A Linse unit before an operation.
Earlier, on 15 November 1944, MEKs 60 and 65 had launched an
attack on the Moerdijk Bridge between Dordrecht and Breda. Nothing is known
regarding this operation or its outcome. Otto Skorzeny5 described another
frogman operation on the Rhine which did not proceed beyond the planning stage:
After the Invasion succeeded, the concern was expressed at
the highest levels of Government that the Allies despised Switzerland’s
neutrality and might invade Germany from Swiss territory. This idea emerged
when the German western front came to a standstill in September 1944. At that
time the front ran more or less along the Reich border. On orders from Führer
HQ I had to begin preparations for such a contingency within a few days. My
frogmen were to be held at readiness on the Upper Rhine in order to destroy the
Rhine bridges at Basle the moment Allied troops set foot in Switzerland. This
purely defensive measure would help the German leadership gain time to erect a
front line opposite Switzerland and parry a future attack from this neutral
territory. It was a region which had never been occupied heavily by German
troops. A few weeks later the whole scheme was cancelled and the men recalled
when it became clear that under no circumstances would the Allies embark on the
feared adventure through Switzerland.
On the night of 12 January 1945, MEK 60 put 240 mines into
the water at Emmerich, it being hoped that these would do the trick and destroy
the bridges at Nijmegen. The mines were to be towed by 17 Biber midget
submarines, the periscopes of which would be camoufaged as drifting
moorhen-nests. Each Biber had to tow 272 kgs of explosives which would be cast
off below the bridges. The mines were fitted with light-sensitive cells and as
soon as the charges were overshadowed by the bridge, the change of light
intensity would set off the detonators. The operation was planned by KptzS
Troschke. Herr Bartels, master of the ferry Lena, which shuttled between
Emmerich and Warbeyer, towed the Biber out of the harbour every day for their
practice runs.
Kptlt Noack, a senior midshipman, a leading seaman and
Obergefreiter Josef van Heek sailed the first mission each submerged with eight
mines in tow. They failed to reach the bridges. Next evening, Noack, again
leading a team of four Biber, made a second unsuccessful attempt. On the third
occasion eight Biber got to within a kilometre of the nearest Nijmegen bridge
but tangled in the net barriers. Seven Biber stuck fast on the river bed, two
of the boats had to be destroyed. Eight of the pilots in the operations froze
to death in the ice-cold water. The road bridges at Nijmegen remained standing
to the end.
In March 1945 the situation in the West was unpredictable
because the front was so fluid. On 9 March K-Verband Command informed OKW that
for the purpose of defending the Rhine crossings in the Wesel-Arnhem area, two
Linse-groups with 24 remote-controlled boats and 100 spherical drifting mines
together with an MEK of 80 men was at readiness to destroy the Rhine bridge pillars
at Lohmannsheide. For the railway bridge at Remagen, 11 frogmen with 700 kg
mines were at their disposal. The Command itself had been hit by
fighter-bombers but was still operational. Around 17 March, Lt Wirth’s squad of
frogmen, who had made their way from Venice with two or three Italian
remote-controlled SSB torpedoes, arrived.
Lt Schreiber led the operation, seven frogmen took part. The
swimmers had to cover almost 17 kilometres of the Rhine in a temperature of
only 7°C. They succeeded in damaging the Ludendorff Bridge so severely that it
remained impassable for some time. The operation claimed four dead, two of whom
died from hypothermia, and the others were made prisoner. Otto Skorzeny wrote:6
On 7 March 1945 a catastrophe occurred on the Western Front.
The bridge over the Rhine at Remagen fell intact into the hands of the
Americans. One evening I was ordered to Führer HQ at the Reich Chancellery.
Generaloberst Jodl gave me orders to send my frogmen to destroy the Rhine
bridge at Remagen immediately … the water temperature of the Rhine at this time
was only 6 to 8°C and the American bridgehead already extended almost 10
kilometres upstream. I therefore stated that I saw only a small chance of
success. I would bring my best men to the locality and leave it to them to
decide if we should take the risk. Untersturmführer Schreiber was leader of
Jagdkommando Donau. He decided to go ahead with this almost hopeless endeavour.
It was a few days before we brought the essential torpedo mines from the North Sea
coast to the Rhine … when everything was ready, the bridgehead upstream was
already 16 kilometres broad. The men swam off into the night: many of them went
shivering with the cold. The Americans raked the water surface with
searchlights. Soon the group came under fire from the river banks, and some
were wounded. The disappointment of the frogmen must have been enormous when,
not far short of the objective, they came up to several pontoon bridges which
the US Army had erected. Despite that they brought up the explosive charges.
Whether despite the cold they were still able to move their fingers only the
survivors know, and they are not talking. Half-dead they hauled themselves to
the river bank – and into captivity.
On 11 March 1945 FKpt Bartels took over command at Lower
Rhine HQ Lederstrumpf. A second unit under Kptlt Uhde code-named Panther was
responsible for the Rhine-Moselle triangle. Oblt Dörpinghaus’ unit received the
codename Puma. To destroy the Rhine crossings in the Sauerland an additional frogman
platoon (one officer, 15 men) and three Linsen groups from K-Flotilla 218 with
36 boats had been made available.
On 26 March 1945 Army Group H reported that K-operations had
no point having regard to the way in which the situation was developing in the
West. Sonderkommando Puma was transferred to Aschaffenburg: Dönitz agreed that
K-Flotilla 218 should be moved from Lederstrumpf to reinforce the defence of
the River Ems as far as Groningen. At the request of 12 Army, on 20 April 1945
two Lederstrumpf groups were transferred to Magdeburg. The frogmen were to
operate against the Elbe bridges at Barby using drifting mines and special
explosives. Nothing further is known.
With regard to MEK 40 which operated in the West, the only
information available is as follows: MEK 40 was 150-strong, trained at
Gelbkoppel and had been formed for a special assignment at Mommark on the
Danish island of Alsen. From August 1944 to March 1945 it was led by Kptlt
Buschkäumper, and from then until the war’s end by Oblt Schulz. At the
beginning of November 1944, MEK 40 was in the Scheldt area. From 8 to 12
December it perfomed espionage missions and during reconnaissance on the
Drimmen peninsula, Holland Diep, north of Breda, took out a sentry and
machine-gun nest. On the night of 22 January 1945, MEK 40 worked with Army
units. With artillery support its saboteurs blew up a water tower and brought
in prisoners after an operation at Anna Jakoba Polder east of Schouwen Island.
Operations in Hungary
By the end of 1944, Soviet troops in Hungary had reached the
Danube. To prevent them crossing the river, Army Group South requested
K-Verband for their support to destroy important bridges. As a result, the
Kriegsmarine ordered K-Einsatzstab Adria to prepare the necessary explosive
materials, and to plan and execute the operation. They were also to investigate
the possibilities of operations by MEKs in the Apatin-Batina region.
On 1 December 1944, 1 and 3 Groups, MEK 71, reported to Army
Group South in Hungary. At Paks, about 100 kilometres south of Buda, the MEK
made its first reconnaissance sorties and set mines adrift in the Danube. On 2
December the Army Group made an urgent request for an operational unit with
twelve Linsen. They were to go immediately to Gran on the Danube and report to
Brükostaffelstab 939. The military situtation in that area then changed
unfavourably with such abruptness that the Wehrmacht plan to operate the unit
was cancelled.
Separate from these developments, on 10 December 1944
Sonderkommando Glatze led by Kptlt Friedrich Benthin, a Linse group for use on
Lake Balaton, was set up. An Oblt commanded the Group, Lt Gerhard Weidlich
commanded the remote-control team. The title of the operation is not known.
Commando operations were given cover-names which – for security reasons – were
often changed in the preparation phase. As a rule in the MEKs they were never
written down and were known only to those immediately involved. Sonderkommando
Glatze was ready to leave from Plön on 15 December 1944.
On 12 December Einsatzstab Haun informed SKL that the Army
would welcome a Linse presence on Lake Balaton but only for its disruptive
effect: the boats would find no worthwhile targets for their explosive cargo
and were too light to mount artillery. Admiral Heye requested a decision from
the Commander-in-Chief as to whether he should send his valuable Linsen under
these circumstances. Dönitz decided in favour, but Lake Balaton then froze
over, and the operation was called off.
A report dated 20 January 1945 states that a group from
Sonderkommando Glatze was sent to Dunaföldvar, 100 kilometres south of
Budapest, to destroy a bridge in the sector controlled by 4 SS-Panzerkorps.
After the Army had demolished a bridge in the vicinity, the Russians had put up
an improvised crossing which was now required to be blown up by Linsen. What
came of this intention is not recorded.
In February 1944 a Linse group was sent to Zagreb in Croatia
to destroy a Soviet pontoon bridge about 30 to 40 kilometres south of the city.
The attempt failed because boats and crews were diverted for other purposes.
More successful was an operation in Hungary in which two Danube bridges were
blown at Budapest, while on 29 March 1945 the Wehrmacht communique reported the
sinking of four river-ships by Linsen at Neusatz on the Danube.
Operations in
Southern France, Italy and the Adriatic
In the sectors of Wehrmacht C-in-C South and Admiralty Staff
South the principal naval sabotage units operational were MEKs 20, 71 and 90.
These were directed by the operational staff of KptzS Werner Hartmann whose HQ
was at Levicio, about 100 kilometres north-west of Padua. On 7 October 1944 the
boundaries of jurisdiction and German Naval Command Italy were changed, and
KKpt Haun with Staff HQ at Opicina, a suburb of Trieste, became responsible for
K-Verband in the Adriatic.
Despite Italy’s capitulation in 1943, elements of the X-MAS
Flotilla fought on the German side to the war’s end. After Prince Borghese had
relinquished command of the Decima, in 1944 his flotilla splintered into several
independent groups, some of which sided with the partisans. K-Verband Command
brought those remaining loyal to Germany into a special fighting unit under its
K-Verband control. Because it had distinguished itself in anti-partisan
warfare, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler wanted to equip the unit with radio
and integrate it into the German network, but Naval Command Italy and Dönitz
were both opposed to the idea.
K-Verband units in the Adriatic operated mainly from Pola
against the British, New Zealanders and Tito-partisans occupying the Dalmatian
islands. These were almost exclusively sabotage raids, either made
independently or under the protection of German S-boats. About MEK 20, which
originated from the Abwehr, very little is known. In the summer of 1944 it was
at Cavallo in Italy, and in September at Sibenick and Split in Yugoslavia.
Subsequently it was withdrawn from the Dalmatian islands. MEK 90 under Kptlt
Jütz fought at Dubrovnic in Yugoslavia in September 1944 and escaped from the
encirclement of the city. On 27 October it arrived at Metkovic with four dead,
two wounded and no vehicles. Subsequently the unit left Trieste and made its
way back via Zagreb and Vienna to Lübeck Steinkoppel.
MEK 71 was en route from Germany to Italy when it received
orders to engage the Maquis in southern France. On 9–10 August 1944 MEK 71
captured two large French Resistance camps near Aix without loss to itself and
made safe large quantities of materials. The unit then proceeded as planned to
La Spezia, the most important naval base. After the Badoglio capitulation, the
Italian Navy had scuttled there the submarines UIT-15 (ex-Sparide), UIT-16
(ex-Murena), UIT-20 (ex-Grongo) and some Type CB midget submarines. MEK
considered that the boats could be raised and towed to Genoa. On 4 and 6
September all were destroyed in an RAF air raid. Whether CB midget submarines
were ever used by the German side is not known.
On 1 October, MEK 71 was ordered to transfer to the Adriatic
75 men with full equipment and five Linsen for operations against the Dalmatian
islands. Early in October 1944 groups of eight to ten men exercised at
Monfalcone in the Adriatic. On 20 October MEK 71 moved up to Trieste, and on 24
October the Abwehr’s 5 Marinekommando from Lehrkommando 700 frogman unit at Venice
arrived at Haun’s operations HQ Opicina to scout the islands of Clib, Silba and
Premnuda to prepare reports for possible MEK operations. Fishing boats and
canoes were to be used.
Leader of operations was Oblt Ross, the Group was headed by
Fieldwebel Mitschke. His first objectives were Komica Bay and Lissa on 17
October. A boat from 24 S-boat Flotilla was to carry the group from Pola to
Sibenik from where on the second night they would attack the harbour. The men
would enter in folding boats and attach explosives to destroyers, MTBs and
freighters. They were to be brought out by S-boats, if this was not possible
they were to paddle to Cape Plocca. The operation was called off because of
winter storm Bora.
On 27 October Oblt Wolter arrived at Trieste with MEK 71. On
the way he had tangled with partisans and had nine wounded plus two damaged
Linsen. A section of his force left at once for Lussin, and Group Mitschke came
under Wolter’s command. On 31 October Mitschke began scouting with a platoon of
five. On the night of 20 November at Sibenik he found no large ships or
military targets of importance. After blowing up the Gruzzo light tower he
returned to base.
On 9 January 1945 naval saboteurs of MEK 71 were taken by
S-boats to the Dalmatian and east Italian coast. At Zadar they sank two
freighters and on the Italian Adriatic coast demolished three bridges.7
At the beginning of December 1944 Kptlt Frenzel, a former
U-boat commander, was appointed head of MEK Adriatic. Group commander Oblt
Hering,8 a German born in Italy, had 48 men at his disposal. On the night of 16
December MEK men blew up a lighthouse and harbour installations on the island
of Metada. Between 8 and 10 January 1945 the men of Kommando Hering attacked
bridges and roads in the Tenna estuary area on the Italian coast south of
Ancona. S-33, S-58, S-60 and S-61 of 1 S-boat Division transported the men
there.
The first group, Lt Kruse and Bootsmaat Sterzer, went ashore
at Tenna from folding boats. They had orders to create havoc in the MTB base
and blow up the bridge at the entrance to the Fermo ammunition factory. The
other assault groups, each of four men, were to demolish the railway/road
bridge over the Tenna and so halt Allied shipping along the Adriatic coast.
The second group (Obermaat Gericke) reached the railway
bridge and goods yard at Porto San Elpidio. Oblt Hering and a midshipman,
Stille, set the charges inside a bridge room. At 0245 all men were aboard
S-boats for the return less two taken prisoner near Tolentino. Violent
explosions were heard from the bridges, and an ammunition train erupted.
In another attack, 18 paired charges caused nine explosions
on the base at Isto Island. Two tonnes of provisions were seized, a British
officer and 20 men occupying the island were taken off by British MGB. In
another raid at Zara, two coasters in the harbour were reported blown up. At
Ruc Como, about 40 kilometres north-east of Milan, Sonderkommando Zander under
Kptlt Nikolaus von Martiny was active, but active in what is unknown.
Operations on the
Eastern Front
From November 1944 when the Red Army was already in East
Prussia, naval sabotage units were used on the Eastern Front with increasing
frequency. The swift Soviet advance was aided by numerous bridges and other
facilities over and near inland waterways. These now became the target of
K-Verband saboteurs. The MEKs could not halt the Soviets, but they could at
least seriously disrupt their lines of supply. Frogmen and Linsen had been on
the Eastern Front previously, at the Baranov bridgehead, on the Peipus and in
the Baltic.
A few weeks before the capitulation, in March 1945 K-Verband
Command fitted out a schooner as a Q-ship for Russian submarines operating
between Windau and Memel and the tongue of land known as the Kurische Nehrung.
For this purpose the schooner had explosives aboard with which the attacks were
to be made. This interesting operation, Steinbock, was not proceeded with.
In early December 1944, Army Group A requested from SKL
naval K-forces to destroy the bridges over the Vistula. The major Soviet
breakout from the three Vistula bridgeheads was impending, speed was of the
essence. K-Verband Command formed six operational groups with a total of 84
Linsen for Operation Lucie, but on 17 December when the Vistula froze over in a
sudden cold snap, the planned operations became doubtful, and when the
thickness of the ice was found to have increased on the 21st of the month
Sondergruppe Lucie was stood down, the 84 Linsen were moved back to
Fedderwardsiel and then onwards to help out in the west.
On 12 March 1945 MEK 85, formed in January that year under
Oblt Wadenpfuhl with 90 men, was fully motorized and sent to Swinemünde to
operate in the lower reaches of the Oder and Oderhaff. Suitable craft such as
cutters, motor boats and canoes were pressed into service. In charge of the
operation was Kptlt Meissner.
Besides MEK 85, Sonderkommando Rübezahl and Kampfschwimmergruppe
Ost were stationed along the Oder. The latter frogman unit had been with
Lehrkommando 700 at Venice in the previous autumn and transferred to List on
Sylt, moving to the Eastern front in February 1945 via Berlin at the request of
the OKW and Reichsführer-SS. In February the 16-strong platoon led by Lt Fred
Keller transferred to the Oder river near Fürstenberg. In the first operation
on the 25th of the month the group towed two torpedo-mines to the Soviet supply
bridge for the Vogelsang bridgehead near the small village about two kilometres
north-east of modern Eisenhüttenstadt. The attempt failed because the strong
current forced the torpedoes against the river bank. On 13 March 1945 the
bridge was destroyed by two Linsen.
On 1 March 1945 Admiral Heye reported that explosive charges
placed around the pillars of the Oder bridge at Aurith had failed to detonate.
It was hoped that a back-up detonator on a 24-hour timer would work. The
frogman team returned. The same day the attempt to demolish an Oder bridge at
Küstrin also failed when the explosive charge, a so-called ‘tree trunk packet’
drifted away from the bridge and exploded at the bankside.9
On 5 March, OKW informed Admiral Heye that Hitler had given
Luftwaffe Oberstleutnant Baumbacher orders to lead the attack on all Soviet
crossing points over the Oder and Neisse rivers. All Wehrmacht arms of service
were to place at his disposal all appropriate means to execute his assignment.
It is assumed that he was to coordinate the Luftwaffe attacks.
On 7 March Sondergruppe Rübezahl attacked two Oder bridges.
The bridge at Kalenzig was destroyed over fifty metres of its length, the
ground supports and lower structure of the bridge at Rebus were ruined over
thirty metres of its length so that the bridge was rendered unusable.
On the night of 13 March Linsen attacked the Oder bridge at
Zellin. In order to cover the engine noise, four Ju 88s circled the operational
zone. The air reconnaissance photographs taken later that day showed that the
bridge had been demolished over 270 metres of its length. The Soviets then
rebuilt it, together with a pontoon bridge. On 16 April Luftwaffe suicide
pilots attacked the crossings at Zellin. Fähnrich Beichl dived his Fw 190
filled with high explosive and carrying a 500 kg bomb into the bridge and
destroyed it. The 40-strong Luftwaffe Sondergruppe destroyed in all seventeen
Oder bridges between 16 and 17 April 1945.10
In the latter part of April 1945 the Soviet armies broke out
of the Oder bridgeheads. On the evening of 24 April, Lt Keller reconnoitred the
small island of Dievenow near Wollin which was still in German hands. After
discussions with the island commandant the frogmen entered the water and
drifted with their torpedo mines to the bridge linking the island to the
Soviet-occupied mainland. Ashore they primed their charges. At 0417 hrs on 25
April 1945 the bridge was no more.
That same 24 April, Lt Albert Lindner (Lehrkommando 700 and
the Orne bridges attack) led his naval saboteurs and three frogmen to destroy the
pontoon bridges at Nipperwiese and Fiddichow. Two men were to blow up four
pontoons from under the bridge. For this purpose they were equipped with small
7.5 kg explosive packs called Sprengfische. They set out from the infantry
trenches at Oderdamm, southeast of Schwedt. The frogmen were discovered by a
sentry, a Russian grenade hit one of the Sprengfische which exploded at once
leaving several dead and wounded. The operation was repeated the following
evening and succeeded. At 0500 explosive charges ripped the pontoon bridge
apart, but the four frogmen involved finished up as Soviet prisoners of war.
The last frogman operation on the Eastern Front was at
Stettin. On the night of 25 April 1945 the last German troops evacuated the
city. Only a section of the harbour remained in German hands. The Soviets held
the high ground at Altdamm, on the far bank of the eastern arm of the Oder, and
were firing into the city. They had infltrated the harbour at a number of
places. While setting a torpedo mine on a bridge pillar, Bootsmaat Künnicke was
fired upon by a sentry. The mine drifted away and was lost. As it was already
dawn, Künnicke hid in a barn and rejoined his unit next day. Two other frogmen
who were Stettiners laid low in a swampy meadow between the east and west arms
of the Oder while the Red Army rolled past them. The hiding place was on the
bank of the Möllnfahrt, the Stettin regatta course. The pair had obtained for
themselves a fine motor boat, Aristides, in which they were proposing to
transport their torpedo mines. In their hiding place on 8 May they heard
explosions and shooting. On 11 May, after selecting an Oder bridge as their
target, they met a German civilian who gave them the news that the war was
over. The two frogmen hid their equipment and obtained civilian clothing, then
joined local people clearing the streets of rubble. Unfortunately they did not
escape the attention of the Russians, and a long and arduous captivity
followed.
