Unterseeboot 22 (1936)

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U-22
Type IIB


Launch Date July 13, 1936
Commission Date August 20, 1936
Construction yard Germaniawerft, Kiel
Patrols
Start Date End Date Assigned Unit
August 26, 1939 September 9, 1939 3rd Flotilla
September 27, 1939 October 3, 1939 3rd Flotilla
November 15, 1939 November 11, 1939 3rd Flotilla
December 13, 1939 December 12, 1939 3rd Flotilla
January 15, 1940 January 24, 1940 1st Flotilla
February 8, 1940 February 25, 1940 1st Flotilla
March 20, 1940 March, 1940 1st Flotilla
Commanders
December, 1936 October, 1937 Kptlt. Harald Grosse
October, 1939 October, 1939 Kptlt. Werner Winter
October, 1939 March, 1940 Kptlt. Karl-Heinrich Jenisch
Successes
Type of Ship Sunk Number of Ships Sunk Gross Registered Tonnage
Commercial Vessels 5 6,413
Military Vessels 2 2,009

Unterseeboot 22, or more commonly U-22 was a German submarine or U-boat which was commissioned in 1936 following construction as a Type IIB submarine at the Germaniawerft shipyards at Kiel. Her pre-war service was uneventful, as she trained crews and officers in the rapidly expanding U-boat arm of the Kriegsmarine following the abandonment of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles two years before.

Contents

[edit] War Patrols

During the Second World War, she was mainly designed for coastal work, a role enforced by her small size and endurance. Thus when war came she was useful for operations in the North Sea and against the English coastal convoys, particularly on the North West coastline. It was in this region that she scored her first successes, after fruitless operations against the Polish coast during the Invasion of Poland and a cruise against British shipping coming from Norwegian ports.

On 18 November 1939 she had her first achievement, sinking the tiny coastal cargo ship SS Parkhill off the Scottish coast. This was followed on her fourth cruise with two mine barrages off Blyth, which claimed two coastal freighters and a naval patrol minesweeper in less than a week. She was then used directly against Scottish convoys in the Moray Firth, during which she achieved her biggest success, torpedoing the British destroyer HMS Exmouth, which disappeared with all hands, the cause of her loss only discovered by the British after the war. Shortly afterwards, in thick fog, she sank a Danish ship from the same convoy. These were in fact her final direct victims, although she later claimed another with a mine laid sometime before.

The submarine failed to return from her seventh patrol, for which she had departed on 20 March 1940. There is some indication that she was either lost due to an unexplained mine detonation in the Skagerrak, or possibly as the result of a collision with the Polish submarine Wilk, which reported crashing into something on 23 March, and whose bow showed signs of a collision with an unidentified ship. Whatever the cause, U-22 and her 27 crew were never seen again, lost somewhere in the North Sea in March 1940.

[edit] Raiding career

Date Ship Nationality Tonnage Fate
18 November 1939 SS Parkhill British 500 Sunk
20 December 1939 SS Mars Swedish 1,877 Mined
25 December 1939 HMS Loch Donn British 534 Mined
28 December 1939 SS Hanne Danish 1,080 Mined
21 January 1940 HMS Exmouth British 1,475 Sunk
21 January 1940 SS Tekla Danish 1,469 Sunk
28 January 1940 SS Eston British 1,487 Mined

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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