They were well aware of Operation Caesar. By this time British MI6 had broken the German Enigma code. The sub was able to clear the island of Fedje off the Norway coast undetected on February 6. The mission was a failure, U-864 having to retreat to the submarine pens in Bergen, Norway, for repairs after running aground in the Kiel Canal. The maiden voyage of the 287’, 1,799 ton German submarine U-864 departed on “Operation Caesar” on December 5, delivering Messerschmitt jet engine parts, V-2 missile guidance systems, and 65 tons of mercury to the Imperial Japanese war production industry. At this time, any surface delivery between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was likely to be detected and stopped. The war was going badly for the Axis Powers in 1945, the allies enjoying near-uncontested supremacy over the world’s shipping lanes. Firing at a submerged target requires that the torpedo be converted to neutral buoyancy, introducing near-insurmountable complexity into firing calculations. The torpedo is a surface weapon, operating in two-dimensional space: left, right and forward. Submarines operate in 3-dimensional space, but their most effective weapon does not. The most unusual confrontation of the war occurred on this day in 1945, in the form of a combat action between two submerged submarines. In the end over 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships would be sunk to the bottom, compared with the loss of 783 U-boats. New weapons and tactics would shift the balance in favor of one side and then to the other. According to the United States Merchant Marine suffered the highest percentage of fatalities of any service branch, at 1 in 26 compared to one in 38, 44, 114 and 421 respectively, for the Marine Corps, Army, Navy and Coast Guard. Thousands of ships were involved in over a hundred convoy battles, with over 1,000 single ship encounters unfolding across a theater thousands of miles wide. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome”. Winston Churchill would say “The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. The “Battle of the Atlantic” lasted 5 years, 8 months and 5 days, ranging from the Irish Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Caribbean to the Arctic Ocean. By the time that WWII was in full swing, England alone would require over a million tons a week of imported goods, in order to survive and to fight the war. The longest and most complex naval battle in history, had begun.Īs in WWI, both England and Germany were quick to implement blockades on one another. Lemp had mistakenly believed it to be an armed merchant vessel and fair game under Prize Regulations, but the damage was done. Hours later, U-30 Oberleutnant Fritz Julius Lemp fired a torpedo into the British liner SS Athenia. England and France declared war on Nazi Germany on the 3rd. Even then, he believed that war with England and France could be avoided, the “Kriegsmarine” under strict orders to follow the “Prize Regulations” of 1936. Hitler’s invasion of Poland began on September 1. Should Poland be invaded by a foreign power, England and France were now committed to intervene. On the 25th the Polish-British Common Defense Pact was added to the Franco-Polish Military Alliance. That August, the first fourteen “Unterseeboots” (U-boats) left their bases, fanning out across the North Atlantic. The impending Nazi invasion of Poland was an open secret in 1939.

Hunley submarine history