|
U534
had a very unusual career.
A big Type IXC/40 U-boat lanched in February
1942 and commissioned under OlzS Herbert Nollau in December 1942. It was
still under Nollau’s command two-and-a-half years later, having
achieved not a single sinking. That sad distinction was not Nollau’s
fault in any sence: the boat had never been assigned to combat. For the
first year and a half of its life, U534 never appears in the records of
the combat flotillas. The presumption must be made that it spent this
period as a school boat, kept in the Baltic to train new crews and test
new systems. Nollau was not a particularly popular commander and U534
was not a particularly happy boat.
He was described by crew members as
being a very stiff and formal man, dapper and a bit pompous. His was one
of the few boats in the fleet never to carry an insigna (Bootswappen) of
any kind. It was quite common for boats to carry one or even several
insignias. They could be the crest of the sponsoring city, the naval
academy class badge of the commander, the insignia of the flotilla or
any of a myriad cartoons or caricatures referring to literature folk
tales, ploitics or some quirk in the personality of the commander or the
boat. They could be very serious or entirely whimsical. The crew was
often involved in thinking up the insignia but the commander had the
ultimate say. The crew of U534 suggested various designs to Nollau but
he always turned them down. He thought that painting an insignia on his
boat would be frivolous.
U-534 did have an Emblem;
click here to see the
emblem of U-534
In May 1944, U534 was released for operational duty, but even then, it
was not sent on offensive patrols. It was assigned the unglamorous, but
crucial, duty of weather reporting. With the outbreak of war, Germany
had lost contact with the international meteorological community which
had previously provided data to its weather forecasters. Central
Europe’s weather comes from the North Atlantic. The prevailing winds
flow from the North-West. With no other means of obtaining data on
weather conditions in the North Atlantic, Donitz was tasked by his
government with providing at all times at least one boat on dedicated
weather duty in the waters near Greenland. This boat was required to
avoid all contact with ennemy forces in order to maintain a regular flow
of weather data. U534 was selected for this duty and spent one long
patrol (8 May 1944 – 13 August 1944) monotonously following a looping
course that took it close to Greenland’s eastern coast and then many
hundreds of miles south into the open ocean.
At the end of its gruelling four-month-long stint as a weather boat,
U534 headed back to the coast of France. Only, this time, the bases were
no longer well supplied with the material necessary to restock or refit
a U-boat. In mid August 1944, the Allied armies were breaking out of
Normandy, spreading rapidly eastward towards the German border.
Bordeaux, where U534 put in on 13 August, was still well behind the
lines, but the supply routes from Germany had been cut and stocks of
food and all other supplies were dwindling. Not suprisingly, under the
circumstances, BdU ordered all boats at the French ports capable of
making the trip to Norway to depart as soon as possible. U534 was
replenished and refuelled and hastily fitted with a snorkel.
Unfortunately, the parts necessary to hinge the snorkel were not
available, so it was fixed in the upright position. Nor was there the
time to train the crew in its use. So, U534 left Bordeaux on 25 August
and almost immediatly came within a hair’s-breadth of disaster due to
inexperience with its new snorkel. More by luck than skill, the boat
survived this first experience and went on to complete a slow,
two-month-long circuit of the British Isles, passing well west of
Ireland, north of the Orkneys and finally down the North Sea to the
Skagerrak. While still in the Bay of Biscay, U534 had encountered and
shot down a RAF Wellington. (The aircraft, Wellington S/N MB.798, was
aircraft ‘B’ of No. 172 Sqn, shot down just after midnight on 27
August 1944. Three survivors, two of them wounded, made their way out of
the aircraft before it sank and were later found and picked up by a
Sunderland).
U534 put into Kristiansand on 24 November 1944 and the next day departed
for Flensburg. There it joined the 33rd Flotilla. The
Norwegian ports lacked the repair and refit facilities necessary to
handle all the U-boats now concentrating at those ports, big and small,
along the western and southern coasts. A good many longer range U-boats
were sent back to German ports in order to relieve the pressure on the
over-burdened facilities in Norway. After U534 arrived at Flensburg, it
once again drops from the records of the U-boat flotillas. For the
remainder of the war, it performed anonymous duties without again
heading out into the Atlantic. In all likelihood, it operated once more
as a training boat and an experimental platform. It might also have made
some supply runs to Kristiansand. During late 1944 the regular coastal
traffic which had run steadily between Norway and Germany, carrying iron
ore south and supplies for the German forces north, had fallen prey to
increasingly frequent aerial sweeps by RAF bombers. Keeping the U-boats
now operating out of a half-dozen Norwegian ports in repair required a
regular supply of spare parts and other supplies. U534 was most likely
engaged in this activity as well. All that is known for certain is that
it remained at Flensburg until it was forced, along with many other
U-boats, to make a desperate dash for Norway at the beginning of May
1944.
(Above text is from the book: Battle beneath the waves - U-boats at
war by Robert C. Stern, a great book to read!!)
May 5th, 1945 U-534 was sailing in the
Kattegat, North-West of Helsingor.
Although Admiral Dönitz had ordered all his
U-boats
to surrender as from 08:00 May 5th, U534 refused to
surrender. U534 - with two other U-boats in company - was heading North towards Norway,
without flying a
flag
of surrender. Their departure was noted by Danish fishermen
(?) and passed on to RAF Coastal
Command
which at her turn sent
out
an air-patrol.
A Liberator from 547 Squadron attacked U-534. With all three U-boats firing at
her she was shot down and
crashed in to the sea. One survivor was
rescued by a
boat from the
nearby lightship.
By that time the 2 other U-boats dived, leaving U534
alone on the surface.
With only U534 left on the surface "G" for George
began her attack on the U-boat around 13:15 May 5th.
Her first attack
she made with a brace of 6 depth charges set at 10 feet explosion depth. The
depth charges
did overshoot. In the second
attack run - using
4 depth charges - one depth charge actually landed on the
deck of the U-boat, then rolled into the water
and exploded very close to the U-boat
starboard stern.
U534 took heavy damage by this explosion, started making water and began to
sink by the stern.
5 crew
members
were trapped inside the sinking U-boat. With all hatches closed U534 sank
to the bottom.
She came to a final rest - keel down - in over 60 meters waterdepth. The 5 trapped men
managed to escape
via the forward torpedo hatch, 49 out of 52 crew members did survive.
This forward hatch stood open for over 48 years in a water pressure of
more then 7 bar. Internal flooding of
the U-boat was inevitable.
(Had the two other U-boats remained on the surface the outcome could
have been very different, together
they possessed a tremendous fire-power against enemy aircraft).
The question remains: why did
U534 remain at the surface?
- was she not capable for submerging...
- was there a risk of sea-mines...
- was she self-confident in being capable shooting down
the remaining attacking bomber...
- was she attracking enemy fire in order to give the
two accompaning U-boats a possiblity to escape...
A question which will probably never be answered.
Facts on U-534:
table from Uboat.net (probably the most informative site on U-boats)
with slight amendment
|
