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Hans-Georg Hess Interview - 2000
Tape H-74

         
  Formal photo when he           A happy Hans-Georg           Hess on the bridge
      was awarded his                   ready for sea.                    of U-995
        Knights Cross

We went back to Germany in 2000 and shot more interviews with veterans of the U-boat wars.  Hans-Georg Hess was a non-com on U-466 under Gerd Thäter, rose to the rank of Leutnant & was I.W.O. on that boat.  A few months past his 21^st birthday, he was given command of U-995 and so became the youngest combat submarine Skipper of WW II and possibly of all time.  At a time when German U-boats did not return from their first patrol, he brought his boat and his men back from five combat patrols and they sank some ships.

How do you hover at periscope depth for an entire day, less than 100 yards from a Soviet guard shack ashore, then go in and sink ships at the dock at night?  How do you manage to return from a Soviet-held fjord, deep enough to avoid aircraft yet not so deep to run onto your own mines?  Hess did it.

His U-995 is the only Type VII-C boat left in the world!  There are things in this tape that are not on any other videotapes.

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