Qualla: German submarine U-722

German submarine U-722: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 27 March 1945, with the European war six weeks from ending, a German submarine called U-722 was caught by three British frigates in the open Atlantic west of the Hebrides. Depth charges drove her down. She did not come back up. All forty-four to sixty men aboard, including her young commander Hans-Heinrich Reimers, died in the dark somewhere below the surface where the cold North Atlantic meets the cold Minch. The sea here keeps its secrets. U-722's wreck has never been positively located, and the position on the records is a best guess.

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German submarine U-722: Built in Hamburg

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-722 was a Type VIIC, the workhorse design of the Kriegsmarine. Her keel was laid down on 21 December 1942 at the yard of H. C. Stülcken Sohn in Hamburg, an old shipbuilder on the Elbe that had been turned over to U-boat work. She was launched on 21 September 1943 and commission...

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German submarine U-722: Type VIIC

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

She was 67 metres long, displaced 769 tonnes on the surface and 871 submerged, and could dive to 230 metres before the pressure hull began to threaten failure. Two Germaniawerft diesel engines drove her at 17.7 knots on the surface; submerged, AEG electric motors took over and pu...

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German submarine U-722: Three Patrols

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

U-722's operational career was short and largely uneventful. She trained with the 31st U-boat Flotilla through the spring and summer of 1944, then joined the 1st Flotilla on active service on 1 August 1944. When the Allies pushed the Germans out of the French Atlantic bases, she ...

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German submarine U-722: 27 March 1945

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The frigates HMS Fitzroy, HMS Redmill and HMS Byron of the British 21st Escort Group caught her on 27 March, north of the Hebrides, hunting her with ASDIC sonar and dropping depth charges in patterns that crushed her hull. The Atlantic here is deep and the records of those final ...

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German submarine U-722: Forty-Four Names

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What is easy to forget when reading service histories of warships is that the boats were full of people. U-722's complement was between forty-four and sixty young men, conscripted, volunteered, trained, deployed. Most were in their twenties. Their families in Hamburg, Bremen, Kie...

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