Adolf Piening
Who was the commander of German submarine U-155 (1941) from Aug 1941 to 1944?
German submarine U-155 ( 1941 ) German submarine U-155 was a Type IXC U-boat of Nazi Germanys Kriegsmarine built for service during World War II . Her keel was laid down on 1 October 1940 by DeSchiMAG AG Weser in Bremen as yard number 997 . She was launched on 12 May 1941 and commissioned on 23 August with Kapitänleutnant Adolf Piening in command . Piening was relieved in February 1944 ( after being promoted to Korvettenkapitän ) , by Oberleutnant zur See Johannes Rudolph . Design . German Type IXC submarines were slightly larger than the original Type IXBs . U-155 had a displacement of when at the surface and while submerged . The U-boat had a total length of , a pressure hull length of , a beam of , a height of , and a draught of . The submarine was powered by two MAN M 9 V 40/46 supercharged four-stroke , nine-cylinder diesel engines producing a total of for use while surfaced , two Siemens-Schuckert 2 GU 345/34 double-acting electric motors producing a total of for use while submerged . She had two shafts and two propellers . The boat was capable of operating at depths of up to . The submarine had a maximum surface speed of and a maximum submerged speed of . When submerged , the boat could operate for at ; when surfaced , she could travel at . U-155 was fitted with six torpedo tubes ( four fitted at the bow and two at the stern ) , 22 torpedoes , one SK C/32 naval gun , 180 rounds , and a SK C/30 as well as a C/30 anti-aircraft gun . The boat had a complement of forty-eight . Service history . Leutnant zur See Ludwig von Friedeburg relieved Rudolph from August to November 1944 , when Rudolph resumed command for another month . During these four months , U-155 had the youngest U-boat commander during the war since Von Friedeburg was only 20 years old . In December , Kptlt . Erwin Witte took over , and was relieved in April 1945 by Oblt.z.S . Friedrich Altmeier . Altmeier commanded the boat for one month before the German surrender ; she was then scuttled by the Royal Navy . The wreck was located , largely intact , in 2001 . U-155 conducted ten patrols , sinking 26 ships totalling , one warship of 13,785 tons and damaging one auxiliary warship of . She was a member of one wolfpack . She sank a warship and a troop transport ship , and damaged a cargo ship , with one salvo of four torpedoes on 15 November 1942 during her fourth patrol , and shot down a P-51 Mustang aircraft on her final patrol . 1st patrol . U-155 left Kiel on her first patrol on 7 February 1942 . Her route took her up the North Sea , through the gap between the Faroe and Shetland Islands and into the Atlantic . South of Cape Farewell in Greenland , she sank and Adellen on the 22nd . She then moved on to the US east coast , sinking the about off Cape Hatteras , North Carolina on 7 March . On the 10th the First Watch Officer ( 1WO ) Oberleutnant zur See Gert Rentrop was washed overboard . The boat docked at the Lorient U-boat base on the Atlantic coast of German-occupied France on March 27 . 2nd patrol . Having left Lorient on 24 April 1942 , U-155 steamed to the eastern Caribbean Sea and that portion of the Atlantic adjacent to it . She attacked Brabant southwest of Grenada on 14 May . The ship sank in eight minutes . The U-boat sank another six ships ; one of them , Sylvan Arrow , was torpedoed on 20 May , but did not go down until the 28th , following a salvage attempt . The submarine returned to Lorient on 14 June . 3rd patrol . U-155s third and most successful foray was conducted in similar waters to her second effort , beginning in Lorient on 9 July . She sank Barbacena with torpedoes east of Barbados , but others , such as Piave , went to the bottom with the more economic deck gun . Another victim , Cranford , met her end within three minutes . Part of her cargo was 6,600 tons of chrome ore . Two injured survivors were treated on U-155 before water , supplies and directions were handed over to their colleagues . The submarines skipper apologized for sinking one ship ( Empire Arnold on 4 August ) , to the Chief Officer , who told him it was a bad business and wished it [ the war ] was over . Piening replied : So do I . Maschinengefreiter Konrad Garneier was lost overboard during an air attack on 19 August . In all , the boat sank ten ships , a total of 43,514 tons . 4th patrol . Three of a spread of four torpedoes hit targets , one aal ( eel : U-boat slang for torpedo ) , damaged , a US Navy-requisitioned cargo transport ; two others sank escort carrier and the British troop transport Ettrick on 15 November 1942 northwest of Gibraltar . Of 526 men on Avenger , there were 12 survivors . Ettricks master was awarded the Order of the British Empire ( OBE ) . The boat also sank Serroskerk in mid-Atlantic . There were no survivors . 5th patrol . U-155s fifth sortie involved her move to the western Caribbean and southern Florida , USA . She sank Lysefjord west of Havana on 2 April 1943 , and on 3 April sank the oil tanker Gulfstate about east northeast of Marathon Key , Florida ( in 2013 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Remediation of Underwater Legacy Environmental Threats ( RULET ) project found the sunken Gulfstate to be a potential source of oil pollution. ) On the return journey U-155 was attacked by an unknown aircraft on 27 April northwest of Cape Finisterre , Spain . 6th patrol . To try and counter the air threat , U-155 was grouped together with , , and in the Bay of Biscay . The formation was attacked by four de Havilland Mosquito aircraft on 14 June — three from No . 307 Polish Night Fighter Squadron and one from No . 410 Squadron RCAF . One Mosquito , hit in the port engine , was forced to break off its attack and return to base where it made a belly landing . Five men in the boats crew were wounded ; they were treated by U-68s doctor on their return to Lorient on 16 June . 7th and 8th patrols . Patrol number seven was as long as any of the others , to a point northeast of the Cape Verde Islands ; but the boat did not find any targets . The submarines eighth patrol took her toward the northeast coast of Brazil . While sinking Siranger she took the third mate prisoner ( he had been wounded , and was operated-on by the boats doctor ) . He was taken back to Lorient and was eventually transferred to the POW camp at Milag Nord near Bremen . 9th and 10th patrols . U-155s ninth patrol was , at 105 days , her longest , but like her seventh , found no targets . On 4 May 1945 , the boat shot down a North American P-51 Mustang aircraft of No . 126 Squadron RAF and on 23 June 1944 , Mosquitos of 248 Squadron attacked , killing Matrosenobergefreiter Karl Lohmeier and Mechanikerobergefreiter Friedrich Feller and wounding seven others . Her patrol terminated at Lorient the same day . Her tenth and final patrol left Lorient on 9 September 1944 , the last by a U-boat from the base . The patrol was uneventful ; she returned to Germany by a circuitous route , and docked at Flensburg on 21 October . Fate . On 30 June 1945 , after the German surrender , she was transferred from Wilhelmshaven to Loch Ryan , Scotland for Royal Navy Operation Deadlight , the scuttling of surrendered German U-boats , and sunk on 21 December the same year . Post war . U-155 was located and identified in 2001 by a team of divers led by nautical archaeologist Innes McCartney , revealing the wreck was lying upright on the sea bed , largely intact , at a depth of . Her crew held their 25th reunion in 1995 with former Oberleutnant zur See Johannes Rudolph and one of the Mosquito pilots who attacked the boat in June 1944 on board .