Under the command of Gunther Prien, the U-47 submarine counted the flooding of more than 30 allied ships with a total area of about 200,000 gross registers (GTR). 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, under which Gunter Prien - Scapa Flow Bull became known. His brilliant career was made possible because the Germans from the very beginning paid special attention to submarines.
Foreword: Unlimited Submarine Warfare
The story of the commander of the submarine, Gunter Pryn, would have been impossible if it were not for the policy of unlimited submarine warfare, which Germany began to conduct in World War I.
Unlimited submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines load ships, such as trucks and tankers, without warning, unlike the traditional rules of warfare. These rules require that submarines be on the surface and attack cargo, transport and civilian vessels only in case of emergency. The Germans ignored this law during the First World War after the British introduction of Q-ships with hidden deck guns, and the most dramatic episode of that time was the flooding of the Lusitania by the Germans in 1915. It was this sad event that triggered the US entry into the First World War.
Admiral Henning von Holzendorf, chief of staff of the Admiralty, at the beginning of 1917 successfully participated in the resumption of attacks and, thus, taught a lesson to the British. The high command of Germany realized that the resumption of unlimited submarine war meant a war with the United States, but considered that American mobilization would be too slow to stop Germany's victory on the Western Front.
After Germany resumed unlimited submarine war on February 1, 1917, countries tried to limit or even abolish submarines. Instead, the London Declaration required submarines to abide by the rules of war. These rules did not prohibit arming merchant ships, but they were supposed to report contact with submarines (or raiders). This made submarine restrictions useless.
Although such tactics increase the combat effectiveness of the submarine and its chances of survival, some see it as a violation of the rules of war, especially when used against neutral vessels in a war zone.
Four major unlimited submarine warfare campaigns were conducted:
- The naval operations of World War I, when an unlimited submarine war was fought 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 submarine intentionally torpedoed the luxurious British Cunard RMS Lusitania.
- Germany's resumption of unlimited submarine warfare in February 1917, together with the Zimmermann Telegram, led the United States to war on the British side. It was also 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 from 1940 to 1943 between Italy and the Allies.
- The Baltic campaign on the Eastern Front, during World War II between 1941 and 1945, especially since 1942, was waged by Germany and the USSR against each other, especially in the Baltic Sea.
- The Pacific Front of World War II, between 1941 and 1945. A war was waged by the United States against Japan.
In four cases, there were attempts to introduce a naval blockade for countries, especially those that are highly dependent on merchant shipping, so that they could not feed their military enterprises and feed the population (for example, Britain and Japan), although countries that conduct unlimited submarine warfare, could not establish the usual naval blockade. It was during the time of unlimited submarine wars that the glory of prominent submariners like commander Gunther Prien shone.
early years
The hero of our article was one of three children in the family of a judge. Future submarine Gunter Prien joined the Handelsflotte (German merchant fleet) in mid-1923. After several years of work and study as a sailor, he passed the necessary exams and became the fourth officer on a passenger liner. In January 1932, the future commander of the submarine, Gunter Prien, received a naval captain license.
Carier start
Unable to find work due to a serious reduction in the German shipping industry during the Great Depression, he was forced to turn to various social institutions for help. Enraged by the inept government, which seemed completely impotent in the face of an economic disaster in the country, he joined the Nazi party in May 1932. In August 1932, the future submarine commander Prien joined the Vogtsberg voluntary working corps in Olsnice, where he rose to the rank of deputy camp commander.
Prien turned to the Reichsmarine in 1933 and quickly got a job there. First, he served on a light cruiser, and then was sent to the Kiel submarine training school. After graduation, he ended up in U-26 on the label Deutsche Schiff und Maschinenbau AG (Deschimag) in Bremen as a first observer, serving under the command of Werner Hartmann. U-26 went on two patrols in 1937 (May 6 - June 15 and July 15 - August 30) during the Spanish Civil War.
The future commander, Gunther Prien, quickly advanced in service, having gone from a midshipman in 1933 to a senior lieutenant at sea in 1937. He was appointed commander of the new type VIIB U-47 at its commissioning in December 1938 and was promoted to lieutenant commander in February 1939.
In 1939, Lieutenant Captain Prien married, and a little later became the father of two children.
The Second World War
World War II began during the first Prin patrol in U-47. He left Kiel on August 19, 1939 to patrol for 28 days. September 5, he sank the British SS Bosnia in the amount of 2,407 gross register tons (GTR) - this was the second ship since the beginning of the war, sunk by a submarine. His boat soon sank two more British ships, Rio Claro - 4086 GR of the 6th, and Gartavon - 1777 GR of the 7th. U-47 returned to Kiel on September 15th.
On October 14, 1939, Lieutenant-Captain Gunther Prin's boat penetrated the Royal Navy's main base, Scapa Flow, and sunk the Royal Oak battleship. He returned to Germany as a celebrated hero. Now he was not just a submarine Guter Prien - 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 sailor of the submarine and the second member on the Kriegsmarine to receive this award. No matter what mistakes Captain Prien makes, Scapa Flow’s attack forever made him a name. The emblem in the form of a snorting bull was painted on a conical tower U-47 and soon became a symbol of the entire 7th submarine flotilla, confirming the nickname of Prin.
Two members of Gunther's team earned the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross during World War II: the chief engineer (Leitender Ingenieur) Johann-Friedrich Wessels and the 1st watch officer (I. Wachhofisier) Engelbert Endrass.
There was, however, one secret that the German naval department was hiding: Submarine captain Prien fired a total of seven torpedoes to his target, five of which failed due to long-standing problems with depth control and their magnetic detonator systems. These problems continued to haunt the German submariners for a long time, especially during the German invasion of Norway, when the submarines could not keep the Royal Navy at bay. Gunter Prien himself wrote about this attack - the book Mein Weg nach Scapa Flow (1940, Deutscher Verlag Berlin) was published under his name.
Age of victories and defeats
U-47 under the command of Prin with the 1st supervisory officer Engelbert Endrass and chief engineer Johann-Friedrich Wessels left Kiel on November 16, 1939.
U-47 was attacked by a British cruiser on November 28, 1939. Prien identified the ship as a boat cruiser. He was about to launch three torpedoes, but only one cleared the tube and exploded after the cruiser. When the periscope cleared the surface, Gunther Prien's submarine watched what he considered to be serious damage to the cruiser's stern. U-47 surfaced and tried to chase the cruiser, but was hit by deep charges dropped from an escort. It turned out that the cruiser was a model HMS Norfolk and was only slightly damaged by detonation. The attack was reported in the daily Wehrmachtbericht on November 29, 1939. In the military diary of Befelshaber der Boate (BDU) on December 17, 1939, it is stated that although a blow was noted, the cruiser was never able to sink.
On December 5, 1939, U-47 discovered nine merchant ships escorted by five destroyers. At 14:40, Prien launched one torpedo, knocking down the British Navasota steamboat on the way to Buenos Aires and killing 37 sailors. After the flooding of the Navasota, the British destroyers unsuccessfully attacked the U-47.
The next day, at 8:29 p.m., the Norwegian tanker Britta was sunk, blowing 6 crew members to the bottom. He was followed by the Dutch Tajandoin, sunk by Prin on December 7, 1939.
U-47 continued to attack Allied transport in western approaches, but eight out of twelve ships either carried 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:
- steamboat of unknown origin 12,000 general relativity;
- Norwegian tanker 10,000 GRT;
- Dutch tanker 9,000 general relativity.
Subsequent career
Among the ships sunk by the new U-47 submarine was SS Arandora, transporting more than 1,200 interned German and Italian citizens and 86 German prisoners of war to Canada. The attack killed more than 800 people.
After later patrols and allied trade raids, Prien was awarded the Oak Leaves of the Knight's Cross in 1940.
Last Stand
In a story typical of Germany’s best soldiers during World War II, Admiral Doenitz tried to convince Pryn to transfer to a training submarine, but the man whom the German people loved instead chose to return to the danger of the cold North Atlantic, which had already given him great military glory . Gunther Prien set off on his tenth raid on U-47 on February 20, 1941.
Having made his way to the west coast of Ireland, on February 25, U-47 collided with an outgoing convoy OB-290. Following Prin’s report, Doenitz called for reinforcements, but when they didn’t arrive on time, the captain of U-47 decided to take on the convoy.
His first victim was the Belgian cargo ship Kosongo, which was hit by a torpedo immediately after midnight on the 26th. This was followed by a quick strike on the British tanker Diala, which damaged the ship at 8,100 tons. Within an hour, Prien recharged and began to attack his second and third victims of the day - the Swedish cargo ship M / S Rydboholm and the Norwegian cargo ship Borglund.
The key role of the U-47 in the destruction of the Convoy OB-290 did not stop here: acting as a beacon, the ship successfully sent Condor's dangerous bombers to a procession of slow-moving vessels. In a coordinated air attack, a squadron of six Condor sank seven merchant ships and damaged the eighth of them. On February 28, U-47 came across a ship that had fought off a broken convoy - the British steamer Holmelea, which was quickly sunk. He became the fourth victim of U-47 during the tenth raid of Prin, and the thirtieth from the start of the war. The next day, Gunther Prien received another promotion.
Mysterious disappearance
The U-47 had to wait more than a week for its next outing to the Atlantic, when on March 7 it came across a British whaling ship with a cargo of more than 20.638 tons - the Terrier Wicken, which was part of the destroyed OB-293 convoy. Two torpedoes were fired into the ship, and both hit the target. Shortly after this attack, Prien was among a squad of at least four ships under the command of commander James Rowland.
From U-47, no signal was received from the moment when he got into the British environment. Prien was considered missing after he was unable to report his position to the General Staff. Only ten days passed, and on March 17, two equally successful colleagues of Prin also went missing: Joachim Schepke and the U-100 were lost in the cold North Atlantic, while U-99 commander Otto Kretschmer and his team were captured captured by the British. Admiral Doenitz was greatly shocked by the loss of his three best underwater aces, and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels wanted to convince people to accept the deaths of war heroes with stoic calm, fearing to see a massive decline in morale. Aware of the situation, the Allies dropped leaflets over Germany with the following text:
"Whisper - Kretschmer - Prien. What happened to these three officers, the most famous German submarine commanders, the only ones to whom Hitler handed Oak leaves to the Knight's Cross? Whisper is dead. The German high command should have admitted this. The Krechmer has been captured. The German high command should was to admit it. And Prien? Who recently heard of Prien? What does the German high command have to say about Prien? Where is Prien? "
The decision to hide the loss of the most popular submarine commander Kriegsmarine from the German public, in all likelihood, did more harm than good. Those in power were constantly asked questions, and after the fall of the Wo ist Prien leaflets, the Nazi propaganda machine was probably in a quandary. The lack of news about Prin gave rise to all kinds of fantastic gossip, including the incredible story of his becoming an anti-fascist or a guard in a concentration camp.
The destruction of U-47 has long been the subject of debate among naval historians. Of all the assumptions that have been made, it is most likely that the submarine was attacked with a deep charge by both the Wolverine and another destroyer called Verity, although no concrete evidence or ever was made to confirm this. Other equal explanations include crew error, structural failure, or a stray torpedo, possibly German, getting into the submarine. Of course, this is all meaningless in the light of the war. It is only clear that Gunter Prien was unable to contact the headquarters after March 7, and that the U-47 and its crew were never seen again.
The decline of the submarine fleet
The loss of Prin and his fellow subordinates during March 1941 hastened the beginning of the end for the laudable German submarine fleet. The morale of the submariners was so doubtful that the death of Prin was not officially announced until May 23, 1941 - two months after U-47 was declared missing in the cold space of the North Atlantic.
Although during the remainder of the war Germany was able to acquire a much larger number of 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 since then nothing has changed. At this time, former hunters themselves became victims.
To date, there is no official data on what happened to the U-47 or 45 members of its crew, although there are many theories.
Churchill personally announced the disappearance of the steel wolf of the Wehrmacht - the commander of the submarine Gunther Prien - in the House of Commons, and propaganda leaflets distributed in Germany repeatedly included the question "Where is Prien?" So far, Germany was not forced to admit its loss.
Although Prien had been at sea for less than two years, his record was the highest among submariner aces during World War II. He spent 238 days at sea and sank 30 ships of the enemy.
In popular culture
The 1957 U-47 war film Kapitänleutnant Prien directed by Harald Reinl was based on the combat reports of Prin and the rest of the U-47 team. Prien was embodied by the German actor Dieter Eppler.
The great German submariner was the hero of a curious hagiographic book in 1981 - “Steel Wehrmacht: the commander of the submarine Prien Gunther”, written by German author Franz Kurovsky. German scientist Hans Wagener classifies Kurovsky’s book, published by far-right publisher Druffel Verlag, as “an almost perfect example of the skillful 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 mention "a worthy soldier and man, Gunther Pryn," who was not forgotten either by the old submariners, nor - and this would amaze most observers in Germany today [in 1995] - by the young submariners of the modern German fleet. "
A lot of legends circled around his personality, some of which were also reflected in popular culture. For example, a rumor circulated for a long time that Prien was a staunch anti-fascist who secretly despised the Hitler regime. Nevertheless, the fact that the main culprit of the dramatic attack of Scapa Flow is the submariner Gunther Prien will never be erased from mass history.
Prin's book about himself
The hero of this article once wrote a book, "The Submarine Commander," dedicated to his military adventures. U-47, under the command of Gunther Pryn, found his way through the maze to the heart of the anchorage where the Royal Oak stood. Suddenly, two torpedoes blew up a mighty ship, tearing it apart and instantly killing more than 800 British sailors.
Some historians who are professionally engaged in the history of the submarine fleet claim that this is actually a book by Paul Weimar, Gunter Pryn's "literary slave." It is well written, it reflects a detailed and very interesting look at where one of the legends of the military machine of Nazi Germany began.
Admission of his enemies does not ridicule and does not insult: he is just a guy on the other hand, who does his job as any other gifted military would do it. If you did not know that he was German, you can read the memories of a British merchant or an American submariner. The clipper ship with which he began is half the book, so this is not a work of war. This is a book about the experience of one person at sea, both in a merchant ship and on a military submarine. It has many stories about his childhood, which, obviously, better and deeper explain what kind of person he became.