Wreck of U-515

 Second World War 1939-1945, shipwreck

Unterseeboot 515 was a Type IXC U-boat laid down in May 1941 at the Deutsche Werft AG shipyard in Hamburg and commissioned into Kriegsmarine service in February 1942. Commanded by Kapitänleutnant Werner Henke, the U-515 departed on her first of seven war patrols in the Atlantic in August 1942, returning 61 days later to the U-Boat pens at Lorient with 9 ships sunk and one damaged to her credit.

Operating out of Lorient for the remainder of the war, the U-515 amassed an impressive war record of 21 merchant ships sunk for a total of 131,769 tons, 2 auxiliary warships sunk for a total of 19,277 tons and four ships damaged for 13,972 tons on her 6 patrols, earning her Captain the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves. Departing on her 7th patrol on March 30th, 1944 bound for the Azores, the U-515 was eleven days out of port when she sighted a convoy under heavy escort heading for Gibraltar.

Trailing the convoy through the morning of April 9th, U-515 came near the surface and dispatched a message to Fleet Command reporting her sighting before she again moved to attack the formation. Convoy escorts, led by the Escort Carrier USS Guadalcanal (CVE 60), intercepted the U-515's message and using action reports from the previous day's flights were able to triangulate the subs general position and a flight of fighters were sent up and the Destroyer Escorts USS Pillsbury (DE-133), USS Pope (DE-134), USS Flaherty (DE-135) and USS Chatelain (DE-149) were dispatched to hunt down the sub.

After several hours of searching by the US ships and avoidance maneuvers by the U-515, the sub was identified by the sonar operator aboard USS Chatelain, which promptly began depth charge attacks and was joined soon after by her fellow Destroyer Escorts. With four ships worth of depth charges raining down on her, the U-515 was unable to elude her attackers and took serious damage along the length of her hull from the explosions and by 1500hrs she had lost all depth control and was beginning to founder. Kapitänleutnant Henke ordered the U-boat surfaced before she sank and at 1505hrs U-515 broke the surface of the Atlantic where she was greeted by repeated rocket and machine gun strafing from airborne US Carrier fighters, followed by gunfire from the assembled Destroyer Escorts. In spite of this, the crew of U-515 manned her deck guns and returned a few rounds of fire at the USS Chatelain and USS Flaherty before the ships sent the crew over the side with concentrated machine gun fire. Moments later, the U-515 was rocked by an internal explosion and began sinking bow-first, throwing any crew still on her decks into the Atlantic. Finally at 1505hrs on April 9th 1944 the U-515 sank at this location, having lost 16 of her crew to the American attack. 44 men including her Captain were captured and spent the rest of the war as POW's, with Kapitänleutnant Henke being shot while trying to escape captivity in Virginia in June 1944.

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