Under the command of Gunther Prien, the submarine U-47 was credited with the sinking of more than 30 allied ships with a total area of about 200,000 gross registers (GRT). It was he who sank the British battleship HMS Royal Oak at the Home Fleet anchorage in Scapa Flow. The British then came up with the famous nickname, by which Gunther Prin became known - the Bull of Scapa Flow. His brilliant career was made possible because the Germans paid special attention to submarines from the very beginning.
Foreword: Unlimited Submarine Warfare
The story of submarine commander Günther Prien would not have been possible if not for the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare that Germany began to pursue in World War I.
Unlimited Submarine Warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines submerge ships such as trucks and tankers withoutwarnings, as opposed to the traditional rules of engagement. These rules require submarines to be on the surface and attack cargo, transport and civilian ships only when absolutely necessary. The Germans ignored this law during the First World War after the British introduction of Q-ships with concealed deck guns, and the most dramatic episode of that time was the sinking of the Lusitania by the Germans in 1915. It was this unfortunate event that provoked the entry of the United States into the First World War.
Admiral Henning von Holzendorff, Chief of Staff of the Admir alty, successfully participated in the resumption of attacks in early 1917 and thus taught the British a lesson. The German high command realized that the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare meant war with the United States, but felt that American mobilization would be too slow to stop a German victory on the Western Front.
Following Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, 1917, countries attempted to limit or even abolish submarines. Instead, the London Declaration required U-boats to abide by the rules of war. These rules did not prohibit the arming of merchant ships, but at the same time they had to report contact with submarines (or raiders). This rendered submarine restrictions useless.
While this tactic increases the submarine's combat effectiveness and chances of survival, some see it as a violation of the rules of war, especially when usedagainst neutral ships in the war zone.
There were four major campaigns of unrestricted submarine warfare:
- Naval operations of the First World War, when unrestricted submarine warfare was waged by Germany between 1915 and 1918 against Great Britain and its allies. One of the most famous acts was on May 7, 1915, when the U-20 deliberately torpedoed the British Cunard luxury liner RMS Lusitania.
- Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917, along with the Zimmermann Telegram, brought the US into the war on the British side. It was also the casus belli for Brazil's entry into the war in 1917.
- Battle of the Atlantic during World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 it was fought between Germany and the Allies, and between 1940 and 1943 between Italy and the Allies.
- The B altic campaign on the Eastern Front, during the Second World War between 1941 and 1945, especially since 1942. It was waged by Germany and the USSR against each other, primarily in the B altic Sea.
- Pacific Front of World War II, between 1941 and 1945. The war was waged by the United States against Japan.
In four cases, there were attempts to impose a naval blockade on countries, especially those heavily dependent on merchant shipping, to prevent them from feeding their military enterprises and feeding their population (for example, Britain and Japan), although countries, conducting unrestricted submarine warfare failed to establish a conventional naval blockade. It was during the times of unlimited submarine warsand the glory of outstanding submariners like commander Günther Prien shone.
Early years
The hero of our article was one of three children in the judge's family. Future submariner Günther Prien joined the Handelsflotte (German merchant fleet) in mid-1923. After several years of work and study as a sailor, he passed the required examinations and became the fourth officer on a passenger liner. In January 1932, the future submarine commander Gunther Prien received a sea captain's license.
Career start
Unable to find work due to the serious contraction of the German shipping industry during the Great Depression, he was forced to turn to various social institutions for help. Angry at the inept government, which seemed completely impotent in the face of the country's economic disaster, he joined the Nazi Party in May 1932. In August 1932, the future submarine commander Prien joined the Vogtsberg Volunteer Corps in Olsznitz, where he rose to the rank of deputy camp commander.
Prien turned to the Reichsmarine in 1933 and quickly got a job there. At first he served on a light cruiser, and then was sent to a training school for submariners in Kiel. After graduation, he ended up with U-26 at the Deutsche Schiff und Maschinenbau AG (Deschimag) label in Bremen as the first observer, serving under Werner Hartmann. U-26 went on two patrols in 1937 (May 6 - June 15 and July 15 - August 30) duringSpanish Civil War.
Future commander Günther Prien rose rapidly through the ranks, rising from midshipman in 1933 to first lieutenant at sea in 1937. He was placed in command of the new Type VIIB U-47 when it entered service in December 1938, and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in February 1939.
In 1939 Lieutenant Commander Prien married and later fathered two children.
World War II
World War II began during Prien's first patrol in U-47. She left Kiel on 19 August 1939 for a 28 day patrol. On 5 September, she sank the British SS Bosnia with 2,407 gross register tons (GRT), the second ship since the start of the war to be sunk by a submarine. His boat soon sank two more British ships, Rio Claro 4086 OTO on the 6th and Gartavon 1777 OTO on the 7th. U-47 returned to Kiel on 15 September.
On October 14, 1939, the boat of Lieutenant-Captain Gunther Prien penetrated the main base of the Royal Navy, Scapa Flow, and sank the battleship Royal Oak. He returned to Germany as a celebrated hero. Now he was not just a submariner Guther Prien - the Scapa Flow attack made him a real star in his homeland!
Prien was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross personally by Adolf Hitler, becoming the first submarine sailor and the second member of the Kriegsmarine to receive this award. Whatever mistakes Captain Prien made, Scapa Flow's attack made him a name forever. Emblem in the formThe snorting bull was painted on the U-47's cone turret and soon became the symbol of the entire 7th Submarine Flotilla, confirming Prin's nickname.
Two members of Günther's team earned the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross during World War II: chief engineer (Leitender Ingenieur) Johann-Friedrich Wessels and 1st watch officer (I. Wachhofisie) Engelbert Endrass.
There was, however, one secret kept by the German Navy: the submarine's captain, Prien, fired a total of seven torpedoes at his target, of which five failed due to longstanding problems with depth control and their magnetic detonators. systems. These problems continued to haunt German submariners for a long time, especially during the German invasion of Norway, when the submarines failed to keep the Royal Navy at bay. Günter Prien himself wrote about this attack - the book Mein Weg nach Scapa Flow (1940, Deutscher Verlag Berlin) was published under his name.
The era of victories and defeats
U-47, commanded by Prien, left Kiel on 16 November 1939 with 1st Observation Officer Engelbert Endrass and Chief Engineer Johann-Friedrich Wessels.
U-47 attacked a British cruiser on 28 November 1939. Prien defined the ship as a boat cruiser. He was about to launch three torpedoes, but only one cleared the tube and exploded after the cruiser. As the periscope cleared the surface, submariner Günther Prien observed what he considered to be severe damage to the cruiser's stern. U-47 surfaced and triedpursue the cruiser, but was hit by depth charges dropped from the escort. It turned out that the cruiser was a model of HMS Norfolk and was only slightly damaged by detonation. The attack was reported in the daily Wehrmachtbericht on 29 November 1939. The war diary of Befelschaber der u Boate (BDU) dated December 17, 1939 states that although a strike was noted, the cruiser was never sunk.
December 5, 1939 U-47 spotted nine merchant ships escorted by five destroyers. At 14:40, Prien fired one torpedo, shooting down the British steamer Navasota en route to Buenos Aires, killing 37 sailors. After the sinking of the Navasota, British destroyers unsuccessfully attacked U-47.
The next day at 20:29, the Norwegian tanker "Britta" was sunk, taking 6 members of her crew to the bottom. It was followed by the Dutch Tajandoin, sunk by Prin on 7 December 1939.
U-47 continued to attack allied shipping in the western approaches, but eight of the twelve ships were either carrying explosives or were out of order. On December 18, 1939, U-47 returned to Kiel via the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. Prin's trophies at the beginning of the war are noted in the military diary of December 17, 1939:
- ship of unknown origin 12,000 OTO;
- Norwegian tanker 10,000 GRT;
- Dutch tanker 9,000 OTO.
Later career
Among the ships sunk by Prinov's submarine U-47 was the SS Arandora carrying more than 1,200 German andItalian citizens and 86 German POWs to Canada. More than 800 people were killed in the attack.
After later patrols and raids against allied merchant shipping, Prien was awarded the Knight's Cross with the Oak Leaves in 1940.
Last fight
In a story typical of Germany's best soldiers during World War II, Admiral Dönitz tried to persuade Prien to transfer to a training submarine, but the man the German people loved chose instead to return to the perilous cold North Atlantic, which was already gave him great military glory. Günther Prien went on his tenth raid on U-47 on February 20, 1941.
Breaking its way to the west coast of Ireland, on February 25, U-47 collided with outgoing convoy OB-290. Following Prien's report, Dönitz called for reinforcements, but when they failed to arrive on time, the captain of U-47 decided to take over the convoy.
His first casu alty was the Belgian cargo ship Kosongo, which was hit by a torpedo just after midnight on the 26th. This was followed by a quick strike on the British tanker Diala which damaged the ship 8,100 tons. Within an hour, Prien reloaded and began attacking his second and third victims of the day, the Swedish freighter M/S Rydboholm and the Norwegian freighter Borglund.
U-47's key role in the destruction of Convoy OB-290 didn't stop here: acting as a beacon, the vessel successfully guided the dangerous Condor bombers towards the procession of slow moving ships. In a coordinated air attack squadronout of six Condors, she sank seven merchant ships and damaged the eighth of them. On February 28, U-47 ran into a ship that had fought off a wrecked convoy, the British steamer Holmelea, which was quickly sunk. He became the fourth victim of U-47 during the tenth Prien raid, and the thirtieth since the start of the war. The next day, Günther Prien received another promotion.
Mysterious Disappearance
U-47 had to wait over a week for her next sortie to the Atlantic when on March 7 she came across the 20.638-ton British whaling ship Terje Viken, part of the destroyed convoy OB-293. Two torpedoes were fired at the ship and both hit the target. Shortly after this attack, Prien was among a force of at least four ships under the command of Commander James Rowland.
No signal has been received from U-47 since entering the British encirclement. Prien was considered missing after he failed to report his position to the General Staff. Only ten days passed, and on March 17, two of Prien's equally successful colleagues also went missing: Joachim Schepke and U-100 were lost in the cold North Atlantic, while the commander of U-99 - Otto Kretschmer - and his team were captured in captured by the British. Admiral Dönitz was greatly shaken by the loss of three of his best underwater aces, and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wanted to convince the people to accept the death of war heroes with stoic calm, fearing to see a massive drop in morale. Aware of the situation, the Allies dropped leaflets over Germanywith the following text:
"Schepke - Kretschmer - Prin. What happened to these three officers, the most famous German submarine commanders, the only ones to whom Hitler handed the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross? Schepke is dead. The German high command should have recognized this. Kretschmer captured "The German high command should have recognized this. And Prien? Who has heard of Prien recently? What does the German high command have to say about Prien? Where is Prien?".
The decision to hide the loss of the most popular Kriegsmarine submarine commander from the German public has in all likelihood done more harm than good. Questions were constantly asked of those in power, and after the drop of the Wo ist Prien leaflets, the Nazi propaganda machine was probably in a quandary. The lack of news about Prien has given rise to all sorts of fantastic gossip, including the incredible story of his transformation into an anti-fascist or a concentration camp guard.
The destruction of U-47 has long been a subject of debate among naval historians. Of all the speculations that have been made, it is most likely that the submarine was depth-charged by both the Wolverine and another destroyer named Verity, although no concrete evidence or ever has been made to support this. Other equally valid explanations include crew error, a structural failure, or a stray torpedo, possibly a German one, hitting the submarine. Of course, this is all meaningless in the light of the war. What is clear is that GuntherPrien was unable to contact HQ after March 7th and that U-47 and her crew were never seen again.
The decline of the submarine fleet
The loss of Prien and his fellow subordinates during March 1941 hastened the beginning of the end for the laudatory German submarine fleet. U-boat morale was in such doubt that Prien's death was not officially announced until May 23, 1941, two months after U-47 was declared missing in the cold expanse of the North Atlantic.
Although during the remainder of the war Germany was able to acquire many more aces submariners, none of them reached the same high levels as the first generation of sea hunters. By mid-1941, the Allies took control of the situation in the North Atlantic, and nothing has changed since then. At this time, the former hunters themselves became victims.
To date, there is no official word on what happened to U-47 or its 45 crew members, although there are many theories.
Churchill personally announced the disappearance of the steel wolf of the Wehrmacht - submarine commander Günther Prien - in the House of Commons, and propaganda leaflets distributed in Germany repeatedly included the question "Where is Prien?" Until Germany was forced to admit its loss.
Although Prien was at sea for less than two years, his record was the highest among submarine aces during World War II. He spent 238 days at sea and sank 30 enemy ships.
In popular culture
Militarythe 1957 film U-47 - Kapitänleutnant Prien, directed by Harald Reinl, was based on combat reports from Prien and the rest of the U-47 crew. Prien was portrayed by German actor Dieter Eppler.
The great German submariner was the subject of a curious 1981 hagiographic book, Wehrmacht Steel Wolves: Submarine Commander Prien Günther, written by German author Franz Kurowski. German scholar Hans Wagener classifies Kurowski's book, published by far-right publisher Druffel Verlag, as "a near-perfect example of the skilful distillation of the Nazi understanding of World War II". Canadian historian Michael Hadley commented on the purpose of the narrative as follows:
Here he [Kurovsky] wanted to commemorate the "worthy soldier and man Günter Prien", who was not forgotten either by the old submariners, nor - and this would have amazed most observers in Germany today [in 1995] - by the young submariners of the modern fleet Germany.”
There were many legends surrounding his personality, some of which were also reflected in popular culture. For example, a rumor was circulated for a long time that Prien was a staunch anti-fascist who secretly despised the Nazi regime. Nevertheless, the fact that the main culprit of the dramatic Scapa Flow attack is the submariner Gunther Prien will never be erased from mass history.
Prin's book about himself
The hero of this article once wrote the book "Submarine Commander", dedicated to his military adventures. U-47 under the command of Günther Prien found his way through the labyrinth to the heart of the anchorage, wherewas the Royal Oak. Suddenly, two torpedoes blew up the mighty ship, tearing it apart and instantly killing over 800 British sailors.
Some historians who are professionally involved in the history of the submarine fleet claim that in fact this is a book by Paul Weimar, the "literary slave" of Günther Prien. It is well written and provides a detailed and very interesting look at where one of the legends of the Nazi German war machine began.
Prin doesn't ridicule or insult his enemies: he's just a guy on the other side who does his job like any other gifted military would. If you didn't know he was German, you can read the memoirs of a British merchant or an American submariner. The clipper ship he started with is half a book, so it's not a war story. This is a book about one man's experiences at sea, both in a merchant ship and on a military submarine. It has a lot of stories about his childhood, which obviously better and deeper explain what kind of person he became.
