U-67
On the 9th of June 1942 Günther Müller-Stöckheim in the Type IX-C U-67 followed the track of U-157, passing over the site of his colleague’s sinking on the 16th of June as it exited the region for the US Gulf. U-67 was in transit through the Caicos Passage and north of Inagua at the time of the USS Thetis attack off Key West, and spent the following three days steaming up the Old Bahama Channel. On the day the boat crossed into the Gulf it sank the Dutch 2,220-ton freighter Managua between Havana and Key West.
Müller-Stöckheim had a successful patrol in the US Gulf, amassing five more sinkings and a total patrol tonnage of 44,846 tons. His victims included the Norwegian Nortind, US Rawleigh Warner, Empire Mica of the UK, Byard of Norway, and the American freighters Paul H. Harwood(damaged, like the Nortind), Benjamin Brewster, and R. W. Gallagher.
On the 17th of July U-67 again rounded Key West, this time eastbound and back down the Old Bahama Channel via the Saint Nicholas Channel, just as the boat had entered the region. On the 18th it passed Ragged Island and on the 19th it skirted the northwest coast of Inagua to transit the Caicos Passage between Mayaguana and Providenciales.
U-66 would exit the region roughly midway between Bermuda and Anegada on the 23rd of July. It was a long patrol of 81 days, originating and terminating in Lorient, where the boat was based with the Second Flotilla. The patrol began on the 20thof May and ended on the 8th of August, and no refuelings were undertaken.
A member of the Crew of 1934, Müller-Stöckheim was a Kapitänleutnant at the time of his patrol, achieving Korvettenkapitän only two weeks before being killed on 16 July 1943 at the age of 29 when attacked in the Sargasso Sea by aircraft from the USS Core (three of her crew of 51 were rescued). Following this patrol he earned the Knights Cross in November 1942, with a total tonnage of thirteen ships sunk of 72,138 tons and five damaged for 29,726 GRT. He joined the U-boat force only in April, 1940.
SOURCES: Gudmundur Helgason, Rainer Kolbicz, www.uboat.net, 2011, Kenneth Wynn, U-boat Operations of the Second World War, Volume 1 and Volume 2, 1997