The PFC SH3 Rolling Quiz (PFC = Post Forum Crash) | Forums

[Ant__.]

11 Minutes!

K61 you are correct - Perhaps the quickest answer in the history of the Rolling Quiz! The photo was actually taken after patrol on U-99 on the 21st July 1940 in Lorient. Source: Uboat.net Source:

Great link you posted too, very informative. Over to you....

[Kaleun1961]

Silly me; I really must get my eyes checked! I neglected to look closely at the uniform of the officer in the foreground and didn't see the obvious eagles.

I'm working a late night at work, so if you have another question ready to go, feel free. The floor is open to you or anyone else.

[Celeon999]

Still wonder what Kretschmers 2-way radio connection with Admiral Raeder out of a allied pow camp looked like.



I feel a new comedy series coming !

"Kretschmer's Heroes"

[Goose_Green]

@K61 - Without rubbing salt into the wound I would say you missed the officer saluting, he's clearly wearing a Kriegsmarine officer's uniform

[Kaleun1961]

Yes, see my post above.

[Kaleun1961]

Alright, since nobody's jumped on the opportunity, I'll pose one to keep the thread alive.

As part of their training, U-boat crewmen were trained in the usage of Tauchretter, or, rescue gear. This gear would give them a chance to escape from a U-boat stranded on a shallow seabed. In the movie Das Boot, you can see the crew members don this rescue gear, in the scene where they are bottomed out in the Gibraltar area. In the depths of the Atlantic, a U-boat hull would be crushed long before it reached the bottom, but there were accounts of U-boat personnel escaping from U-boats bottomed out in shallower water. So, this leads to my question:

"How many reported cases were there of U-boat crewmen escaping from a bottomed out U-boat using Tauchretter?"

[Ant__.]

A great question K61! RJ racks his brains, knowing the answer is in there somewhere...

Someone! Anyone?

[Kaleun1961]

I was surprised when I read about this.

[VikingGrandad]

According to a source I just found, the number of cases appears to be just 12 (that's 12 successful cases of escape from sunken U-boats - I don't know the total number of men who actually reached the surface alive).

[Kaleun1961]

Originally posted by VikingGrandad:
According to a source I just found, the number of cases appears to be just 12 (that's 12 successful cases of escape from sunken U-boats - I don't know the total number of men who actually reached the surface alive).

You are correct!

My source for the question was Gordon Williamson's "Wolf Pack. From page 149:

The number of occasions in which a relatively intace U-boat was trapped on the bottom in waters shallow enough for escape attempts to be feasible was very small. In 12 recorded cases, U-boat crews or at least part of the crew escaped using the Tauchretter. Crewmen from U-767 in 1944 and U-2199 in 1945 escaped, in both cases from depths in excess of 200 feet.

I think the training in use of escape gear, while theoretically useful but practically useless for most emergencies [but not all, as we see above] served to bolster morale and give U-boat crewmen a glimmer of hope. Much like the demonstrations of flotation gear by airline personnel prior to takeoff. Theoretically, it may come in handy, but for the most part it is to help keep our minds off of crashing, or to give us some hope we could survive a crash landing on water. I'm not saying it's totally useless, but close to it.

Over to you, VG, for the next question.