U-158 Rostin 2-Mar-1942
U-158 under Kapitänleutnant Erwin Rostin spent an above-average eight days in the Bermuda zone, starting on the first of March, 1942 when it sank the Finnanger between Bermuda and Nova Scotia. The Finnanger was a Norwegian tanker of 9,551 tons out of Convoy ONS 67. On the way to the US east coast U-158, which had left from Heligoland, Germany on the seventh of February, pursued convoy ONS 67 off Canada.
Rostin was an aggressive commander and managed to sink the Empire Celt and Diloma on the 24th of February. After dispatching the Finnanger and transiting north and west of Bermuda from the first to the sixth of March, U-158 sank the Caribsea, John D. Gill, Olean, and Ario as far south as the Carolinas. Then the submarine returned to the waters north of Bermuda on the 16th, heading east-northeast until the 19th when it left the region. U-158 arrived in its new 4thU-boat Flotilla base of Lorient on the 31st of March, 1942.
Erwin Rostin was a member of the Crew of 1933 and 34 years of age at the time. His earliest commands were of minesweepers M-98 and M-21 before he joined U-boats in March 1941. A daring and highly accomplished commander, he was awarded the Knights Cross on the 28thof June 1942, merely two days before being attacked by a Bermudian-based aircraft and sunk northwest of Bermuda. As commander of U-158 he racked up 111 patrol days in two patrols during which he attacked 19 ships of 116,585 tons.
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