Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany's Eastern Front 1944#45 (General Military) by Buttar Prit

Author:Buttar, Prit [Buttar, Prit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany&#8217, s Eastern Front 1944&#8211, 45
ISBN: 9781780964652
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2012-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

There were nearly 4,300 people aboard the Steuben, including 2,800 wounded and 800 refugees. At 1230hrs on 9 February, the ship left Pillau. Several thousand refugees who were left behind watched the ‘beautiful white Steuben’ slowly move away, and consoled themselves that even if they had been left behind, the ship would be back in a few days.

Near Hela, the Steuben was joined by two escorts, the T 196 and the TF 10, the former carrying a further 200 refugees. Both the escorts were elderly vessels, and they did nothing to inspire confidence in the officers of the Steuben. Two Soviet aircraft put in a sudden appearance, but their bombs narrowly missed the T 196, and they disappeared swiftly into the clouds. After this scare, the little convoy set off for the west at a speed of 12 knots.

Marinesko and the S-13 were still in the area. After the attack on the Wilhelm Gustloff, the submarine remained submerged as long as it could, finally surfacing late on 31 January with her batteries almost exhausted. Marinesko immediately signalled his superiors in Kronstadt, reporting that he had sunk a ship of about 20,000 tonnes displacement. His claim was greeted with scepticism. In October 1944, he had claimed to have sunk a 5,000-tonne steamer in the Bay of Danzig, but it had then transpired that his victim was the tiny Siegfried, a coaster of only 563 tonnes. In any event, Marinesko decided to remain on station, narrowly missing collision in fog with a German submarine heading on an opposite bearing on 6 February. Now, late on 9 February, the Soviet submarine’s lookouts spotted the faint light of sparks in the smoke of one of the Steuben’s escorts, the sparks standing out against the cold, clear night sky. Purely by chance, the escort was headed straight for the S-13, and Marinesko immediately ordered his submarine to dive. When he surfaced 30 minutes later, he and his officers could see the three German ships silhouetted against the sky 4km away. Tentatively, they identified the largest ship as a German cruiser of the Emden class, and submerged again to prepare for their attack. Just before 0100hrs on 10 February, Marinesko ordered two torpedoes to be fired from his rear tubes.

Both torpedoes struck the starboard side of the Steuben. At first, the ship appeared to be able to remain afloat, but about 15 minutes after the explosions she gave a sudden lurch and began to settle lower in the water, listing first to one side, then the other. Immediately, there was a rush for the lifeboats. For the wounded men in the interior of the ship, there was no prospect of escape, and as the water flooded into the ship many shot themselves. One of the last to escape from the sinking ship was Hauptmann Huber, the wounded Luftwaffe officer:

I awoke from a deep sleep to a dreadful din. The entire ship shuddered, and at first one had the feeling that it would burst apart at any moment.

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