page_title: Seenotdienst
section_title: Retreat
hierarchical_section_title: Seenotdienst / World War II / Retreat
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Ostpreußische Flüchtlinge Pillau, den 26.1.1945
context_page_description: The Seenotdienst was a German military organization formed within the Luftwaffe to save downed airmen from emergency water landings. The Seenotdienst operated from 1935 to 1945 and was the first organized air-sea rescue service.
  The Seenotdienst was at first operated as a civilian service run by the military, and later was brought formally into the Luftwaffe. Throughout their existence, the group solved a number of organizational, operational and technical challenges to create an effective rescue force. When British and American air leaders observed the German success, they modeled their own rescue forces after the Seenotdienst. As the Allies of World War II advanced, denying sea areas to German forces, local groups of the Seenotdienst were disbanded. The last active group served in the Baltic Sea in March 1945.
context_section_description: As the Allies advanced following the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Luftwaffe pulled bases back to keep them from being overrun. Units of the Seenotdienst whose areas of operation were threatened by Allied activity were disbanded or reorganized into other groups with safer locations. For instance, in July 1944, surrounded by the U.S. VIII Corps gathering to attack Brest, Seenotstaffel 1 that had been operating there since June 1940, with a southern detachment at Hourtin, was sent to Pillau in the Baltic Sea, then redesignated Seenotstaffel 60 in August. In November 1944, German leadership decided that the flying boat manufacturing resources could be put to better use elsewhere, and ordered the Dornier factory to cease making Do 24s.
  The most persons that a single Seenotdienst aircraft rescued in one sortie was 99 children and 14 adults carried by a Do 24, saved from orphanages threatened by the Soviet advance into Koszalin during the Battle of Kolberg at the beginning of March 1945. The load was so great that the aircraft was unable to take off—instead, it wave-hopped and taxied back to base. During the same battle, six boats working with the Seenotdienst made repeated trips March 17–18 to a pier in Kolberg and evacuated 2,356 people.
caption: Pillau, January 1945. Boats and aircraft of the Seenotdienst helped evacuate thousands of German citizens during the last four months of war.
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