Some years ago my wife and I had to clear her mothers house in order to let it out. One day she needed a small box and yelled out to me if I could find her one. A bare house , all the rubbish and unwanted items gone ; OK lets look again in the cellar.Stretching my hand out into a small dark cupboard I felt a heavy box. Opening it was like pandora's box , one peep at what was inside and I was hooked.We took a few things home that day but what really interested me was that box and my late father-in-laws personal effects.
Well the box I found contained well over 100 color 35mm slides mainly of his time in the German U-boat Service. This together with his wartime papers and decorations wetted my appetite to find out more.My wife knew very little of what he did in the war as he never spoke of it at home , still she did know a little and this was a start. The first thing I did was to get hold of a microfilmed copy of his boats logbook ; this then had to be hard copied and digitized. Translation from German into English was next on the list.Finally the log needed to be reconstructed for publication.The photographs had to be scanned onto a hard drive,restored as closely to their original condition at the time the pictures were taken and researched as to when and where they were taken.This is still ongoing and will take a lot more time , however we do now have a collection of 17 pictures that can be associated with the U-513's first patrol.
During all this time I traveled to the UK, accidentally met a Canadian who has a very personal connection to this story and who then invited us to be his guests in Newfoundland.It took a few years to convince my wife the natives would be friendly but eventually we went over this year.What marvelous people , we had a great time ,and were very pleased to donate items to the local museum and do some press interviews for our new found friends at Ocean Quest Adventure Resort and Bell Island.
In the fall of 1942 Bell Island Newfoundland suffered the first of two German U-boat attacks.What happened is well documented but for the first time a German perspective can now be given regarding the first encounter. A detailed window of events starting with the commissioning of the U-513 at a Hamburg shipyard through to her return to the safe haven of a bunker in occupied France after 77 days at sea.The following pages contain a translated reconstruction of the ¨Kriegstagbuch¨or War diary of the German submarine U-513.The period covered extends from the initial construction in Hamburg through to the end of her maiden voyage to Newfoundland in 1942 under her first commander Korv.Kpt Rolf Rüggeberg. The document consists of a translated copy of each page of the diary with supplementary tracking map plus explanations of the '' red '' highlighted points of interest.Rolf Rüggeberg left a personal collection of rare coloured 35mm photographs which have remained undisturbed since his death in 1979.These allow us a unique view into his time in the U-boat service; restored photographs which can be linked to this KTB log have been published here for the first time.Restoration is a time consuming process and further additions will be made available as and when possible.The¨Kriegstagbuch¨or ¨War Diary ¨consisted of a loose collection of handwritten pages in pen and ink; one of a number of different logs kept aboard each U-boat; others dealt with navigation, supply,radio usage, armament, weather and several for engineering. It was assembled, typed out, copied and distributed to the various departments at the end of each sea patrol. At the end of WW2 Grand Admiral Donitz ordered the Kriegsmarine archives to be retained therefore allowing them to be seized intact by the Allies. The documents were taken to London and microfilmed by the US Navy Office of Naval Intelligence. The originals were returned to the German Bundesarchiv-Abt. Militärarchiv in Freiburg from 1955 onwards. The US Navy gave its microfilm collection of the records to the US National Archives where it remains today. Many of the microfilmed KTB's were processed hastily and this has resulted in some not being copied clearly ( certain sections of the U-513 KTB are missing or difficult to read because of this).
