Unternehmen Tundra Oct.1943

Hello

I think I asked this question before ;-)

Does anybody have some information about the "Unternehmen Tundra"? It must have been in October 1943 when german troops tried to find hostile agents that operated in Northern Norway and cabled the destinations of german convois. German submarine chasers tried to sink a soviet submarine that landed these spions. Are there some sources that could give more information? Was the submarine sank on Oct. 21st? Which submarine has it been?

Greetings from Austria!

Armin

These subs were probably on regular anti-shipping patrols when they were lost, and as such, not directly victims of "Tundra", but here goes:

Die genannten sowj. U-Boote gehen vermutlich auf den in den Sommer- und Herbstmonaten von den dt. Minenschiffen Roland, Ostmark und Kaiser ausgelegten Flankenminensperren verloren. M-172 (Kptlt. Kunets) kehrt von einer Feindfahrt vom 2.- 11.10. vor dem Varangerfjord, Shch-403 (Kpt. 3.Rg. Shuisky) von einer Feindfahrt vom 4.- 17.10 vor dem Tanafjord, M-174 (Oblt. Egorov) von einer Feindfahrt vom 18.- 24.10. vor dem Varangerfjord nicht zurück. S-55 geht erst im Dezember verloren. Das große U-Boot K-1 wird bereits seit Ende September beim Rückmarsch von der Karasee vermisst. Nach diesen Verlusten werden die sowj. U-Boote wesentlich vorsichtiger angesetzt.

(From http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/43-10.htm, an excellent site, by the way)

Johan F.

Hi,

here is some more info on the incident you probably had in mind:

The Soviet sub M-105 was sent to Seglodden in Finnmark to retrieve survivors from a group of agents landed several weeks before.
Unbeknown to the Russians, one of the surviving agents, Leif Utne, had been captured and turned by the Wehrmacht.
He had sent fake radio messages back to base, requesting extraction as they were being cornered by German forces.

Hoping to strike a double blow by not only destroying the agent network, but bagging a Russian sub as well, the Germans prepared an ambush.
PAKs, 37 and 75mm, were positioned at the site, along with automatic weapons, searchlights and generators.
Several patrol vessels (Vorpostenbooten, VPs) were also standing by nearby.

The trap was sprung on October 20., but despite being caught in the searchlights and hammered by fire at relatively short range, the sub was able to dive.
Arriving late, the VPs proceeded to drop almost 200 depth charges in the area in a hunt lasting 17 hours. They were sure the sub had been sunk, but in fact the M-105 arrived back in Murmansk late the next day, slightly damaged.

The only casualty of the operation was the Norwegian sub pilot who was captured on the beach. He also agreed to work for the Germans.

Sorry it took so long to dig out this info. Most of it is taken from the book "Rød august" by Alf R. Jacobsen.

Hope this was helpful

Johan F.