World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseGerman Type IXC/40 submarine U-530 was commissioned into service in late 1940. She served with the 4th, 10th, and then the 33rd Submarine Flotilla. On 22 May 1944, she departed Lorient, France to attack Allied shipping in the Trinidad area. Aboard, she carried a Naxos radar detector which was to be given to the Japanese when she would meet with the Japanese submarine I-52; she was also to transfer a German radar operator and a navigator to the Japanese submarine. The two submarines met on 23 Jun about 850 miles west of Cape Verde Islands; U-530 proceeded with her journey for the Trinidad area after the equipment and personnel transfer (I-52 would be sunk by aircraft of escort carrier USS Bogue before she was able to reach home). When the war ended, she disobeyed President Karl Dönitz's order for all submarines to return home. Instead, she sailed on to Argentina and surrendered to the Argentineans on 10 Jul 1945. U-530's commanding officer Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth failed to explain why he chose to surrender to the Argentineans, why the journey took more than two months, why the submarine had jettisoned her deck gun, and why the ship's log book was missing. She was eventually towed to the United States and was used as a torpedo target ship; she was sunk by a torpedo from USS Toro. Her WW2 record showed that she sank two Allied ships totaling 12,063 gross register tons (GRT) and damaged one 10,195 GRT ship.

ww2dbaseConspiracy theorists often suspected that U-977 had carried Adolf Hitler and/or gold from Nazi German reserves to Argentina.

Photographs

U-530 Operational Timeline

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