U-Boats in the Black Sea

[19kilo]

I understand that in 1942 the Germans shipped six? Type II u-boats via canal and rail to the Black Sea. How effective were they in operations and what was the ultimate fate of these boats?

[Keith Enge]

The six U-boats were shipped by truck (with weights like engines removed) on the autobahn from Dresden on the Elbe River to Regensburg on the Danube, then sailed down the Danube to the Black Sea. The six were all Type IIB; numbers 9, 18,19, 20, 23 and 25. They operated seemingly without much result until 1944 when U9 was bombed in port and the rest were scuttled when the Soviets took over their base. Italy sent six CB class midget subs by rail. One was lost by bombing in port in 1942 and the rest were captured by Germany after the 1943 Italian armistice (I don't know but assume that they too would have been scuttled in 1944).

Both sides also sent some MTBs. As far as I can tell, neither the subs nor the MTBs conducted offensive operations, probably there basically was no Soviet merchant ship traffic. Instead they seem to have been used for coastal/harbor defense, defending Romanian ports like Constanza (and maybe western Crimean ports) from Soviet warship raids. However, after a Soviet raid by two large destroyers on June 26, 1941 that didn't end well (one DD was lost to a mine), no more raids were made; all Soviet warship traffic was on the east coast and up to the Crimea. Therefore, by the time the subs and MTBs got to the Black Sea, they had nothing to defend against.

[RF]

As far as I am aware the Black Sea was the operational area of the fourt largest Axis navy, the Reggina Marina of Romania. Its role as I understand was entirely defensive. Neither did the Romanians participate in the naval war in the Med.