Otto Kretschmer
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Otto Kretschmer (May 1, 1912 - August 5, 1998) was a German U-Boat commander of the Second World War, and was the most successful Ace of the Deep. From September 1939 until being captured in March 1941, he sank 47 ships for a total of 274,333 tons. For this he received the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, among other commendations. He earned the nickname "Silent Otto" both for his successful use of the "silent running" capability of the U-Boats as well as for his reluctance to make Nazi propaganda broadcasts.
Biography
Prewar career
Otto Kretschmer was born in Heidau, Liegnitz. At the age of seventeen he spent eight months living in Exeter, where he learned to speak English fluently. He joined the Kriegsmarine in April 1930, and attained the rank of Seekadett after completing officer training courses as well as three months' aboard the training ship Niobe. Later he spent about a year serving about the light cruiser Emden and in December 1934 was transferred to a posting aboard the light cruiser Köln. Kretschmer remained aboard the Köln until he was transferred to the U-Boat force in January 1936, where he received extensive officer training and was promoted to Oberleutnant zur See.
Kretschmer's first command was the U-35, a Type VIIA U-Boat, in 1937. This promotion coincided with Germany's involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and U-35 was ordered to patrol the Spanish coast. U-35 returned to Germany after an uneventful patrol during which no ships were sunk. In September 1937, Kretschmer left the U-35 and took command of U-23, a Type IIB coastal U-Boat.
World War II
The German invasion of Poland found Kretschmer still in command of U-23, and he was soon sent into action along with the rest of the Kriegsmarine's U-Boat fleet. His first war patrols ranged over in the North Sea and around the English coast. Kretschmer's first success came after U-23 laid mines in Moray Firth. One of these mines sank the Danish 10,517 ton tanker Danmark on January 12, 1940. A month later on 18 February, Kretschmer sank the 1,300 ton British fleet destroyer HMS Daring off the Pentland Firth while she was escorting convoy HN-12 from Norway. U-Boat crews almost always avoided deliberately engaging enemy destroyers, so the Daring's destruction was rightly seen as a very skillful attack by both Kretschmer and the U-23.
In April 1940, after eight patrols, Kretschmer left the U-23 and was transferred to the newly-completed Type VIIB U-99, and in a sense started his legacy. After two months' training and shakedown maneuvers in German waters, U-99 went into action in June 1940. In the first four patrols of the U-99, Kretschmer started striking convoys at night on the surface, taking down merchant ships with highly accurate shots, using only one torpedo per target ship in order to save ammunition, and the quote "One torpedo ... one ship" is attributed to Kretschmer from around this time. Kretschmer's tactics were widely copied throughout the U-Boat force, although they achieved mixed results in practice.
His most successful patrol occurred in November-December 1940. During that patrol Kretschmer and U-99 sank three British armed merchant cruisers, HMS Laurentic (18,724 tons), HMS Patroclus (11,314 tons) and HMS Forfar (16,402 tons). Laurentic and Patroclus were sunk on the night of 3-4 November after they responded to distress calls from the 5,376 ton British freighter Casanare, which U-99 had mortally wounded about 250 miles west of Ireland. Forfar was sunk a month later on 2 December while steaming to join up with and escort outbound convoy OB-251. Put together, the three AMCs totalled over 46,000 gross tons. These three successes earned Kretschmer the number-one spot on the Aces list, and was never surpassed.
On his last patrol in March 1941, he sank 10 more ships, but these were to be Kretschmer's last victims. During a counterattack by British escorts, U-99 was disabled by depth charges dropped from the British destroyer HMS Walker. On March 17, Kretschmer surfaced and scuttled his boat. Three of his men were lost, but Kretschmer and the remainder of U-99's crew were captured by the British. The same day saw the British escorts score another success against the Kriegsmarine: another noted U-Boat skipper, Joachim Schepke, was killed aboard U-100 when that boat was rammed and sunk in heavy fog by Walker's flotilla-mate HMS Vanoc.
A prisoner of war and postwar career
Upon his capture, he spent almost seven years as a P.O.W. in the hands of the British, until December 1947 when he was allowed to return to Germany. Four of those years he spent in Canada at Bowmanville POW camp. Like several other surviving German naval veterans, Kretschmer joined the post-WWII German Navy, the Bundesmarine. He joined the newly-formed service in 1955 and two years later was appointed commanding officer of the 1. Geleitgeschwader (1st Escort Squadron). The next year he was transferred to the position of commander of the Bundesmarine's Amphibische Streitkräfte (Amphibious Forces). From 1962 onward he served as a staff officer in NATO before becoming Chief of Staff of the NATO command COMNAVBALTAP at Kiel in May 1965. He retired in September 1970 as a Flotillenadmiral.In later years Kretschmer was often interviewed for television and radio programmes about the Second World War, and appeared in the 1974 documentary The World at War. In the mid-1990s he served as a technical advisor for the computer simulation Aces of the Deep, and also recorded several interviews specially for the game's bonus features.
During a vacation in Bavaria during the summer of 1998, he died in an accident on a boat on the Danube, while celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary.
Achievements
Even though Kretschmer only served three years out of seven in WWII, he would never be surpassed in terms of tonnage sunk. He was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class, the U-boat War Badge, the Iron Cross 1st Class, the Knight's Cross, the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, and the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.
References
- [On line interviews (Realaudio)]
- Terence Robertson, The Golden Horseshoe: The Wartime Career of Otto Kretschmer, U-Boat Ace, Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhaal Ltd, London
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