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German submarine U-530

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German submarine U-530 was a Type IXC/40 U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. She was laid down at the Deutsche Werft in Hamburg on 8 December 1941 as yard number 345, launched on 28 July 1942 and commissioned on 14 October 1942 with Kapitänleutnant Kurt Lange in command, who led her in six patrols. Lange was replaced in January 1945 by Oberleutnant zur See Otto Wermuth, who led her escape to Argentina after Germany's surrender. The submarine's voyage to Argentina led to legends, apocryphal stories and conspiracy theories that it and U-977 had transported escaping Nazi leaders (such as Adolf Hitler) and/or Nazi gold to South America, that it had made a secret voyage to Antarctica, and even that it sank the Brazilian cruiser Bahia as the last act of the Battle of the Atlantic.[2][3] Later investigations led by the U.S. and Brazilian Navies proved that the cruiser was sunk in an accident during exercises with depth charges.

U-530 after her surrender at Mar del Plata Naval Base
History
Nazi Germany
NameU-530
Ordered15 August 1940
BuilderDeutsche Werft AG, Hamburg-Finkenwerder
Yard number345
Laid down8 December 1941
Launched28 July 1942
Commissioned14 October 1942
Fate
  • Surrendered in Mar del Plata, Argentina on 10 July 1945
  • Sunk during torpedo tests on 28 November 1947 by submarine USS Toro[1]
General characteristics
Class and typeType IXC/40 submarine
Displacement
  • 1,144 t (1,126 long tons) surfaced
  • 1,257 t (1,237 long tons) submerged
Length
Beam
  • 6.86 m (22 ft 6 in) o/a
  • 4.44 m (14 ft 7 in) pressure hull
Height9.60 m (31 ft 6 in)
Draught4.67 m (15 ft 4 in)
Installed power
  • 4,400 PS (3,200 kW; 4,300 bhp) (diesels)
  • 1,000 PS (740 kW; 990 shp) (electric)
Propulsion
Speed
  • 18.3 knots (33.9 km/h; 21.1 mph) surfaced
  • 7.3 knots (13.5 km/h; 8.4 mph) submerged
Range
  • 13,850 nmi (25,650 km; 15,940 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) surfaced
  • 63 nmi (117 km; 72 mi) at 4 knots (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph) submerged
Test depth230 m (750 ft)
Complement4 officers, 44 enlisted
Sensors and
processing systems
  • FuMO-61 Hohentwiel U
  • FuMB-26 Tunis
Armament
Service record
Part of:
Identification codes: M 49 518
Commanders:
  • Kptlt. Kurt Lange
  • 14 October 1942 – January 1945
  • Oblt.z.S.. Otto Wermuth
  • January – 10 July 1945
Operations:
  • 7 patrols:
  • 1st patrol:
  • 20 February – 22 April 1943
  • 2nd patrol:
  • a. 29 May – 3 July 1943
  • b. 21 September 1943
  • 3rd patrol:
  • 27 – 29 September 1943
  • 4th patrol:
  • 3 – 5 October 1943
  • 5th patrol:
  • 17 October 1943 – 22 February 1944
  • 6th patrol:
  • a. 22 May – 4 October 1944
  • b. 19 – 23 February 1945
  • 7th patrol:
  • 3 March – 10 July 1945
Victories:
  • 2 merchant ships sunk
    (12,063 GRT)
  • 1 merchant ship damaged
    (10,195 GRT)

Design

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German Type IXC/40 submarines were slightly larger than the original Type IXCs. U-530 was powered by two MAN M 9 V 40/46 supercharged four-stroke, nine-cylinder diesel engines for surface propulsion and two Siemens-Schuckert 2 GU 345/34 double-acting electric motors for submerged propulsion. She had two shafts and two 1.92 m (6 ft) propellers.

The boat had 48 crew.[4]

Sensors

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Radar

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U-530 was one of the few U-boats that was fitted with a FuMO 61 Hohentwiel U Radar Transmitter. It was installed on the starboard side of the conning tower.

  •  
    FuMO-61 Hohentwiel U Radar Transmitter

Radar Detection

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U-530 was fixed with the FuMB-26 Tunis antenne. The FuMB 26 Tunis combined the FuMB Ant. 24 Fliege and FuMB Ant. 25 Cuba II antennas. It could be mounted in either a direction finder antenna loop or separately on the bridge.

  •  
    FuMB-26 Tunis Radar Detection.

Service history

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She served with the 4th U-boat Flotilla while training, then the 10th flotilla from 1 March 1943 to 30 September 1944 and the 33rd flotilla from 1 October 1944 to 8 May 1945. U-530 completed seven war patrols, sinking two ships totalling 12,063 gross register tons (GRT) and damaging another of 10,195 GRT. She surrendered in Mar del Plata, Argentina on 10 July 1945.

First patrol

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The submarine left Kiel on her first patrol on 20 February 1943. Her route to the Atlantic took her through the gap between Iceland and the Faeroe Islands. On 9 March she sank the Swedish ship Milos in mid-Atlantic, at a point roughly equidistant from the southern tip of Greenland, Iceland and northwest Scotland. She also sank the American Sunoil on 5 April after the tanker had already been hit by U-563. She then made her way to the port of Lorient in occupied France, arriving on 22 April.

Second, third and fourth patrols

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These three forays were relatively uneventful, apart from her home port being moved to Bordeaux and then La Pallice.

Fifth patrol

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Her fifth patrol took her to the Caribbean Sea where she attacked and damaged the American tanker Chapultepec on 26 December 1943. She was forced to return to France when she was rammed by the tanker Esso Buffalo on 29 December. She arrived at Lorient on 22 February 1944.

Sixth patrol

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For her sixth sortie, U-530 departed Lorient on 22 May 1944 ultimately for operations in the Trinidad area. On her outward voyage she was to rendezvous with the I-52 and supply the larger boat with a Naxos radar detector, a radar operator and a German navigator to help I-52 complete her journey.

The two submarines rendezvoused on 23 June in mid-Atlantic, 850 nmi (1,570 km; 980 mi) west of the Cape Verde Islands. The Allies had been informed of the rendezvous and directed the escort carrier Bogue (CVE-9) to the scene; her aircraft managed to sink I-52 with an acoustic torpedo.[5] U-530 returned to base, this time Flensburg, after 133 days at sea.

A short journey from Kiel to Horten Naval Base in southern Norway on from 19 to 23 February was her recorded next move, but it did not count as a patrol.

Seventh patrol and surrender

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U-530 departed Horten on 3 March 1945 to operate off of New York, operating as close as two or three miles off Long Island. On about 4 May the submarine sighted a convoy and attacked with three torpedoes: two missed while the third had a battery explosion and did not leave the tube. U-530 attacked a second convoy 6 May with five torpedoes and a third the next day with two more, all of which missed.[A]

U-530 did not initially surrender at war's end, as ordered by Admiral Karl Dönitz; instead the crew headed for Argentina and ultimately surrendered to the Argentine Navy on 10 July 1945 at Mar del Plata. Prior to their arrival the crew dumped the five remaining torpedoes[B], anti-aircraft gun ammunition, secret papers, and the ship's log overboard.[6][7]

Her captain, Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth, did not explain why it had taken him more than two months to reach Mar del Plata, why the submarine had jettisoned its deck gun[C], or why the crew carried no identification.

The unexpected arrival of U-530 started many rumors. Brazilian Admiral Jorge Dodsworth Martins said he believed that U-530 could have sunk the cruiser Bahia, while Admiral Dudal Teixeira, also a Brazilian, believed that U-530 had come from Japan. An Argentine reporter claimed that he had seen a Buenos Aires provincial police report to the effect that a strange submarine had surfaced off the lower Argentine coast and had landed a high-ranking officer and a civilian who might have been Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in disguise.[8] U-977, which arrived in Mar del Plata on 17 August, was also accused of sinking Bahia; however, an inquiry eventually found that the cruiser had been sunk due to a gunnery accident.[9]

The Argentine Naval Ministry issued an official communique stating that U-530 did not sink the Bahia, that no Nazi leader or high-ranking military officers were aboard, and that U-530 had landed no one on the coast of Argentina before surrendering.[8]

The crew of U-530 were interned. They and the boat were then transferred to the United States. The submarine was sunk as a target on 28 November 1947 by a torpedo from American submarine USS Toro.

Summary of raiding history

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Date Ship Name Nationality Tonnage
(GRT) 		Fate[10]
9 March 1943 Milos   Sweden 3,058 Sunk
5 April 1943 Sunoil   United States 9,005 Sunk
26 December 1943 Chapultepec   United States 10,195 Damaged

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ ONI notes that convoys HX 534, UC65A, and ON 298 were in the area on the dates in question, with HX 534 and ON 298 badly scattered by fog. None reported any submarine contacts.[6]
  2. ^ While Type IXC/40 U-boats could nominally carry 24 torpedoes, in practice this varied, particularly as external canisters were removed/not used late in the war. U-530 departed on patrol with 14 torpedoes, eight G7e T3a electric torpedoes and six G7e T5 homing torpedoes.[6]
  3. ^ Interrogation reports of the Captain Wermuth U-530 crew do not mention the 105 mm deck gun, listing only the 37 mm and two twin 20 mm. Late in WWII these were regularly removed from U-boats and some completed without guns at all, and it is not clear if U-530 lost her deck gun in a prior refit. The US Naval Attache's report on Captain Wermuth's interrogation report does include "parts of the 37 mm gun" among the items dumped overboard.[6]

References

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  1. ^ Helgason, Guðmundur. "The Type IXC/40 boat U-530". German U-boats of WWII - uboat.net. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  2. ^ Salinas & De Nápoli , 2002.
  3. ^ Paterson, 2009. Pages 27 to 33.
  4. ^ Gröner 1991, p. 68.
  5. ^ Samuel, Wolfgang W. E. (2004). American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 114. ISBN 978-1-60473-136-1.
  6. ^ a b c d "Report on the Interrogation of Prisoners from U-530 Surrendered at Mar del Plata, 10 July 1945", U-Boat Archive. Retrieved 22 December 2022.
  7. ^ "Resume of Interrogation of Lieut.(j.g.) Otto WERMUTH, Commanding Officer of the German submarine U-530.", U-Boat Archive. Retrieved 22 December 2022.
  8. ^ a b "ARGENTINA: U-530". Time. 23 July 1945. ISSN 0040-781X. Archived from the original on 19 February 2020. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
  9. ^ Rohwer, Jürgen: Chronology of the War at Sea, 1939–1945: The Naval History of World War Two. Naval Institute Press, 2005, page 423. ISBN 1-59114-119-2
  10. ^ Helgason, Guðmundur. "Ships hit by U-530". German U-boats of WWII - uboat.net. Retrieved 30 January 2014.

Bibliography

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  • Busch, Rainer; Röll, Hans-Joachim (1999). German U-boat commanders of World War II : a biographical dictionary. Translated by Brooks, Geoffrey. London, Annapolis, Md: Greenhill Books, Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-186-6.
  • Busch, Rainer; Röll, Hans-Joachim (1999). Deutsche U-Boot-Verluste von September 1939 bis Mai 1945 [German U-boat losses from September 1939 to May 1945]. Der U-Boot-Krieg (in German). Vol. IV. Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn: Mittler. ISBN 3-8132-0514-2.
  • Gröner, Erich; Jung, Dieter; Maass, Martin (1991). U-boats and Mine Warfare Vessels. German Warships 1815–1945. Vol. 2. Translated by Thomas, Keith; Magowan, Rachel. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-593-4.
  • Los Verdaderos Últimos Días de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Parte II: "La verdad sobre la llegada de sumergiles alemanes a la Argentina". Julio B. Mutti, HistoryBook 2013, ISBN 978-987-29109-1-4

Further reading

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  • Helgason, Guðmundur. "The Type IXC/40 boat U-530". German U-boats of WWII - uboat.net. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  • Hofmann, Markus. "U 530". Deutsche U-Boote 1935-1945 - u-boot-archiv.de (in German). Retrieved 1 February 2015.

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