Qualla: U-168: The U-Boat Betrayed by Its Own Allies

U-168: The U-Boat Betrayed by Its Own Allies: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The information that killed U-168 came from her own side. On October 5, 1944, the German submarine left Batavia -- modern-day Jakarta -- and, following standard procedure, transmitted her precise departure time, intended course, and speed to Japanese naval units in the area. The Japanese were allies, after all. What the Germans did not know was that Allied codebreakers at FRUMEL, the signals intelligence center in Melbourne, were reading those Japanese communications almost as fast as the Japanese themselves. Within hours, a Dutch submarine had her orders. By sunrise the next morning, U-168 was on the bottom of the Java Sea.

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U-168: The U-Boat Betrayed by Its Own Allies: Built in Bremen, Bound for the Tropics

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-168 was a Type IXC/40, a long-range ocean-going submarine designed to operate far from German waters. Her keel was laid down on March 15, 1941, at the Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG shipyard in Bremen. She was launched on March 5, 1942, and commissioned on September 10 un...

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U-168: The U-Boat Betrayed by Its Own Allies: Monsoon Boats in Eastern Waters

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By 1943, Germany was sending U-boats to operate from Japanese-controlled ports in Southeast Asia, part of the so-called Monsoon Group. These submarines hunted Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean, where convoy protection was thinner than in the Atlantic and targets were plentiful....

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U-168: The U-Boat Betrayed by Its Own Allies: Three Ships in Two Weeks

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-168's third patrol, departing Penang on February 7, 1944, was her most productive and her most ruthless. South of Ceylon -- present-day Sri Lanka -- she fired three torpedoes at a British salvage vessel on February 14. One malfunctioned, but the other two sent the ship to the b...

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U-168: The U-Boat Betrayed by Its Own Allies: An Intercepted Secret

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What happened next was a consequence of coalition warfare and its inherent vulnerabilities. When U-168 departed Batavia on October 5, 1944, for her fourth patrol, standard operating procedure required her to share navigational details with the Japanese military so their own force...

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U-168: The U-Boat Betrayed by Its Own Allies: Sunrise in the Java Sea

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Shortly after dawn on October 6, 1944, Goossens's submarine spotted U-168 on a steady easterly course in the Java Sea, exactly where the decrypted coordinates said she would be. The Dutch boat fired a spread of six torpedoes. The attack killed 23 of U-168's crew. Twenty-seven oth...

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