Quote:
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Originally Posted by DGJ
Here
http://www.uboat.net/men/crew/commander.htm (bottom of page)
is a link to the last(highest) rank of all uboat commanders. Six commanders never reached higher than leutnant zS so those did obviously start out their command as leutnants. 625 commanders never made it past oberleutnant zS. Probably some of those 625 started their uboat commanding as leutnants too.
But I agree with your point that if you start early in the war you should start with higher rank than Leutnant z.S. |
I suppose these 6 Leutnants started their career in '44 or '45 and the 625 Oberleutnants got their command upon reaching the rank of Oberleutnant (probably around late '42/ beginning of '43).
Here's a quote from
http://www.uboat.net/men/crew/commander.htm :
The age of U-boat commanders
During the first years of the war there was a strict rule, that a commander had to be at least 25 years old. That's why "Teddy" Suhren, then already a
Knights Cross holder, had to wait in a training unit for a few months until he became 25-year old. Later in the war this limit was lifted and Leutnant zur See Ludwig-Ferdinand von Friedeburg became the youngest combat U-boat commander. He took over the command of
U-155 on 15 August 1944. He was then 20 years and 3 months old. There were 3 others Leutnants who took over a boat while only 20 years old; Hans-Eckart Augustin (
U-62), Gerhard Ady (
U-704) and Hans-Joachim Dierks (
U-14). They all commanded training U-boats only.
The oldest Commander was Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm Kiesewetter. He took over the command of the training boat
UC 1 on 20 November, 1940. He was at that time 62 years old! In WWI Wilhelm Kiesewetter was Commander of SM UC-56.
The oldest Commander on patrol was Korvettenkapitän Georg von Willamowitz- Moellendorf, the well known commander of
U-459, one of the
Milk-Cows. He died in 1943 at the age of 49 years.
The usual limit for combat-commanders was
40 years.