| Born | 24 Dec 1915 | Hamburg | |
| Died | 8 Sep 2000 | (84) |
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Ranks
Decorations
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U-boat Commands
| U-boat | From | To | |
|---|---|---|---|
| U-6 | Aug, 1942 | Sep, 1942 | No war patrols |
| U-151 | Sep, 1942 | May, 1943 | No war patrols |
| U-546 | 2 Jun 1943 | 24 Apr 1945 | 3 patrols (284 days) |
Paul Just joined the Kriegsmarine in 1936. He went through officer training from April 1936 to Sept 1938. In Oct 1938 he was seconded to Luftwaffe, the German air force until Jan 1941.
Oblt. Paul Just joined the Ubootwaffe, U-boat force, in Jan 1941 and went through U-boat training until Sept 1941 when he joined the U-156 as its First Watch Officer (1WO). He served on the boat until July 1942, going out on 3 war patrols, 153 days at sea. During these very successful patrols they sank 17 ships (67,123 tons) and damaged 4 more for over 20,000 tons.
Oblt. Paul Just went through U-boat Commander course from July to Aug 1942 and the served as an acting Commander on the small "duck" U-6 until Sept 1942. Just then commanded another "duck" school boat, the Type VIID U-151, until May 1943 when he began his U-boat familiarization (Baubelehrung) at Hamburg.
On 2 June 1943 Oblt. Paul Just commissioned the brand-new type IXC/40 boat U-546. After working up both boat and men in the Baltic he left Marviken, Norway for his first war patrol on 26 Jan 1944. The boat was lost on its third patrol north-west of Azores, enroute to the US each coast.
Capture
Just's boat was lost on 24 April 1945 to depth charges from US destroyers from a Hunter / Killer group that had been alerted of his presence by aircraft. 26 dead but 33 survived (Niestlé, 1998). Kptlt. Paul Just was among the survivors.
After the loss of his boat just after sinking his only victim Paul Just was captured and taken to America and was interrogated rather harshly along with Kptlt. Steinhoff (U-873) who committed suicide (Blair, 1998).
The ship he sank was the American destroyer escort Frederick C Davis (DE 136) (Rohwer, 1998). One of the survivors, LTJG P K Lundeberg, often visited Paul Just after the war.
Sources
Blair, C. (1998). Hitler’s U-boat War. The Hunted, 1942-1945.
Busch, R. and Röll, H-J. (1999). German U-boat commanders of World War II.
Niestlé, A. (1998). German U-boat losses during World War II.
Rohwer, J. (1998). Axis Submarine Successes of World War Two.
Patrol info for Paul Just
| U-boat | Departure | Arrival | ||||||
| 1. | U-546 | 22 Jan 1944 | Kiel | 23 Jan 1944 | Marviken | 2 days | ||
| 2. | U-546 | 26 Jan 1944 | Marviken | 23 Apr 1944 | Lorient | Patrol 1, | 89 days | |
| 3. | U-546 | 15 Jun 1944 | Lorient | 11 Nov 1944 | Flensburg | Patrol 2, | 150 days | |
| 4. | U-546 | 11 Mar 1945 | Kiel | 24 Apr 1945 | Sunk | Patrol 3, | 45 days | |
| 3 patrols, 284 days at sea | ||||||||
Ships hit by Paul Just
| Date | U-boat | Name of ship | Tons | Nat. | Convoy | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Apr 1945 | U-546 |  | USS Frederick C. Davis (DE 136) | 1,200 |  | am | |
| 1,200 | |||||||
1 ship sunk (1,200 tons). Legend | |||||||
About ranks and decorations
Ranks shown in italics are our database inserts based on the rank dates of his crew comrades. The officers of each crew would normally have progressed through the lower ranks at the same rate.
Media links
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