U-754 Oestermann 5-Apr-1942 4 days
Kapitänleutnant Hans Ostermann brought his submarine U-754 briefly into the Bermuda area between the fifth and eighth of April, 1942 – just long enough to sink the Norwegian tanker Kollskegg of 9,858 tons on the sixth. Aside from this it was a highly successful patrol in which he also sank the British tanker British Prudence off Newfoundland and Saint Pierre. Following his Canada foray the sub moved off the Hatteras area in the end of March. There it attacked three barges and their tug with gunfire before sinking the barges Barnegat and Alleghany and the tug Menominee and damaging the barge Ontario.
Thereafter on the first of April Oestermann sank the tanker Tiger off Virginia, followed two days later by the Otho. After sinking the Kollskegg U-754 returned for Brest, where it was based for the 5th U-boat Flotilla. The patrol bgan there on the seventh of March and ended in Brest on the 25thof April 1942.
Born in 1913, Oestermann was a member of the Crew of 1933 and turned 29 during this patrol. He would drown within the year, the victim of Allied anti-submarine efforts north-east of Boston. Early in his career Oestermann served aboard the destroyer Hermann Shoemann before joining U-boats in July 1940. His only boat before commissioning U-754 was U-151. Overall he accrued 135 patrol days in three war-going patrols and sank or damaged 14 ships of 56,149 tons. He received no decorations before being sunk by a Royal Canadian Air Force Hudson on 31 July 1942.
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