U-105 under Heinrich Schuch Bermuda patrol March 1942

U-105          Schuch         21-Mar-1942       

U-105 under (later Fregattenkapitän) Heinrich Schuch patrolled north of Bermuda for 12 days between the 21stof March 1942 and the 1st of April. It was one of eleven subs assigned to the fourth wave of Operation Drumbeat. It left Lorient as part of the 2nd U-boat Flotilla on the 25th of February and entered the region northeast of Bermuda westbound on the 21st of March.

It proceeded west then southwest, performed a dog-leg and sank the British tanker Narragansett of 10,389 tons on the 25th. Then it proceeded northwest until the 27th, when it sank the Norwegian ship Svenørnorthwest of Bermuda.

Earlier that day it attacked a ship with a torpedo and heard a detonation, however no confirmed damage or sinking has been attributed to this attack and the Eastern Sea Frontier Enemy Action Diary (US) is silent as to ships reporting an attack in this location. U-105 then headed east until the first of April, exiting just north of where it had entered the area. It returned to Lorient on the 15th of April.

Schuch was born in 1906 and a member of the Crew of 1925, making him 35 years of age at the time. From 1938 to September 1939 he commanded U-37 without sinking enemy ships. His other command aside from U-105 was U-154. He moved ashore in 1945 a Head of the Weapons Division until the surrender. Overall he was responsible for sinking seven ships of 39,187 tons, three of them from U-154. Schuch received no decorations. He died in 1968 at the age of 61.

 

SOURCES: Gudmundur Helgason, Rainer Kolbicz, www.uboat.net, 2013, Kenneth Wynn, U-boat Operations of the Second World War, Volume 1 and Volume 2, 1997, R. Busch, and H.-J. Röll, German U-boat Commanders of World War II, 1988, Franz Kurowski, Knights Cross Holders of the U-boat Service