Unterseeboot 75 (1940)

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U-75
Type		VIIB
Launch Date		October 18, 1940
Commission Date		December 9, 1940
Construction yard		Bremer Vulkan, Vegesack
Patrols
Start Date	End Date	Assigned Unit
April 10, 1944	May 12, 1944	7th Flotilla
May 29, 1944	July 3, 1944	7th Flotilla
July 29, 1944	August 25, 1941	7th Flotilla
September 27, 1944	November 2, 1941	7th Flotilla
December 22, 1941	December 28, 1941	10th Flotilla
Commanders
December, 1940	December, 1941	Kptlt. Helmuth Ringelmann
Successes
Type of Ship Sunk	Number of Ships Sunk	Gross Registered Tonnage
Commercial Vessels	6	21,046
Military Vessels	None	0

Unterseeboot 75 (usually abbreviated to U-75) was a German submarine built during World War II. A VII Type U-boat, U-75 was moderately successful her early career in the Second Battle of the Atlantic, but in autumn 1941 she was dispatched to the Mediterranean Sea with poor results leading to the eventual destruction of the boat and its crew.

[edit] War Patrols

Completed in December 1940, U-75 was available for service from April following the completion of her working-up period and sea trials. Her captain, Kplt Helmuth Ringelmann, was a good sea officer, who made an impact within three weeks of her initial patrol starting, when on the 29 April U-75 torpedoed and sank the 10,000 ton liner SS City of Nagpur in the Central North Atlantic Ocean, killing sixteen sailors ^[1].

This success was followed in her second patrol with another victim, this time a Dutch freighter, and her third patrol scored a British cargo ship as well. These operations were conducted from the new submarine base at St Nazaire, which provided type VII boats like U-75 with a greater patrol range and cruising ability, thus conferring an essential advantage. The boat’s fourth patrol was more unusual, requiring her to slip unnoticed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean to attack allied shipping operating from Gibraltar, Malta and Egypt. She was accompanied in this task by U-371, U-559, U-97, U-79 and U-331 , which together formed the Goeben group, so named for the German battleship of the same name which had terrorised the Mediterranean in 1914.

For the operations in the Mediterranean, U-75’s home base was now Salamis Island in Greece, where she arrived on the 2 November. On the journey there, the boat had taken a successful detour along the Libyan coast to see if she could catch any British resupply convoys. On the 12 October she had seen just such a convoy and managed to sink two coastal barges with gunfire before she escaped. Her final patrol was in December 1941, and consisted of a similar sweep along the Libyan coast. On the 28 December, six days since leaving Salamis, a small coastal convoy was spotted off Mersa Matruh and U-75 launched an attack which sank a small British freighter. The convoys escorts had spotted the boat however, and HMS Kipling ran the submarine down and dropped depth charges on the boat. The explosions forced U-75 to the surface, where 30 of her crew were rescued and taken prisoner by her erstwhile opponent before the boat heeled over and sank, taking 15 men down with her, including her only captain.

[edit] Raiding career

Date	Ship	Nationality	Tonnage	Fate
10 April 1941	SS City of Nagpur	British	10,146	Sunk
3 June 1941	SS Eibergen	Dutch	4,801	Sunk
5 August 1941	SS Cape Rodney	British	4,512	Sunk
12 October 1941	barge A-2	British		Sunk
12 October 1941	barge A-7	British		Sunk
28 December 1941	SS Volo	British	1,587	Sunk