U-1060 was not a hunter. The Type VIIF was designed as a torpedo transport -- a submarine whose primary mission was to resupply other U-boats at sea, carrying up to 40 torpedoes in addition to her own armament of fourteen. Commissioned on May 15, 1943, at the Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel, she was one of only four boats of her type, making her a rare vessel in a navy that mass-produced submarines by the hundreds. At 77.6 meters long with a surface displacement of 1,084 tons, she was larger than a standard Type VII, built to accommodate the extra torpedo storage. Her Germaniawerft diesel engines gave her a surface speed of 16.9 knots and a range of 14,700 nautical miles at ten knots -- enough to reach resupply points deep in the Atlantic.

U-1060 never conducted an offensive patrol. Her entire operational career, from December 1943 to October 1944, consisted of six torpedo transport voyages between the naval base at Kiel and ports in German-occupied Norway. These were not glamorous missions, but they were essential. By late 1943, the Battle of the Atlantic had turned decisively against Germany, and the U-boat fleet depended on supply chains that were themselves under constant threat. Each of U-1060's runs meant navigating waters increasingly dominated by Allied air and naval power. She served under the 5th U-boat Flotilla, a training unit, which underscored her support role. Her crew of 44 to 60 men understood that their job was to keep other submarines fighting -- a dangerous assignment with none of the offensive glory the Kriegsmarine once promised its submariners.

On October 27, 1944, Fleet Air Arm Fireflies and Barracudas from a British aircraft carrier found U-1060 and attacked with rockets and depth charges. The damage was severe enough to force the submarine aground on Fleina, a small island in the Nordland coast archipelago. She was stranded but not yet destroyed. Two days later, on the morning of October 29, two Liberator heavy bombers of the Czechoslovak-manned No. 311 Squadron RAF flew from RAF Tain in Scotland to finish the job. Flying Officer Josef Pavelka's Liberator struck U-1060 with seven semi-armour piercing rocket projectiles. Squadron Leader Alois Sedivy's aircraft suffered a failed rocket sight but still managed to land eight rockets on the submarine, along with four depth charges -- two of which straddled her just behind the conning tower. Finally, two Halifax bombers of No. 502 Squadron RAF delivered depth charges that ended any question of salvage.

The men who delivered the killing blows were fighting far from home. No. 311 Squadron RAF was manned by Czechoslovak airmen who had fled their occupied homeland to continue the war from British bases. For crews like Pavelka's and Sedivy's, every mission over the Norwegian Sea was flown in the knowledge that the country they were fighting for was under Nazi occupation thousands of kilometers to the south. Their attack on U-1060 was one of many Coastal Command operations that targeted the supply lines sustaining Germany's U-boat campaign in northern waters. The wreck of U-1060 remains on the seabed near Fleina, a monument to the intersecting fates of German submariners and exiled Czechoslovak airmen, all far from the places they called home.