U-759 was laid down on November 15, 1940, at the Kriegsmarinewerft shipyard in Wilhelmshaven, one of hundreds of Type VIIC boats rolling off German production lines as the Battle of the Atlantic intensified. She was launched on May 30, 1942, and commissioned on August 15 of that year under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Rudolf Friedrich. The Type VIIC was the most produced U-boat variant of the war—compact, reliable, and lethal in the right hands. At roughly 67 meters long and displacing 769 tonnes surfaced, these boats carried fourteen torpedoes and could range across the Atlantic. By mid-1943, however, the tide of the submarine war was turning. Allied air cover was closing the mid-Atlantic gap, radar technology was improving, and U-boat losses were climbing sharply. It was into this increasingly dangerous environment that U-759 departed on her second and final patrol.

U-759 left the submarine base at Lorient on June 7, 1943, heading west across the Atlantic toward the Caribbean. The warm waters around Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba were a favored hunting ground for German submarines—merchant convoys funneled through narrow passages, and the islands created chokepoints that a patient commander could exploit. On July 5, roughly 70 nautical miles west of Port-Salut, Haiti, Friedrich found his first target: the American merchant ship Maltran, a 3,513-gross-register-ton steamer sailing as part of Convoy GTMO-134. A torpedo struck, and the Maltran went down in fifteen minutes. All 47 crew members aboard the merchant vessel managed to escape in lifeboats and were later rescued.

Two days later, on July 7, U-759 struck again. This time the target was the Dutch cargo ship Poelau Roebiah, a much larger vessel at 9,251 gross register tons, traveling in convoy TAG-70 east of Jamaica. Friedrich's torpedo found its mark, and the Poelau Roebiah began to sink. Of the 68 crew, 24 armed guards, and 31 American passengers aboard, all but two survived, abandoning ship in four lifeboats and awaiting rescue. After the attack, a United States Navy destroyer gave chase, hunting U-759 with depth charges. Friedrich and his crew evaded the warship—a feat that required nerve, skill, and no small amount of luck in the shallow Caribbean waters where a submarine had far less room to hide than in the open Atlantic.

That luck did not hold. On July 15, 1943, barely a week after sinking the Poelau Roebiah, U-759 was caught on the surface by an American PBM Mariner patrol aircraft from Squadron VP-32. The flying boat attacked with depth charges in the waters northwest of Haiti, at approximately 15°58′N, 73°44′W. There was no escape this time. U-759 sank, carrying all 47 of her crew to their deaths. No distress signal was received; no survivors were found. The boat that had sent two Allied merchant ships to the bottom just days earlier now lay on the Caribbean seabed herself—one of 783 German U-boats lost during the war, and one of the many that vanished without a trace in the vast spaces of the Atlantic and its surrounding seas. The wreck site, in waters northwest of Haiti, remains a war grave.