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| Name | Info |
![]() Thilo Bode (deceased) *Signature Value : £70 | Thilo Bode was a rather young U-boat commander in the sense that the first of his two patrols started on 1st May 1944 until 30th September 1944 and the second was from 1st October 1944 to 8th May 1945. His boat served as a weather boat for about three months in the northern part of the North Atlantic where his only job was to report three times each day the weather encountered in his area because they had no weather stations in the area. While a boring job, this was the only way the German High Command could get first hand information about the weather in the area. Since some 90% of the weather in Northwestern Europe originates in that area, this information was extremely important to both the U-boat and Luftwaffe commands. Bode never sighted a single Allied vessel. His second patrol was in the North American waters. The High Command assigned him to that area with the idea that surveillance had been considerably relaxed after the German submarine war had practically come to an end due to the defeat of the German submarine arm. Again, he had no contact with any Allied vessels until he was ordered to surrender. He surrendered U-858 to the USS Pilsbury on 14th May 1945. Crew of the American ship boarded the U-858 and she was taken to be docked near Ft Miles, Delaware, where the crew were held prisoner. Later she was taken to the Philadelphia Naval Yard and was scuttled near the end of 1947 after being used for torpedo trials off the coast of New England. The crew of U-858 suffered no losses from accidents, combat or other causes. His boat was laid down by A G Weser shipyards in Bremen on 11th December 1942, commissioned on 30th September 1943 and was one of 87 of the IXC/40 type boats commissioned. The U-858 carried 22 torpedoes and had 6 tubes – 4 in the bow and 2 in the stern. It carried a crew of between 48 and 56 men and had a top speed of 19 knots on the surface and 7 knots submerged. She could submerge to a maximum of 755 feet. Maximum range was 13,850 miles. Thilo Bode was awarded the Spanish Cross in Bronze on 6th June 1939, the Iron Cross, 2nd Class in 1940, the Destroyer War Badge in 1941, the U=Boat War Badge in Silver in 1943, and the Iron Cross, 1st Class, also in 1943. Thilo Bode died 3rd January 2014 at the age of 95. |
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