets into lifeboats
and give them a course to the nearest land. On one patrol
in September 1940, Kretschmer had also recovered a survivor
of another torpedo attack who was alone in the Atlantic on
a small raft and took him aboard, transferring him to a lifeboat
after his next successful attack.
On his last patrol in March 1941, he sank 10 more ships, but
these were to be his last victims. On 17 March 1941, during
a counterattack by the British escorts of Convoy HX-112,
U-99
was disabled after repeated depth charge attacks by the destroyers
Walker and Vanoc. Kretschmer surfaced and under fire from
the British vessels, scuttled his boat. Three of his men were
lost, but Kretschmer and the remainder of
U-99's
crew were captured. That same day the British escorts scored
another success against the Kriegsmarine when the noted U-boat
skipper, Joachim Schepke, was killed aboard
U-100,
having being depth charged, rammed and sunk by Vanoc.
Kretschmer's usual standards of conduct were evident during
the sinking of his boat he signalled Walker asking for rescue
for his men, taking care to ensure as many left the submarine
as possible, and assisted some of his crew towards the rescue
nets hung from the British destroyer. Kretschmer's strength
was evidently failing in the cold ocean his own rescue was
at the hands of a British sailor who climbed down the nets
and plucked him from the water.
Following his capture he spent almost seven years as a POW
(prisoner of war) in the hands of the British and Canadians.
In 1943, the German command tried to rescue him (in Operation
Kiebitz) but that daring plan failed. Four of those years
were spent in Canada at Bowmanville POW camp. In December
1947 he was allowed to return to Germany.
Like several other surviving German naval veterans, Kretschmer
joined the post-World War II German Navy, the Bundesmarine.
He joined the newly-formed service in 1955 and two years later
was appointed commanding officer of the 1. Geleitgeschwader
(1st Escort Squadron). The next year he was transferred to
the position of commander of the Bundesmarine's Amphibische
Streitkräfte (amphibious forces). From 1962 he served
as a staff officer in NATO before becoming chief of staff
of the NATO command COMNAVBALTAP at Kiel in May 1965. He retired
in September 1970 as a flotilla admiral.
In later years Kretschmer was often interviewed for television
and radio programmes about the Second World War he appeared
in the British 1974 documentary series The World at War. In
the mid 1990s he was interviewed for the computer simulation
game Aces of the Deep, as one of several former U-boat skippers
whose input was excerpted specially for the CD-ROM version
of the game.
While on vacation in Bavaria in the summer of 1998, he died
in an accident on a boat on the Danube, while celebrating
his 50th wedding anniversary. He was cremated and his ashes
were scattered at sea.
Even though Kretschmer only served for one and a half of the
six years of World War II, he was never bettered in terms
of tonnage sunk. He was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class,
the U-boat War Badge, the Iron Cross 1st Class, the Knight's
Cross of the Iron Cross, the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves,
and the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. He was mentioned
five times in the Wehrmachtbericht the daily radio report
on 3 August 1940, 19 October, 4 November, 17 December and
25 April 1941.
U-23
participated in an unusual operation by the Kriegsmarine.
The boat, along with five others, was transferred overland
and by river to the Romanian port of Constanza from there
they attacked Russian ships in the Black Sea. This group,
the 30th Flotilla, sank many ships for the loss of three submarines,
over two years. However, in August 1944, when Romania left
the Axis, the 30th Flotilla was stranded with no way to return
to Germany. The submarines were scuttled. S. Kolay, a Turkish
marine engineer, recently found the final resting place of
the three scuttled submarines and visited one of them,
U-20.
For a complete list of
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