Unterseeboot 559

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U-559
Type VIIC


Launch Date January 1, 1941
Commission Date February 27, 1941
Construction yard Blohm & Voss, Hamburg
Patrols
Start Date End Date Assigned Unit
June 4, 1941 July 5, 1941 1st Flotilla
July 26, 1941 August 22, 1941 1st Flotilla
September 20, 1941 October 20, 1941 1st Flotilla
November 24, 1941 December 12, 1941 23rd Flotilla
February 16, 1942 February 26, 1942 23rd Flotilla
March 4, 1942 March 21, 1942 23rd Flotilla
May 18, 1942 June 22, 1942 29th Flotilla
August 15, 1942 September 21, 1942 29th Flotilla
September 29, 1942 October 30, 1942 29th Flotilla
Commanders
February, 1941 October, 1942 Kptlt. Hans Heidtmann
Successes
Type of Ship Sunk Number of Ships Sunk Gross Registered Tonnage
Commercial Vessels 4 13,482
Military Vessels 1 1,060

Unterseeboot 559 (or U-559) was a Type VIIC U-boat (or German submarine) of the Kriegsmarine built in 1941 at the Blohm & Voss shipyards in Hamburg. She was most famous for an incident during her sinking in the Mediterranean Sea in 1942, in which British sailors seized cryptographic material from U-559 without the German crew's knowledge. This material was extremely valuable in breaking the U-boat Enigma cipher.

Contents

[edit] War patrols

U-559 was originally intended to serve as an Atlantic U-boat during the Second Battle of the Atlantic. On her first two war patrols in the summer of 1941, she operated out of the U-boat base at St. Nazaire against Allied convoys in the Western Approaches. During these patrols, she sank one freighter, the SS Aguila, but was generally unlucky. For her third patrol, beginning 26 September, she was assigned to the Goeben group, which were the first U-boats to enter the Mediterranean during World War II.

In the Mediterranean, she operated from Salamis in occupied Greece, making six patrols against Allied shipping on the coasts of Libya and Egypt. During these patrols she torpedoed five Allied freighters and an Australian frigate, HMAS Parramatta, without ever being seriously threatened herself.

[edit] The sinking of U-559

It was her own demise that made her most famous. On the night of 30 October 1942, a British destroyer, HMS Petard, caught U-559 sneaking up on a convoy off the coast of Egypt. Petard, joined by HMS Pakenham, HMS Dulverton and HMS Hurworth attacked U-559, dropping depth charges which cracked her pressure hull. With four of her crew dead from the explosions and flooding, U-559 was forced to the surface.

Convinced that their boat was sinking, the German crew scrambled overboard in panic, and neglected to destroy their codebooks or Enigma machine. The Germans were collected by British ships, and hastily hustled below decks, so they could not see what was to follow. Three British sailors, Able Seaman Colin Grazier, Lieutenant Francis Anthony Blair Fasson, and NAAFI canteen assistant Tommy Brown, then swam naked to the abandoned submarine which was slowly sinking. They retrieved the boat's Enigma machine and the code books with all current settings for the U-boat Enigma key. Grazier and Fasson were inside the boat, searching for more cipher and intelligence material, when the boat foundered. Both were drowned.

Grazier and Fasson were awarded the George Cross posthumously, and Brown was awarded the George Medal. The Victoria Cross was considered but not awarded, for the ostensible reason that their bravery was not "in the face of the enemy". Another consideration may have been that a Victoria Cross would have drawn unwanted attention to the U-boat capture from German Intelligence.

This Enigma material they retrieved was immensely valuable to the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, who had been unable to read U-boat Enigma for nine months. The captured material allowed them to read U-boat Enigma for several weeks, and to break U-boat Enigma thereafter.

The recovery was one of several such events that inspired the fictional account of the submarine capture in the film U-571.

There is a sequel to the sinking of the U-559. Lt. Cmdr. Peter Keeble, in his war autobiography, Ordeal by Water, describes a dive made on a U-boat in the Mediterranean not far from Port Said in 230 feet of water. He was informed that it was the U-307, and that it was thought to have on board a top secret infra red sighting device. The U-307 never operated in those waters, and since HMS Petard had taken an accurate fix on her last resting place, the wreck was easily located for the dive. Prior to the dive he was informed exactly where in the control room the secret device was located. In fact a mock-up of the control room was made so he could practice locating the device in the dark. It is unlikely that the Allies would have known exactly where a secret device would be located, however Brown, the third person to enter the sinking sub, would have seen the location of the radar device. It is almost certain that Keeble was fed "misinformation" to maintain secrecy, and that he dived on U-559. The secret device was successfully recovered, but not before two corpses were encountered: the one jammed in the ladder, making it necessary for Keeble to dissect it with his diver's knife. The other's finger ring tapped his helmet several times while attempting to free the device. He was obliged to push it away! He assumed they were German seamen, but they most likely were the corpses of Fasson and Grazier [1]since there were no German casualties.

[edit] Raiding career

Date Ship Nationality Tonnage Fate
19 August 1941 SS Aguila British 3,255 Sunk
27 November 1941 HMAS Parramatta Australian 1,060 Sunk
23 December 1941 SS Shuntien British 3,059 Sunk
26 December 1941 SS Warszawa Polish 2,487 Sunk
10 June 1942 MV Athene Norwegian 4,681 Sunk
10 June 1942 SS Brambleleaf British 5,917 Damaged

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Sharpe, Peter, U-Boat Fact File, Midland Publishing, Great Britain: 1998. ISBN 1-85780-072-9.
  • Kahn, David; Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boats Codes, 1939-1943'; (1991)
  • Keeble, Peter; "Ordeal by Water" Longmans, Green and Co. London. 1957 Chapter 8 "Top Secret Dive"

[edit] External links