"Toward the end of World War II a German submarine from the Monsun Gruppe 33rd Flotilla operating out of Penang, Malaysia was said to have shown up at the La Palma Secret Base, a primitive submarine-pen hewn out of the jungle-like estuaries of Chiapas along Mexico's far southern reaches of the Pacific Coast by the Japanese. That German U-boat, a long range Type IXD2, was the U-196.
Unlike records of most of the known U-boats, the background facts of U-196 are literally all over the map. The thing is, those all over the map stories are mostly no more than a number of individual stand alone histories promulgated by people with their own agenda. However, if the facts of the individual histories are gleened out of the morass and connected in compehensive fashion a different picture emerges --- much, much different than the official picture.
In the early stages of her career the U-196 is most notorious for having completed the longest patrol by any submarine in WWII, 225 days from March 13 to October 23 1943. After that the official picture is pretty bland. In a brief two-line outline it shows the U-196 left from France for Malaysia. Approximately three months after arrival in Malaysia she left on a patrol around Australia. No sooner had she departed than she disappeared, afterwhich she was stricken from the records.
A more in depth view of the official records gives much the same basic imprint, indicating that the U-196 departed the German U-boat base in La Pallice, occupied France, into the Bay of Biscay March 16, 1944 thence then into the Atlantic under orders for Penang, Malaysia. By early July she had passed east of Cape Town South Africa into the Indian Ocean arriving at the Malaysia base August 10, 1944, five months after her departure from France. On November 30, 1944, U-196 left Penang to undertake a war patrol around Australia with two other boats. When she failed to respond to repeated transmissions requesting her position sometime around December 1st, she was listed as missing in the Sunda Straits south of Java, effective December 12, 1944…"
Full text here
the-wanderling.com/u-196.html
Amicalement
Armand
paints up some WWII Soviet aircraft.
