In the opening days of the Second World War at sea, the U-boats of the German
Kriegsmarine reigned supreme. Attacking in deadly, coordinated wolf packs,these
stealthy vessels cut swath through Allied shipping convoys in the north Atlantic,
threatening to sever Britain’s vital lifeline to North America and starve the island nation into
submission. But this “happy time” -as U-boat crews called it -was not to last, for by 1943
major developments in Allied naval technology and tactics -from radar and sonar to escort carriers
and long-range patrol aircraft -had succeeded in turning the tide, putting the once-feared U-boat
arm firmly on the back foot. Meanwhile, the German surface fleet -never large to begin with -remained
largely bottled up in port, its commanders hesitant to commit their expensive capital ships
to battle. With the Allies pushing into mainland Europe -first in Italy, then in France -theGerman
Navy began to look increasingly irrelevant. In response to this changing strategic situation,
the Kriegsmarinedecided to switch gears and think small, deploying a variety of bizarre miniature
attack craft from human torpedoes and midget submarinesto frogmen and explosive, remote-control
motorboats. While certainly creative, the combat performance of these weapons of desperation was
less than impressive, and ultimately had little impact on the course of the war. This is the
story of Nazi Germany’s hilariously awful Naval Special Forces.As covered in our previous video,
The Midget Submarine That Changed the Course of WWII,several nations deployed midget submarines
during the Second World War. The first were the Italians, whose elite Decima Flottiglia MAS unit
used human torpedoes called maiale to attack ships in the British ports of Alexandria, Gibraltar,
and Valetta in Malta in 1941. The Japanese also used Type A Ko-hyoteki midget submarines
during the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 and in 1942 raids on Sydney Harbour,
Australia and Diego Suarez, Madagascar. However, the most successful users of midget submarines
were the British, whose 4-man X-Craft were used to great effect in both the European
and Pacific theatres. Nazi Germany was a relative latecomer when it came to naval special forces,
having little use for such units in the early part of the war. But as Allied
naval and air superiority rendered the regular surface and submarine forces of
the Kriegsmarine increasingly ineffective and an invasion of Western Europe became imminent,
the German High Command realized that smaller, stealthier weapons would be needed to defeat
the coming tide of enemy shipping. And so, in late 1943, Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of the U-boat arm,
approved the establishment of an elite naval attack unit under the command of Rear Admiral
Hellmuth Heye. Though officially known as Marine Einsatz Abteilung or “Special Naval Attack Force”,
these forces were colloquially known as Klein Kampf Verbände, K-Verbände,orsimply “K-units”.
The “K-men” who made up these units were carefully selected and put through gruelling
training courses to weed out all but the best of the best. These courses included not only training
in explosives handling, hand-to-hand combat, escapeand evasion, and naval architecture, but
also punishing physical challenges like day-long forced marches over sand and sleeping outdoors
on the Baltic coast in winter. To preserve the secrecy of the unit, the K-men were confined to
their headquarters in Heilingenhafen and forbidden from interacting with civilians. Once a month,
the entire unit was permitted to visit a local cinema under heavy guard to prevent anyone from
talking. Steadily, the unit was whittled down to a core of highly-trained men who would, in
the words of Admiral Heye:“...with a few members and with less means still be able to cause the
enemy great loss.”The first specialized weapon developed for the K-Verbändewas
ahuman torpedo called the Neger.This craft was the brainchild of naval engineer Richard Mohr,
who designed it as a way to use up surplus Germany's Laughably Awful Attempt
at Naval Special Forces.docx stocks of U-boat torpedoes piling
up in naval storehouses. The name Neger, meaning “negro” was derived from its designer’s surname,
the German form ofMoor -a black person from North Africa. The main body of the Neger was built from
a standard G7e electric torpedo, stripped of its warhead and fitted with a cramped cockpit
and simple steering controls for a single pilot. Slung beneath this was a regularG7e torpedo. The
Neger was not a true submarine, being incapable of diving. Instead, it relied on its low profile
in the water and the cover of darkness to approach its target undetected. The pilot would then align
his craft with the target using a metal spike mounted ahead of the cockpit, then start and
release the underslung torpedo. Unfortunately, in testing the release mechanism exhibited a
disturbing tendency to jam, causing the Neger and its pilot to be dragged uncontrollably towards the
target at a speed of 30 knots. The first prototype Negers were built with open cockpits, but these
had an annoying habit of flooding in all but the calmest seas. This was corrected by fitting the
cockpit with a transparent plexiglas dome -which, strangely could only be opened from the outside.
As we shall see, this was a design flaw which was to have tragic consequences. Once sealed inside,
the pilot breathed using an oxygen rebreather of the type used to escape sinking submarines,
which used a chemical scrubber to filter out carbon dioxide from his breath. Navigation
was rudimentary, performed using the stars and a compass strapped to the pilot’s wrist. The Neger
had a top speed of around a brisk walk at3 knots and an endurance of around 10 hours,
meaning the crafthad to be launched within 15 nautical miles or 28 kilometres of its target.The
first raid using Negerswas planned for the night of April 15, 1944 against the Allied-held ports of
Anzio and Nettuno on the west coast of Italy. Conducted by the K-Verbände’s261st Flotilla,
the attack was launched from the town of Practica di Mare, 29 kilometres away from the target. But
almost from the start, the mission was plagued with bad luck. The Negers were to be transported
from their hiding places in the town to the beach for launch using specially-built hand carts.
However, the primitive roads of rural Italy tended to destroy the carts’ aircraft tyres. In response,
the Germans hired local Italian citizens to clear the two-mile road to the beach of sharp rocks.
The attack, originally planned for the 15th, was postponed until the 20th to give the Negerpilots
a cloudless sky to navigate by. But as the crews and 500 German troops manhandled the Negersdown to
the beach, trouble struck once again. Hidden sandbars just offshore made it difficult
to launch the Negers, causing many to become stranded. Of the 37 craft brought to the beach,
only 23 were successfully started, while 14 became stranded, leaving only 9 to carry out the attack.
Those 9 split up into three attack groups, led by Lieutenants Koch, Serbicki, and Potthast.
Koch’s group was tasked with attacking the port of Nettuno, while the other two were to attack Anzio.
To help guide them to their targets, German forces arranged to light a bonfire on the coast near the
German front line, while antiaircraft batteries were ordered to fire tracer rounds towards Anzio
at 20-minute intervals.The 9 Negers set off at 10 PM, reaching their targets in the early
morning hours of the 21st. To the pilots’ shock, however, they found the harbours nearly empty -the
Allied cargo ships they had been assured of had already offloaded their cargo and left. Undaunted,
the pilots located targets of opportunity and fired their torpedos, successfully destroying a
small escort ship, two transports, and a coastal defence gun mounted on the harbour mole. Of the
9 Negers launched, 8 returned to base around 10 AM. The ninth was found washed ashore near Anzio,
its pilot dead. Unable to open his craft’s hatch, he had succumbed to canon dioxide poisoning. Even
grimmer, another Negerwith a dead pilot was found tossing in the surf near the launch
beach at Practica di Mare. In their frustration at being unable to free the craft from the sandbar,
the launch crew had simply abandoned it, leaving the pilot to suffocate.It was
an inauspicious start for the K-units. For the destruction of a few unimportant ships,
the Kriegsmarine had revealed the existence of its new secret weapon to the Allies. But
the K-men would soon get another chance to prove their worth when, two months later,
Allied forces landed in Normandy. The K-Verbände was redeployed to Viller-sur-Mer in Normandy,
from where it could attack Allied Germany's Laughably Awful
Attempt at Naval Special Forces.docx shipping off the British-controlled Sword
Beach. Learning from their mistakes in Italy, the Germanscarefully selected their launch site,
which had concrete ramps and a steeper dropoff. However, the waters off the French coast were a
completely different animal than Anzio. The tidal currents were faster than the Neger’s maximum
cruising speed, meaning the craft could only be launched during certain narrow windows when the
ebb tide would carry them to their targets and the flood tide backto their launching point.
These conditions only occurred four days a month, and since the craft could only operate after 10
or 11 P.M., this left them with only two hours to reach their target and carry out their mission.
Nonetheless, on the night of July 5, 1944, a force of 40 Neger sailed out from Viller-sur-Mer. Only 9
returned, but the commander reported an impressive score of one cruiser, 2 destroyers, one steamer,
and two Tank Landing Craft sunk and one cruiser, one destroyer, two steamers, and two landing craft
damaged by torpedoes. However, these claims do not line up with British records, which only record
the loss of two small minesweepers: HMS Magicand HMS Cato.Undaunted, the K-men tried again,
launching another attack on the night of July 7.But this mission was a complete failure,
with not one of the 21 Negerslaunched returning to base. And for the loss of so many highly-trained
men, the Flotilla only managed to sink the minesweeper HMS Pylades and damage the Polish
cruiser Dragon, which was later scuttled as a harbour breakwater. This disaster revealed
that the K-Verbändehad lost the vital element of surprise; the Allies were now alert to the
German secret weapon and had taken appropriate precautions. Ever-present air patrols also doomed
the surface-bound craft, as Kriegsmarine captain Friedrich Böhme later recalled:“Frequently,
day broke before my one-man submarines had returned and allied fighters strafed them
on the way back to the mouth of the One river. Of the submarines I sent out, I recovered only 10 to
15 per cent. Approximate 200 small submarines were lost through allied strafing attacks. I have seen
at one time as many as 50 to 100 fighters circling the bay like hawks hunting for these submarines.
They were very persistent. Once they mistook a wreck caught in a strong current for a submarine
wake, and attacked and re-attacked it for half an hour.”Realizing that the Neger’s inability to
dive made it dangerously vulnerable, the Germans produced an improved version called the Marder or
“Pine Marten.” The Marder was fitted with ballast tanks, allowing it to diveto a depth of 25 metres.
The pilot’s dome was also made openable from the inside. The new submarines were first deployed on
the night of August 2, 1944, when 58 were launched against Allied shipping off Courseulles-sur-Mer.
But the improved craft proved no more effective than their predecessors, sinking the destroyer
escort HMS Quorn and the minesweeper HMS Gairsay for the loss of 41 Marder. Two weeks later on
the night of August 16, 42 Marder torpedoed the French battleship Courbet, the barrage balloon
vessel HMS Fratton,and one landing craft for the loss of 26 of their own. Unknown to the Germans,
the Courbetwas nothing but an empty shell, scheduled to be scuttled as a harbour breakwater.
But before any more attacks could be launched, the Allies brokeout from the Normandy beachhead and
overran the K-Verbände launching sites, forcing the unit to withdraw from northern France. The
last mass attack by German human torpedoes took place in September 1944 against shipping
in Southern France, where the Allies had landed on August 15 in Operation Dragoon. Unfortunately,
the mission was a complete failure, with 14 of the 30 Marderlaunched being destroyed or captured for
the loss of zero Allied ships. Yet sporadic, small-scale attacks continued to be launched
in the German-occupied Low Countries, with one of the last Allied ships to be lost to these weapons
being the trawler HMS Colsay, sunk off Ostend, Belgium on November 2, 1944. And while the Germans
did try to develop a faster, longer-range version of the Mardercalled the Hai or “Shark”, this
performed so poorly in testing that the project was quickly cancelled. Yet while the physical
impact of German human torpedoes was negligible, their psychological impact was considerable -fact
the Germans exploited by throwing hundreds of clear plastic domes into the sea around Normandy
to keep Allied sentries on their toes. Germany's Laughably Awful Attempt
at Naval Special Forces.docx But the hastily-developed Negersand
Marderswere far from the only midget submarines developed by the Germans during WWII. In September
1943, the British Royal Navy launched Operation Source, an attempt to sink the German battleship
Tirpitzin her Norwegian anchorage using X-craft midget submarines. While the mission succeeded
in severely damaging the Tirpitz,five of the six X-craft were lost andtheir crews killed
or captured. After examining the captured British midget subs, the Kriegsmarine’s
construction bureau began developing a version of their own, designated the Type XXVIIA Hechtor
“Pike.”Measuring 10 metres long and manned by a crew of two, the Hecht was powered by a regular
12 horsepower electric torpedo motor, giving it an extremely low speed of 4 knots and endurance
of only 69 nautical miles or 128 kilometres. Like the X-craft, the Hechtwas designed to carry
a large explosive charge in its bow, which could be dropped beneath the keel of a ship at anchor.
However, at the insistence of Admiral Dönitz, the craft was later fitted with two torpedoes
for longer-ranged attacks, further decreasing its speed and range. As the Hecht was intended
to slip through torpedo nets and other obstacles, it was not initially fitted with hydroplanes,
trim being controlled by a system of sliding weights. In testing however, this system proved
completely unworkable, and hydroplanes were subsequently fitted. Nonetheless, the submarine
remained extremely difficult to control. While 53 Hechts were produced by Germaniawerft in Kiel,
their disappointing performance meant they were never deployed in combat. Instead, they were used
to train the crews of other midgetsubmarine types. The Hecht was eventually developed into a far more
capable craft known as the Type XXVIIB Seehund or “Seal”. Measuring 45 feet long, manned by a crew
of two, and armed with two external torpedoes, the Seehund was effectively a miniature U-boat,
equipped with a diesel-electric propulsion system that gave it a top speed of 7 knots surfaced and
3 knots submerged, a range of 300 kilometres, and a maximum diving depth of 50 metres. Furthermore,
the tiny craft provedremarkably immune to depth charges, which tended to simply toss
them around without inflicting major damage. A total of 285 Seehundwere manufactured, the
type first seeing combat on New Year’s Eve 1944 off IJmuiden in the Netherlands. Unfortunately,
the flotilla ran into a violent storm, which sank all but two of the 18 submarines. From then on,
Seehund largely operated off the German coast and in the English Channel, scoring their first
victory off Great Yarmouth in February 1945. During their brief career, these craft proved the
most successful of all German midget subs, sinking 8 ships for a total of 17,300 gross register tons
for the loss of 35 submarines. And as with the Negersand Marders,the psychological effect of
the Seehund was considerable. Their hulls were too small for Allied sonar to get a good signal return
and their slow, quiet electric motors made them almost immune to detection by hydrophone, making
them nearly invisible to Allied antisubmarine escorts. However, despite their relative success,
like all such weapons the Seehund had almost no impact on the course of the war, with Admiral
Sir Charles Little, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth later stating: "Fortunately for
us these damn things arrived too late in the war to do any damage”.Seehund were last deployed on
April 28 and May 2, 1945, when they were used to resupply the besieged German garrison at Dunkirk.
Instead of torpedoes, the submarines carried special containers nicknamed “butter torpedoes”
filled with food. On the return voyage, the containers were used to carry mail. After the war,
France received four Seehund as war reparations and commissioned them into the French Navy,
where they served until 1953.Much smaller -and far less successful -than theSeehundwas the Molch or
“Salamander.” 37 metres long, crewed by one pilot, and armed with two torpedoes, like the Hechtthe
Molch was powered by a regular electric torpedo motor, giving it a top speed of 5 knots and a
range of 35 nautical miles or 64 kilometres. While 393 Molch were built before the end of the war,
they proved a dismal failure, its complicated control system proving too much for a single pilot
to handle. Deployed against Allied shipping off the coast of Southern France and the Netherlands
in late 1944, the craft sank only seven Germany's Laughably Awful Attempt
at Naval Special Forces.docx small ships in 102 missions for the loss
of 80 submarines. Due to this poor performance, like the Hechtthey were soon relegated to
training duty.But the smallest submarine in the Kriegsmarine’s arsenal was the Biberor “Beaver.”
Designed by Kriegsmarine captain Hans Bartels, the Biber measured only 9 metres long and,
like the Molch,had a crew of one and was armed with two torpedoes. However, it was also fitted
with a gasoline engine, giving it a surfaced speed of 6.5 knots and a range of 100 nautical
miles or 180 kilometres. 393 Biberwere built by Flenderwerke of Lubeck, the type first being
deployed in August 1944 against Allied shipping off the coast of southern France. However, like
the Molch submarines they operated alongside, the Biber scored no victories. The type later briefly
operated from Fécamp harbour in France before being withdrawn to Rotterdam the Netherlands,
where, as part of the 261st Flotilla, they operated against Allied shipping in the Scheldt
Estuary. Given the submarines’ slow top speed and the great distances from their operating bases to
their targets, missions could last 24 hours or more. In order to keep their crews alert,
they were issued with an experimental drug known as D-IX -a mixture of oxycodone,
cocaine, and methamphetamine, or as we here in the basement at Whistler Headquarters like to call it,
breakfast.Despite this chemical assistance, however, the Biberproved no more effective
than the Molch, with most falling victim to Allied warships or aircraft. The only confirmed victory
scored by the type was against the American cargo ship Alan A. Dale, which was torpedoed
and sunk off the Dutch coast on September 23, 1944. One month later in January 1945,
six Biber were used in an attempted attack against the Soviet battleship Arkhangelsk at its anchorage
in Murmansk, northern Russia. The midget subs were strapped to the decks of full-size U-boats,
which would ferry them to the target and release them just outside the harbour. Unfortunately,
when the carrier U-boats surfaced, 4 of the 6 Biber were found to be severely damaged,
and the operation was called off. Ironically, the most effective special naval weapon would turn out
to be one that required no vehicle at all: the kampfschwimmeror frogman. Equipped with a rubber
dry suit, flippers, and a compact rebreather set, these men were trained to stealthily infiltrate
enemy harbours and place explosive limpet mines on the hulls of ships at anchors. But by the time the
frogmen units became operational in June1944, German forces were being pushed back from the
coast, making the targets they had trained to attack increasingly scarce. Consequently,
they were reassigned to attacking bridges and other riverine infrastructure to slow the
Allied advance across Europe. On June 23, 1944, just three weeks after D-day, German frogmen
successfully blew up two bridges over the Orne river, losing just one man in the process. Later,
in August, the unit placed explosives against the canal lock gates in Antwerp,
Belgium, knocking them out for three months. Successful operations were also carried out
against bridges at Arnhem in the Netherlands, Stettin in Poland, and along the Oder river
in Germany. But even these highly-effective units could do little to turn the tide of the
war, and less than a year after the Kampfschwimmer were first deployed, Nazi Germany surrendered to
the Allies. The failures of the K-Verbände and its midget submarineswere typical of many Nazi
“secret weapon” projects, from jet aircraft to ballistic missiles: while conceptually clever,
they were developed and rushed into service too hastily to be effectivein combat. Furthermore,
by the time such weapons appeared, Germany’s crumbling industrial and strategic situation
meant that the war was already lost. It was simply a case of, quite literally, too little, too late.