Eight wolfpacks - Eisenhart, Schill, Weddigen, Hinein, Igel, Hai, Preussen, Dragoner. The pack names sound like an inventory of forgotten Wagnerian heroes. U-764 ran with all of them between November 1943 and May 1944, six months that covered the climactic phase of the Battle of the Atlantic, the loss of Donitz's son, the breaking of the U-boat fleet. In eight patrols she sank one merchant ship and two warships - a creditable record by 1944 standards, when most German submarines were dying without firing a shot. She surrendered in May 1945 at Loch Eriboll and was sent to the bottom of the Atlantic as a Royal Navy gunnery target in February 1946.
The Kriegsmarinewerft yard at Wilhelmshaven laid down U-764's keel on 1 February 1941 as yard number 147 - just three weeks after the United States passed Lend-Lease, the legislation that would arm Britain for the rest of the war. She took two years and three months to build. By the time she was launched on 13 March 1943, the U-boat war was at its peak; six weeks later, in May 1943, Donitz lost 41 U-boats in one month and conceded that the Atlantic was no longer winnable. Oberleutnant zur See Hanskurt von Bremen commissioned U-764 on 6 May 1943. She would enter active service into a war already turning against her, and her crew - 44 to 60 men depending on configuration - would learn the new rhythm of submarine warfare: less hunting, more hiding.
After training with the 8th Flotilla, U-764 transferred to the 9th Flotilla at Brest in occupied France on 1 November 1943. She joined wolfpack Eisenhart 3 within days, then Schill 3, then Weddigen - named after Otto Weddigen, the WWI U-boat ace who sank three British cruisers in an hour in 1914 and was killed himself the following year. Through the winter of 1943-44 she ran with one pack after another: Hinein in late January, Igel and Hai through February, Preussen into March, Dragoner in May. Eight wolfpacks in seven months. The pack system was disintegrating under Allied pressure but Donitz kept trying. U-764 was credited with sinking one merchantman and two warships totalling 1,696 tons - modest by the standards of 1941 but more than most boats achieved in the last 18 months of the war.
On 1 October 1944, with the Normandy invasion three months old and the Allied armies sweeping toward the German border, U-764 transferred from Brest to the 11th Flotilla at Bergen, Norway. The French Atlantic bases were collapsing; St Nazaire and Lorient were already cut off, the U-boats inside them stranded. Norway was the new front line. U-764 spent her last months running the same circuit her sister submarines all worked - short patrols out of Bergen, never long enough to attract serious Allied attention, never far enough to find a profitable target. She remained with the 11th Flotilla until the end of the war.
On 14 May 1945 U-764 hauled into Loch Eriboll on the north coast of Scotland - the principal Royal Navy reception point for surrendering U-boats - and gave herself up. The loch is a long, narrow Scottish sea-fjord, sheltered, deep enough for any submarine, and within practical reach of the Norwegian fleet bases. Through May and June, dozens of U-boats hauled in here under white flags and were processed by Royal Navy boarding parties. The crews were transferred to British internment. The boats themselves were sorted: some for technical study, some for transfer to Allied navies, most for Operation Deadlight scuttling. U-764 was assigned to the scuttling list.
She did not die in the wholesale way most Deadlight boats died - towed out, sunk by gunfire or by foundering. She was used as a target ship - a deliberate gunnery and torpedo exercise, the Royal Navy practicing on a real submarine hull to refine its sub-killing tactics for the future. The shooting took place on 2 February 1946 in deep water northwest of Ireland. The shells found their marks. The torpedoes detonated. U-764 went down as planned, a training aid for the next war's submarine hunters. She lies today at approximately 56.10 degrees north, 9.00 degrees west, deep on the muddy Atlantic floor. The boats she had hunted with in the wolfpacks of 1943-44 mostly lie nearby. The Wagnerian names of those packs have been quiet for eighty years.
Wreck site approximately 56.10°N, 9.00°W, in the deep-water Operation Deadlight area northwest of Northern Ireland. Recommended viewing altitude 5,000-7,000 ft. The Donegal coast lies 40 nm east; Tory Island and the rugged Bloody Foreland are the closest visual references. Nearest airport: Donegal Airport (EIDL), 40 nm east-southeast. Lisahally on the Foyle estuary, 60 nm southeast, was one of the principal Deadlight gathering points. The seabed below holds dozens of U-boats - perhaps the densest concentration of warship wrecks in the world.