Years of service 1930–43 Name Siegfried Forstner | ||
 | ||
Born 19 September 1910
Hannover ( 1910-09-19 ) Allegiance Weimar Republic (to 1933)
Nazi Germany Service/branch Reichsmarine
Kriegsmarine Rank Korvettenkapitan
posthumously promoted to Fregattenkapitan Unit SSS Niobe
cruiser Emden
survey vessel Meteor
battleship Hessen
cruiser Admiral Scheer
cruiser Nurnberg
Panzerschiff Deutschland
U-99 Battles/wars World War II
Battle of the North Atlantic
convoy SC 107
convoy SC 118 Died October 13, 1943, Atlantic Ocean Awards Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross Battles and wars Battle of the Atlantic, Convoy SC 107, Convoy SC 118, World War II | ||
Commands held German submarine U-402 | ||
Korvettenkapitän Siegfried Freiherr von Forstner (19 September 1910 – 13 October 1943) was a German U-boat commander during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (German: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes). The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership. He and his entire crew of U-402 were killed in action on 13 October 1943.
Contents
Background
Von Forstner was the son of an aristocratic Prussian family whose men had served for generations as Army and Navy officers. His younger brother Wolfgang Friedrich (*1916) was also a U-boat commander, and two other brothers (Ernst Richard and Hans Dietrich) were Army officers. Wolfgang was the only brother to survive World War II. Their great-grandfather and grandfather had been army officers, and their father was a general, Ernst Freiherr von Forstner (1869–1950), who had won the Pour le Mérite with cluster as a regimental commander during World War I. Their uncle George Gunther von Forstner had commanded U-1 and U-28 during World War I, and another uncle of the Imperial Navy had died in that conflict.
Career
Siegfried von Forster joined the Kriegsmarine in 1930 and served four years on the German cruiser Nürnberg following training as an artillery technical officer. Many of his year group were already at sea in submarines when he entered U-boat school in 1940. Von Forstner received training as a student commander aboard U-99 under his Naval School classmate Otto Kretschmer. After a 5-month tour in U-59, von Forstner assumed command of U-402. Von Forstner carried out eight combat patrols in U-402 sinking 14 merchantmen and one warship and damaging three other ships.
Von Forstner married in Hamburg in December, 1940, while waiting to take command of U-402. His wife Annamaria made distinctive red pom-poms for the crew of U-402 to wear on their uniform hats. The Baron and Baroness saved their home in Hamburg from burning during August, 1943, air-raids by staying on the roof and extinguishing incendiary bombs.
No ships were sunk during the first U-402 patrol from 26 October 1941 to 9 December 1941. On the second patrol von Forstner damaged the 12000-ton troopship Llangibby Castle off the Bay of Biscay on 16 January 1942 but the damaged troopship was able to make repairs in the Azores.
Von Forstner then made two patrols off the Atlantic coast of the United States. He sank a 4800-ton ship en route and then sank the 5300-ton Russian tanker Ashkabad and the 1000-ton converted yacht USS Cythera off Cape Hatteras on 2 May 1942. On the next patrol, U-402 was depth charged by patrol bombers off Cape Hatteras in mid-July and suffered a battery explosion.
Von Forstner received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for torpedoing twelve ships from convoy SC 107 and convoy SC 118. Baron von Forstner sank two ships during a submerged daylight attack on convoy SC 129 before U-402 was depth charged and damaged by the corvette Gentian.
Following departure for her last patrol on 4 September 1943, U-402 shot down an attacking RAF 172 Squadron Vickers Wellington bomber over the Bay of Biscay, The submarine also provided flak protection for U-377 when the latter was attacked by a B-24 Liberator bomber during the battle of Convoy ON 202. A U-boat believed by the Allied Anti-Submarine Assessment Committee to be U-402 was sunk with all hands on 13 October 1943 by a Mark 24 FIDO Torpedo dropped by Grumman TBF Avenger aircraft from USS Card.
Ships attacked
As commander of U-402 Siegfried von Forstner is credited with the sinking of 14 ships for a total of 70,434 gross register tons (GRT), further damaging three ships of 28,682 GRT and sinking one auxiliary warship of 602 GRT.