What's New
Before you get in touch with me then please read this. This page explains who we are and how these pages are built. That page also leads to another page on how you can contact us more efficiently.
19 May- Modified personal info for Commander Georg-Werner Fraatz
- Modified personal info for Commander Reinhard Reff
- Modified personal info for Commander Jürgen von Rosenstiel
- Modified personal info for Commander Max-Hermann Bauer
- Modified personal info for Commander Horst Heitz
- Modified personal info for Commander Werner Witte
- Modified personal info for Commander Karl-Heinz Wolff
- Modified personal info for Commander Viktor Graf von Reventlow-Criminil
- Modified personal info for Commander Ulrich Graf von Soden-Fraunhofen
- Modified personal info for Commander Carl-Gabriel Graf von Gudenus
- Modified personal info for Commander Viktor Graf von Reventlow-Criminil
- Modified personal info for Commander Gert Mannesmann
- Modified personal info for Commander Paul Brasack
- Modified personal info for Commander Paul Brasack
11:13 - Photos of Allied Commanders
Added photos of 59 Allied Commanders thanks for our readers who submitted them.- Modified personal info for Commander Wilhelm-Heinrich Graf Pückler und Limburg
- Modified personal info for Commander Graf Wilhelm-Heinrich Pückler und Limburg
- Modified personal info for Commander Graf Carl-Gabriel von Gudenus
- Modified personal info for Commander Walter Sitek
- Modified personal info for Commander Rudolf Premauer
- Modified personal info for Commander Paul Hartwig
- Modified personal info for Commander Ernst Kals
22:01 - Allied Warships wartime histories page
Just added a new page showing all our Allied Warships with full wartime histories. This is a easier way to find the warships which have been upgraded to list great info on patrols, maps and so on.
10:11 - Server upgrade on uboat.net
I upgraded the server to more memory and faster processing (and some smaller tuning). Overall we should be faster and better. The site was down for about 25 minutes while this went through, sorry about that it was worth it :)
22:27 - U-boat found off Norway
The wreck of German U-boat U-486, sunk in April 1945, has been found at depth of 250 meters off Bergen, Norway. The boat was found during oil pipe work by Statoil. More info on the find. The boat is about 2 km off the wreck of U-864, a boat that has caused much trouble in recent years due to its big cargo of highly toxic mercury. Also read up on U-486's commander, Oblt. Gerhard Meyer, one of the most capable U-boat commanders at the end of the war.
19:23 - Server outage
Today the site was down for almost 5 hours due to hardware problems at my host (which hosts many other sites). Migration to a new machine/server took some time and I just got the server running again. This is the first real problem for 2 years or so - I've been very happy with the host.
09:53 - U-676 and U-745 reported found in Baltic Sea
In late 2012 a Finnish diving team 'Badewanne', after 10 years of searching, reported they had found both U-676 and U-745 in the Baltic south of the Finnish island of Hanko. Both boats went missing in early 1945 with all hands lost. The boats were apparently lost in the Finnish minefield 'Vantaa 3' laid by Finnish mine layers Louhi and Ruotsinsalmi on 12 Jan 1945.
- Modified personal info for Commander Ulrich-Philipp Graf von und zu Arco-Zinneberg
14:10 - Article: North Carolina’s Flying Volunteers
Mr. Frank A. Blazich Jr, has compiled a great paper on the American civilian air patrol called North Carolina’s Flying Volunteers: The Civil Air Patrol in World War II, 1941–1944. He debunks the CAP U-boat kill claims with real evidence among other things. Very nice read.
08:32 - Major update completedAfter more than four years of work all British and Dutch T-class submarines now have detailed info added for their wartime operations. Also the Dutch O12-class and O21-class have this info added to their pages. This has resulted in over 5000 events and over 780 maps being added to the database.
The administrator of the Allied warships section would especially like to thank Mr. Platon Alexiades from Canada for his help on completing this project. Due to his help a lot of details "from the enemy side" regarding Allied submarine attacks could be added.
Also thanks to Mr. Gerard Horneman from The Netherlands, the staff of the English National Archives at Kew, London and the staff of the Dutch archives at The Hague, Mr. Thomas Weis from the Württembergische Landesbibliothek at Stuttgart, Germany, the contributors of the forum at Warsailors.com and finally everybody I forgot to mention.
Work is now underway on British S-class and U-class submarines. Work on other Dutch submarines will continue as well.
2012
30 December
10:58 - Mine operations by U-boats now properly shown
Fixed a long-standing bug in the display of ships hit by mines laid by U-boats. The problem was that ships hit by mines after the U-boat returned to port were not shown. The ship list was always based on ships hit during the patrol of the boat. This has been fixed and the first patrol by U-15 is a great example. All 3 ships were sunk after she returned to port.
11:36 - Book review added
Added a book review on the excellent Neutral Shores: Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic by Mark McShane.- Added book review for Neutral Shores
10:11 - U-234 and jet fighters update
The story on U-234's last mission to the Far East has been updated with new research on what the boat actually carried in its vast hold. The coolness has been downgraded somewhat as she carried Me 262 plans and drawings, not actual aircraft parts.
- Modified personal info for Commander Herbert Kühn
21:42 - Allied Commander updates
Added photos to pages of 60 Allied Commanders plus other details to many more.
22:24 - Destroyed my working machine
Yesterday I somehow managed to destroy my nice linux development machine at home. Rebuilding now :)
18:16 - U-boat Commander photos added
To wrap this project up I have just added 116 photos of U-boat Commanders; 70 from Crew 37a and 46 officers from Crew X/39. All the photos came from Kriegsmarine Crew books and mostly feature photos from their training years. Now we have photos of 885 U-boat Commanders (63%).
00:26 - U-boat Commander photos added
Have just added 69 photos of U-boat Commanders; all were from Crew 38 (the so-called "Gangster Crew"). The photos came from Kriegsmarine Crew books and mostly feature photos from their training years. Now we have photos of 769 U-boat Commanders.
11:20 - U-boat Commander photos added
Have just added 94 photos of U-boat Commanders; 60 from Crew 37b and 34 officers from Crew 34. All the photos came from Kriegsmarine Crew books and mostly feature photos from their training years. Now we have photos of 700 U-boat Commanders.
- Modified personal info for Commander Sarto Ballert
- Modified personal info for Commander Joachim-Werner Bach
- Modified personal info for Commander Fritz Albrecht
- Modified personal info for Commander Günther Stark
20:58 - Commander page written
Wrote a career bio on the 26-year old Kptlt. Klaus Hänert, the Commander of U-550 just discovered of the US coast this week.- Modified personal info for Commander Klaus Hänert
23:11 - U-boat found of USA
The wreck of U-550 has been found off the US coast. See our announcement on this discovery or visit the U-550 page directly. Thanks to everyone who sent this in (I was away for the day and just saw this while, fittingly, at sea).
- Modified personal info for Commander Hartmut Graf von Matuschka, Freiherr von Toppolczan und Spaetgen
- Modified personal info for Commander Hugo Deiring
- Modified personal info for Commander Graf von Hartmut Matuschka, Freiherr von Toppolczan und Spaetgen
20:13 - Map updatesNew maps:
U-boats losses in May 1943, U-boat losses by year and U-boats at sea on 4 May 1945Totally rewritten maps:
U-boats bombed in safe waters, U-boats missing in action and U-boats sunk by Allied submarines
20:17 - Maps of U-boat losses
Just added a map on each U-boat page showing its position of loss - if applicable. See U-157 for example.
11:47 - Allied Warships section improvements
We added 8,656 new warships to our Allied Warships section. We now have 21,092 ships listed there. Most of these new warships were of various small motor boat types.
19:17 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
Added 1,165 new personnel entries to our Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats section. 63,298 names listed now.
11:49 - Update to Maps
Reworked the U-boat shipyards map. Now it's clickable showing the yards in each city and their production.
09:06 - Improved Allied Warships section
Changed the Allied Warship ship pages a bit. Now the loss position (if any) is shown on a nice map right away. Example of this is seen on the British battleship HMS Royal Oak which was sunk on 14 Oct 1939 by U-47 at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. Also improved the title of the page.
20:00 - Allied Warships section improved
Rewrote and improved the page British submarines of WWII.
20:06 - Captured U-boat U-B
Updated the page for captured submarine U-B, former British submarine HMS Seal.
17:20 - Wreck at Loch Foyle - more news
Some more news on this mystery wreck. The BBC has this article explaining things a bit more: Royal Navy divers to explore Foyle wreck. There you can see a sonar image showing something submarine shaped. The experts are considering next steps and say this could be all kinds of a ship or boat.
10:53 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
Added 4,785 new personnel entries to our Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats section. 61,776 names listed now. This addition contains mostly casualties ships sunk during the months of April and May.
09:44 - Mystery U-boat wreck found in Ireland?
A wreck located on the river bed of Foyle near Londonderry in Northern Ireland is causing some confusion. On a photo (source) it might be a German type XXIII U-boat but those should all be accounted for. The location of the wreck is currently a secret to protect it from scavengers. Another source.
20:47 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
Added 9,318 new personnel entries to our Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats section. 56,893 names listed now. This addition contains most of the casualties of all British and Norwegian ships sunk in the months January, February and March.
21:58 - New emblem page created
Added 29 new emblems to our Emblem section. Almost all of them were Coat of Arms of various cities, towns or regions. I thus created a special Coat of Arms page showing all known Wappen displayed on U-boats. Some Coats of Arms are still unknown to us but we already have most of them here.- Modified personal info for Commander Eckehard Wolf
- Modified personal info for Commander Eberhard Hoffmann
10:08 - U-boat Commander passes away
Former U-boat Commander ace of WWII Kvrkpt. Georg Lassen, passed away on 18 Jan at Mallorca, Spain at the age of 96. He was one of very, very few of the top aces to still be with us.- Modified personal info for Commander Georg Lassen
2011
16 December
13:11 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
Added 8,085 new personnel entries to our Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats section. 47,467 names listed now.
- Modified personal info for Commander Horst Degen
- Modified personal info for Commander Horst Degen
- Modified personal info for Commander Hans-Heinrich Giessler
- Modified personal info for Commander Hans-Werner Offermann
17:56 - Just added 5,082 people to our Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats section. 39,297 names listed there now.
17:17 - New article publishedAdded the article The U-Boats that Surrendered - U-1407 (HMS Meteorite) in the Royal Navy - 1945 to 1949 by Derek Waller. It covers the often overlooked post-war service of former German U-boats in the Royal Navy.
- Modified personal info for Commander Bernhard Zurmühlen
- Modified personal info for Commander Horst Uphoff
- Modified personal info for Commander Günther Keller
22:24 - Revised article published
Added the heavily revised article The U-Boats that Surrendered - The U-Boats Allocated to the UK in 1945 (Version 2) by Derek Waller. It covers the often overlooked post-war service of former German U-boats in the Royal Navy.
- Modified personal info for Commander Alfred Radermacher
08:32 - New article published
Added the article The U-Boats that Surrendered - U-Boats at Lisahally in Lough Foyle, near Londonderry, N. Ireland 1945 to 1949 by Derek Waller.
- Modified personal info for Commander Reinhard Reff
- Modified personal info for Commander Paul Ackermann
- Modified personal info for Commander Emmo Hummerjohann
13:47 - New article published
Added the article The U-Boats that Surrendered - U-Boats in the Royal Navy post-May 1945 by Derek Waller. It covers the often overlooked post-war service of former German U-boats in the Royal Navy.
15:04 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
We've just added 4,271 more names of people on ships hit by U-boats. Now there are 34,231 names of Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats.
14:09 - Two new U-boat Commanders added
Yes, even now history is being cleaned up and edited a bit: we just added two U-boat commanders that are never listed in commander listings. These are Oberleutnant zur See Adolf Gundlach of U-120 and Oberleutnant zur See (R) Hans Julius Hoß of U-1109. Both left their command after brief time.
- Modified personal info for Commander Rolf Rüggeberg
09:05 - U-513 found off Brazil
The wreck of the U-513, sunk off Sao Francisco do Sul, Brazil on 19 July 1943 has been located. The boat was located by the Schurmann family. They have a nice website, u-513.com, dealing with the discovery. The boat apparently lies in 75 meters of water. You can also see our map of the South Atlantic for its position.- Modified personal info for Commander Rupprecht Stock
- Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich-Wilhelm Wissmann
- Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich Markworth
- Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich von Riesen
- Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich van Riesen
22:55 - U-boat Commander photos added
Just added 63 photos of German U-boat Commanders from Crew of 1936, the famous Olympiacrew. This class of naval students delivered the largest number of U-boat Commanders, 165 men. Now we have 597 photos of U-boat Commanders.- Modified personal info for Commander Hans-Günther Kuhlmann
- Modified personal info for Commander Leonhard Auffhammer
- Modified personal info for Commander Otto-Ulrich Blum
21:15 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
We've just added 2,957 more names of people on ships hit by U-boats. Now there are 29,531 names of Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats.
11:05 - Combat strength of the U-boat force
I've added a new page showing the timeline of the combat strength of the U-boat force during WWII. This page includes a graph showing number of U-boats at sea during the entire war. I plan to improve and add new material to this page over time.
- Modified personal info for Commander Rolf Schauenburg
23:00 - New photo galleries added
Added recently two interesting photo galleries; first the ULD training facilites at Gdynia, Poland (34 photos) and secondly the Polish sailing ship Zawisza Czarny that has a rather unique U-boat engine (20 photos).
- Modified personal info for Commander Gerhard Palmgren
18:23 - Improved Patrol display for the U-boats
Made some changes to the way U-boat patrols of WWII are displayed. Now the full info patro on each patrol will also detect if the patrol had layovers (i.e. the patrol was split into several 'legs') or not. Example of this is the 5th War patrol of U-586 which had a short stop before continuing on the patrol. All events, notes etc. on the patrol pages will show all entries for the entire patrol.- Modified personal info for Commander Werner Czygan
16:39 - New article published
Published the article Reassessing the losses of U 85 and UC 68 by Michael Lowrey. It attempts to better explain the loss of these two boats in March 1917.
- Modified personal info for Commander Heinz Walkerling
- Modified personal info for Commander Hartwig Looks
- Modified personal info for Commander Richard von Harpe
00:00 - Our Feed had a problem
I've fixed a problem in our RSS feed which caused problems in some instances. The issue was with the extended characters (Icelandic Á and á for example). This has been solved now.
- Modified personal info for Commander Rolf Manke
- Modified personal info for Commander Rolf-Heinrich Hopman
- Modified personal info for Commander Heinz-Joachim Neumann
- Modified personal info for Commander Werner Nees
- Modified personal info for Commander Dieter Erdmann
- Modified personal info for Commander Hans-Adolf Engel
- Modified personal info for Commander Heinz Emmrich
- Modified personal info for Commander Bernhard Emde
- Modified personal info for Commander Hermann Ellerlage
- Modified personal info for Commander Hans-Joachim Ebersbach
- Modified personal info for Commander Kurt Jäckel
- Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich Justi
- Modified personal info for Commander Paul Just
- Modified personal info for Commander Karl Jobst
- Modified personal info for Commander Wolf Jeschonnek
- Modified personal info for Commander Bernhard Jaek
- Modified personal info for Commander Hans-Adolf Isermeyer
- Modified personal info for Commander Walter Otto
- Modified personal info for Commander Horst-Thilo Queck
- Modified personal info for Commander Eduard Turre
- Modified personal info for Commander Werner Techand
- Modified personal info for Commander Renko Tammen
- Modified personal info for Commander Karl-Erich Utischill
- Modified personal info for Commander Hubert Verpoorten
- Modified personal info for Commander Karl-Heinz Wolff
- Modified personal info for Commander Werner Musenberg
- Modified personal info for Commander Siegfried Lindke
- Modified personal info for Commander Hans Eckermann
- Modified personal info for Commander Harald Bosüner
- Modified personal info for Commander Heinz-Ehler Beucke
- Modified personal info for Commander Arend Baumann
- Modified personal info for Commander Otto Niethmann
23:58 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
We've just added 418 more names of people on ships hit by U-boats. Now there are 26,427 names of Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats.
- Modified personal info for Commander Willy-Roderich Körner
15:56 - More on the discovery of U-boat U-106
There is a video on Youtube, in Dutch, that shows more on the discovery and the wreck. Very interesting.
- Modified personal info for Commander Hans Benker
- Modified personal info for Commander Joachim Brünner
18:25 - Crew lists of Allied ships hit by U-boats
We've just added 465 more names of people on ships hit by U-boats. Now there are over 26,000 names of Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats.
12:20 - U-boat located off Netherlands
The German WWI U-boat U 106 lost in 1917 with all hands has been located and identified off the Dutch coast according to numerous reports. Check out its page for links and sources.
- Modified personal info for Commander Peter Lohmeyer
13:39 - New article published
Published another article by Mr. Derek Waller: The Fate of the U-Boats which Surrendered - Sink or Scrap?. This one deals with the discussions between the Allies immediately post war on what to do with the surrendered German U-boats.
12:18 - U-boat Commander passes away
Oblt. Walther Ehrhardt, commander of U-1016 and U-637 passed away on 3 March 2011 at the age of 91. He also commanded the Bundesmarine boat U-Hai in 1957.
18:00 - New server is now online
After spending many weeks and loads of time the new site is finally online at a new server. This new server gives us more opportunities to improve things further and adapt to our needs. This is one of the largest overhauls we've had in almost 16 years. Technical design of the site is much improved and this should result in better performance among other things. Now, I can re-focus on the content and e-mail again :)
19:08 - Mystery submarine seen on Top Gear
The rusting submarine marked "U24" seen in Albania in latest Top Gear on BBC was not the former German U-boat U-24, scuttled at Konstanza, Romania in 1944, but rather a Soviet Whiskey class boat decommissioned in 1991 :)
- Modified personal info for Commander Fritz Hein
- Modified personal info for Commander Herbert Brünning
01:39 - Kriegsmarine replica map for sale
We can now point you to a very nice Kriegsmarine U-boat replica map that we've played with and thought you might like as well - I certainly do! :) Please note that uboat.net is only hosting the promotional page for the map and sales go directly to the third party. Check out it, it's a lovely map for only $5,90 plus shipping.
- Modified personal info for Commander Hans Pauckstadt
- Modified personal info for Commander Herbert Brünning
21:25 - U-Boat Commander updates
Just added career information and 3 photos to the page for the German WWII U-boat Commander Kptlt. Herbert Brünning (U-642) and the other day I also wrote same information for KrvKpt. Wolfgang Heller (U-842).
01:26 - Wreck of UC 42 found off Cork, Ireland
The wreck of the German mine-laying U-boat UC-42 of World War One was found in late 2010. The boat was lost off the harbour of Cork, Ireland on 10 Sept 1917. See photos at rte.ie
- Modified personal info for Commander Wolfgang Heller
- Modified personal info for Commander Dr. Ulrich Abel
19:40 - The Sinking of the Laconia on BBC
The two part drama movie aired on BBC in early Jan. I was not able to watch is being in Iceland but reports on it are good. you can grab it on the BBC iPlayer if you are in the right area. This is the page on the Laconia and its sinking in the mean time.
22:07 - Crewlist for Ships attacked
Added 4,269 new names to the Crew lists from Ships hit by U-boats. 4,024 of them were US Navy personnel. Now there are over 25,000 people listed there.
- Modified movie title Lupi nell'Abisso.
- Modified personal info for Commander Paul Just
23:16 - New maps uploaded
Two new and vastly improved maps have been introduced; convoy routes (example: HG convoys and individual Wolfpacks positions (example: Wolfpack Seerauber). Each shows the info we already had in much better format, the Wolfpack map is especially improved.
- Modified personal info for Commander Klaus Willeke
01:26 - New photo gallery added
Just added a very cool gallery showing the U-861 being dived on off Ireland recently. The boat was scuttled north of Ireland during Operation Deadlight after the war.
- Modified personal info for Commander Helmut Laubert
- Modified personal info for Commander Ludwig Mathes
- Modified personal info for Commander Georg Staats
- Modified personal info for Commander Joachim Zaubitzer
- Modified personal info for Commander Franz Gramitzky
- Modified personal info for Commander Eberhard Godt
2010
31 December
- Modified personal info for Commander Gerhard Wiebe
- Modified personal info for Commander Joachim Zaubitzer
- Modified personal info for Commander Joachim Berger
- Modified personal info for Commander Helmut Laubert
- Modified personal info for Commander Rolf-Birger Wahlen
- Modified personal info for Commander Friedrich Mumm
- Modified personal info for Commander Wolfgang Leimkühler
- Modified personal info for Commander Heinz Bentzien
00:59 - Site improvements
Good day. I am working on various site maintenance and future-proofing elements of the site. Spent 4 days (with breaks) on a single problem over the holidays before it finally clicked and now very few problems remain. If I do this properly you should not see much change :) I hope to finish this around the start of the new year. Then regular content work resumes at full speed.
19:01 - Seasonal greetings
Merry Christmas and may you and your family have a great holiday and a great new year!
23:00 - New article published
Published the article The U-Boats that Surrendered - The U-Boats Allocated to the UK in 1945 by Mr. Derek Waller.
22:58 - World War One section improvements
Just added photos of 30 additional ships hit by U-boats during WWI. Now we have photos of 652 of the more than 7000 ships hit during the war.- Modified personal info for Commander Hanns-Ferdinand Massmann
- Modified personal info for Commander Peter Lohmeyer
15:45 - Experimenting with twitter
I've been experimenting with Twitter and just submitted the first tweet from uboat.net. You can follow this through http://twitter.com/uboatnet or by following @uboatnet. I will test this out some more (making sure only interesting stuff goes in there - not all our minor updates). Could be helpful to some of you.
15:32 - World War One section improvements
Just added photos of 59 additional ships hit by U-boats during WWI. Now we have photos of 630 of the more than 7000 ships hit during the war.
22:59 - World War One section improvements
Just added photos of 65 additional ships hit by U-boats during WWI. Replaced two older WWI ship photos with better copies as well.
00:48 - World War One section improvements
Just added photos of 65 ships hit by U-boats during WWI.
22:15 - Back to proper site updates
After a brief break where I happened to turn 40 last weekend (!) I'm now back to the regular work, and then some. More book reviews are upcoming, as well as more work on the WWI section and general improvements all over the site, including various map work. Stay tuned.
- Modified personal info for Commander Günther Pfeffer
- Modified personal info for Commander Helmuth Ringelmann
- Modified personal info for Commander Rolf Struckmeier
11:44 - Site outage
The site was down for about 10 hours from roughly midnight GMT on Nov 22.
13:10 - Book review published
Just added the review of Geirr H. Haarr's fantastic book The German invasion of Norway. He splits the events in Norway in 1940 into two titles, first the invasion in April and then the resulting battles until June. This title deals with the invasion itself in great detail.- Added book review for The German Invasion of Norway