Wreck of U-161

 Second World War 1939-1945, navy, shipwreck, submarine

Unterseeboot 161 was a Type IXC U-Boat laid down in March 1940 at the Deutsche Schiff und Maschinenbau Shipyard at Bremen and commissioned into Kriegsmarine service in July 1941. Initially assigned to the 4th Unterseebootflottille for four months of training in the Baltic Sea, U-161 and her crew put into Kiel in late December 1941 to provision for their first War Patrol.

Departing Kiel on the 3rd of January 1942 and spending only 13 days at sea before an engineering casualty cut short her patrol, U-161 put into her new home at Lorient and was hastily repaired for her second patrol, which she began on the 24th of January. Free of mechanical problems, U-161’s second War Patrol came to typify the long-range and highly successful nature of her assignments, as she crossed the Atlantic and operated throughout the Windward Islands hunting Allied merchant shipping. Returning after 69 days at sea with nine ships sunk or damaged to her credit, U-161 returned to her previous operating area on her third patrol, moving as far West as the Gulf of Panama and notching a further three ships to her kill record before returning to Lorient. Travelling the West African Coast on her fourth, longest and most successful patrol, U-161’s crew were rewarded for their marathon 113 day deployment by the sinking of three ships and the damaging of a further two, including the British Light Cruiser HMS Pheobe (43).

Moving to the waters off New England for her fifth patrol during the spring and summer of 1943 and finding limited hunting among the heavily defended convoys and American coast, U-161 still managed to sink a single sailing vessel before returning to Lorient and receiving orders to proceed to the Brazilian coast on her six War Patrol. Standing out of her U-Boat pen on the 3rd of August, the U-161 and her crew shaped a course for the coast of Brazil and began their hunt shortly after their arrival in the area on the 6th of September. Finding ample but well defended targets steaming through her patrol waters, U-161 successfully torpedoed the SS St. Usk on the 20th, taking the British Steamer’s Captain prisoner in order to extract shipping route and minefield information, which helped the U-Boat claim her second ship of her patrol on the 26th off Algoas.

Retiring Southward after her successful attack, the U-161 surfaced after dark as usual to run her engines, recharge her batteries and report her day’s action to U-Boat Command. Off Bahia as the Eastward sky began to brighten, lookouts keeping an eye out for enemy patrol aircraft didn’t have to wait long before the unmistakable outline of a US Navy PBM Mariner was sighted closing on U-161’s position. Ordering a crash-dive, U-161’s Skipper followed his crew off the conning tower below decks and took his boat deep as the enemy aircraft roared overhead, strafing as she went and dropping a pair of depth charges which detonated on contact with the ocean surface. Hoping to elude his attacker before the American aircraft turned around and began its bombing run, U-161’s Captain was unaware that his boat was trailing oil from punctured wing fuel tanks, leaving a telltale slick on the surface of the Atlantic for the PBM crew to follow as they set the depth fuses on their load of depth charges. Releasing their full bombload ahead of the U-161’s position, the crew aboard the Mariner watched as the oil-stained sea went calm as the depth charges descended, then were rewarded by a geyser of debris and oil-laden water shot into the air, signifying the loss of U-161 with all 53 hands and one prisoner at this location on the 27th of September 1943.

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