Type IXD2 submarine
U-848 under attack by PB4Y's from VB-107 and two B-25's, southwest of Ascension Island, 5 November 1943. All 63 hands were lost.
Second pass of LT Charles A. Baldwin, USNR, PB4Y-1 of VB-107.
U-848 was sunk by a combined six Army and Navy aircraft, and after she sank these aircraft dropped life rafts for the twenty or so survivors seen in the water. We attempted to divert a merchant ship to the area to rescue survivors, but none were found, which is very common for U-boats sunk by aircraft.
On 3 December 1943, the cruiser USS
Marblehead found a single survivor, Oberbootsmann Hans Schade, in a US Army life raft. He was taken to the Navy hospital in Recife, and briefly “interrogated” by a US officer impersonating another German prisoner. “There was little need for this ruse however as the man was delirious or in a stupor most of the time. Everything possible was done to bring him to and for a brief period of ten or fifteen minutes he was somewhat rational.” It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say we got more information from the life raft’s paddle than from Schade himself, where he had carved his name,
U-848, and that he’d been in the raft for 14 days,
On 6 December Schade died from exposure and was buried with military honours 6 December 1943 at Recife in the Santo Amara Cemetery
