Story of German submarine’s NZ visit recognised
massey-university
Wed Dec 07 2016 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Story of German submarine’s NZ visit recognised
Wednesday, 7 December 2016, 10:14 am
Press Release: Massey University
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Story of German submarine’s NZ visit recognised
Family of a Gisborne man fascinated by Nazi Germany’s most distant war patrol into New Zealand waters in 1945 presented his book investigating this little-known slice of WW II war history to Massey University’s Manawatū library this week.
Gerald Shone, a Massey alumnus and the author of U-boat in German Waters – U 862’s War Patrol off Gisborne and Napier in 1945, was represented by his brother Mike Shone and sister Sue Shone, at a special ceremony organised by the Centre for Defence and Security Studies.
Gerald Shone, who was too unwell to attend, has been fascinated for 20 years by the story of the U-boat – for the German word U-boot, an abbreviation of Unterseeboot, literally “undersea boat” – which made a reconnaissance voyage along the East Coast of the North Island.
The focus of the book is how the U-862 entered Gisborne harbour undetected in the dead of a summer night in January 1945. Mike Shone says his brother had gathered and hoarded information about the enormous U-boat for more than 20 years. “It’s been his great passion.”
It was believed to be the only German submarine sent on a combat mission to the South Pacific, where it had fired at – but missed – the New Zealand coaster Pukeko off the coast of Napier. On its voyage to New Zealand via Australia’s coastline it sank the US liberty ship Robert J Walker south of Sydney on Christmas Day, 1944, one of two freighters it sank.
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The book is centred around the private war diary of the U-862’s First Watch Officer Gunther Reiffenstuhl, who, the author says in his preface, was an astute observer of life aboard the U-boat and who recorded events every day the vessel was at sea.
He says that prior to the release of Reiffenstuhl’s diary in 1992, “the U-862’s presence in New Zealand had been known only to a small number of Allied Naval commanders and Enigma code-breakers, who had conscientiously kept their silence.”
Born in Gisborne two years after the stealthy midnight visitation, he was struck by how close his family had been to the presence of the German behemoth. “Gisborne’s wartime visitor never used its formidable firepower against our little township of 14,000 people, though U-862’s single deck gun could have easily destroyed both the harbour railway bridge and the nearby freezing works within a matter of minutes,” he writes.
The spectre of the U-boat’s proximity and its potential threat to sleeping civilians stirred questions he wanted to answer, including why the vessel did not venture to Auckland and Wellington harbours if it was seeking ships to sink, and whether its commander Heinrich Timm knew there was only one metre under its keel when it entered Gisborne harbour.
Professor Rouben Azizian, director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies spoke at the event, saying it was important to recognise Massey’s alumni and their achievements, and to see them pursue life-long learning and research. He said Gerald Shone’s book was a valuable addition to New Zealand’s wartime and maritime history.
The 218-page book features photographs of the U-boat and its crew, diary pages as well as maps and diagrams of its design and military features.
Gerald Shone trained as a medical laboratory technologist at Gisborne's Cook Hospital. After qualifying, he worked in Nauru and Kiribati where he spoke to many people who had witnessed first-hand the Japanese invasion of their lands during WWII. He subsequently became interested in studying the Pacific War in greater detail. He graduated from Massey University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1998.
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