| Kriegsmarine (KM) | |
|---|---|
Kriegsmarine Ensign |
|
| Active | 1935–1945 |
| Country | Nazi Germany |
| Type | Navy |
| Part of | Wehrmacht |
| Engagements | Spanish Civil War World War II |
| Commanders | |
| Notable commanders |
Erich Raeder Karl Dönitz Hans-Georg von Friedeburg |
The Kriegsmarine (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁiːksmaˌʁiːnə], War Navy) was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime (1935–1945). It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.
The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly during German naval rearmaments in the 1930s. In January 1939 Plan Z was ordered, calling for the construction of many naval vessels. The ships of the Kriegsmarine fought during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine was Adolf Hitler, who exercised his authority through the Oberkommando der Marine.
The Kriegsmarine's most famous ships were the U-boat wolfpacks, most of which were constructed after Plan Z was abandoned at the beginning of World War II. They were submarine groups which attacked Allied convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic. Along with the U-boats, surface ships (including auxiliary cruisers) were used to disrupt Allied shipping in the early years of the war. However, the adoption of convoy escorts later in the war greatly reduced the effectiveness of naval strikes on convoys. At the end of the Second World War, the Kriegsmarine's remaining ships were divided up amongst the Allied powers and were used for various purposes including minesweeping.
Contents |
Adolf Hitler was the commander-in-chief of all German armed forces, including the Kriegsmarine. His authority was exercised through the Oberkommando der Marine, or OKM, with a Commander-in-Chief (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine), a Chief of Naval General Staff (Chef der Stabes der Seekriegsleitung) and a Chief of Naval Operations (Chef der Operationsabteilung).[1]
Subordinate to these were regional, squadron and temporary flotilla commands. Regional commands covered significant naval regions and were themselves sub-divided, as necessary. They were commanded by a Generaladmiral or an Admiral. There was a Marineoberkommando for the Baltic Fleet, Nord, Nordsee, Norwegen, Ost/Ostsee (formerly Baltic), Süd and West. The Kriegsmarine used a form of encoding called Gradnetzmeldeverfahren to denote regions on a map.
Each squadron (organized by type of ship) also had a command structure with its own Flag Officer. The commands were Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers, Submarines (Führer der U-Boote), Torpedo Boats, Minesweepers, Reconnaissance Forces, Naval Security Forces, Big Guns and Hand Guns, and Midget Weapons.
Major naval operations were commanded by a Flottenchef. The Flottenchef controlled a flotilla and organized its actions during the operation. The commands were, by their nature, temporary.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Germany was only allowed a minimal navy of 15,000 personnel, six capital ships of no more than 10,000 tons, six cruisers, twelve destroyers, twelve torpedo boats and no submarines or aircraft carriers. All the ships allowed and personnel were taken over from the Kaiserliche Marine, renamed Reichsmarine.
The launching of the first pocket battleship, Deutschland in 1931 was a sign for the rebuilding of a modern German fleet. Modern destroyers and light cruisers were also built. All of these new ships were built in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that allowed replacements of the old ships taken over from the German World War I fleet.
Even before the Nazi takeover on 30 January 1933 the German government decided on 15 November 1932 to launch a naval re-armament program that included U-boats, airplanes and an aircraft carrier which were not allowed under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler soon began to ignore many of the Treaty restrictions and accelerated German naval rearmament. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935 allowed Germany to build a navy equivalent to 35% of the British surface ship tonnage and 45% of British submarine tonnage; battleships were to be limited to no more than 35,000 tons. That same year the Reichsmarine was renamed as the Kriegsmarine.
The building-up of the German fleet in the time period of 1935-1939 was slowed by problems with marshaling enough manpower and material for ship building. This was because of the simultaneous and rapid build-up of the German army and air force which demanded substantial effort and resources.
The first military action of the Kriegsmarine came during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Following the outbreak of hostilities in July 1936 several capital ships of the German fleet were sent to the region. The Deutschland, Admiral Scheer, and light cruiser Köln were the first to be sent in July 1936. These capital ships were accompanied by the 2nd Torpedo-boat Flotilla. The German presence was used to covertly support Franco's Nationalists although the immediate involvement of the Deutschland was humanitarian relief operations and the rescuing of 9,300 refugees from the fighting, including 4,550 Germans. Following the brokering of the International Non-Intervention Patrol to enforce an international arms embargo the Kriegsmarine was allotted the patrol area between Cabo de Gata (Almeria) and Oropesa. Numerous vessels served as part of these duties including Admiral Graf Spee. U-Boats also participated in covert action against Republican shipping as part of Operation Ursula. At least eight U-Boats engaged a small number of targets in the area throughout the conflict. By way of comparison the Italian Navy, Regia Marina, operated 58 submarines in the area as part of Sottomarini Legionari. On 29 May 1937 the Deutschland was attacked in the Deutschland incident off Ibiza by two bombers from the Republican Airforce. Total casualties from the Republican attack were 31 dead and 110 wounded, 71 seriously, mostly burn victims. In retaliation the Admiral Scheer shelled the harbour of Almeria on 31 May. Following further attacks by Republican submarine forces against the Leipzig off the port of Oran between 15–18 June 1937 Germany withdrew from the Non-Intervention Patrol although the Kriegsmarine maintained a continuous presence in the area until the end of the conflict.
The Kriegsmarine saw its main tasks as controlling the Baltic Sea and winning a war against France in connection with the German army, because France was seen as the most likely enemy in the event of war. But in 1938 Hitler wanted to have the possibility of winning a war against Great Britain at sea in the coming years. Therefore he ordered plans for such a fleet from the Kriegsmarine. From the three proposed plans (X, Y and Z) he approved Plan Z in January 1939. This blueprint for the new German naval construction program envisaged building a navy of approximately 800 ships during the period 1939–1947. Hitler demanded that the program was to be completed in 1945. The building programme was to include:
Personnel strength was planned to rise to over 200,000.
The planned naval program was not very far advanced by the time World War II began. In 1939 two M class cruisers and three H class battleships were laid down and the strength of the German fleet at the beginning of the war was not even 20% of Plan Z. On September 1, 1939, the navy still had a total personnel strength of only 78,000, and it was not at all ready for a major role in the war. Because of the long time it would take to get the Plan Z fleet ready for action and shortage in workers and material in wartime, Plan Z was essentially shelved in September 1939 and the resources allocated for its realization were largely redirected to the construction of U-boats, which would be ready for combat against Great Britain quicker.
The Kriegsmarine was involved in World War II from its outset and participated in the Battle of Westerplatte and the Battle of the Danzig Bay during the Invasion of Poland. In 1939, major events for the Kriegsmarine were the sinking of the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous and the British battleship HMS Royal Oak and the loss of the Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate. Submarine attacks on Britain's vital maritime supply routes (Battle of the Atlantic) started immediately at the outbreak of war, although they were hampered by the lack of well placed ports from which to operate. Throughout the war the Kriegsmarine was responsible for coastal artillery protecting major ports and important coastal areas. It also operated anti-aircraft batteries protecting major ports.[2]
In April 1940, the German Navy was heavily involved in the invasion of Norway, where it suffered significant losses, including the heavy cruiser Blücher sunk by torpedoes from Oscarsborg Fortress in Oslofjord, ten destroyers lost in the Battles of Narvik (half of German destroyer strength at the time) and two light cruisers lost elsewhere during the campaign. The Kriegsmarine did in return sink some British warships during this campaign, including the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious.
The losses in the Norwegian Campaign left only a handful of undamaged heavy ships available for the planned, but never executed, invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion) in the summer of 1940. There were serious doubts that the invasion sea routes could have been protected against British naval interference. The fall of France and the conquest of Norway gave German submarines greatly improved access to British shipping routes in the Atlantic. At first, British convoys lacked escorts that were adequate either in numbers or equipment and, as a result, the submarines had much success for few losses (this period was dubbed the First Happy Time by the Germans).
Italy entered the war in June 1940, and the Battle of the Mediterranean began: from September 1941 to May 1944 some 62 German submarines were transferred there, sneaking past the British naval base at Gibraltar. The Mediterranean submarines sunk 24 major Allied warships (including 12 destroyers, 4 cruisers, 2 aircraft carriers and 1 battleship) and 94 merchant ships (449,206 tons of shipping). None of the Mediterranean submarines made it back to their home bases as they were all either sunk in battle or scuttled by their crews at the end of the war[3]
In 1941 one of the four modern German battleships, the Bismarck sank HMS Hood while breaking out into the Atlantic for commerce raiding. The Bismarck was in turn hunted down by much superior British forces after being crippled by an airborne torpedo. She was subsequently scuttled after being rendered defenceless by two British battleships.
During 1941, the Kriegsmarine and the United States Navy became de facto belligerents, although war was not formally declared, leading to the sinking of the USS Reuben James. This hostility was the result of the American decision to support Britain with its Lend-Lease program and the subsequent decision to escort Lend-Lease convoys with American war ships through the western part of the Atlantic.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war against the United States in December 1941 led to another phase of the Battle of the Atlantic. In Operation Drumbeat and subsequent operations until August 1942, a large number of Allied merchant ships were sunk by submarines off the American coast as the Americans had not prepared for submarine warfare, despite clear warnings (this was the so-called Second happy time for the German navy). The situation became so serious that military leaders feared for the whole Allied strategy. The vast American ship building capabilities and naval forces were however now brought into the war and soon more than offset any losses inflicted by the German submariners. In 1942, the submarine warfare continued on all fronts, and when German forces in the Soviet Union reached the Black Sea, a few submarines were eventually transferred there.
Hitler, fearing a British invasion of Norway, forced the leadership of the Kriegsmarine to transfer her big ships based in the French Atlantic port of Brest to Norway. Thus, in February 1942, the two battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen passed through the English Channel (Channel Dash) on their way to Norway despite British efforts to stop them. Not since the Spanish Armada in 1588 had any warships in wartime done this. It was a tactical victory for the Kriegsmarine and a blow to British morale, but the German fleet lost the possibility to attack allied convoys with heavy surface ships in the Atlantic (which was its wish) because of Hitler's decision.
With the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 Britain started to send Arctic convoys with military goods around Norway to support their new ally. In 1942 German forces began heavily attacking these convoys, mostly with bombers and U-boats. The big ships of the Kriegsmarine in Norway were seldom involved in these attacks, because Hitler and the leadership of the Kriegsmarine feared losses of these precious ships. The most effective of these attacks was the near destruction of Convoy PQ 17 in July 1942. Later in the war German attacks on these convoys were mostly reduced to U-boat activities and the mass of the allied freighters reached their destination in Soviet ports.
The Battle of the Barents Sea in December 1942 was an attempt by a German naval force to attack an Allied Arctic convoy. However, the advantage was not pressed home and they returned to base. There were serious implications: this failure infuriated Hitler, who nearly enforced a decision to scrap the surface fleet. Instead, resources were diverted to new U-boats, and the surface fleet became a lesser threat to the Allies.
After December 1943 when the Scharnhorst had been sunk in an attack on an Arctic convoy in the Battle of North Cape by HMS Duke of York, most German surface ships in bases at the Atlantic were blockaded in, or close to, their ports as a fleet in being, for fear of losing them in action and to tie up British naval forces. The largest of these ships, the battleship Tirpitz, was stationed in Norway as a threat to Allied shipping and also as a defence against a potential Allied invasion. When she was sunk, after several attempts, by British bombers in November 1944 (Operation Catechism), several British capital ships could be moved to the Far East.
From late 1944 until the end of the war, the surface fleet of Kriegsmarine was heavily engaged in providing artillery support to the retreating German land forces along the Baltic coast and in ferrying civilian refugees to the western Baltic Sea parts of Germany (Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein) in large rescue operations. Large parts of the population of eastern Germany fled the approaching Red Army out of fear for Soviet retaliation (mass rapes, killings and looting by Soviet troops did occur). The Kriegsmarine evacuated two million civilians and troops in the evacuation of East Prussia and Danzig from January to May 1945. It was during this activity that the catastrophic sinking of several large passenger ships occurred: the Wilhelm Gustloff and the Goya was sunk by Soviet submarines, while the SS Cap Arcona was sunk by British bombers, each sinking claiming thousands of civilian lives. The Kriegsmarine also provided important assistance in the evacuation of the fleeing German civilians of Pomerania and Stettin in March and April 1945.
A desperate measure of the Kriegsmarine to fight the superior strength of the Western Allies from 1944 was the formation of the Kleinkampfverbände (Small Battle Units). These were special naval units with frogmen, manned torpedoes, motorboats laden with explosives and so on. The more effective of these weapons and units were the development and deployment of midget submarines like the Molch and Seehund. In the last stage of the war, the Kriegsmarine also organized a number of divisions of infantry from its personnel.[2]
Between 1943 and 1945, a group of U-boats known as the "Monsun Boats" (Monsun Gruppe) operated in the Indian Ocean from Japanese bases in the occupied Dutch East Indies and Malaya. Allied convoys had not yet been organized in those waters, so initially many ships were sunk. However, this situation was soon remedied.[4] During the later war years, the "Monsun Boats" were also used as a means of exchanging vital war supplies with Japan.
During 1943 and 1944, due to Allied anti-submarine tactics and better equipment the U-boat fleet started to suffer heavy losses. Radar, longer range air cover, Sonar, improved tactics and new weapons all contributed. German technical developments, such as the Schnorchel, attempted to counter these. Near the end of the war a small number of the new Elektroboot U-boats (XXI and XXIII) became operational, the first submarines designed to operate submerged at all times. Although too few and too late to make an impact on the course of the war, the Elektroboote had the potential to negate the Allied technological and tactical advantage.[5]
Kriegsmarine was involved during the war in atrocities and Holocaust. One notable example are Liepāja massacres where Jews, Gypsies, communists, the mentally ill and so-called "hostages" were mass murdered. About 5,000 of the 5,700 Jews trapped in Liepāja were shot, most of them in 1941. As a naval base, Liepāja came under the command of the German navy, the Kriegsmarine. Lieutenant commander (Korvettenkapitan) Stein was appointed as town commandant[7] On July 1, 1941, Stein ordered that ten hostages be shot for every act of sabotage, and further put civilians in the zone of targeting by declaring that Red Army soldiers were hiding among them in civilian attire.[7] This was the first announcement in Latvia of a threat to shoot hostages.[7] On July 5, 1941 Korvettenkapitan Brückner, who had taken over for Stein[7] issued a set of anti-Jewish regulations.[8] These were published in a local newspaper, Kurzemes Vārds.[6] Summarized these were as follows[9]:
Throughout July several shootings of Jews, communists and hostages were made, starting with 5 July On July 16, 1941, Fregattenkapitän Dr. Hans Kawelmacher was appointed the German naval commandant in Liepāja.[10] On July 22, Kawelmacher sent a telegram to the German Navy's Baltic Command in Kiel, which stated that he wanted 100 SS and fifty Schutzpolizei ("protective police") men sent to Liepāja for "quick implementation Jewish problem".[11] Kawelmacher hoped to accelerate killings complaining that With present SS-personnel, this would take one year, which is untenable for [the] pacification of Liepāja[12] Mass arrests of Jewish men began immediately in Liepāja, and continued through July 25, 1941.[11]
22 July 1941: "... Here about 8,000 Jews ... with present SS personnel this would take about 1 year, which is untenable for pacification of Libau."
27 July 1941: "Jewish problem Libau largely solved by execution of about 1,100 male Jews by Riga SS commando on 24 and 25.7."
The shootings continued till December, and additionally Romani people were mass murdered as well.
After the war, the German surface ships that remained afloat (only two large warships were operational) were divided among the victors. The USA used the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in the Bikini atomic experiments in 1946 as target ship. Some (like the unfinished aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin) were used for target practice with conventional weapons, while others (mostly destroyers and torpedo boats) were put into the service of Allied navies that lacked surface ships after the war. The British, French and Soviet navies received the destroyers, and some torpedo boats went to the Danish and Norwegian navies. For the purpose of mine clearing, the Royal Navy employed German crews and minesweepers from June 1945 to January 1948,[13] organized in the German Mine Sweeping Administration, the GMSA, which consisted of 27,000 members of the former Kriegsmarine and 300 vessels.[14]
The destroyers and the Soviet share light cruiser Nürnberg were all retired by the end of the 1950s, but five escort destroyers were returned from the French to the new West German navy in the 1950s and three 1945 scuttled type XXI and XXIII U-boats were raised by West Germany and integrated into their new navy. In 1956, with West Germany's accession to NATO, a new navy was established and was referred to as the Bundesmarine (Federal Navy). Some Kriegsmarine commanders like Erich Topp and Otto Kretschmer went on to serve in the Bundesmarine. In East Germany the Volksmarine (People's Navy) was established some time after the war. With the reunification of Germany in 1990, it was decided to simply use the name Deutsche Marine (German Navy).
By the start of World War II, much of the Kriegsmarine were modern ships: fast, well-armed and well-armoured. This had been achieved by concealment but also by deliberately flouting World War I peace terms and those of various naval treaties. However, the war started with the German Navy still at a distinct disadvantage in terms of sheer size with what were expected to be its primary adversaries – the navies of France and Great Britain. Although a major re-armament of the navy (Plan Z) was planned, and initially begun, the start of the war in 1939 meant that the vast amounts of material required for the project were diverted to other areas. The sheer disparity in size when compared to the other European powers navies prompted German naval commander in chief Grand Admiral Erich Raeder to write of his own navy once the war began "The surface forces can do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly." A number of captured ships from occupied countries were added to the German fleet as the war progressed.
Some ship types do not fit clearly into the commonly used ship classifications. Where there is argument, this has been noted.
The main combat ships of the Kriegsmarine (excluding U-boats):
Construction of the Graf Zeppelin was started in 1936 with an unnamed sister ship started two years later in 1938, but neither ship was completed. In 1942 conversion to auxiliary carriers was begun on three German passenger ships and two unfinished cruisers—the captured French light cruiser De Grasse and the German heavy cruiser Seydlitz. In November 1942 the work for conversion of the passenger ships was stopped because this ships were now seen as to slow for operations with the fleet. But one of this ships was now begun to convert in a training carrier. In February 1943 all the work on carriers was halted because of the German failure during the Battle of the Barents Sea which convinced Hitler that big warships were useless.
All engineering of the aircraft carriers like catapults, arresting gears and so on were tested and developed at the Erprobungsstelle See Travemünde (Experimental Place Sea in Travemünde) inclusive the airplanes for aircraft carriers the Fieseler Fi 167 ship-borne biplane torpedo and reconnaissance bomber and the navalized versions of two key early war Luftwaffe aircraft: the Messerschmitt Bf 109T fighter and Junkers Ju 87C Stuka dive bomber.
The Kriegsmarine completed four battleships during its existence. The first pair were the 11-inch gun Scharnhorst class, consisting of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which participated in the invasion of Norway (Operation Weserübung) in 1940, and then in commerce raiding until the Gneisenau was heavily damaged by a British air raid in 1942 and the Scharnhorst was sunk in the Battle of the North Cape in late 1943. The second pair were the 15-inch gun Bismarck class, consisting of the Bismarck and Tirpitz. The Bismarck was sunk on her first sortie into the Atlantic in 1941 (Operation Rheinübung), whilst the Tirpitz was based in Norwegian ports during most of the war as a fleet in being, tying up Allied naval forces, and subject to a number of attacks by British aircraft and submarines. More battleships were planned (the H class), but construction was abandoned in September 1939.
The "Pocket battleships" were the Deutschland (later renamed Lützow), Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee. Modern commentators favour classifying these as "heavy cruisers" and the Kriegsmarine itself reclassified these ships as such (Schwere Kreuzer) in 1940.[15] In German language usage these three ships were designed and built as "armoured ships" (Panzerschiffe) - "pocket battleship" is an English label.
The Graf Spee was scuttled by her own crew in the Battle of the River Plate, in the Rio de la Plata estuary in December 1939. Admiral Scheer was bombed on 9 April 1945 in port at Kiel and badly damaged, essentially beyond repair, and rolled over at her moorings. After the war that part of the harbor was filled in with rubble and the hulk buried. Lützow (ex-Deutschland) was bombed 16 April 1945 in the Baltic off Schwinemünde just west of Stettin, and settled on the shallow bottom. With the Soviet Army advancing across the Oder, the ship was destroyed in place to prevent the Soviets capturing anything useful. The wreck was dismantled and scrapped in 1948-1949.[16]
The World War I era Pre-dreadnought battleships Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein were used mainly as training ships, although they also participated in several military operations. Zähringen and Hessen were converted into radio-guided target ships in 1928 and 1930 respectively. Hannover was decommissioned in 1931 and struck from the naval register in 1936. Plans to convert her into a radio-controlled target ship for aircraft was canceled because of the outbreak of war in 1939.
Three O class battlecruisers were ordered in 1939, but with the start of the war the same year there were not enough resources to build the ships anymore.
Admiral Hipper, Blücher, and Prinz Eugen
Never completed: Seydlitz, Lützow
The term "light cruiser" is a shortening of the phrase "light armoured cruiser." Light cruisers were defined under the Washington Naval Treaty by gun caliber. Light cruiser describes a small ship that was armoured in the same way as an armoured cruiser. In other words, like standard cruisers, light cruisers possessed a protective belt and a protective deck. Prior to this, smaller cruisers tended to be of the protected cruiser model and possessed only an armoured deck. The Kriegsmarine light cruisers were as follows:
Never completed: three M class cruiser
Never Completed: KH-1 and KH-2 (Kreuzer (cruiser) Holland 1 and 2). Captured in the Netherlands 1940. Both being on the stocks and building continued for the Kriegsmarine.
In addition, the former Kaiserliche Marine light cruiser Niobe was captured by Germans on September 11, 1943 after the capitulation of Italy. She was pressed into Kriegsmarine service for a brief time before being destroyed by British MTBs.
During the war, some merchant ships were converted into "auxiliary cruisers" and nine were used as commerce raiders sailing under false flags to avoid detection, and operated in all oceans with considerable effect. The German designation for the ships was 'Handelstörkreuzer' thus the HSK serial assigned. Each had as well an administrative label more commonly used, e.g. Schiff 16 = Atlantis, Schiff 41 = Kormoran, etc. The auxiliary cruisers were:
Although the German World War II destroyer (Zerstörer) fleet was modern and the ships were larger than conventional destroyers of other navies, they had problems. Early classes were unstable, wet in heavy weather, suffered from engine problems and had short range. Some problems were solved with the evolution of later designs, but further developments were curtailed by the war and, ultimately, by Germany's defeat. In the first year of World War II, they were used mainly to sow offensive minefields in shipping lanes close to the British coast.
These vessels evolved through the 1930s from small vessels, relying almost entirely on torpedoes, to what were effectively small destroyers with mines, torpedoes and guns. Two classes of fleet torpedo boats were planned, but not built, in the 1940s.
Cap Arcona, Goya, Steuben, Wilhelm Gustloff.
Minelayers, minesweepers, Gunboats, E-boats and Watchboats.
At the outbreak of war, the Kriegsmarine had a relatively small fleet of 57 submarines (U-boats).[18] This was increased steadily until mid-1943, when losses through allied counter-measures matched the new vessels launched.[19]
The principal types were the Type IX, a long range type used in the western and southern Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans; and the Type VII, the most numerous type, used principally in the north Atlantic. Type X was a small class of mine-layers and Type XIV was a specialized type used to support distant U-boat operations – the "Milchkuh" (Milkcow).
Types XXI and XXIII, the "Elektroboot", would have negated much of the Allied anti-submarine tactics and technology, but only a few of this new type of U-boat became ready for combat at the end of the war. Post-war, they became the prototypes for modern submarines, in particular, the Soviet Whiskey class submarine.
During World War II, about 60% of all U-boats commissioned were lost in action; 28,000 of the 40,000 U-boat crewmen were killed during the war and 8,000 were captured. The remaining U-boats were either surrendered to the Allies or scuttled by their own crews at the end of the war.
| Top 10 U-Boat Aces in World War II | |
|---|---|
| 274,333 tons (47 ships sunk) | Otto Kretschmer |
| 225,712 tons (43 ships) | Wolfgang Lüth |
| 193,684 tons (34 ships) | Erich Topp |
| 186,064 tons (29 ships) | Karl-Friedrich Merten |
| 171,164 tons (34 ships) | Victor Schütze |
| 171,122 tons (26 ships) | Herbert Schultze |
| 167,601 tons (28 ships) | Georg Lassen |
| 166,596 tons (22 ships) | Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock |
| 162,333 tons (30 ships) | Heinrich Liebe |
| 160,939 tons (28 ships), plus the British battleship Royal Oak inside Scapa Flow | Günther Prien |
The military campaigns in Europe yielded a number of captured vessels, many of which were under construction. Nations represented included Soviet Union, Norway, the Netherlands, France, Italy (after the armistice), Yugoslavia and Greece. Few of the incomplete ships were actually commissioned; they were abandoned, wrecked or broken up.
| Warships | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ship | Type | Date | Action | |
| HMS Courageous (Royal Navy) | Fleet Aircraft Carrier | September 17, 1939 | torpedoed by submarine U-29 while on convoy escort | |
| HMS Royal Oak (Royal Navy) | Battleship | October 14, 1939 | torpedoed at anchor by submarine U-47 | |
| HMS Glorious (Royal Navy) | Fleet Aircraft Carrier | June 8, 1940 | sunk by battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst | |
| HMS Hood (Royal Navy) | Battlecruiser | May 24, 1941 | sunk by the battleship Bismarck | |
| HMS Ark Royal (Royal Navy) | Fleet Aircraft Carrier | November 14, 1941 | torpedoed by submarine U-81 | |
| HMS Barham (Royal Navy) | Battleship | November 25, 1941 | torpedoed by submarine U-331 | |
| HMS Audacity (Royal Navy) | Escort Carrier | December 21, 1941 | torpedoed by submarine U-751 | |
| HMS Eagle (Royal Navy) | Aircraft Carrier | August 11, 1942 | torpedoed by submarine U-73 | |
| HMS Avenger (Royal Navy) | Escort Carrier | November 15, 1942 | torpedoed by submarine U-155 | |
| USS Block Island (American) | Escort Carrier | May 29, 1944 | torpedoed by submarine U-549 | |
| HMAS Sydney (Royal Australian Navy) | Light Cruiser | November 19, 1941 | sunk by German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran | |
The Luftwaffe had monopoly on all German military aviation, a major source of ongoing interservice rivalry with the Kriegsmarine. Catapult-launched spotter planes like Arado Ar 196 were manned by the Bordfliegergruppen ("ship-born groups").[22] Trägergeschwader 186 (Carrier Air Group 186) with two wings (Trägergruppe I/186 and Trägergruppe II/186)[23] was with navalized Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Junkers Ju 87 Stuka assigned for the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin but used from bases on land. Furthermore five coastal groups (Küstenfliegergruppen) with reconnaissance aircrafts, torpedo bombers, minesweepers and air-sea rescue seaplanes supported the Kriegsmarine, although with lesser resources as the war progressed.[24]
The Marine-Schützen divisions ("marine riflemen") protected the naval bases[25] and in 1944 amphibian units unsuccessfully tried to capture the strategic island Suursaari in the Gulf of Finland from Germany's former allied Finland (Operation Tanne Ost). The Atlantic Wall had former battleship crews to man the coastal batteries and other Kriegsmarine personnel to man the Seetakt sea radars.[26]
| Kriegsmarine | US Navy/Royal Navy |
|---|---|
| Großadmiral | Fleet Admiral/Admiral of the Fleet |
| Generaladmiral | Admiral |
| Admiral | Vice Admiral |
| Vizeadmiral | Rear Admiral (Upper Half)/Rear Admiral |
| Konteradmiral | Rear Admiral (Lower Half)/Commodore Admiral |
| Kommodore | Commodore Junior Grade/ Commodore |
| Kapitän zur See | Captain |
| Fregattenkapitän | Commander |
| Korvettenkapitän | Lieutenant Commander |
| Kapitänleutnant | Lieutenant |
| Oberleutnant zur See | Lieutenant (Jg.)/Sub-Lieutenant |
| Leutnant zur See | Ensign/Acting Sub-Lieutenant |
| Oberfähnrich zur See | Midshipman (Senior Grade) |
| Fähnrich zur See | Cadet/Midshipman (Junior Grade) |
Many different types of uniforms were worn by the Kriegsmarine, here is a list of the main ones:
| German | English |
|---|---|
| Dienstanzug | Service Suit |
| kleiner Dienstanzug | Small Service Suit |
| Ausgehanzug | Suit for Walking Out |
| Sportanzug | Sports Suit |
| Tropen-und Sommeranzug | Tropical and Summer Suit |
| große Uniform | Parade Uniform |
| kleiner Gesellschaftsanzug | Small Party Suit |
| großer Gesellschaftsanzug | Parade Party Suit |
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