U-852 and the Peleus Atrocity
U-852 was a German Type IXD2 submarine that became the only U-boat whose crew faced war crimes charges after World War II. Built in Bremen and completed in June 1943, the vessel gained notoriety not for sinking ships, but for the killing of survivors from the Greek steamer Peleus in March 1944, an act that led to the execution of her commander and two officers at a British military tribunal in Hamburg.
Design and Specifications
U-852 belonged to the Type IXD2 class, an enlarged variant of the standard Type IX submarine designed for extended oceanic operations. The boat displaced 1,610 tonnes on the surface and 1,799 tonnes when submerged, measuring 87.58 metres in length with a beam of 7.50 metres. Her dual propulsion system combined four diesel engines for surface running, producing 9,000 metric horsepower, and two electric motors for underwater use, yielding 1,000 shaft horsepower.
The submarine could reach 20.8 knots on the surface and 6.9 knots submerged. Her range extended to 12,750 nautical miles at 10 knots when surfaced, making her well suited to long-distance operations in distant theatres. Armed with six torpedo tubes, a 10.5 centimetre naval gun, and multiple anti-aircraft weapons, U-852 carried a crew of fifty-five. She also mounted a Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 Bachstelze, a cable-towed observation gyroglider that allowed lookouts to see further across the ocean while the submarine remained submerged.
The Indian Ocean Mission
In January 1944, Kapitänleutnant Heinz-Wilhelm Eck took command of U-852 and led the boat on her first war patrol. The Kriegsmarine assigned the submarine to a classified mission in the Indian Ocean with orders to disrupt Allied shipping lanes in the Far East. Secrecy was paramount for the operation’s success.
On 13 March 1944, while crossing the Atlantic near Freetown, U-852 encountered the Greek steamer Peleus travelling alone. Despite his orders to remain undetected, Eck decided to attack. After pursuing the vessel until nightfall, he fired two torpedoes and sank her. The attack left survivors clinging to wreckage and floating in lifeboats across a wide debris field.
The Peleus Survivors and War Crimes
Eck then made a fateful decision. Fearing that the debris field and survivors would alert Allied patrol aircraft to a U-boat’s presence in the area, he ordered his junior officers to destroy the evidence by firing into the wreckage with hand grenades and automatic weapons. The crew below deck heard the gunfire but did not witness the killings. Only three of the Peleus’s thirty-five crew members survived the attack and sinking.
Two weeks later, U-852 sank the British cargo ship Dahomian off Cape Town on 1 April, but this time Eck chose not to attack the survivors. The contrast between the two incidents would later become significant in the war crimes investigation.
Capture and Interrogation
On 30 April 1944, a Vickers Wellington bomber from Aden spotted U-852 in the Indian Ocean and attacked with depth charges. Damaged and unable to dive, Eck steered toward the Somali coast. Before reaching shore, six RAF bombers from 621 Squadron attacked the crippled submarine. Eck ran the boat aground on a coral reef approximately 20 kilometres from the coast. Seven crew members died in the bombardment, while the rest abandoned ship.
The Somaliland Camel Corps and local militia captured fifty-eight survivors. A British boarding party salvaged the wreck and recovered Eck’s Kriegstagebuch, the submarine’s war diary, which documented the attack on the Peleus and proved invaluable to prosecutors. The British also retrieved the Fa 330 observation platform.
Trial and Execution
In November 1945, Eck and four junior officers faced a British military tribunal in Hamburg, making them the only Kriegsmarine submariners tried for war crimes in Europe. Eck claimed operational necessity, arguing that survivors’ rafts might have contained radio equipment and that the Laconia Order prohibited him from assisting enemy crews. The tribunal rejected this defence.
August Hoffmann, the second-in-command, and Walter Weisspfennig, the ship’s doctor, both received death sentences despite claiming they followed orders. Hans Lenz, the engineering officer who had opposed the order but carried it out, received life imprisonment and was released in 1952 after seven years. Wolfgang Schwender, an enlisted engineer, was sentenced to fifteen years and released in 1951 after six years. On 30 November 1945, Eck, Hoffmann and Weisspfennig were executed by naval firing squad.
Understanding the Laconia Order
The Laconia Order was a directive issued by Admiral Karl Dönitz in September 1942 after the sinking of the passenger liner Laconia. It instructed U-boat commanders to cease rescue operations and avoid helping survivors of torpedoed vessels, partly to prevent U-boats from being attacked while engaged in rescue work. Eck invoked this order to justify his actions, but the tribunal found that the order did not authorise the deliberate killing of survivors already in the water. The Kriegstagebuch, or war diary, was a standard log kept aboard German naval vessels documenting operations, positions, encounters and orders. Eck’s diary provided written evidence of his decisions and commands. The Fa 330 Bachstelze was a towed aerial observation platform resembling a kite or gyroplane that could be raised while the submarine remained submerged, allowing improved visibility across the ocean.
Further Reading
The story of U-852 and the Peleus is documented in Wikipedia’s articles on the submarine, the steamer, and the war crimes trial. Maritime archives and naval records hold additional details about the boat’s construction, operations and final fate.
