Unterseeboot 703
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| U-703 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | VIIC
|
||
| Launch Date | July 16, 1941 | ||
| Commission Date | October 16, 1941 | ||
| Construction yard | Stülcken Sohn, Hamburg | ||
| Patrols | |||
| Start Date | End Date | Assigned Unit | |
| April 26, 1942 | May 7, 1942 | 6th Flotilla | |
| May 16, 1942 | May 30, 1942 | 6th Flotilla | |
| June 29, 1942 | July 15, 1942 | 11th Flotilla | |
| August 8, 1942 | September 11, 1942 | 11th Flotilla | |
| September 14, 1942 | September 26, 1942 | 11th Flotilla | |
| January 1, 1943 | February 14, 1943 | 11th Flotilla | |
| March 7, 1943 | April 5, 1943 | 11th Flotilla | |
| July 19, 1943 | August 3, 1943 | 13th Flotilla | |
| August 17, 1943 | September 9, 1943 | 13th Flotilla | |
| February 29, 1944 | March 8, 1944 | 13th Flotilla | |
| April 9, 1944 | April 29, 1944 | 13th Flotilla | |
| August 21, 1944 | September 10, 1944 | 13th Flotilla | |
| September 14, 1944 | September, 1944 | 13th Flotilla | |
| Commanders | |||
| October, 1941 | July, 1943 | Kptlt. Heinz Bielfeld | |
| July, 1943 | September, 1944 | Kptlt. Joachim Brümmer | |
| Successes | |||
| Type of Ship Sunk | Number of Ships Sunk | Gross Registered Tonnage | |
| Commercial Vessels | 5 | 29,532 | |
| Military Vessels | 1 | 500 | |
Unterseeboot 703, or more commonly U-703 was a German submarine deployed during the Second World War against allied shipping in the Arctic Ocean. She was a successful boat, which had a far longer service life than most other U-boats, primarily due to the restricted zone of operations in which she fought. Her main mission during the war was to target the Arctic Convoys which carried supplies to the Soviet Union from Britain. At this she was quite successful in her three years of raiding until her presumed demise in 1944.
A German Type VII submarine, U-703 was built at Hamburg in Northern Germany on the North Sea. She was completed in the autumn of 1941, and given to the experienced Kptlt. Heinz Bielfeld to command. He took her on her working-up period in which the boat was tested and the crew trained in the Baltic Sea and around the German held coastlines, before being dispatched to Narvik in Norway for her first war patrol in April 1942.
[edit] War Patrols
Enjoying the improving Arctic weather, U-703 had an unsuccessful patrol in terms of victims, but the boat began to work better as a team, and the second patrol in May reaped dividends, with the sinking of the 6,000 ton American freighter SS Syros. This ship sank with eleven lives after a torpedo touched off her ammunition [1]. The same patrol scored greater success during the disastrous end to Convoy PQ-17 on the 5 May, when she managed to sink two lone cargo ships, one of them damaged by long range German bombers before hand. Returning to port at Narvik, U-703 was cheered by her victory, but she struggled to make further impressions during the year, as her two further patrols yielded only one victim, the British destroyer HMS Somali, which was fatally crippled by a torpedo near Convoy PQ-18 in September.
Following her lay-over in the winter as her home ports of Narvik, Trondheim, Hammerfest, Harstad and Bergen were all frozen, U-703 returned to the offensive, again attacking allied convoys in the Arctic Sea. Her first two patrols, in January and April were short and barren, but on the next two in July and August 1943 under her new commander Joachim Brünner, she cruised in Soviet waters in the Barents Sea and further east, catching a small Soviet armed trawler on the first [2], and larger Soviet merchant ship on the second in August, sinking the SS Sergj Kirov near Istvestij Island [3]. These patrols had shown the vulnerability to older U-boats to newer allied countermeasures and protection, forcing the submarines to divert themselves into backwaters of the Second Battle of the Atlantic in order to gain any victories.
The U-703 continued operating in the spring of 1944, but she was obviously less efficient and was given duties deploying weather balloons in the Arctic Sea to test weather conditions for reports to other shipping,. This was in part a result of terrible damage she received off Narvik during her first patrol of the season, when allied aircraft strafed her, killing three crew and wounding three more. Just a few days before she had claimed her only victim of the year, the SS Empire Tourist, which was sunk whilst part of Convoy RA-57.
Relegated to her new duties, U-703 suddenly disappeared around the 25 September 1944. She had left Narvik on her thirteenth war patrol on the 14 September, in order to deploy a weather balloon in the Arctic. At the time a heavy gale was running, and it has been assumed that U-703 foundered due to heavy seas in the course of this difficult and highly technical operation. No trace of the boat and her 54 crew has ever been found since.
[edit] Raiding career
| Date | Ship | Nationality | Tonnage | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 May 1942 | SS Syros | American | 6,191 | Sunk |
| 5 July 1942 | SS Empire Byron | British | 6,645 | Sunk |
| 5 July 1942 | SS River Afton | British | 5,479 | Sunk |
| 20 September 1942 | HMS Somali | British | 1,870 | Damaged |
| 30 July 1943 | "T-911 {Pennant Nr 65} (Formerly RT-76} Ref [1] | Soviet naval trawler | 500 | Sunk |
| 1 October 1943 | SS Sergej Kirov | Soviet | 4,146 | Sunk |
| 3 April 1944 | SS Empire Tourist | British | 7,062 | Sunk |
[edit] References
- Sharpe, Peter, U-Boat Fact File, Midland Publishing, Great Britain: 1998. ISBN 1-85780-072-9.
- U-boat.net webpage for U-703
- ^ uboat.net - Allied Ships hit by U-boats - Syros (Steam merchant)
- ^ Which has never been successfully named by historians.
- ^ uboat.net - Allied Ships hit by U-boats - Sergej Kirov (Steam merchant)
See Also: List of U-boats
