The Mystery of German Submarine U-859

U-boat under attack.
While in Penang, Malaysia, on holidays some time ago, I came across a story that totally intrigued me. It appeared that during WWII Admiral Doenitz had such heavy U-Boat losses in the Atlantic that he decided to divert some of his long-range submarines to undertake the incredible voyage from Europe around Africa, past the Indian Sub-Continent and across to Penang in what is today called Malaysia. Here the U-Boats would dock at the submarine base the Japanese had built there. But the U-boats' troubles would not be over' !

The Japanese commanders did not trust the Germans, Japanese submarine parts and torpedos did not fit the U-boats, and engineering services needed to overhaul the submarines after the long voyage. In the process of 52 U-Boats being sent on these missions, they sank one million tons of shipping, but this consisted mainly of small, relatively insignificant coastal vessels. The attrition rate was so high for these U-Boats that only four managed to return to Germany.

It took 4 years to research the details on these U-Boats with information from the British Admiralty, U.S. sources etc. and found that the Germans had also planned to deliver items like mercury to the Japanese and bring home quinine and raw rubber in return. The German Enigma naval code was broken by the U.S. Navy, and consequently the U-Boats could be shadowed, their messages intercepted and all this, plus the fact that the U-Boats could get little in the way of local supplies in Penang resulted in one of the most successful Allied operations of WWII.

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