page_title: German submarine U-175
section_title: Third patrol: Atlantic
hierarchical_section_title: German submarine U-175 / Service history / Third patrol: Atlantic
caption_attribution_description: "Crew members of the U.S.S. Spencer giving coffee and cigarettes to German prisoners on the quarter deck. John Tumas, R.M. 3/c, Boston, Mass. is pouring coffee."; 17 April 1943; Photo No. 1570; photo by Jack January, USCGR. German survivors on board Spencer, from left to right: Matrosenobergefreiter Max Klinger (facing to his right--face is barely visible); Maschinenobergefreiter Werner Bickel (with cigarette); Maschinenobergefreiter Walter Schröder; Fähnrich (Ing.) Karl Völker; Matrosengefreiter Jean Bamberg (with upraised arm); and Matrosenobergefreiter Ewald Urbanek. RM3 John Tumas, USCGR, is pouring the coffee. The other Coast Guardsmen are unidentified. As soon as each survivor was brought aboard, their wet clothing was removed and each was wrapped in a Navy blanket and given coffee, brandy and cigarettes. They were soon fed a hot meal.
context_page_description: German submarine U-175 was a Type IXC U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine built for service during World War II.
  She was laid down on 30 January 1941 at Bremen, and commissioned on 5 December 1941 with Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Bruns in command. After training with the 4th U-boat Flotilla, U-175 was transferred to the 10th U-boat Flotilla for front-line service. Throughout her career, the boat undertook three war patrols during which she sank ten merchant ships amounting to a total of 40,619 gross register tons before being sunk by the US Coast Guard cutter Spencer on 17 April 1943.
context_section_description: Upon their return to Lorient, which by that time had been heavily bombed by the Allies, the boat underwent repairs, first on its periscope and then the damaged port diesel and the electric motors. In addition to this new batteries were installed and the compressor was given a tune-up. Meanwhile, the crew were housed in air raid shelters rather than a barracks, as all the other accommodation had been destroyed. A number of crew members were sent away on promotion or training courses and in their place new personnel arrived. As a result, the crew composition changed considerably; the average age on board by the time of the third patrol was 23.
  The boat's repairs took longer than expected and instead of being completed by 4 April, it was not until the 10th that the boat was ready to depart on its third patrol. Nevertheless, when she left, she did so with repairs incomplete and a number of dock workers remained on board to finish these off while at sea. Departing Lorient with an armed escort known as a Sperrbrecher and three anti-submarine vessels, U-175 proceeded independently after passing Ile de Groix. In the days that followed, a number of radar contacts sent the boat below the surface. However, by 15 April they had arrived in the Mid-Atlantic air gap where they were out of range of Allied aircraft, allowing them to operate on the surface with less circumspection. The following day, BdU ordered U-175 to join an attack on convoy HX-233, a Liverpool-bound convoy which had departed from Halifax and New York City earlier in the month, which had been spotted by U-262 while on a clandestine operation to pick up German prisoners-of-war. Steaming at full speed, the boat beat towards the convoy for 10 hours before finally spotting it just before midnight on 16 April. At this point Bruns reported the sighting to BdU, who relayed it to two other boats, U-382 and U-628, while Bruns attempted to get in front of the convoy to set up an attack. Four other boats  –  U-226, U-264, U-358 and U-614  –  also subsequently converged on the convoy.
  In the early morning of 17 April, U-628 torpedoed one of the freighters in the convoy, Fort Rampart. A short time later, one of the convoy's escorts, the United States Coast Guard cutter Spencer, under Commander Harold Berdine, responding to a signal from one of the other escorts, the corvette HMCS Arvida, moved away from the convoy to screen the cutter while it picked up survivors. Once this was completed, she steamed back towards the convoy. As she came back, she attempted to pass ahead of the convoy to take up her station, and in doing so found U-175 where she was sitting at periscope depth preparing to launch a submerged attack upon the G Harrison Smith, a tanker of 11,752 GRT. Picking up a contact on her sonar about 5,000 yards (4,600 m), she rushed ahead at full speed. The sound of the sonar pinging on the boat alerted Bruns to the danger and he gave the order for the boat to dive. However, Spencer launched a salvo of 11 depth charges which exploded above and below the boat. The result was that the boat went into a dive bow first and just as they began to restore buoyancy, Spencer launched a second salvo. This second attack ruptured U-175's pressure hull, destroyed the electric motors and damaged several batteries which, as a result, began to give off poisonous gas.
  At this point Spencer attacked again and was joined by another Coast Guard cutter, the Duane, they waited for U-175 to surface. On board U-175, quick thinking by the boat's engineer to blow the ballast tanks had prevented them from sinking further and helped right the boat, but communications had been knocked out and it became clear to Bruns that the only option was to surface. Giving the order, the boat rose to the surface; as it did so, Spencer and Duane began firing at close range, while Spencer's commander, Berdine, closed with intent to ram. But Bruns was not intending to fight it out and, seeking to save his crew, led the way onto the conning tower to signal his intention to surrender. The Coast Guard crewmen, however, did no
caption: Survivors, 17 April 1943
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