The Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft yard at Kiel laid down U-244 on 24 October 1942 as yard number 678. She was a Type VIIC - the most produced submarine class in history, with 568 boats built between 1940 and 1945. By the time Oberleutnant zur See Ruprecht Fischer commissioned her on 9 September 1943, the Type VIIC's golden era was over. Allied technology had caught up. The Schnorchel that would help later boats survive a few months longer was not yet fitted. Fischer's crew trained with the 5th U-boat Flotilla at Kiel through the winter and into the summer of 1944, knowing that the boats they would replace had mostly already died.

On 25 July 1944, U-244 was running on the surface between Horten Naval Base and Bergen - short voyages along the Norwegian coast that were not officially patrols. The Coastal Command aircraft hunting the Norwegian fjords were not all British. No. 333 Squadron RAF was crewed by Norwegians who had escaped to Britain after the German invasion of 1940. They knew every fjord and skerry of the coast they had grown up flying over. Two of their Mosquitoes - all-wood twin-engine fighter-bombers built by de Havilland - found U-244 in the open and attacked. Cannon shells stitched the conning tower. One German sailor died. Seven were wounded. The Norwegian crews flew back to Scotland. U-244 dragged herself into Bergen and waited for the welders.

Her first true patrol began with her departure from Bergen on 9 August 1944. Her route took her south of Iceland into the Atlantic, then back to Bergen on 1 November - eighty-four days at sea, mostly submerged, finding nothing worth a torpedo. The Atlantic of late 1944 was an Allied lake. U-boats that tried to attack convoys died. U-boats that hid lived but accomplished nothing. U-244's second sortie in December 1944 passed without incident. Her third, in early 1945, took her all the way to the English Channel off Worthing - 64 days, her longest patrol. The English coast she could see through her periscope was the coast her grandfathers' generation had been told they would one day invade. She saw it through bombsight glass for two months. She did not fire.

Loch Eriboll on the north coast of Scotland was where many U-boats finished their war. Deep, sheltered, and within easy steaming distance of Bergen and Trondheim where the surviving German fleet was anchored, it became the principal Royal Navy reception point for surrendering submarines in May 1945. U-244 hauled in on 14 May, a week after the European war ended. Her white flag was already flying. The Royal Navy boarding parties took control of the boat, processed Fischer and his crew, and assigned her a slot in the queue for disposal. She would not have to wait long. The Operation Deadlight schedule was already being drawn up.

Later that same day - the day she surrendered - U-244 was hooked up for tow toward the deep-water scuttling area northwest of Donegal. The cable parted. She was finished off by gunfire from the ORP Piorun, a Polish destroyer that had earlier in the war helped sink the Bismarck. The Polish Navy in exile had spent five years fighting Germany across half the world - Piorun had been among the destroyers that famously located and engaged the Bismarck in 1941, drawing its fire for an hour before withdrawing; finishing off German submarines after the surrender was a kind of bookend. U-244 sits today on the Atlantic seabed at approximately 55.77 degrees north, 8.53 degrees west. Her crew had survived four patrols, an air attack, and a war that killed most of their service. They went home to the rebuilding of Germany. The Polish sailors who fired the killing shots went home to a country newly subjugated by the Soviets. The Atlantic does not distinguish between victories.