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Originally Posted by gandalf71
Lemp seems to be one of the tragic persons of the u-boat war, there are many rumours around his death. Most likely he drowned in the attempt to get aboard his boat again, when he realised that it wouldn´t sink fast enough. Another theory says that he was shot in the water by the boarding crew, to prevent him from going back onboard.
In an interview with a former crew member it became clear that Lemp´s first priority was to get his crew out of the sub safely when it was doomed. Basically I think he was a good sub commander and in one row with Prien, Scheppke, Kretschmer or Lehmann-Willenbrock in terms of success in the early war. In that interview it became also obvious that he was personally suffering from the "Athenia incident", which was kept absolutely secret by the high command. Dönitz even ordered to write a revised version of the boats wardiary (KTB). He made himself responsible not only for killing civilians, but also for causing a major international crisis which made Great Britain even more consequent in their deny to negotiate a possible armistice with Germany.
We will never know exactly.
Cheers,
Michael
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You can find an excerpt of this interview in a german TV documentation about the u-boat war, it is in german language, the story of the end of U-110 starts around 3:10:
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Michael
Edit: Infact this documentation was made for Discovery Channel, so an english version should exist somewhere.