Project ASS
Axis Submarine Successes, 1939-1945

Founded by Jürgen Rohwer

Database ‚ASS‘ is depending on the famous study „U-Boot-Erfolge der Achsenmächte 1939-1945“ by Prof. Jürgen Rohwer. The book was first published in 1968, planned to be volume 1 of a series „Dokumentationen der Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte“ (Stuttgart).

After the end of Second World War Rohwer had come into contact with the “Naval Historical Team”, a group of German naval officers, who, at behest of the Anglo-American Allies, were busy to report the military experiences and intentions of the German Navy during the war. Commanders Günter Hessler and Alfred Hoschatt, in Brunsbüttel, were ordered to write a detailed account of German submarine warfare in the Atlantic for the British Ministry of Defence. For their studies, they obtained all necessary information from the Naval Historical Branch of the British Admiralty, such as the collection of German torpedo firing reports, information on attacked British and Foreign merchant vessels, and warships lost or damaged by enemy action during the war. But the study was kept under wraps and was not published until 1989.

For this reason Rohwer drew up his own listings of submarine attacks, no simple task under the condition, that there was no possibility of access to the U-boat logs, being treasured in Anglo-American archives until 1985. To make comparisons easier, Rohwer entered all data on U-boat attacks, found in the war diary oft the former Commander U-Boats, Admiral Karl Dönitz, on beschreibung cards. The war diary of Dönitz was personally typewrited from the original document, which had to be returned to Naval Archives in London when Hessler and Hoschatt had finished their work.

Rohwer‘s „Torpedo Attacks Index“ doesn’t only contain the successful attacks of Axis sub-marines, but in addition to 5700 ASS records there are about 3000 beschreibung cards with missing attacks. They should perhaps be part of the data base. But there are some reasons that prevented me from doing so. First, this task would probably require a time of 100 working days. Moreover, the information on torpedo misses don’t lead to sufficient knowledge. For the evaluation of attacks and successes it is absolutely necessary to study the u-boat war logs, as well as the observations from Allied escort groups.

„U-Boot-Erfolge der Achsenmächte“ got revised by Prof. Rohwer at two times in distances of 15 years. As no German publisher was interested any more, his book was published under the titel „Axis Submarine Successes, 1939-1945“ by US Naval Institute (Annapolis, Md.) in 1983, and by Leo Leventhal (Greenhill, London) in 1998, the later edition already supported by Thomas Weis. Now, 15 years later a revised edition being necessary, it was pub¬lished as data base by “Historisches Marinearchiv”. Thanks a lot for the technical support of Thorsten Reich!

The data base was constructed by myself in preparation of book redaction 1996-1997, she was the appropriate instrument to enter all corrections and reassessments, which had been gathered since 1983 edition, as well as objections following the 1998 edition.

It is quite impossible to thank to all informers at this place (I would recommend in¬terested readers to the prefaces of the three book editions); but the most important institu¬tions and helpers with my part of engagement have to be counted. In the 60th it has been the „Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare“ (Giuseppe Fioravanzo), the „Naval Historical Branch“ of the British Admiralty (Robert Coppock), the Chief of the „Office for Military History of Japanese Self-Defence Forces “ (KAdm. Sakamoto), for the French side Dr. Claude Huan und in Germany Karl Dönitz, Eberhard Godt und Günter Hessler. For the 70th Prof. Rohwer remembers on many American colleagues, such as Dean Allard, Bernard Cavalcante, on British helpers like Brian Schofield and Peter Gretton. In the 90th Prof. Rohwer and me got essential help from Frans Beckers, Walter Cloots und Eric Zimmerman (project „duikboot“), and for the now revised 2013 data base I’ve got a big deal of indispensable information from Rainer Kolbicz. In completion to ASS, I urgently recommend you to Rainer’s famous project „Attacked Ships“ (http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/), part the of meritorious uboat.net. Printed sources being were used for ASS are a legend of its own. They should be cited on a separate directorate of this website.

We are furthermore mostly interested in completion, emendation, and corrections. They should be posted in „Forum Marinearchiv“ for the benefit of all partners and readers.
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In his book "U-Boote - Chronik in Bildern", Oldenburg 1961, Jürgen Rohwer has published a statistical evaluation of German submarine successes in form of a table.
Thomas Weis is going to revise the tables soon, the original statistics can be treated here (click for enlargement).