U-514 Auffermann 3-Sep-1942 5 days
Kapitänleutnant Hans-Jürgen Auffermann brought U-514 into the area northeast of Bermuda on the 3rd of September 1942 on a north-south patrol leg which would last five days. The boat headed south-southwest until the 5th, when it turned due south, east of Bermuda, and motored in that direction until the 7th of September, when it left the area.
On the sixth Auffermann sank the British 167-ton schooner Helen Forsey using gunfire alone. Later during the patrol, off Barbados on the 11thof September he damaged the British steamer Cornwallis of 5,458 tons. On the 15thAuffermann sank the British ship Kioto of 3,297 tons off Tobago Island and was conter-attacked by a US Mariner aircraft. A US destroyer then damaged the submarine, necessitating four days of repairs.
U-514 then motored south to the delta of the Amazon River in Brazil. During that tour it penetrated the defenses of USS Roe to sink the steamers Ozorio (2,730 tons) and Lages (also Brazilian, 5,472 tons) on the 28th of September. On 11 October Auffermann sank the US steamer Steel Scientist of 5,688 tons off South America. Two days later she was attacked without damage by a US B-18 bomber. She arrived in her new base at Lorient on the 9th of November, 1942.
Hans-Jürgen Auffermann was born in 1914 and turned 28 years of age during this patrol on the first of October. He was a member of the Crew of 1934 and joined U-boat training in January 1941. This led to a role as First Watch Officers of U-69 in April of that year, from which he was given command when the skipper, Metzler, was incapacitated by illness. Then Auffermann commissioned U-514 in January 1942.
Auffermann was to serve four patrols aboard U-514, accruing 199 sea days. Overall he sank or damaged eight ships of 13,551 tons. On the 8th of July 1943 U-514 was attacked by rockets fired from the air by a British Liberator near Cape Finisterre, Spain. The boat and its full complement were killed. In 1942 Auffermann was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, and in 1944 he was posthumously awarded the German Cross in Gold.
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