Qualla: German Submarine U-513

German Submarine U-513: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fifty-three men sailed out of Lorient on May 18, 1943, aboard a steel cylinder 77 meters long. Seven would come home. U-513, a Type IXC submarine of the Kriegsmarine, had already crossed the Atlantic three times. Her new captain, Friedrich Guggenberger, wore the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, one of Germany's highest military decorations, awarded for sinking the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal while commanding a different boat. He was 28 years old. Two months later, southeast of the Brazilian coast, depth charges from a U.S. Navy Martin PBM Mariner would send U-513 to the bottom. She would remain there, unseen, for 68 years.

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German Submarine U-513: Built for the Atlantic War

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-513 was laid down at the Deutsche Werft shipyard in Hamburg on April 26, 1941, and commissioned on January 10, 1942. She was a Type IXC, the workhorse of Germany's long-range submarine fleet: 1,120 tons surfaced, armed with six torpedo tubes and 22 torpedoes, plus deck guns for...

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German Submarine U-513: From Newfoundland to Brazil

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-513's first patrol began on August 7, 1942, when she slipped out of Kiel and headed into the Atlantic through the gap between Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Off Newfoundland, in Conception Bay near Bell Island, she scored her first kills on September 5. She made port at Lorient...

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German Submarine U-513: The Final Patrol

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-513 departed Lorient on May 18, 1943, heading for the Brazilian coast, where Allied shipping remained less protected than in the North Atlantic. The gamble paid off initially. In five attacks near the coast of Santa Catarina and Parana, she sank four ships and damaged a fifth. ...

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German Submarine U-513: A Ghost at 130 Meters

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For decades, U-513 was one of roughly a dozen German submarines known to lie somewhere off the Brazilian coast, their exact positions lost. In 2003, the Schurmann family, a well-known Brazilian sailing family based in Florianopolis, began searching. It took nine years of research...

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German Submarine U-513: What Rests Below

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The wreck of U-513 lies in waters that appear calm and featureless from above. There is no marker, no buoy, nothing on the surface to suggest that 46 men are entombed below. The submarine is a war grave, one of over 700 U-boats lost during World War II, each carrying its own crew...

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