On March 13, 1945, while attacking convoy FS 1753,
midget submarine Seehund sank transport vessel Taber Park,
which had a displacement of around 3,000 tons.
It was the first combat raid
for submarine Commander Max Huber and engineer Siegfried Eklof,
and they were awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class for conducting it.
It goes without saying that the triumph encouraged the officers,
who soon set out on their next mission in the North Sea.
The memories of Lieutenant Eklof about that raid
serve as the basis of our story.
We were shocked by what we saw when we surfaced at night.
The sea around the sub was filled with magnificent shining beauty.
A fiery green trail stretched along our sub's wake;
water droplets sparkled on the deck and conning tower like diamonds.
By the end of World War II,
it was highly difficult for standard submarines
to disrupt Allied communication lines in British waters.
The Kriegsmarine Shipbuilding Department
received an order to create a midget submarine
with a crew of two people.
This would enable them to supply
the maximum number of submarines to the navy
within a short time frame.
Midget submarine Seehund first served
in Diversion and Assault Task Force K of the navy,
in December 1944.
The task force had been formed a year prior,
and its objective was to conduct operations
against enemy units in coastal areas.
All other miniature projects of the navy
supposed the implementation of submerging
or surface-based one-man vehicles.
Seehund wasn't only the largest of the midget submarines,
she also had a two-man crew.
That represented a decisive advantage,
because a sole person in a vehicle
with dimensions slightly larger than those of a torpedo
could rely only on themselves;
the person would be entirely alone during a mission,
and therefore—in great danger.
The sea was gleaming with fantastic illumination.
However, we were soon reminded of the wartime reality—
a convoy showed up along the course,
its ships also leaving wide glistening trails behind them as they went.
We shifted to combat duty and launched a torpedo,
but, unfortunately, it missed.
The glow from the sea prevented the commander
from determining the target parameters and course correctly.
The ships were much closer to us than we expected,
so we had to sharply turn to the side in order to avoid a collision.
We submerged and hit the sea floor, regretting the missed chance.
Performance characteristics of midget submarine Seehund
Length: almost 12 meters
Beam: 1.7 m
Draught: 1.54 m
Underwater displacement: almost 17 tons
She's a side-tank submarine.
Diameter of her sturdy hull: 1.28 m
Armament: Two G7e electric torpedoes
Caliber: 533 mm
To conserve some weight,
one of two electric batteries was removed from the torpedoes.
The torpedoes, if the battery was fully charged,
traveled at a speed of around 18 knots or 18 naval miles per hour,
and had a cruising range of around 5,000 meters.
Propulsion:
Diesel engine: 60 h.p.
Electric engine: 25 h.p.
Eight groups of storage batteries with a 1,600 ampere-per-hour capacity
These diesel engines
were mass-manufactured by Büssing in Braunschweig
and other cities across Germany,
and used primarily in buses and trucks.
To use the engine for Seehund,
its power, which was initially 100 horsepower,
needed to be lowered,
otherwise the sub would plow due to the shape of her hull.
Top speed: 8 knots while surfaced
6 knots while underwater
Operational depth: 30 meters
Cruising range: 270 miles at a 7-knot speed while surfaced
Several hours later, when we were eating,
we heard three distant explosions of depth charges.
Thirty minutes later, we heard three more explosions.
The explosions repeated regularly every 30 minutes.
Finally, we decided to surface to inspect the situation.
The weather was bright,
but a thick impenetrable fog was hanging over the water.
The fog finally dissipated at around 10 AM.
Observing from a tiny conning tower,
we were more surprised than shocked by what we saw.
There was a British destroyer a mile away from us
that was drifting as we were.
At that moment, 30 minutes since the last explosions had elapsed.
We could see through binoculars
how the English sailors were performing preparations on the deck,
then the destroyer suddenly moved full ahead,
and the sailors started dropping depth charges from the rear.
Then the destroyer stopped and started drifting again,
they were obviously listening to the sounds below them.
We were discussing an attack plan
when the destroyer suddenly started moving,
turned around, and headed towards us at full speed.
We submerged and moved to the side underwater.
Seehund could submerge very quickly—
it took between 5–8 seconds.
Upon the commander's order,
both crew members simultaneously activated the system
that filled the main ballast tanks.
Then, the engineer would shift
the horizontal rudders to the submerge position.
In case of an emergency dive,
the diesel engine wasn't turned off by the crew
and could continue operating until the sub reached a depth of 15–17 meters
thanks to the exhaust gases being ejected into the exterior water
through a special two-atmosphere pressure valve.
It might seem that during these seconds while the sub was submerging,
the fact of the diesel engine using the air from the interior of the sub
might kill the crew.
However, an experiment demonstrated
that when the crew began suffering from elevated heart rates,
ringing in the ears, and a lack of air;
the diesel engine also stopped functioning due to the lack of air.
In reality, of course,
the engineer usually switched to the electric engine much sooner.
The first bombs started exploding near our sub five minutes later.
A thermos bottle with tea was the first thing to shatter.
A disgusting squeaking sound
caused by the shards scattered all around the sub
was definitely heard on the surface.
However, it was all quiet there for some time.
But we knew what that meant.
The destroyer had stopped and was listening.
We carefully touched down on the sea bottom with our sub, and waited;
we didn't even dare to cough or say a couple of words.
As we had predicted already, 30 minutes later,
we heard the loud noise of the destroyer starting to move.
Almost at the same time, gruesome hits descended upon our sub.
Our equipment was destroyed in rapid sequence.
After the third hit,
a horrific and oppressive silence enshrouded the submarine.
Submarine Seehund was basically a standard submarine,
just smaller in size,
but she noticeably outclassed
any other military miniature submersibles.
Seehund submarines could perform combat raids
for periods of several days to a week or more,
while other miniature combat units weren't capable of this.
Waiting for next explosions was even more tiresome,
because the quality of the air inside the submarine was deteriorating rapidly.
We didn't turn the automatic ventilation system on,
since we were afraid that its noise
would surely give away our exact location to the destroyer.
Thirty minutes later,
the familiar procedure was repeated again on the surface—
the noise of destroyer's receding propellers
followed by deafening explosions of depth charges.
That time, the shock wave of an explosion slammed the sub harder.
I was hit against a sidewall,
the lights went out,
everything was squeaking around,
and water started getting inside the submarine.
The situation became critical,
so we decided to turn the ventilation system on,
since they could hear us on the surface anyway.
A mass of depth charges came down from above immediately.
The enemy wasn't waiting anymore,
they just blanketed us with bombs.
If we didn't manage to quickly move out,
the much-hyped robustness of Seehund wouldn't save us.
Thanks to her dimensions,
Seehund was almost invisible to radar in her surfaced position
and hardly detectable for hydrophones while underwater.
It was much harder to hit a small Seehund with depth charges
than submarines of a standard size.
She was often just knocked away by the shock wave of an explosion.
A case occurred where a badly damaged Seehund
managed to return to base after 259 depth charges
had been dropped on the submarine in the combat area.
I turned the emergency light on.
The water level inside the sub was rising,
amperemeters and voltmeters cracked,
and the magnetic compass was broken.
The manometer displayed an impossible air pressure of 1,500 millibars,
thus indicating that it was faulty.
To make matters worse, the sub suddenly capsized
and started rolling along the bottom.
At first, it seemed like somebody
had hooked Seehund with a steel rope or net,
and was pulling her like a huge fish.
The sub was rolling, shaking, hitting rocks,
bouncing, and tumbling along the sea bottom.
But it was a miracle— the destroyer didn't respond to that.
There was no further bombing.
We came to the conclusion that our sub had been moved by a depth current,
while our pursuer might have been moved
in the opposite direction by a surface current.
Anyway, it became clear to us that we could use the current
which was carrying the submarine
to get us to the surface by inertia using the rudders.
We simultaneously grabbed the levers of the parallel-connected rudders,
but they hardly moved.
They were jammed. It meant that we had also lost control.
The commander was responsible for navigation.
As a rule, the commander was a young officer—
a lieutenant who had just recently graduated from the academy;
the engineer was a junior engineering lieutenant or chief mechanic,
also called a "senior under officer."
In some cases, such under officers became commanders.
They were the most experienced navigation officers.
I had been working and sweating in a tight compartment for 90 minutes
before I finally decided to disconnect both rudders.
My rudder started turning, albeit with the application of great effort.
Meanwhile, the depth current had vanished.
The submarine was lying on the bottom, motionless.
I thought that if the compressed air module had failed
or the ballast tanks had leaked air due to the damage,
we were doomed to die stranded on the sea bottom.
I started blowing the tanks, and Seehund didn't fail.
She began to quickly ascend to the surface.
The water that had leaked in moved to the rear compartments,
causing Seehund to surface in an almost vertical position.
As we discovered on the surface,
the damage taken by the sturdy hull seemed insignificant.
We easily pumped out the water that had leaked in,
the batteries made contact again,
and the diesel engine started after the water was removed.
Some time later, when Seehund was in good condition again—
if we don't mention broken devices inside the sub—
and ready to sail, we plotted our course home.
We don't know what the largest target sunk by a Seehund was,
but we can suppose that the largest attacked and sunk ships
had dimensions similar to those of Liberty vessels—
in other words, around 7,500 gross registered tons.
Other ships might have been smaller, we just don't know their dimensions.
We felt ill at ease only the next morning
when our sub was taken out of the water.
The technicians looked at us
as if we had just returned from the other side.
Our Seehund looked more like a pile of scrap than a submarine.
The plating in many places was torn off,
and the conning tower had been pushed inside by 4 cm.
Her sturdy hull had been turned into something similar to a crushed bucket
that had been walked over by hundreds of feet
wearing boots with iron horseshoes.
When the first crews of Seehund submarines
began training in the fall of 1944,
many of them understood
that the defeat of the Third Reich was inevitable.
The only remaining hope was a "wonder weapon"
that was promised to the nation by Goebbels and Hitler.
One of the young submarine cadets
asked their K Task Force commander, Vice Admiral Heye,
when they would get that "wonder weapon."
The Admiral looked at the future crews of the midget submarine and answered:
You ARE our "wonder weapon!"
In total, 285 submarines of that class were built,
but not all of them were commissioned into service.
Since the documentation has mostly been lost,
we can only speculate about the reasons behind that.
According to the data I possess,
only 70 to 90 submarines saw combat.
137 Seehund-class midget submarines entered service in the Kriegsmarine.
In the period from January to May 1945,
they performed 142 combat raids and sank at least nine Allied vessels.
At the same time, 35 subs were lost.
Two thirds of them were lost for reasons that didn't involve combat.
The Allies had to utilize 500 ships, and 1,500 airplanes
in the fight against the German midget submarines.
Seehund was the most successful midget submarine of World War II—
she demonstrated her high efficiency in just 4 months of active combat.
In reality, the Allies were very lucky
that the Kriegsmarine started using midget submarines
only at the end of the war.
The Germans simply didn't have the time to fully realize their potential.
After the war, a German submarine veteran recalled in an interview
how their Seehund had been detected,
and how they had hidden at the bottom of the English Channel.
Over the course of several hours,
the crew of the Seehund lying on the sea floor
counted at least a couple of hundred Allied vessels passing over them.
It was a vast convoy that they weren't able to attack.
That was the moment when the veteran realized
that Germany had no chance of winning the war.
Sailors, stay calm!
Don't panic!
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Have a lovely time!
Fair winds and following seas.