{"id":3746,"date":"2013-03-03T21:35:37","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T03:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3746"},"modified":"2013-03-03T21:35:37","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T03:35:37","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-3-9-march-1941-gunther-prien-perishes-aboard-the-u-47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3746","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 3–9 March 1941: Gunther Prien perishes aboard the U-47"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kapitanleutnant<\/a>

Kapitanleutnant Gunther Prien 1940 [Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2006-1130-500\/ Schulze, Annelise (Mauritius)\/ CC-BY-SA, wikimedia]<\/p><\/div>U-boat ace Kapitanleutnant Gunther Prien perished with his entire crew this week in the war, 8 March 1941, when the U-47 was sunk by the destroyer, HMS Wolverine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Formidable<\/em>, indomitable<\/em>, redoubtable<\/em> were the adjectives that Churchill used to describe Prien, the U-boat commander who became famous for his daring raid against the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.<\/p>\n

Following the orders of Commodore Karl Doenitz, Germany’s U-boat chief, Prien guided the U-47 through the British boom defences and entered Scapa flow on the night of 13 October 1939. He fired four torpedoes at point blank range into the battleship HMS Royal Oak<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Battleship<\/a>

Battleship HMS Royal Oak [Public domain, wikimedia]<\/p><\/div>Three torpedoes failed to hit the battleship, and the fourth struck home, but with little effect. Amazingly, Prien had time to reload and fire a second salvo from his bow tubes. The result for the aging WWI battleship was catastrophic. The ship’s magazine exploded and the vessel capsized with a loss of almost 900 of her crew.<\/p>\n

The U-47 made good its escape, and Prien and his crew returned to Germany in triumph.<\/p>\n

\"Destroyer<\/a>

Destroyer HMS Wolverine 1939 [Public domain, wikimedia]<\/p><\/div>Prien became one of Germany’s most successful U-boat commanders. Eventually, on 8 March 1941, he was sighted on the surface whilst attacking a convoy south-east of Iceland. He dived, but was pursued and depth charged by the convoy’s escort. A final depth charge attack by HMS Wolverine<\/em> is believed to have blown the U-boat apart.<\/p>\n

The war at sea, including the exploits of Gunther Prien, are described by Marc Milner in his book Battle of the Atlantic<\/em> (Tempus Publishing\/Vanwell Publishing, 2003).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U-boat ace Kapitanleutnant Gunther Prien perished with his entire crew this week in the war, 8 March 1941, when the U-47 was sunk by the destroyer, HMS Wolverine. Formidable, indomitable, redoubtable were the adjectives that Churchill used to describe Prien, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[401,400,394,397,398,399,395,396],"class_list":["post-3746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-world-war-ii","tag-battle-of-the-atlantic","tag-doenitz","tag-gunther-prien","tag-hms-royal-oak","tag-hms-wolverine","tag-scapa-flow","tag-u-47","tag-u-boat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3746"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3770,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions\/3770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}