Hitler’s Raketen U-Boote (Rocket Submarines), the True Story of the Steinhoff Brothers and the Nazi’s First Submarine Launched Missiles: The Untold New England U-Boat Saga and Homicide Thriller

This guide is about Germany’s improvement of secret rocket launching U-Boats – “Operation Teardrop” – Hitler’s Raketen U-Boote (rocket submarine) and the mysterious loss of life of Kapitanleutnant Friedrich Steinhoff throughout World Battle II. Throughout the ultimate days of German belligerence in World Battle II a little bit identified chapter in Naval historical past passed off simply off the American Northeast Coast. In response to the perceived menace of a U-boat launched missile assault towards New York Metropolis, the U.S. Navy mobilized one of the vital complete anti-submarine operations of the battle. For almost six a long time the story of the ultimate patrol of the German U-boat U-873, and the mysterious loss of life of her commander, Kapitanleutnant Friedrich Steinhoff, have been little greater than a footnote in naval historical past. The reminiscence of these occasions, nevertheless, and American considerations for nationwide safety, will endlessly stay as a prophetic imaginative and prescient of the terrorist assaults that wreaked havoc throughout the US on September 11, 2001.On Might 11, 1945, the usS. Vance and the usS. Durant had orders to search for the surrendering German U-Boat U-873. The U-873 was boarded and escorted to the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Naval Base, arriving there on Might 16-Seventeenth. In response to the floor group Commander of the U.S. Navy’s Jap Sea Frontier’s Northern Group, Captain Alexander W. Moffat, Commander: “Steinhoff was a tricky, truculent Nazi. When he got here aboard (U.S. Coast Guard Cutter) Argo (CGC-100) he refused to speak to me. By way of an interpreter he mentioned solely: ‘I’m obeying orders of a better authority.’ Then he sneered at me and turned away.” rom just lately declassified handwritten U.S. Naval Jail notes taken in the course of the preliminary interrogation of U-873 Officers and crewmen whereas held within the Portsmouth Naval Jail, it’s clear the interrogators additionally realized that Commander Steinhoff had beforehand been the Commanding Officer of “U-511 as C.O. on first patrol June 42” throughout which Germany’s first profitable submarine rocket-firing assessments have been carried out. Steinhoff’s first brutal two and a half hour lengthy interrogation passed off in an remoted dungeon-like cell identified by the jail’s Marine guards as “The Pit.” Upon discovery of Steinhoff’s involvement within the secret analysis and testing of submarine launched rockets, and his insistence that no such U-boats have been ever deployed, it’s doubtless that Steinhoff’s interrogations, whereas “lashed to a wood chair” grew more and more extra brutal.Commander Steinhoff, two German officers and 47 crewmen have been transferred in a number of closely guarded Navy buses to Boston, Massachusetts, the place they have been handed over to the First Military Command authorities and briefly held on the Suffolk County Jail on Charles Road.A couple of days later, German Navy Prisoner of Battle Officer, Kapitanleutnant Steinhoff was found lifeless in his cell. The official ruling was that he had dedicated suicide. However the proof, covered-up by the U.S. Naval authorities, pointed to a really totally different conclusion.