U boat supply base? German Built?

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Joeyboots
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U boat supply base? German Built?

#1

Post by Joeyboots » 07 Apr 2015, 02:19

Can anyone advise if U Boat supply bases were built on Carribean Islands? If so were they solid structures bunker like? I would like to put a photo here but haven't figured out how to post it yet.

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Polar bear
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Re: U boat supply base? German Built?

#2

Post by Polar bear » 15 Apr 2015, 22:21

hi,

U-boat supply bases in the Carib are as plausible as that in the Antarctic.

AFAIK the only u-boat supply bases outside of German-occupied territory were several ships in different ports of Spain and her isles.

greetings, the pb
Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War
(John Milton, the poet, in a letter to the Lord General Cromwell, May 1652)


steverodgers801
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Re: U boat supply base? German Built?

#3

Post by steverodgers801 » 16 Apr 2015, 07:19

Germany had no islands nor the means to build such a base once the war started. They converted other subs into supply vessels and the subs they had after the war started were able to get to the US and back

Atrevida
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Re: U boat supply base? German Built?

#4

Post by Atrevida » 23 Apr 2015, 20:52

The coast of Argentina was a haven for U-boats.

(1) In August 1942 a Brazilian Navy seaplane photographed the Argentine tanker "Santa Cruz" refuelling a U-boat between Santos and Montevideo. Source: Newton, Professor Ronald C: "Actividades Clandestinas de la Armada Alemana en Aguas Argentinas, official CEANA preliminary report, February 1998. footnote 26 (the report can be read in Spanish under this title on the Internet.)

(2) On a day in November 1942 at the main Argentine naval base of Bahìa Blanca, a German U-boat was seen moored in the Estuary of the Rio Colorado. The resident US observers could not determine why the U-boat was there, nor why the C-in-C, Paraguayan Air Force, Major Pablo Stagni (well entrenched in German Intelligence netrwork as "Hermann") was present. From other sources it is thought that this was a delivery of material for ongoing work in Paraguay. Source: Newton, footnote 27.

(3) On 19 February 1940, Dietrich Niebuhr, organizer of German naval intelligence in South America, sent an encoded message to Berlin via Transradio proposing the creation of a secret U-boat base in Patagonia. Source: Newton above. One of his trusted spies, "Robert" thought that a base could be easily disguised as a plant to process fish meal, blubber, oil and seal skins. He had a concession for such a plant. The E-dienst would invest half the capital and the local Germany community the other half. A good location was suggested as being Bahìa Vera at 44º15'S a place described as "off the beaten track and easy to conceal." Four Graf Spee stevedores were found work in the area in 1941. Naval Command in Berlin allegedly rejected the idea because it was too close to the town of Astra where there was a petroleum company employing 500 local Germans and operating a fleet of tankers.

(4) During his research in the region a respected Argentine author, Camarasa, was provided with a report by Chilean Professor Renè Cardenas of the University of Magallanes for the information of Horacio Lafuente reagrding several small German naval bases in and near the archipelago. Oscar Zanola, historian and director of the Museo del Fin del Mundo, Ushaia, told author Camarasa that in Tierra del Fuego on the Argentine side there were two German bases in Thetis Bay in the extreme east and Aguirre Bay in the south. From early in 1940 a company processing sealion fat, Sadiscafe, produced grease which the Germans apparently needed for their heavy machinery. Based on testimony by former workers, German U-boats would call in occasionally to load drums of sealion fat and of course also refuel. It would not have been a breach of Argentine neutrality for an Argentine company to supply U-boats with sealion fat and fuel if the U-boats were being used as transports in the way suggested.
The whole point of the operation might have been to quietly refuel U-boats, possibly the result of Niebuhr's suggestion in 1940.
Source: Camarasa, Jorge: Puerto Seguro, Ed.Norma, Buenos Aires 2006

And there is plenty more information of this kind available. There are two other locations, at Villa Gesell and Golfo Nuevo, where physical evidence and Argentine Fleet reports indicate the presence of a U-boat base. It is by no means excluded moreover, that several Type II small U-boats might have been based on the Argentine coast throughout the war for transport and espionage purposes

Atrevida
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Re: U boat supply base? German Built?

#5

Post by Atrevida » 24 Apr 2015, 18:22

CONTINUING EARLIER INFORMATION:

GOLFO NUEVO

In May 1941 an informer, "a customarily reliable source", told the US Embassy at Santiago de Chile of two German U-boat supply points on the Valdez Peninsula between Lobería on the isthmus between Golfo Nuevo and Golfo San José, and the other at Punta Delgado just outside Golfo Nuevo. Source: Newton, op cit.

On 7 March 1942, the commander, 3rd Destroyer Division, Argentine Navy, informed his Destroyer Squadron commander that three of his torpedo boats had detected by hydrophone and surface disturbance a submerged submarine at the entrance to Golfo Nuevo: "Have seen wake and ripples on surface, my hydrophones detected a submerged vessel on port beam 2000 metres, position 42°55' 64°01'W".

On 25 March 1942 Admiral Sueyro reported to the Argentine NavSec Fincati: "It is not the first time that reports of this nature have ben received by the C-in-C, all in the same zone, but over an extended period of time. In some cases the information has originated from senior commanders who had no doubt they had seen a periscope at 500 metres".

Source: Camarasa (op cit). (These supply points were never identified, but this is an uninhabited coast and it would not have been difficult to conceal a small supply point along the shoreline either inside or outside Golfo Nuevo. Once inside Golfo Nuevo it would have been difficult to detect an intruder submarine by reason of the water layers similar to those near Gibraltar.)


VILLA GESELL

In 1931, Carlos Gesell a German engineer acquired a large parcel of land for beach development on the coast of Buenos Aires province. After the war, the FBI kept a close watch on Villa Gesell in the search for Hitler, and in company with provincial police seized a short wave transmitter and receivers there.

There is no doubt that Villa Gesell was equipped to refuel and repair U-boats and assist in disembarkations. At the end of the 1960s when the village was being developed into a major holiday resort, construction work at the beach below Avda Buenos Aires uncovered a railway track leading up from the sea into the sand dunes near the house of Carlos Gesell (nowadays the local history museum).

According to architect Jorge Castro, a German mechanic who specialized in diesel engines used to live at the upper end of this railway track. Castro thought that the remains discovered would amount to a kind of dry-dock.

In his unpublished manuscript "The Treasure of the Third Reich in Argentina", journalist Martin Malharro stated that "...at the end of the 1960s when the location started to grow into one of Argetnina's most popular holiday resorts, they shifted the coastal sand dunes and found a bunker with lubricant and submarine parts." (Source: Camarasa, op cit, p.164).

This repair shed would have housed one Type II U-boat at a time. As this writer mentioned above, it is thought likely that several small U-boats worked the Argentine coast throughout the war as transports and for espionage purposes.

A supply point close to Mar del Plata was reported by a shore artillery officer in July 1945 in a long article published in Argentine newspapers (see Internet) by Colonel Bustos under the title "Yo fuí téstigo" in which he related discovering a small cave packed with provisions and noticed light signals coming from the sea.

END OF POSTING

steverodgers801
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Re: U boat supply base? German Built?

#6

Post by steverodgers801 » 24 Apr 2015, 20:30

I also said once the war started. Even if the bases had been operational it would have been difficult to supply the base with parts and fuel and keep them from allied eyes.

Carl Schwamberger
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Re: U boat supply base? German Built?

#7

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 25 Apr 2015, 11:51

Dont remember anything about submarine bases in or near the Carrabean. Nothing from the usual literature on the naval war, or the German submarine campaign. Have run across someremarks about the US Navy sending officers undercover into Latin America to gather information on German activities, but those do not say what the activities were.

The British were suspicious of submarine refueling in the Spanish islands in the Atlantic. The USN intellegence dept developed similar suspicions. I dont know if there is any collaborateion from German records. That is submarine log books recording supply stops at these islands. Or maybe radio messages directing them to those.

There were a handful of Allied cargo ships sunk by submarines at or near Cape Horn. Either a supply freighter or milk cow type sub was sent to the region. So it is not inconceivable resupply of one or more was accomplished in Argentina. I'd have to check the books on how many cargo ships were sunk in the south Atlantic, but the number seems too small to justify much effort at base establishment.

Atrevida
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Re: U boat supply base? German Built?

#8

Post by Atrevida » 25 Apr 2015, 16:36

There seems to be no doubt that U-boats refuelled for some time from the tanker "Charlotte Schliemann" at Gran Canary Island. There was also alleged to be a supply point at the south end of Fuerteventura.
From the book by U-boat commander Axel Löwe, (I think the title was "The Laughing Cow"), U 69 spent time in the Portuguese island group between the Canaries and Madeira. The only mention of a "bunker" outside of Europe I have ever seen was the one at Villa Gesell. However, in conversation with the son of an Argentine Navy engineer, he reported his father as describing how U-boats used the underground pen at Rio Santiago naval based near La Plata to repaint or repair. This dries at low tide. All I have for it, however, is what the son says.

The German naval policy was to report shipping movements but not attack within the 300-mile exclusion zone from the coast. This ban was enforced after the furore in 1940 when an Allied ship was blown up actually in Buenos Aires harbour.

Edward L. Hsiao
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Re: U boat supply base? German Built?

#9

Post by Edward L. Hsiao » 21 Mar 2016, 11:13

Dear Sir,

This is getting to be pretty interesting indeed! I know there were plenty of reports of U-Boat sightings off the coasts of South America after World War II was over. I know about Fuerteventura which was supposed to have a secret U-boat base.

Sincerely,

Edward L. Hsiao

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