Subject: Harald Sander

born: May 29, 1923

Navy / Small submarines (Seals)

Interviewer: Franjo Hülck

Mr Sander: I started at the Berlin-Dahlem grammar school in 1934 and remained there until 1941. Then in the 8th grade I signed up for the navy. I didn't want to go to the army or the air force. Even as a child I was interested in the navy because I had a childhood friend with whom I always played navy games. He was in the navy Hitler Youth and I was in the regular Hitler Youth. That was the way it was. We were all just sort of drawn in and in a practical sense the interest was in the navy. I was accepted and signed up before doing my school leaving certificate. It was on September 30, 1941. We had to go to Buxtehude and we were there for a couple of days, but officially our time began with the company of recruits in Roosendaal in the south of The Netherlands. Time passed and until Christmas of 1941/42, up to the Christmas and New Year holiday period, we were there in Roosendaal.

My first official navy service began at the navy college in Kiel, where I completed a workshop apprenticeship. We learnt everything from forging to turning and iron work. It was a very thorough training up till April, 1942. When I was finished in Kiel I was sent to my next unit. That was with the minesweepers in the south of France on the Garonne, in Royan at the mouth of the Garonne River. Sometimes we went to Bordeaux. I went there with one of my comrades, Ernst August von der Haar from Hanover, the two of us. After the training in Kiel we became ship machinists and then as mates, or as sub-officers, we went on board a large ship. It was a five-thousand-tonne ship and it was used as a minesweeper. We had to clear a path for the Italian and German submarines which were going abroad as far as Japan to pick up hard metals and bring them back. So we had to escort them back into Bordeaux and back out again. The English were so kind as to lay mines at the entrance to Bordeaux and the Garonne and we had to destroy these mines before the submarines sailed over them. So we travelled as minesweepers and were like a magnet. We had a reel at the bow of the boat which was charged by engine power and we had spare diesel fuel on board. The reel, this large magnet, sailed in front of the submarines and exploded the mines, as though a ship were there. I stayed on this ship for a while and we didn't get to shore much in Royan. We always thought, "Why go to shore when you can see the shore from on board?"

The crew, of course, was bigger. A five-thousand-tonne ship needs more crew. I myself didn't go on board as the stoker. It was a 2-stroke, a 7-cylinder, I think, which we had and we operated the engine in the old way. And the head engineer was a "Silberling" (sailor in administration, or not a professional soldier) who was there beforehand. We experienced all sorts of things there.

Afterwards we were brought back to Kiel and then came a sergeants’ training course, and then we were in Memel with some of the group. So the whole period in 1942 and '43 was quite varied, until I went to Godenhaven in Gdansk in Poland for my first training course as head engineer on board a 7 C boat. This was one of the standard submarines which were in service. So we completed our training on these boats in the Baltic Sea, first in Godenhaven and then there was a second course in Pillau. There was a full crew on the boat which sailed as the regular crew so that it was always ready for service - from the captain to the last mates. I was on board as first head engineer and there were several ship's officers in training, including young lieutenants and chief petty officers. I myself was a chief petty officer and I still did the course. Of course, coming to Neustadt was quite special. What were we in for? At first we didn't even have the finished "seals" - the small submarines. Instead we initially had the two-man submarines which only operated with an electric motor. This boat wasn't as large as the other later ones operating with both diesel and electric motors and we started practicing on it there, at sea. Then there was this fuss with the shooting of torpedoes. Of course we had a torpedo attached underneath the boat and we sailed around Neustadt Bay, which is not very deep. When we wanted to stop for a while we settled on the seafloor. There were these windows up in the tower so that we could look out at the fish swimming around. That was the initial period. The first "seals" arrived in October or November, I think, and then ten of us were trained on them to operate them. Sailing above water and underwater and operating the engines didn't present a problem. The boats were about twelve metres long and were fitted with two torpedoes attached underneath. The method of propulsion for above the surface was a diesel engine which was coupled with an electric motor attached behind. When we dived the diesel was turned off and we continued moving underwater with the electric motor. There were rechargeable batteries at the front which powered the electric motor. The electric motor acted as a generator while we were moving above the surface and charged the batteries. Underwater we used the batteries to power the electric motor and propel the boat. This whole manoeuvre took place as we dived to orders such as, "deep water - adjust deep rudder", and so on, followed by steadying the boat under water which we learnt on the larger boats for use on the smaller boats. The training course there was called the "K group" - the light military manoeuvre group - and later we had Admiral Heye who was present as a special submarine commander and achieved a lot. Then I was sent, - I have to think about this - I think it was the end of February, or the beginning of May, away from the courses and a flotilla of ten boats was put together. No, that's not right, first of all we were ordered to Wilhelmshaven. I forgot one part of it. The boats we were to use in the manoeuvre were in Wilhelmshaven. I was assigned a commander and we were a crew and we had to be in agreement that we wanted to sail together. We were given a boat and had to learn to operate it there in Wilhelmshaven. We carried out test voyages in the basin of the port and we dived there, although we couldn't see much in Wilhelmshaven. It's also called "mudtown" and when you are two or three metres under the surface of the water it is so dirty that you can't see anything. That's where we did our whole training with the boat, until finally all ten submarines arrived. Then these ten boats were put onto large trailers. There was a huge "Büsing" towing vehicle, which was typical of the kind used at the end of the war. The boats were loaded onto the rear and covered with tarpaulins as camouflage. When I think about it, this was also the time of the so-called "Vergeltungs-Waffen" (retaliation weapons, translator), the "V1" and "V2" missiles, which were often transported to the French and Dutch coast, so that our "Führer" could threaten England with them. If someone asked us, we said, "Yes, these are those V1s and V2s we have on here." Then we came to Ijmuiden which is at the mouth of the Amsterdam sea canal which stretches from Amsterdam to the North Sea. We set up camp behind the canal sluice gates and moored the boats there where it was a bit safer. At that stage the English had advanced quite far and practically controlled the area and the invasion and so forth had begun. That was in 1945.

Interviewer: 1945?

Mr Sander: Well, yes, they were practically surrounding us already and then they came and we were bombarded, although they only bombarded the entrance to the docks area where the fast boats were. They couldn't bombard us because the sluice gates would have been destroyed and Holland would have been flooded. So we were quite safe there. We drivers were housed in private homes which were close to Haarlem. Usually there were three or four families, as we called it, in one house. Two men (one submarine crew) always lived together and had to be really attuned to each other and for practical purposes made up a couple which functioned together perfectly. This actually worked quite well. We were locked in and had guards stationed around us and so on, the whole works. Just how well all this was protected against the Dutch we, as navy personnel, did not know. We had no idea what was in store for us and then we ran the boats down into the canal. Meanwhile I was still tinkering a little with my engine, trying to tune it up to go a bit faster, although on the other hand it can't go too fast or else it doesn't fire properly and so on. So those were the little games one played.

Goodness, how old were we then? It was 1945 and I was twenty-two, or not even quite twenty-two, since I was born in May. One tried to make something from almost nothing. Many people still ask me these days, "Why did you do it? Why did you get into that boat?" and so on. I have to be honest and say that sometimes it was the boat itself. It's the same as when I ride in a motorboat these days and have fun with it. In those days for us boys it was simply a lot of fun to take the boat out. The seriousness behind it all was just accepted, or we were not really aware of it. There was no fear at all. We took the boat out and we were not afraid. That is the way we were raised. "Go and do it," - this had been drummed into us as children and boys. France and England and the others were the enemy and we had to conquer the enemy and so forth. That was the attitude we had on the boat. The important thing was to do our job well during a manoeuvre and of course to make sure that nothing happened to you. That wasn't easy on those boats, because from the first flotilla which came - ten boats in all - only one returned. This wasn't necessarily because of enemy action, but mostly due to human error. Some couldn't handle the boats properly and it was very difficult. They were so small and fat and then it was underwater. We didn't have any assistance like they do these days with all the electronics. That didn't exist. We had a rudder machine, but otherwise, if the mole wasn't lined up correctly then we were on our own. We had to ascertain our position and our route on our own in relation to the charts and by looking at the position of the sun. It was quite dangerous, because we couldn't travel on the surface any longer since the English were watching. Following this initial period I was sent down to the Schelde Estuary on my first manoeuvre with my commander. The English had had reinforcements sent from London, from the Thames over to the Schelde to support the ...

Interviewer: The invading troops.

Mr Sander: ...to support the invading troops and so we attacked this line. There were even some who escorted our boats which went down as far as Plymouth. Some were actually inside the mouth of the Thames. So the two of us had to go down there. Well, I will never forget those two days and the conditions we experienced. We had a wind speed of 10 or 11 and the swell was correspondingly large. We had been trained as far as food went to keep digestion to a minimum. We drank, but did not excrete much. Beforehand we were supplied with food so that digestion was slowed down, because this was a kind of problem. Our food came in large tin cans and these had to be used for excretion and then thrown overboard, but when the seas were so rough it wasn't possible. But in the first two or three days it could happen that there was no need to go, just like in normal life, and that was okay then. As far as the little things went, as a man one was better off, if I may say so - put it to one side and then it was done. We did it in a similar fashion to the way the cyclists do it today in the Tour de France. They do it quickly. So anyway, we got there all right. The only thing was that then misfortune struck. The diesel air valve stopped working and every time we came up out of the water a wave of water washed into the boat. Our stern was getting lower and lower in the water and it was almost as though the rear of the boat couldn't get to the air at all but stayed submerged. At the time I asked one commander, "How deep is it here?" "Oh," he said, "we are already quite far down. We are just about in that deep valley that runs from the North Sea through the channel in the direction of Biscay." And he said, "It must be a good fifty metres." I said, "Let it go down." At thirty metres the situation normally became quite serious with our boats, but we let it go down and we waited till we got to the sand and then we said, "So, now we are down." One has to consider that we had an atmospheric pressure per square centimetre of five and the thickness of the outer metal around the boat only had a strength of five millimetres. The boat ribs were placed thirty centimetres apart. So it was practically like fishbones, the way boats are built these days, and the body of the boat only had minimal strength.

But it didn't crack. There was no noise from the boat. The only thing was that water came from astern into the front and we were both sitting in water. Well, the commander was seated a bit higher and I was a bit lower behind him, but we were both sitting in water. First we took a deep breath and then we said, "Okay, what shall we do now?" and then we tried to surface the traditional way. The diesel engine cannot be started under water because it needs air, so we tried it with the electric motor. We put the deep sea rudder up at the front and then we started the electric motor and revved it up until the boat was high enough to have the nose poking out of the water, so that air came in and I could start the diesel engine. The diesel engine was then used to pump out the diving cells. We were so heavy that there wasn't much water in the diving cells anyway. I hadn't flooded them. The boat itself was heavy enough. A ship only floats if it has enough displacement to allow it to remain above the surface. Well, all right, this didn't work because we were too heavy. We couldn't pump either because our bilge pump only managed 25 metres. It had two ˝ atmospheric pressure and this could be managed with the hand bilge pump. This was possible, although at a depth of fifty metres... We were both still fit and didn't want to abandon ship. Getting out was not that easy at a depth of fifty metres and it could have been dangerous. So we kept trying. We had two compressed air tanks in the boat in case of emergency and I released compressed air into the first diving cell in the bow and in this way the boat rose at the front a little. Then I started the electric motor and the boat actually rose up with this pocket of air in the bow. If you can imagine that practically half of the boat was still submerged, then we began pumping. We were pleased that we were at least up on the surface. Then came the manoeuvre, "Are there ships up there?" Underwater you can hear a long way. You can hear the noise made by every screw. There was nothing. We had waited so long for night time, until it was dark. They didn't discover us and we began pumping eagerly in order to make the boat lighter so that we could continue on. We knew that the valve was broken. We were of course swaying close to the surface. The air quality inside wasn't very good which made us both very anxious and we exchanged comments, such as, "Come on, do it, keep pumping," and so on. At some point afterwards, I don't know when, suddenly the commander said to me, "Harry, I can't go on, I don't know what's happening, I'm getting out," and such things. He was panicking and thinking he wouldn't make it, but we had to, because if we didn't keep pumping we would have sunk again and been down on the bottom at fifty metres. For me it was... anyway, I don't know how I managed it. I yelled at him. I really told him what I thought. I said, "If you don't, I will hit you between the eyes." He had to be brought out of his shock. So this was how it was. These days I get asked, "How could you have done anything in that small boat?" The narrowness had an effect in that moment when neither of us were sane. We managed our work all right but at any moment it could have all gone wrong. The English could have run us over if a boat had been there and if they had discovered us they could have chased us down to the bottom and so on. So I really had to pull myself together. The fact that I managed this is a great thing. I still say today, God had a big hand in it my whole time with the navy. In any case, to cut it short, we managed and we returned home, at least to Ijmuiden. We went on a bit and then we both pumped again and then we went on until we came to the locks. Then we told the lock keeper to adjust the crane after we were through and pick us up with the crane straight away so that we didn't fall again because the boat was only just floating. That was the best it could do. They weren't very pleased when we returned, but the main thing was that we were there. Both torpedoes were still attached, so they hadn't been wasted. It was all valuable material. But, yes, the boat was wrecked. What to do? Our boss, Admiral Heye, then said, "Harald, go home to Berlin for eight days and then from there go back to Willhelmshaven and get yourself a new boat." Then I told him that I didn't really get on with my companion. "Okay, find yourself a new commander. We still have some in training." So in Wilhelmshaven after my holiday in Berlin I... It wasn't easy coming to Berlin because the "chain dogs" were in operation. I don't know if people are still familiar with the term "chain dogs" these days. Mr Himmler and Adolf had formed these troops which were a sort of military police force and they wore chains. Everyone running around in Berlin and elsewhere was gathered together by them as troops for the Berlin defence. This was already the end of February and the Russian troops were advancing on Berlin. I had a special pass of course, so that they couldn't recruit me. I had papers from Heye stating that I was in the "K group" so they couldn't send me off towards Russia.

Then the manoeuvre started again from the beginning. Pick up a boat in Wilhelmshaven, then run it in, then we travelled from there by train. The whole ten boats in the flotilla were loaded onto a train. We had the infantry there as guards and we travelled by night. By day we halted at the border in a siding under guard and then we continued on, arriving in Ijmuiden after the second night. And then we ran the boats in again. Down there at the Schelde it was different now. The invasion was more advanced. Then I was given the job of going to Great Yarmouth with my comrade. If a line is drawn directly from east to west from Ijmuiden you come to the corner of England where the port and the city of Great Yarmouth are situated. The transport ships from America came around this corner and travelled along south of the coast bringing reinforcements to London and we had to travel towards this line. In two days we chugged across, lying low by day and continuing by night, because the boat couldn't move fast. Above the surface it only travelled at about six or seven knots. That is not a great speed. It's twelve kilometres, if you think about it. Underwater it was only three or four knots, even less. Then in Great Yarmouth we went to ground and the next day from a long way off we heard the sound of two ships and then we surfaced. There was a destroyer and a big commercial ship. At the time we estimated about ten or twelve thousand tonnes. It was behind the destroyer. Okay, it was a target and we wanted to try it out. We dived again until the destroyer had passed overhead and then we went down to sea bed level and my commander tried it out. I had to pull both the levers which were behind my chief engineer's seat in order to free the torpedoes - first one lever and then the other. There was no explosion. Nowadays, of course, I say, "Thank goodness we missed."

Interviewer: How was it at the time?

Mr Sander: We didn't sink the ten thousand tonner at the time.

Interviewer: No, I mean what were your thoughts when you realised you had missed the target? Were you disappointed?

Mr Sander: Well, when you say that, disappointed, not disappointed... Of course we wanted to, but on the other hand the destroyer was still there. If I really think about whether we were disappointed or not, then sure, we had probably wanted to sink that ship.

Interviewer: Then you would want to get away.

Mr Sander: You want to get away. Well after firing we dived straight away and stayed on the bottom and then we had to be quiet. We couldn't make a sound, no sound of metal, otherwise the English would start to attack immediately. Then came the sonar "Estik", as it is called. You know how it was done from that Film "Das Boot", and it sounded as though a handful of gravel was being thrown against the outside of the boat. There is this ticking noise which comes at intervals. Then it was quiet for a while and then we heard the destroyer returning. The other boat, the freighter, of course, had kept moving and then the destroyer came looking for us.

That took a couple of hours. Either they changed position, or we changed position and when they changed position we moved as well, because it was sound against sound. And then when they were quiet and stopped moving they were looking for us, so we remained still. The whole thing went like that and they dropped about thirty depth charges on us. We weren't hit directly, otherwise I wouldn't be here, but they kept trying by dropping depth charges in our general position. They kept this up for a while and then afterwards we were so far away and we were really quite a small target. The boat is not quite one metre wide and with a length of twelve or thirteen metres it is not a big target to pinpoint. So we were in luck again and then we went home by night. We landed in Ijmuiden again and that was towards the end. It was already late March or early April of 1945. At that time the Canadians and the English were steadily advancing towards us.