Leather U Boat Jackets

[Peacoat]

Thanks for pointing out the 3/4 length, Smithy. I didn't realize they were that long. Your photographs have answered a lot of my questions.

 

[Capesofwrath]

Thanks, Smithy. These are great photos. Easy to pick out the Skipper from the group of sailors; he has The Look.

If these leather U Boat peacoats weren't issued, or made available for official purchase, then there must have been a regulation with specs for private purchase as they all appear to be the same.

Due to the uniformity of the coats in the pictures of the early war crews as above and here it seems certain that officers as well as men were issued with these grey/blue coats.

But other darker coats were worn which seem to be black but might be dark brown. According to some sources only grey and brown were allowed…

The coat above does not have the straight yoke of the others and might be a private purchase. Private purchase coats were certainly allowed and by the time the Battle of the Atlantic was underway there was a lot of latitude over uniform, and both officers and men wore civilian clothes for comfort at sea.

This was a coat advertised on a reputable memorabilia site which it is said was a private purchase.

This is a Gray/Green Leather Kriegsmarine private purchased Overcoat. It is fully lined in a plaid wool like type of material. There are no rips, no tears and no scuffs to the leather. There are only 2 of the 4 buttons still attached. The buttons are marked on the reverse side. ​

This is a medium size coat that has been worn. . KM Overcoat Measurements are:
•From Shoulder Seam to Shoulder Seam is 15 1/2"
• From Shoulder Seam to Bottom of Sleeve is 23 1/2"
•From Center of Neck Area to Bottom of Coat is 46 1/2"
•From Under Armpit to Under Armpit is 17"
Here are other views 1 2 3 4. I bought it in Hamburg from UBoat Commander "Ali Cremer". A COA will be issued to the next owner.​

Interestingly the Germans captured a lot of British battle dress at Dunkirk and this was issued to U boat officers with German insignia added. Later they made their own versions.

But other coats were worn too….

All in all I think that just as in the Luftwaffe officers could buy and wear their own coats. But that the grey straight yoke coats were issued early in the war at least. Most of the half belt darker coats are it is said based on older German coachman’s styles, and the German police went on to wear very similar ones.

As I wrote above I have an Aero Mariner which is not really like any of the above and is just a leather half belt peacoat style. I don’t really want to pretend to be a U boat skipper or Dr Who so I prefer to think of it as a coachman’s type coat. Which actually is what I think it is.

 

[Smithy]

Nice photos Capes.

In my earlier posts I was responding to the assertion that KM issued coats might not have existed. Private purchase items were used but they were the exception rather than the rule. Das Boot probably fuelled the idea that all U-boat deck jackets looked like they did in the film. Interesting in that last photo montage you posted most of the jackets are KM issued items - Günther Prien for example is wearing an engine personnel jacket.

The real problem with jackets and coats which purport to be actual items used on U-boat service is the lack of provenance when these things come up for sale. As I mentioned earlier it's not uncommon for unscrupulous sellers to sew on KM buttons or make assertions regarding the lineage of the jacket they are selling. If it was me, I would not buy an unissued item unless it came with exact provenance. Even an issued item may very well have not been used in the U-boat service. Provenance is the only way to go. As I said earlier actual jackets which saw service on U-boats are in reality rare, especially deck jackets.

One interesting pointer is that most originals apparently reek, even after all these decades. A Battle of Britain historian friend of mine who has also written the definitive history of all U-boats and their crews and lived in Germany for 5 years researching these volumes saw a few and said they still stink. U-boats were incredibly foul smelling and anything which had been on patrol would smell terribly. Hardly surprising that a leather coat that had been on multiple patrols would soak up the stink of a U-boat!

 

[kronos77]

I was wondering where these coats fit in the U-Boat jacket history. They are Reichswahr troops, 1919. The jackets was originally a French design for the armoured car and motor transport crews. The facings are said to be black cloth.

 

[Superfluous]

^ Off topic: looks to me like every one of the lower ranking officers could put a beat down on the commander of that group -- definitely not a Darwinian hierarchy there.

 

[kronos77]

^ Off topic: looks to me like every one of the lower ranking officers could put a beat down on the commander of that group -- definitely not a Darwinian hierarchy there.

Put a leather jacket on that commander and you wouldn't think that!

 

[Smithy]

I was wondering where these coats fit in the U-Boat jacket history.

In truth they probably have no connection directly with later KM (deck) jackets. Whilst there's similarities in terms of the double-breasted configuration, army and navy developed their designs separately due to differing needs of their respective services.

 

[hpalapdog]

I thought that I might post these in this thread for those looking for references for actual issued Kriegsmarine/U-boat service leather jackets. I hope they might be of help to those interested in these jackets and give some visual evidence of what these jackets looked like.

A great photo of both deck and engine personnel jackets:

Skipper in his deck jacket (possibly a black example with rank epaulettes) with his crew sporting the engine personnel single breasted example.

A "large size" deck jacket in the grey shade worn by an Oberleutnant zur See rank skipper:

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Are you saying the short waisted black leather submariner jackets are all private purchase ?

Panzer Issue jackets

12th SS Panzer

 

[Smithy]

[QUOTE="hpalapdog, post: 2030220, member: 1831]
Are you saying the short waisted black leather submariner jackets are all private purchase ?
[/QUOTE]

Not private purchase but those are almost certainly examples of items from other branches of the military being used in the U-boat service - which you can also see with items of clothing other than jackets. Whilst you see items like this and private purchase examples as well, all I was trying to point out was that there were only two types of leather coat/jacket that were KM specified and built expressly for the service. This is fairly well documented in books on the subject such as those by Williamson.

 

[tropicalbob]

Looking at these photos really makes me sad thinking of all those poor young guys, many, if not most, of whom died in the service. Being a bit of a claustrophobe, I can think of few worse things than the way they went.

 

[Steve S.]

Being a bit of a claustrophobe, I can think of few worse things than the way they went.

me too. maybe being sucked out of a plane without a parachute....

 

[Peacoat]

Looking at these photos really makes me sad thinking of all those poor young guys, many, if not most, of whom died in the service. Being a bit of a claustrophobe, I can think of few worse things than the way they went.

I think the survival rate for the submarine crews was about 25%. So, 75% of them ended up on the bottom of the sea. A claustrophobic's worst nightmare.

 

[Smithy]

I think the survival rate for the submarine crews was about 25%. So, 75% of them ended up on the bottom of the sea. A claustrophobic's worst nightmare.

That's one of the things about the KM U-boat service which is so sobering, the sheer casualty rate.

Yes for many they might have been on the other side but the scale of loss is truly horrifying.

My wife's old boyfriend was in the submarine service here and although they were on the other side from Norwegians, he told me that the men they respected the most as submariners, even in the modern submarine service, were the German U-boat service. Strange but true.

 

[Capesofwrath]

My father was in the RN in the war and served at times on escort duties for Atlantic and Arctic convoys. The Arctic convoys were much more dangerous because the water was so cold that men could not be usually be saved when they went in and death occurred after only a few minutes. They knew that if they were sunk they were dead. He told me of the times they pulled men out of a sea of burning fuel oil in the Atlantic with skin peeled completely off, and of the times they couldn’t stop to rescue crews because the chances of being torpedoed themselves were so high that they had to leave them to die.

Unsurprisingly the U boat crews were hated by the RN and the Merchant Marine, and incidentally the British Merchant Marine lost far more seamen in the Atlantic the the RN did and yet was almost forgotten after the war. It took forty years to even get a proper memorial with the names of the dead. Back then they saw the U boats as fighting a coward’s war, and right up to the turning point of the Battle of the Atlantic the U boats had the upper hand and had very few losses for the amount of allied tonnage sunk. Particularly in their so called 'happy time' when they could sink allied shipping almost without risk.

But the final breaking of the German Navy Enigma code after the capture of an Enigma machine from a sinking U boat by the RN, and more effective anti U boat tactics and weapons like forward firing death charges, and most of all the closing of the mid Atlantic gap by long range Liberator bombers and the deployment of radar equipped Sunderlands hunting them down on the surface and bombing them before they could crash dive turned the tide. By May 1943 the U boat losses that month was 25% of their total strength, and after that they withdrew from the Atlantic and looked for easier pickings elsewhere.

 

[Smithy]

My father was in the RN in the war and served at times on escort duties for Atlantic and Arctic convoys. The Arctic convoys were much more dangerous because the water was so cold that men could not be usually be saved when they went in and death occurred after only a few minutes. They knew that if they were sunk they were dead. He told me of the times they pulled men out of a sea of burning fuel oil in the Atlantic with skin peeled completely off, and of the times they couldn’t stop to rescue crews because the chances of being torpedoed themselves were so high that they had to leave them to die.

Unsurprisingly the U boat crews were hated by the RN and the Merchant Marine, and incidentally the British Merchant Marine lost far more seamen in the Atlantic the the RN did and yet was almost forgotten after the war. It took forty years to even get a proper memorial with the names of the dead. Back then they saw the U boats as fighting a coward’s war, and right up to the turning point of the Battle of the Atlantic the U boats had the upper hand and had very few losses for the amount of allied tonnage sunk. Particularly in their so called 'happy time' when they could sink allied shipping almost without risk.

But the final breaking of the German Navy Enigma code after the capture of an Enigma machine from a sinking U boat by the RN, and more effective anti U boat tactics and weapons like forward firing death charges, and most of all the closing of the mid Atlantic gap by long range Liberator bombers and the deployment of radar equipped Sunderlands hunting them down on the surface and bombing them before they could crash dive turned the tide. By May 1943 the U boat losses that month was 25% of their total strength, and after that they withdrew from the Atlantic and looked for easier pickings elsewhere.

My granddad was RN as well and his ship was sunk by a U-boat (although in WWI at Jutland), luckily he survived (well otherwise I wouldn't be here!). He apparently told my Dad that anyone who goes under the water had to be either brave or mad because it's bad enough on top!

 

[Capesofwrath]

My granddad was RN as well and his ship was sunk by a U-boat (although in WWI at Jutland), luckily he survived (well otherwise I wouldn't be here!). He apparently told my Dad that anyone who goes under the water had to be either brave or mad because it's bad enough on top!

I had an uncle who was at Jutland as a boy of fourteen. The difference between that sort of action and merchant ships is that the latter were sitting ducks at the start of the war. Even when the convoy system was reinstated they steamed at the speed of the slowest ship - no more than 8 knots, sometimes less. So every day and night they were waiting for the explosion that told them they had been hit while the enemy could operate with impunity and no risk.

That is why they did not see them as brave or gallant because their chances of being sunk themselves were very low at that time. Later the U boats got their comeuppance and then it was their turn to know fear every day and night. But the merchant ships and their RN escorts knew it all the time in the first years while at the time the U boats had nothing to fear at all. It was like shooting fish in a barrel for them. I think it took more guts to be a sailer on an old slow merchant ship knowing that your chances of getting to the end of the trip were probably 50/50 at best and your chances of survival if you were hit not much better, and thinking that every morning if it would be your last, than to serve underwater. Later in the war it was much more dangerous for the U boats, and by then it did take guts to keep going knowing that their chances of getting home were about the same as they had been for the merchant seamen a few years earlier.

That’s probably what those who had experience as escorts on Atlantic and Arctic convoys identified with the merchant seaman who took most of the casualties rather than U boat crews who frankly they just wanted to kill. Not all naval personnel did serve with the convoys of course.

 

[Bolero]

Its difficult to reconcile the Mindset of the German U-Boat Commanders....
while the crewmembers were just young kids under 21 for the most part and at that age and being a male living under the Hitler, Gastapo, Storm Trooper mentality....you served like it or not.
The well educated Officer Corp OTOH seemingly took great pride in acquiring massive Sunken Tonnage of Civilian, non-armored, non-combat Shipping....to satisfy Hitler, Dornitz, Gorring, Himmler, and the others.
Something not right about Glorifing those U-Boat guys, were they Psycopathic types on the loose...???
Thankfully our USN & RN Brave, Dedicated Naval personnel were able to extinguish these Monsters in time to avert catastrophic endings...
I wonder why we don't Glamorize the Jackets and Coats they wore...
Granted there is a Morbid Fascination about it all...

 

[hpalapdog]

[QUOTE="hpalapdog, post: 2030220, member: 1831]
Are you saying the short waisted black leather submariner jackets are all private purchase ?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not private purchase but those are almost certainly examples of items from other branches of the military being used in the U-boat service - which you can also see with items of clothing other than jackets. Whilst you see items like this and private purchase examples as well, all I was trying to point out was that there were only two types of leather coat/jacket that were KM specified and built expressly for the service. This is fairly well documented in books on the subject such as those by Williamson.[/QUOTE]

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The Submariners certainly didn't get them from the Luftwaffe whose issue short leather jackets were single breasted. Can be found in brown, black and interestingly grey..

 

[Smithy]

I had an uncle who was at Jutland as a boy of fourteen. The difference between that sort of action and merchant ships is that the latter were sitting ducks at the start of the war. Even when the convoy system was reinstated they steamed at the speed of the slowest ship - no more than 8 knots, sometimes less. So every day and night they were waiting for the explosion that told them they had been hit while the enemy could operate with impunity and no risk.

That is why they did not see them as brave or gallant because their chances of being sunk themselves were very low at that time. Later the U boats got their comeuppance and then it was their turn to know fear every day and night. But the merchant ships and their RN escorts knew it all the time in the first years while at the time the U boats had nothing to fear at all. It was like shooting fish in a barrel for them. I think it took more guts to be a sailer on an old slow merchant ship knowing that your chances of getting to the end of the trip were probably 50/50 at best and your chances of survival if you were hit not much better, and thinking that every morning if it would be your last, than to serve underwater. Later in the war it was much more dangerous for the U boats, and by then it did take guts to keep going knowing that their chances of getting home were about the same as they had been for the merchant seamen a few years earlier.

That’s probably what those who had experience as escorts on Atlantic and Arctic convoys identified with the merchant seaman who took most of the casualties rather than U boat crews who frankly they just wanted to kill. Not all naval personnel did serve with the convoys of course.

Its difficult to reconcile the Mindset of the German U-Boat Commanders....
while the crewmembers were just young kids under 21 for the most part and at that age and being a male living under the Hitler, Gastapo, Storm Trooper mentality....you served like it or not.
The well educated Officer Corp OTOH seemingly took great pride in acquiring massive Sunken Tonnage of Civilian, non-armored, non-combat Shipping....to satisfy Hitler, Dornitz, Gorring, Himmler, and the others.
Something not right about Glorifing those U-Boat guys, were they Psycopathic types on the loose...???
Thankfully our USN & RN Brave, Dedicated Naval personnel were able to extinguish these Monsters in time to avert catastrophic endings...
I wonder why we don't Glamorize the Jackets and Coats they wore...
Granted there is a Morbid Fascination about it all...

There's no doubt that the Merchant Navy and convoy men and women had one of the toughest jobs of WWII - that same granddad of mine was Royal Merchant and served on the convoys for the first 3 years of the war.

I certainly would never glorify those who fought against my granddad but I can appreciate the hardships and horror that the men on the U-boats faced - even he talked about it. Most were young men fighting for their country and trying to survive and do their bit for their country (whether right or wrong) in horrific conditions. The Happy Time for the U-boat service was a relatively short-lived affair, for most of the war they were on the back foot and suffered truly dreadful losses. The KM and especially the U-boat service was the most unpoliticised service in all the German armed forces having the smallest proportion of Nazi party members. Most skippers, contrary to popular belief, hated seeing the results of their attacks and there are many cases of boats surfacing and giving provisions and what they could to survivors of their attacks.

The Submariners certainly didn't get them from the Luftwaffe whose issue short leather jackets were single breasted. Can be found in brown, black and interestingly grey..

Sorry if we're getting crossed wires here but I didn't say those jackets were Luftwaffe. Rather that they were not built to KM specifications. Once again there were only two leather jackets which were made to KM stock requests and specifications. BUT that doesn't rule out items being used which were from other branches of the military.

But if you have official KM documentation listing the order for the procurement of short waisted double-breasted leather jackets for sanctioned KM use please post it as it'll be highly interesting, not just here but for WWII military uniform researchers and historians.

 

[hpalapdog]

I don't know much about KM uniforms, my main interest is WWII aviation. I suppose you would have to try to trace back the RB. number on a submariner jacket.

This is a good photo. Crew surrendering to the USN. The guy nearest the camera looks an old sea dog judging by the wear on his cap and age, but wears a brand new looking jacket.