US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

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ohrdruf
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US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#1

Post by ohrdruf » 17 Sep 2009, 19:59

(1) The US national archive has now declassified the USN intelligence reports on the interrogations at Mar del Plata of Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth, commander of U 530, and eight officers and senior NCOs. The report runs to eleven pages.

(2) The Report was forwarded from the US naval attaché at Buenos Aires on 24 July 1945. The United States operates automatic declassification rules by which this report should have been made public in 1975. It was exempted "in the interests of national defense or foreign policy". It is not immediately evident what the need for secrecy was in this case:

(3) "The Argentine Navy interrogation of nine officers and petty officers terminates with little information of importance revealed. The documents of the submarine examined indicate that these have been thoroughly censored."

(4) Details of U 530 Voyage during wartime - Otto Wermuth.
(i) Wermuth would not confirm if he was attached to any particular flotilla and said he operated directly under orders from Berlin.
(ii) U 530 sailed from Kiel for Cristiansand-South on 19 February 1945.
(iii) On 3 March 1945 he sailed the boat to Horten for an unspecified purpose and sailed from there for the Atlantic on 6 April 1945. He refused to discuss his orders or the voyage except to say that his last contact with his commanding officer in Berlin had been on 26 April 1945.

(5) Details of U 530 Voyage, wartime - Other Interrogatees
(i) After rounding the Newfoundland Bank, U 530 was ordered by radio to operate off New York.
(ii) On or about 28 April 1945, the boat crossed the 200-metre line and spent a fortnight south of Long Island, once entering US territorial waters. Eight torpedoes were fired without result in three attacks between 4 and 7 May.

(6) Details of U 530 Voyage, postwar - Otto Wermuth
(i) Wermuth said that once he got to Argentina, it was his initial intention to go to Miramar to surrender, but later he decided to go to the Argentine submarine base at Mar del Plata.
(ii) He first sighted the Mogotes light at 0300 on 10 July 1945 from 18 miles out. At 0630 he entered port. Wermuth stated that "no persons or treasure" had been landed in Argentina or elsewhere prior to surrendering.

(7) As regards Wermuth only, the US Navy Report should coincide perfectly with the Argentine Navy Report of 13-15 July 1945 declassified in June 2002 to Argentine authors De Nápoli and Salinas, authors of "Ultramar Sur" (Grupo Norma, Buenos Aires, 2002). I understand personally from the two authors that they were obliged contractually to report on the declassified material with absolute honesty, and they said they had done so.

(8) There is one major discepancy between the Argentine Navy reports cited in "Ultramar Sur" and the US Navy Report.
(i) In "Ultrmar" p.424, the authors record: "Wermuth said he saw the Punta Mogotes light at 0300 on 9 July 1945 and that he went down the coast from Mar del Plata because it had been his original intention to sight land ("recalar") at Miramar, where he arrived at 0600. Wermuth denied vehemently that he had disembarked anybody there. His intention was simply to wait until nightfall before going back to Mar del Plata (50 miles away). "When it got dark on 9 July I surfaced and ran back up the coast three miles out to Mar del Plata." He had a rubber dinghy missing which he could not account for.
(ii) The US Navy version at 6(ii) gives the incorrect day of the month(10th instead of 9th) for when the Mogotes light was first seen. 6(i) is literally true but misleading because it is made to appear by omission that U 530 never went to Miramar.

(9) The reason why all this is significant is as follows. Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth was a dark-haired man 1.78 metres in stature, thus of medium height. He posed for the Argentine Federal Police mugshot at Mar del Plata as Otto Wermuth on 12 July 1945. He was the officer who attended the Argentine Navy interrogations as commander of U 530 as from 13 July 1945. But when he was on the boat and was not on the boat, and if he had ever been in command of the boat, and where he was between 10 and 12 July 1945, were matters upon which the Argentines could not satisfy themselves absolutely.

(10) This mysterious affair of the boat with two commanders both called Otto Wermuth probably explains why the US Navy Report was kept secret for 64 years though it actually revealed "little information of importance". What was important would only be detected by somebody who had knowledge of what went on in Buenos Aires around the time when U-530 came in to surrender. And what was important to be kept secret by Washington was that Otto Wermuth had important business ashore to attend to in Argentina.

(11) The true Otto Wermuth is described at (9) above. The U 530 crew gave Press interviews. The base commander introduced "Otto Wermuth" to the Press, who took his photo, and described him in the evening editions that day as "tall and blond." On a personal note, a short while ago I came into possession of photographs showing the interior of U 530, and the crew in a playing field shortly after the surrender. From these photographs it is evident that "Otto Wermuth" who brought the boat into Mar del Plata on 10 July 1945 was not the same Otto Wermuth who posed for the Argentine Police photo on 12 July, and who is identical with the Otto Wermuth of the official Kriegsmarine photographs.
Otto Wermuth-2 was a tall blond officer of Nordic facial structure. His face is not a match for Otto Wermuth-1. He also wore the U-boat Frontspange on his unfiorom, a decoration to which Otto-Wermuth-1 was not entitled. Anybody with a copy of "Ultramar Sur" should turn to page 440 for the photo of Nordic commander Otto Wermuth-2.

(12) Coronel Rómulo Bustos of the Argentine coastal artillery described "Otto Wermuth", with whom he had a long conversation at Mar del Plata on 12 July 1945 before being shown over U 530, as having "...a blond beard and a fine elongated blond moustache." Bustos is still alive and lives in Buenos Aires. His article, published in 2008, is long but very enlightening. I should be glad to reproduce it upon request.

(13) When U 530 surrendered, it was found that all the boat's documents, logs, war diary, charts, code books and much else was missing. The crew, including "Otto Wermuth", lacked identification documents. The US Report makes it clear that Otto Wermuth-1 turned up out of the blue. The Argentines obviously accepted that the tall, blond officer who had brought U 530 into Mar del Plata on 10 July 1945, and claimed to be Otto Wermuth was actually Otto Wermuth, commander of U 530. And now suddenly this small dark-haired officer had turned up and was also claiming to be Otto Wermuth, and one assumes that the blond version of Otto Wermuth now vanished into the Argentine interior before the matter could be investigated properly.

(14) The US Report states: "He (Otto Wermuth) had no identification of any kind to support his statement that he was actually in command of the submarine. Upon being questioned as to whether or not he could substantiate this, after much reflection he recalled that one of his seamen had married a girl in Kiel by proxy and radio during the voyage and that he, as commanding officer of the submarine, had signed the marriage document." He might have commanded the boat in April, but obviously he had not been the commander of U-530 when the boat was brought into Mar del Plata in July, or even the Argentines would have remembered, since it was only three days before.

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#2

Post by Sid Guttridge » 18 Sep 2009, 13:18

Hi Ohdruf,

In view of the way you have consistently misrepresented other sources on earlier threads, I would suggest it would be much more useful to put up the original report, rather than your selective commentary upon it.

Cheers,

Sid


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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#3

Post by LWD » 18 Sep 2009, 13:46

ohrdruf wrote: ...(8) There is one major discepancy between the Argentine Navy reports cited in "Ultramar Sur" and the US Navy Report.
...
(ii) The US Navy version at 6(ii) gives the incorrect day of the month(10th instead of 9th) for when the Mogotes light was first seen. ...
How did you determine that the US Navy version was incorrect?

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#4

Post by s3bpilot » 19 Sep 2009, 00:56

Ohdruf and all, these reports are posted on my website at http://uboatarchive.net/U-530.htm I copied all these documents at the US National Archives at College Park Md. between 2000 and 2003 and there was nothing unusual about their declassification. My sense is, that while the reports on U 530 and U 977 are abbreviated as the war was over and Op-16-Z was winding down, there was interest in getting the chain of events correct and that there wasn't any particular intrigue about the process or the conclusions. Had there been concern that there were two Otto Wermuths it would have been mentioned in the classified report by the Naval Attache and in the subsequent Op-16-Z report. It does not seem likely that the Argentine Navy could or would keep something like that a secret nor is it likely that every member of the crew would have kept something like that a secret throughout the interrogation process, particularly since the war was over. Cheers, Jerry

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#5

Post by ohrdruf » 19 Sep 2009, 19:12

JERRY

I think that if it is desired by a nation that a fact is to be kept secret, then it will be kept secret from a report. You, as a naval man, and I, as a former serviceman and prison officer, both understand for all kinds of reasons, official reports rarely state the whole truth. How often did you say when in the service, "Well, I think we'll leave that out, don't you?" I know I did.

Undoubtedly the US Navy and the Argentine Navy knew about the substitution, and the reason for it, but preferred not to have it in the report. The reason for this is clear. If U 530 switched commanders by dropping one off and taking aboard a substitute, this throws open the door to all kinds of allegations that other persons were also disembarked in a clandestine manner at the same time. This explains the "error" in the 24 hours between first light on 9 July and 10 July in the respective reports. It also indicates that the Argentine Government was never in "hot pursuit", or any other kind of pursuit, of the various German intelligence networks in Argentine. Live and let live was the Farrell/Perón motto. In this connection you will see from the opinion of Coronel Bustos below that all was not as it has been staged to appear on the Argentine coast.

Elsewhere on this AHF website is a Kriegsmarine photograph of Otto Wermuth. This man is the same man who sat for the Federal Argentine Police photograph at Mar del Plata on 12 July 1945. However, he is not the same man introduced to the Press as Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth by the base commander, nor is he the officer who brought U 530 into the naval base, because the Argentine Navy did not recognize him as that man.

The photographs in my possession are clear. I would like to publish them here but as I may have mentioned to you in another context I have completed a book and am bound not to publish the photos beforehand since I am claiming them to be "previously unpublished in the northern hemisphere". The replacement officer is shown at page 440 of "Ultramar Sur", this photo corresponds with other photos of him in my possession and it will be seen from these that facially he does not resemble the officer in the Kriegsmarine photo. I suppose I could call on Coronel Bustos with the Kriegsmarine photo and asked him if this was the Otto Wermuth with whom he spoke in 1945, and ask him to swear to it on affidavit if it is not, but what purpose would it serve?

The question never confronted about the U 530 episode is this: Why were all the crew IDs (the Soldbücher with all personal information, photograph and pay details) ditched overboard so that the only proof of one's identity was what one's shipmate said? Otto Wermuth had no ID and no available photograph to identify him as the commander of U 530. What on earth could have convinced him to become "indocumentado"? The most likely explanation is that there was a substitution or substitutions at the late stage in the voyage. And Bustos' evidence about the cans he saw inside U 530 seem to support the idea of somebody coming aboard clandestinely and bringing his refreshments with him.

When you make the point that this could never have been hushed up postwar I think you misunderstand the German system of military discipline. When I was collaborating with former Oberfunkmeister Wolfgang Hirschfeld in the period 1985-1997 on the English version of his book, the idea was for me to cast his original work in the German into English, and consult him whenever there was something which needed to be clarified. The majority of these questions were sensitive, or he would have come right out and stated them baldly in the original, and he would have to refer back somewhere and provide an answer a few weeks later. There was clearly some dominating force - maybe "Stahlhelm" or something similar - he never said, but it was certainly an authority to which he was required to answer for anything he put into print and before he put it into print.

On one occasion he gave me an answer but I had to swear never to reveal it until after his death. On other occasions he was quaking with fear and told me, "For God's sake, forget I ever told you that or it's curtains for me!" Many of us who have researched Ohrdruf and Rudisleben in the past have been threatened with death by this same mysterious authority if I were to be incautious enought to reveal certain facts, and so we tend to be cautious.

If we think of the U 530 crew in that light, the pressure not to speak out comes from the German system of military post-discharge discipline - and never has a single crewman written an article, never has Otto Wermuth written a book, about the last U 530 voyage. You may not find that strange but surely it is. Something about that voyage must never be spoken of. If one brings all the strands together from the US Report it is possible to see what is omitted about the voyage in the final fortnight of the war. This is what is to be hushed up. If you want me to explain further I would ask you to come though to me by PM.

I am grateful for your useful input.

********************************************************************************************************************************************

The following article appeared in the Argentine newspaper "La Nación" on Sunday 23 March 2008 and can be read in the original Spanish at:

http://www.histarmar.com.ar/
InfHistorica/BusquedaUboats/10-LaNacion-Yofuitesti...

"I WAS A WITNESS"

On 10 July 1945 the town of Mar del Plata came alive following the surrender there of the German submarine U 530. The then Coronel Rómulo H Bustos commanded an AA battery on the coast. In this report, the retired officer related to reporter LNR certain curious episodes prior to the submarine's arrival, and details of the boat and crew.

Coronel (retired) Rómulo Horacio Bustos (born Buenos Aires 15 November 1921) is in every respect a very interesting subject. A small man sporting a carefully trimmed white beard, he is always an impassioned speaker. After a long period of service in military intelligence, he has just finished his as yet unpublished memoirs under the title "Un Perón poco conocido" (The Unknown Perón"). As an artillery officer he was stationed at Mar del Plata during the southern winter of 1945, when the German submarines U 530 and U 977 arrived there mysteriously to suurender two months after the European War had finished.

"That winter in Mar del Plata", Bustos began, "I experienced a couple of episodes rather more than suggestive. At the time I was the commander of an AA battery in the Camet Park area (along the coast north of the town). One afternoon in the first half of June 1945 all battery commanders were summoned to see the Commanding Officer, Coronel-Tte Pedro Lagrenade. He had just received a coded signal from Army C-in-C ordering him to cover a large section of coast between the port of Mar del Plata and Mar Chiquita lagoon. We were to take live ammunition, our purpose being to resist possible landings from German U-boats.

My battery had to defend the outer flank of the lagoon. We had nine light Oerlikons on a cliff, all loaded and ready to fire. One particular night was very dark, rainy and windy. Just after midnight I noticed light signals being flashed at short intervals from the sea to the adjacent sector of coast. When they were repeated, I informed my Commanding Officer immediately. When Coronel-Tte Legrenade arrived at my position I pointed to where the signals had originated, but by then they had stopped."

Bustos went on to say that when his Commanding Officer was about to drive away from the position, the signalling resumed. "Lagrenade ordered the force in the adjacent sector to close up with us and if there were landings we were to take the greatest possible number of prisoners. After 0100 however the light signals were repeated less often and then ceased, probably because the adverse climatic conditions (rough sea and strong crosswinds) would have made landings in rubber dinghies hazardous, or because the crew of the mysterious vessel had been warned from shore that a military force was waiting for them on the coast".

Bustos stated that the signalling did not resume on subsequent nights and the batteries were gradually reduced in number. He confirmed that a report on the incident was classified top secret and sent to the Army C-in-C.


A CAVE WITH SURPRISES

Bustos recalled a second strange episode he witnessed which occurred at the end of June 1945, probably about ten days after the previous incident. "This time it happened on a warm, sunny morning. I had taken my unit to the beach for shooting practice with blanks. The beach (only ten metres wide in that sector) was backed by a 25-metre high rocky cliff. We had to dismantle our weapons and lower the parts by rope. Then we put them together again and had our practice. At the end of the exercise the company ate and then rested. At this point one of the men discovered a cave about 3 metres deep into the cliff face. Inside it we saw that about 10 to 20 cms above the high water mark somebody had set up three wooden planks around the edges. Piled on these planks were dozens of tins about the size of modern beer cans, lacking any identification marks except for a single impressed letter.

The first can we opened contained black bread which appeared recently baked and another had bars of chocolate. I assumed the others would have drinks and other foodstuffs. Obviously I connected this find with the strange nocturnal light signals a few days before (which had occurred in this same sector). I had no doubt that this place was a support point, either to reprovision German submarines passing through the zone or to provide refreshment to clandestine passengers being disembarked here.

When we informed the Commanding Officer of this unexpected find, he had photos taken from different angles inside and in front of the cave, removed all the cans and planks and drew up a detailed report based on the information supplied by myself and my officers. Everything was then gathered up and sent by Coronel-Tte Legrenade the same day to Army C-in-C. I do not know what happened to it all subsequently but I consider it conclusive proof that there were clandestine disembarkations along our Atlantic sea coast. A number of my men drew my attention to the fact that none of the foregoing was ever reported in the local Press."

Bustos' suspicions grew when U 530 and U 977 arrived at Mar del Plata to surrender in July and August 1945 respectively.
"The day prior to the arrival of U 530, a public holiday, my battery took part in the military parade along the Avenida Colón. It was cold but sunny. Next day the town was agog over the arrival and surrender of U 530. This was news of national and international importance, and unlike the earlier facts to which I was a witness could not be suppressed.

"U 530 was commanded by Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth. The naval authorities mentioned their surprise that the deck gun and two large calibre machine guns had been unshipped at sea. Once I was able to visit the boat three days after its arrival two things struck me: first, the nauseating stench in its interior (despite having been aired ever since its arrival), the result of overcrowding and prolonged navigation submerged. Secondly, the presence in its interior of cans identical to those we found in the cave on the beach.

"The crew of the boat were surprisingly young (between 18 and 20 years of age) and all looked exhausted and malnourished. Their beards were long and their hair unkempt. Immediately after coming ashore at the naval base they were given oranges and all kinds of citrus fruits to combat scurvy. The interior of the submarine was very narrow and we had to walk through it stooped, which was unpleasant. The captain's compartment was tiny and austere. We saw no Nazi symbols or bulkhead decorations inside the submarine. The crew slept in hammocks.

"I was able to talk with the submarine's commander, Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth, who spoke good French and English. He told me he had received Admiral Dönitz' last order to surrender to the Allies when he was close to the north-east tip of Brazil. He added that he had not wanted to surrender to the Uruguayans since "they would have burnt us in the market square". Wermuth was lodged with his officers in the coastguard vessel "General Belgrano", and the rest of his crew in tents on a football field where on medical instructions they were served at regular times with boiled potatoes and lemons.

"I recall that the German commander seemed very young and pleasant. He was only 26 and had a long and dangerous Atlantic crossing behind him. His sufferings had not erased the boyish look from his features. He had started growing a blond beard on his chin and had a fine elongated blond moustache which reminded me of Jesus (Even today the popular Argentine image of Jesus always shows him as a tall, blue-eyed man with a blond beard and moustache. Ohrdr.) Wermuth had an evident affection for us, besides his gratitude for the good treatment which the Argentine military had given him and his crew. He did not appear to me to be especially fanatical or Nazi. He just said how much he missed his family."

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#6

Post by ohrdruf » 20 Sep 2009, 17:51

LWD

The answer to your question is that the US Report is the report of what was said at the Argentine Navy interrogation. US and British intelligence officers did not attend the Argentine interrogations because it was felt that their presence might intimidate those under interrogation. This fact is stated on the first page of the US Report.

The Argentine Report, parts of which I have seen, is the original, and the Americans merely took copies. That is why I say that whenever the US Report and the Argentine Report differ, the US Report must be the one in error.

******************************************************************************************************************************************

I should like to make a final observation regarding U 530. The US Report is a classic example of how history is manufactured by authors suppressing material facts. In this case it is not merely the US which is reponsible, for it was originally an Argentine Report.

Here is the principal reason for this statement. The switch of commanders was merely the end result of events occurring during the final part of the patrol. Wermuth-1 needed to inform his superiors of these events. Following the capitulation, his superiors had relocated to Argentina. Probably he took the war diary and nautical logs with him to show them and did not ditch these books as he alleged.

It should not be overlooked that U 530 appeared to have survived some terrible calamity when it docked at Mar del Plata. Most of the equipment and armament had been jettisoned together with virtually all the documentation and crew ID's. The conning tower was splitting as the result of some powerful corrosive. The casing appeared to have been the seat of a great conflagration.

What is even more impressive is what we now understand about the crew.

(1) According to the US Report, U 530 sailed from Horten, Norway, on or about 6 March 1945 and arrived at Mar del Plata on 10 July 1945. That is a period of four months four days at sea. Before leaving Germany, U 530 loaded one week's supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, and sixteen weeks' supply of special submarine foodstuffs. That should have been enough to get the crew to Mar del Plata. Nothing further appears in the report about the provisions.

(2) Following the arrival of U 530 at Mar del Plata, the base commander Mallea and his adjutant Azcueta made statements at a Press conference. Although the German submarine had hardly any fuel left, it still had a large store of provisions aboard, and the quantity could not be accounted for. For this reason it has always been assumed that U 530 must have reprovisioned from another boat at sea.

(3) From Coronel Bustos' article we find that the crew was not only haggard and malnourished, but incredibly was actually suffering the early stages of scurvy. How can it be reconciled that a German U-boat of the Second World War, its food lockers half full of good quality provisions, had a scurvy crew only four months out of port? Now we must assume that U 530 was not reprovisioned, but for some reason the crew was not eating, or something was either affecting them physically so that their bodies were not able to convert Vitamin C, or was causing vitamin deficiency. In this regard Colonel Bustos' statement that a "nauseating stench" still pervaded the boat after it had been aired for three days is very interesting. Perhaps there was a connection between these factors.

When the calamitous state of the boat and crew are taken into account, together with the commander's urgent need to go ashore to report on what had transpired during the latter stages of the voyage, and we remember that U 530 had a special mission in the waters near New York, for which Wermuth received his orders directly from Kriegsmarine HQ in Berlin, we have to suspect that a great deal more was edited out of the Argentine/US Report than has been suspected hitherto.

This seems to be a most fascinating story, but confronted with the reluctance of the various participants to come forward and relate it we shall almost certainly never know much more.

***********************************************************************************************************************************************

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#7

Post by Sid Guttridge » 21 Sep 2009, 13:08

Hi Ohdruf,

I think your "blond/dark" line of approach is entirely without substance.

If you look at photos of Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed by some "The Blond Beast", he appears brunette. The standard photo of Wermuth shows the same. Monochrome photos have this effect.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#8

Post by LWD » 21 Sep 2009, 13:13

ohrdruf wrote:...The Argentine Report, parts of which I have seen, is the original, and the Americans merely took copies. That is why I say that whenever the US Report and the Argentine Report differ, the US Report must be the one in error.
I will agree given the above that that is the most likely answer. But not however an absolute.
I should like to make a final observation regarding U 530. The US Report is a classic example of how history is manufactured by authors suppressing material facts....
You have steadfastly maintained this. What you have not done is proved it. Indeed the proof seems to favor the othersided by a considerable margin.

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#9

Post by ohrdruf » 22 Sep 2009, 16:02

GUTTERIDGE

Nice try, but not the Argentine Federal Police monochrome photo. The mugshot is attached to an temporary ID document dated 12 July 1945 and states that the hair colour of Otto Wermuth is "castaño" which is "chestnut brown" and not blond. The word for blond is "rubio". In 1945 there were 250,000 pure blood Germans living in Argentina, and the Argentine police know a German blond from a German "brunette", even a peroxide one.

When you obtain the two photos of Wermuth-1 and Wermuth-2 for comparison, come back to me with magnifying glass and measuring instrument and I will tell you how to identify the differences in the facial structure.


LWD

The statement "The US Report is a classic example of how history is manufactured by the authors suppressing material facts" has to be read in conjunction with the statement that the US Report is based on the original Argentine Report.

The Argentines were initially the guilty party since the US Report was merely reporting what the Argentines had said UNTIL the US Report added a footnote. Once you add a footnote to a copy to clarify what you know and what has been omitted, honesty obliges you to add footnotes about each and every discrepancy of which you are aware. Since the Americans did not do this, they aided and abetted all the deceptions included in the Argentine Report which they knew about, and were dishonest.

All nations participating in the Second World War and subsequently have been dishonest in this respect: What pro-Allied supporters such as yourself have to admit to yourselves is the truth of that statement and not take it personally.

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#10

Post by Sid Guttridge » 22 Sep 2009, 17:25

Hi Ohdruf,

I would suggest that "castaño", or chestnut, might also reasonably describe the usual photo of Wermuth:

http://www.uboat.net/men/commanders/1337.html

Besides, hair tends to get blonder with prolonged exposure to the sun. Wermuth had just spent months underwater or surfaced at night. His hair had probably never been darker.

Here is the Argentine photo of him you refer to:

http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-530.htm

It looks much like the same man to me.

I would suggest that this whole line of approach is of little or no evidential value because shade of hair changes in different environmental conditions and description of hair colour is subjective.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#11

Post by tommy303 » 22 Sep 2009, 20:34

Also, the use of pomades or hair dressings for men in those days would make the hair look darker in most any photograph, and it was much more common then than it is today. If one looks at Ernst Lindemann of Bismarck, his hair looks very dark in most photos, yet he is described as blonde with his hair sleeked back.

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#12

Post by LWD » 23 Sep 2009, 13:23

ohrdruf wrote: .... Once you add a footnote to a copy to clarify what you know and what has been omitted, honesty obliges you to add footnotes about each and every discrepancy of which you are aware. ....
Does it? Should we hold your posts to the same standard?

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#13

Post by Atrevida » 30 Sep 2014, 20:32

Atrevida ex-Ohrdruf writes: I am now in possession of the Übergebungsakte signed by "Otto Wermuth" surrendering U 530 at Mar del Plata on 10 July 1945 and will be in possession of Otto Wermuth's true signature from another source for the comparison within a few days.

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#14

Post by EricOosterbeek » 21 Jan 2016, 06:58

I have a simple question. What happened with Otto till the day he died? Google doesn't tell me much.
Did he spent time in jail? If yes, where and how long?
Where did he go when he he was released?
The finger print file number is very easy recognizable. Was it to tell guards it was a special prisoner?

That raises the question of what happened to the rest of the crew.

But, can anyone tell me what happened to Otto?

Thanks,
Eric

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Re: US Nat Archive Releases U 530 Report

#15

Post by Sid Guttridge » 26 Jan 2016, 13:12

Hi Ereic,

From memory, I think the two U-boat crews were repatriated with the Graf Spee crewmen aboard a British Royal Mail Lines passenger ship, possibly the Highland Monarch, in early 1946.

Cheers,

Sid.

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