U-999


The Unknown Boats:
 U 999 under Oberleutnant zur See Werner Heibges

 It was March 1945, East Prussia was in flames. The red juggernaut rolled 
 through the country, burying, crushing everything beneath it. On the Hela 
 peninsula near Gdansk crowded tens of thousands of people. All were known 
 to have been fleeing the Red Army, from the ghastly news.

 Here Oblt.z.S. Werner Heibges, a young 24 year old commander, ordered his 
 boat to move first to Hamburg, then to march from there to Norway in the 
 North Sea to search for enemy ships and sink them.

 Heibges saw the number of mothers with young children, and he also knew 
 the command not to include refugees, because they were in danger aboard 
 submarines and in particular also have hindered the submarines crucial 
 operation. But Heibges thought from fulfilling this command. "I had to 
 help these poor people easily," he said later. "The risk I took for the 
 military march to Hamburg to be acceptable."

 On the night of the 14th March he had a 50 men crew and in addition 
 another 40 refugees were to climb into the steel tube. He knew that at 
 sea there were Russian submarines, aircraft and minefields hazards placed 
 there by the Russians.

 He was immersed in the so-called U-999 "Zwangsweg" (a path clear of sea 
 mines) which was mine-free run. His next destination for the refugees that 
 was initially safe was Warnemünde. Until then, there were 270 nautical miles, 
 about 500 kilometers to travel. In an underwater journey the boat was running 
 in the next 48 hours 140 nautical miles to the west. Such a "cargo" had seen 
 no submarine in the world. In the "Zentrale", the nerve center of the boat, 
 hanging diapers on the clothesline. Certainly never before had a watch officer 
 read to young children Andersen's fairy tales, and the chief engineer came here 
 to prepare a bottle, because the first thing he had filled with condensed milk, 
 was not accepted by one of the babies.

 Bornholm appeared before U-999, and in the following eleven hours, the remaining 
 130 miles were on the surface. 

 In Warnemünde were rescued from these 40 refugees from Danzig/Hela. The commander 
 said his "Seven Little Goats," as he called the children who were part of the 
 extended family Müller, farewell. The boat went further on a westward course and 
 reached on the first of April 1945, the bunker of the U-boat base at Hamburg-
 Finkenwerder/Waltershof. Here, a snorkel mast was to be installed so that the boat 
 could run continuously submerged, but on 9 April that came to an end. A heavy bomb 
 crashed through the thick concrete ceiling of the bunker and damaged the boat 
 heavily, but it could not be repaired again, and so on 5 May 1945, the commander 
 sank his boat in the Geltinger Bucht, so that it did not fall into enemy hands.

 In the spring of 1985 the family Mueller was able to rediscover their "commander", 
 and shortly thereafter was director of the current government Wolfang Heibges his 
 "Seven Little Goats" again.

Ref: An Alle Wölfe: Angriff ! (U-Boat Crews and commanders in WW II 1939-1945) by Franz Kurowski