Qualla: German Submarine U-1302

German Submarine U-1302: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-1302 had been at sea for less than a month, and the war had less than two months to run. On 7 March 1945, in the cold grey of St George's Channel between Wales and Ireland, the Canadian frigates La Hulloise, Strathadam, and Thetford Mines caught her with depth charges and sent her to the bottom. All forty-eight men aboard died. The youngest was probably nineteen; the oldest, her commander Wolfgang Herwartz, was twenty-eight.

Read more: German Submarine U-1302 on Qualla

German Submarine U-1302: A Late-War Boat

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-1302 was a Type VIIC/41, a slight modification of the workhorse Type VII U-boat that the Kriegsmarine had built by the hundreds. The /41 variant had a stronger pressure hull and could dive deeper — to about 230 metres — but in every other respect she was the same boat that had ...

Read more: German Submarine U-1302 on Qualla

German Submarine U-1302: The Patrol

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-1302 spent her early months with the 4th U-boat Flotilla at Stettin for training, then transferred on 1 January 1945 to the 11th U-boat Flotilla at Bergen, Norway, for operational duty. Her first and only war patrol began in February 1945. She sailed for the western approaches ...

Read more: German Submarine U-1302 on Qualla

German Submarine U-1302: EG 25

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Escort Group 25 of the Royal Canadian Navy was a hunter-killer group operating out of Londonderry in the closing months of the war. Frigates of the River class — purpose-built anti-submarine ships, smaller and slower than fleet destroyers but better suited to the patient, methodi...

Read more: German Submarine U-1302 on Qualla

German Submarine U-1302: Who They Were

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The German wartime record for U-1302 lists forty-eight crew members lost on 7 March 1945. They were submariners, conscripts and volunteers, mostly men in their twenties — the youngest crew on Type VII boats by 1944 were often nineteen-year-old Funkmaaten (radio operators) and Mas...

Read more: German Submarine U-1302 on Qualla

German Submarine U-1302: Two Months Later

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Karl Dönitz, the U-boat arm's commander and by then Hitler's nominal successor, signed the order ending submarine operations on 4 May 1945, two months and three days after U-1302 went down. By that point seven more U-boats had been sunk in British and Irish waters with all hands....

Read more: German Submarine U-1302 on Qualla