Unterseeboot 852
Unterseeboot 852 (usually abbreviated to
U-852) was a
German submarine built during
World War II. She became famous as the only
Kriegsmarine U-boat crew to be accused, prosecuted and convicted of
war crimes during the
Second World War.
Built in
Bremen and completed in June
1943, the boat was of the
IX Type, which possessed long range cruising capabilities as well as eight
torpedo tubes, six in the bow and two in the stern. She was commanded throughout her brief lifespan by Kapitänleutnant
Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, who led her through her sea trials and out onto her first war patrol on the
18 January 1944.
Her mission involved a high level of secrecy, because she was intended to disrupt allied communications in the
Indian Ocean by attacking sea lanes there, and so she had to avoid conflict on her passage so her attacks could have maximum effect in the right area. This plan was complicated however, because on the
13 March on the
latitude of
Freetown, she spotted the lone Greek steamer
SS Peleus, and sank her with two torpedoes. What followed has been the subject of much dispute since.
The sinking
Peleus left a large debris field, amongst which were a number of survivors clinging to rafts and wreckage. This field would provide unmistakeable evidence of the precence of an enemy submarine, and thus would betray the position of the
U-852 to aircraft and shipping patrolling the area. Eck then controversially decided to disperse the wreckage with the use of
hand grenades and
automatic weapons. The question of whether this "dispersal" order explicitly or implictly encouraged the killing of the sailors in the water, or whether this was an unfortunate example of
collateral damage was to be the subject of a famous post war trial.
Eck ordered his junior officers to fire into the wreckage in an effort to disperse it, and accounts differ greatly as to the number of shots fired and the damage done. Surviving sailors, of which there were two, reported that the shooting went on for a long while and that at least four of their compatriots were killed by it. The German crew reported that they had shot several short bursts of machine gun fire into the wreckage and were unable to see their targets in the dark. The men shooting were later proven to be the ship's engineering officer,
Hans Lenz, (who said he had done so under protest to spare an enlisted man from having to do it),
Walter Weisspfennig, (the ship's doctor who was not supposed to be handling arms), the second in command
August Hoffmann and an enlisted engineer,
Wolfgang Schwender, (who was under direct orders, and fired very few rounds). The submarine's commander, Eck, was also present during the incident, whilst the remaining crew were below decks.
The operation to disperse the wreckage was not hugely successful, but the submarine was able to evade pursuit, and managed to sink the British cargo ship SS
Dahomian off
Cape Town on the
1 April, this time hastily leaving the scene rather than pausing. It was just a few weeks later, on the
30 April, that the boat was spotted by a
Vickers Wellington bomber, flying from
Aden, which managed to damage her with
depth charges, thus preventing her from diving. Knowing that all was lost, Eck made for the
Somali coast, where his ship was beached on a coral reef whilst under extensive air attack from six bombers of
621 Squadron Royal Air Force.
58 of Eck's crew made it to shore, where they were captured by the
Somaliland Camel Corps and local milita. Seven of the crew had been killed by the constant air attacks the submarine had endured, whilst the survivors were sent to various prison camps to wait out the end of the war. It was in prison that Lenz provided his captors with a signed confession, which when combined with the testimony of the
Peleus survivors and the log of
U-852, which Eck had failed to destroy, provided damning testimony. Following the war's conclusion, All the above named crew members were placed on trial for the deaths of the steamer's crew at the
Hamburg war trials, an extension of the
Nuremburg trials for minor war criminals. After a four day hearing, at which crew members, survivors and experts were all called, all five men were found guilty.
Eck, Hoffmann and Weissppfennig were sentenced to death, the latter as his role as a doctor precluded weapons handling under the
Geneva Convention, and thus he had no right firing a weapon even in action, let alone such an incident as this. The former were executed because in their role as the boat's senior officers, responsibility for the actions of their crew, as well as for themselves, fell directly on their shoulders. All three were shot by
firing squad at
Lüneberg Heath on the
30 November 1945. Lenz, by virute of his protest at the time and his written confessionhad his sentenced commuted to life imprisionment, whilst Schwender, who was the only man involved who had been under direct orders was given seven years.
The incident is notable as it was the only case in which Kriegsmarine personnel were convicted of war crimes following the Second World War, compared to the thousands of people from the other branches of service who were involved in such things. It is also notable and controversial, beacause both British and American submarines were recorded massacring survivors of their targets, such as
HMS Torbay and
USS Wahoo, and yet their crimes were hushed up at the time and for some years after the war, and no legal proceedings ever attempted against the perpetrators.
As several U-boats and Japanese
I-boats carried
uranium oxide to
Asia from
France, it is worth noting that following the
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, Somalians living along the coast near U-852's wreck developed
radiation poisoning.
* Sharpe, Peter,
U-Boat Fact File, Midland Publishing, Great Britain: 1998. ISBN 185780072.
* Bridgland, Tony,
Waves of Hate, Leo Cooper, Great Britain: 2002. ISBN 0850528224.
*
U-boat.net webpage for U-852See Also:
List of U-boats
