U-864: Hitler's Last Deadly Secret

[tenakha]

If someone is interested, tonight on french television (France 3)
http://www.toutelatele.com/breve.php3?id_breve=7377

Le 9 février 1945, pour la seule et unique fois dans l'histoire de la marine, un sous-marin, le HMS Venturer, battant pavillon britannique, parvient au terme d'une chasse de plusieurs jours à couler un autre sous-marin, allemand - le U864, au large des îles Fedje en mer du Nord, et alors que les deux étaient en immersion.

73 marins périrent, parmi eux : des scientifiques allemands et japonais. Le sous-marin U864 était en effet l'une des pièces maîtresse de l'opération César montée par les Allemands pour transmettre à leurs alliés japonais les moyens de développer à leur tour des armes de haute technologie. Le sous-marin U864 transportait les plans du premier avion à réaction jamais conçu, le Messerchmitt - Me 262, ainsi que 65 tonnes de mercure.

La chasse avait commencé alors que les services de renseignement avaient réussi à casser les codes donnant accès aux informations sur cette opération. Le sous-marin U864 venait alors de quitter le port de Bergen, via le canal de Kiel, juste après le bombardement massif par les alliés.

Le film raconte l'histoire de cette chasse incroyable, alternant témoignages émouvants des survivants et des proches de ceux qui ont péri, et reconstitutions minutieuses des événements clés de cette histoire.

Deep in the icy waters off Norway, there lies one of the last great secrets of the Second World War. In February 1945, the German submarine U-864 disappeared without trace during the course of a clandestine journey to Japan. The passengers included eighteen of the Reich’s leading aeronautical scientists and two of Japan’s most renowned aerodynamics experts.

The craft also contained stacks of blueprints for the Me 262 fighter jet, as well as newly designed Messerschmitt jet engine parts and missile guidance systems. Had this deadly cargo arrived at its destination, revolutionary Nazi jet technology could have affected the course of the Second World War, possibly tipping the balance in favour of the Japanese Air Force in its struggle against the US Navy.

Sixty years later, following a chance discovery by local fishermen, we follow a Norvegian salvage team as its intrepid members prepare to recover U-864. The wreck is an ecological time bomb. According to German records, the submarine also carried eighty tons of highly toxic mercury. At any time, its deadly load could leak from the sunken vessel’s eroded hull, precipitating a major environmental disaster in the North Sea.

As we share the team’s hazardous underwater quest, we reconstruct the German submarine’s ill-fated last journey. Long forgotten German and British naval documents, as well as interviews with surviving witnesses and protagonists, reveal that U-864 was sunk during one of the most dramatic naval engagements of the Second World War - the first battle ever to have been fought entirely under water.

On 7th February 7 1945, U-864 left its Norwegian home port of Bergen for Japan. Its commander, Rolf-Reimer Wolfram, had decided to travel entirely under water in order to avoid detection by the Allies’ seamless aerial reconnaissance network. However, one of the Royal Navy’s most advanced submarines, the Venturer, already lay in wait. British code breakers had deciphered a message from Berlin to Tokyo, announcing the submarine’s imminent journey to the Far East.

The Venturer’s task of finding a submerged German submarine somewhere in the dark and wintry North Sea was always going to be a difficult one. On 9th February, Captain Launders detected an object 4600 meters ahead. Thus began one of the most dramatic chases in the history of naval warfare.

We use interviews, contemporary quotes, archive film and state of the art dramatic reconstructions to relive the gripping three and a half-hour chase. Location photography and extensive expert analysis complete this amazing examination of Hitler’s deadly last secret.