U-193 Pauckstadt 15-Nov-1943 10
FregattenkapitänHans Pauckstadt brought U-193 for a ten-day patrol south of Bermuda starting on the 15th of November, 1943 and ending on the 11th of January, 1944. First U-193 entered southeast of the island on 15 November and motored to the northwest, in a generally straight line. The sub exited the area on the 20thin the direction of Savannah and Hatteras. Whilst returning to Europe over a month later the boat returned, this time from south of Bermuda on a northeasterly heading, starting on the 8th of January. This leg lasted only four days and ended on the 11th when Pauckstadt and his crew headed northeast out of the region, to the southeast of the island.
The Type IXC/40 boat U-193 entered the Bahamas south of Bermuda on the 17th of November and then motored west then west-southwest for the Northeast Providence Channel, which it obtained on the 22nd of November. Motoring south of Abaco and north of Nassau, the boat emerged into the Gulf Stream on the night of 23rd November and turned to port around Great Isaacs Light. Proceeding down the Gulf Stream in the Straits of Florida, it cleared Key West on the 26th and exited the region into the US Gulf on that date. In a 122-day patrol the boat’s only victim was the US-flagged tanker Touchetof 10,172 tons, sunk in the US Gulf.
From Key West the boat rounded Cuba via the Yucatan Channel and re-entered the greater Bahamas region via the Windward Passage on the 29th of December. The thirtieth found U-193 south of Inagua, but instead of going through the Caicos or Crooked Island Passage Pauckstadt opted to turn east along the north coast of Hispaniola and then turn northeast, having passed to the south and east of the Turks & Caicos Islands.
Motoring northeast between the 1st and 6th of January 1944, the boat exited the area on that day south of Bermuda. However rather than return to La Pallice, where it as based with the Second Flotilla, the boat was forced to duck into El Ferrol, Spain due to urgent repairs after it was attacked by Allied aircraft on the 9th of February.
The re-positioning patrol from El Ferrol in neutral Spain (which required permission from the Spanish government to undertake) took five days for the submarine to arrive in Lorient, France. This patrol began on the 12th of October and U-193 refueled from U-488 east of Bermuda in late October. U-193 was attacked twice while in the Caribbean by USN aircraft.
The Touchetwas to be the only ship sunk by FregattenkapitänPauckstadt. A member of the Crew of 1926, he survived the collision and sinking of U-18 ten years later. At the time of outbreak of war in 1939 he was an officer on the training ship Gorch Foch. After that he led the Fifth U-boat Flotilla. He commissioned U-193 in Bremen at the end of 1942.
At the time of the German surrender Pauckstadt was in command of the Eighth Flotilla (training) and another training flotilla. In total he acquired 185 patrol days at sea in two war patrols. Hans Pauckstadt lived until 1984 and the age of 77. U-193 was posted as missing from the Bay of Biscay on the 23rd of April 1944 without him – no precise explanation was been given for its loss.
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