Silent Hunters: German U-boat Commanders of World War II by Theodore P. Savas

Author:Theodore P. Savas [Savas, Theodore P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781940669007
Published: 2013-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

approaching danger. Before U-513 could even open fire with her automatic weapons or change course and speed, let alone dive, four bombs bracketed the doomed boat. One of

the charges detonated directly on her bow section, and this single hit sealed the U-boat’s

fate. As sea water rushed into the perforated forward compartment, U-513 dropped like a

rock toward the ocean floor. Only the bridge personnel and gun crews, a dozen men, had

an opportunity to jump into the water. Everyone else perished as U-513 took her final plunge.28

The twelve survivors, many of them wounded, found themselves scattered over a radius of

about 1000 feet when the American flying boat dropped a life raft and life vests among them. In the end only seven men had the strength to drag themselves onto the raft. Among

the lucky survivors was the severely wounded and barely conscious Fritz Guggenberger,

whom his fellow survivors managed to pull into the tiny raft by his hair. Sharks attacked

and killed at least two of the others, who disappeared beneath the surface and were not seen again.

The luck of the seven survivors continued to hold when, five hours after U-513 had gone

down, the Barnegat arrived on the scene to pick them up and take them to Rio de Janeiro.

Guggenberger was the most critically injured of the bunch, having partially broken three

vertebrae, several ribs and one of his ankles—among other problems, including blood loss

and shock. After receiving initial medical attention he was flown from a Brazilian military base near Rio to Miami, Florida, and from there to Washington, D.C. At the Bethesda Naval Hospital American surgeons gradually restored his health so that by October he could be transferred to a regular POW camp in Crossville, Tennessee. In January 1944, following routine interrogations by U.S. intelligence personnel at Fort Hunt, Virginia, Guggenberger was transferred to a camp at Papago Park in Phoenix, Arizona.

At Papago Park Guggenberger met up with several fellow U-boat commanders, including

three of his own Crew 34. Hans Werner Kraus’ U-199 had experienced an almost identical

fate as U-513 when she succumbed to an air attack off Rio de Janeiro on July 31, just twelve days after Guggenberger’s debacle. Camp resident U-595’s Jürgen Quaet-Faslem was, like Kraus and Guggenberger, a veteran of the Mediterranean campaign. August Maus of U-185, the fourth member of Crew 34, had been captured in August 1943 in the

central Atlantic after many distinguished combat missions. The Allied authorities did not

realize the danger inherent in throwing together men of such resilience and ability.

Unwilling to sit out the remainder of the war behind barbed wire, the U-boat veterans and

old friends developed a brilliant scheme to escape from the camp with the hope of crossing into nearby Mexico, which they mistakenly supposed to be still neutral. The ultimate goal was to make it home to Germany. The result was the largest POW breakout

from an American camp during the entire war, entertainingly retold by John Hammond Moore in his book, The Faustball Tunnel. 29

Actually there were two attempts. In the first one on Saturday, February 12, 1944, Maus

and Guggenberger—the latter playing the role of a stranded Greek sailor because of his poor English as well as his dark hair and complexion—were smuggled out of the

compound by fellow prisoners in a truck on a work detail. The pair managed to make it by

train to Tucson, where they learned that no buses or trains ran into Nogales, Mexico, until the following Monday. Unsure what to do next, they decided to wait at the bus depot, where an alert police officer ended their excursion and returned them to Papago Park.

Paradoxically, no one in the camp had missed the escapees, even though they were gone

some thirty-six hours. While Maus and Guggenberger were quickly recaptured, a second

group of German officers, including Quaet-Faslem, actually made it 40 miles into Mexico,

sleeping by day and walking at night. Two weeks into their adventure they were finally recognized, arrested and returned to their camp without any great formality—despite efforts to remain in Mexican custody and prolong their outing.

From this earlier experience plans emerged for a more ambitious mass escape. Virtually unmolested, the prisoners used much of the fall of 1944 to dig a 178-foot tunnel underneath the outer fences of their compound to a drainage canal beyond the wire. On a

dark and rainy December 23, 1944, with a weekend approaching and their guards’ minds

diverted by Christmas preparations (as well as deliberate distractions staged by other prisoners), 25 officers and enlisted men slipped out of camp in small groups, among them

Guggenberger and Quaet Faslem. Their idea was to reach the Gila River, since maps indicated that one might be able to raft on it or just follow it practically all the way to Mexico. Unbeknownst to the prisoners, who had no firsthand experience with the Arizona

countryside, the river is actually dry for most of the year. Incredibly, the camp authorities did not learn of the break-out for some twenty-four hours, although a massive manhunt was ordered once the prisoners were found missing. Eventually all escapees were

recaptured. Guggenberger and Quaet-Faslem managed to get within ten miles of the Mexican border and enjoyed two weeks of freedom before a search group caught up with

them on January 6, 1945. Thus ended Fritz Guggenberger’s last wartime adventure.

In May 1946, the 31-year-old Guggenberger returned to Germany to pick up the pieces of

his life. For a time he worked as a bricklayer and later as a civilian employee for the U.S.

occupation forces in southern Germany. Although he would have preferred to enter medical school, the lengthy course requirements caused him to consider other avenues of

study. He eventually settled on architecture, since the curriculum could be completed relatively quickly in eight semesters. But the sea was not done with Guggenberger. By late

1955, shortly after he had opened his own architectural firm, the newly-created West German Navy offered him reactivation at the initial rank of Commander.

Without much hesitation Guggenberger accepted this opportunity to resume his former career. Rising in rank to full Captain by 1961 and Rear Admiral by 1968, he held over the

years a number of challenging appointments both ashore and with the fleet. They included

a year at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and two years as Chief of

Staff to the German representative of the NATO Military Committee in Washington, D.C.,

at the time of the 1961 Berlin Crisis. His last position before retirement to Garmisch in December 1972 was that of Deputy Chief-of-Staff for Planning and Operations at the NATO Command AFNORTH in Oslo, Norway. Guggenberger’s post-war career closely

paralleled that of his good friend and Crew 34 comrade Erich Topp. Topp, who had also

studied architecture after the war, was reactivated in 1958 and served both in Washington,

D.C., and in desk jobs in Bonn. The former enterprising commander of the Red Devil Boat

also rose to the rank of Rear Admiral, and had been slated for the same NATO position in

Oslo that eventually went to Guggenberger.

On a more personal note, Guggenberger’s first marriage did not survive the long separation occasioned by his three years in captivity.

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