Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière

Vizeadmiral Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière (German: [ˈloːtaʁ fɔn ʔaʁˈnoː də la peˈʁi̯ɛːɐ̯]; March 18, 1886 – February 24, 1941), born in Posen (now Poznań, Poland) and of French-German descent, was a German U-boat commander during World War I. With 194 ships and 453,716 gross register tons (GRT) sunk, he is the most successful submarine captain ever. His victories came in the Mediterranean, almost always using his 8.8-cm deck gun. During his career he fired 74 torpedoes, hitting 39 times.[1]

Vizeadmiral

Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière
Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière
BornMarch 18, 1886 (1886-03-18)
Posen (today Poznań), German Empire
DiedFebruary 24, 1941 (1941-02-25) (aged 54)
Le Bourget, France
Buried
Invalidenfriedhof Berlin
Allegiance German Empire
 Weimar Republic
 Nazi Germany
Service/branch Imperial German Navy
 Reichsmarine
 Kriegsmarine
Years of service1903–32, 1939–41
Rank Vizeadmiral
Commands held
Battles/wars
Awards
RelationsFriedrich von Arnauld de la Perière (brother)

Arnauld de la Perière remained in the German Navy (Reichsmarine) after the war ended. During World War II, he was recalled to active duty as a rear admiral, and was killed in a plane crash near Paris in 1941 while taking part in secret negotiations with the Vichy French government.

First World War
U-35 in the Mediterranean Sea
Troopship Gallia

Arnauld de la Perière entered the Kaiserliche Marine in 1903. After serving on the battleships SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein, he served as torpedo officer on the light cruiser SMS Emden from 1911 to 1913.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Arnauld de la Perière served as an adjutant to admiral Hugo von Pohl in Berlin. Upon the mobilization, he was transferred to an active post where he served in the Marine-Luftschiff-Abteilung. In 1915, Arnauld de la Perière transferred to the U-boats. After a course in Pula, he was given command of the U-35 in November 1915. He made 14 voyages with the U-35 during which he sank 189 merchant vessels and two gunboats for a total of 446,708 GRT. One of his kills was the French troop carrier SS Gallia, which sank with great loss of life. Transferred to the U-139 in May 1918, he sank a further five ships with a combined tonnage of 7,008 GRT. His record number of sunken tonnage and number of sunken ships is unsurpassed since then. For his service, he was awarded the Iron Cross, second and first class, and the Pour le Mérite in 1916.

Interbellum

After the end of the war, Arnauld de la Perière stayed in a vastly reduced German Navy. During the 1920s, he served as navigation officer on the old pre-dreadnoughts SMS Hannover and SMS Elsass. From 24 September 1928 to 10 October 1930, he commanded the light cruiser Emden. Promoted to captain in 1931, he was put on the retired list. He then taught at the Turkish Naval Academy from 1932 to 1938.

Second World War
Grave in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin

At the start of World War II, Arnauld de la Perière was again called up for active duty. Until March 1940, he served as naval commandant in Danzig until he was sent to the Low Countries as naval commandant for Belgium and the Netherlands. Promoted to Konteradmiral Arnauld de la Perière was made naval commandant in Brittany and later for the entire western French seacoast. He was promoted to Vizeadmiral on February 1, 1941. Transferred to take up command of Navy Group South, he was killed when his plane crashed on takeoff near Le Bourget Airport. He is buried in Berlin at the Invalidenfriedhof.

Awards

Notes
  1. www.histomar.net which contains information based on original ship logs
gollark: Hmm, or maybe TCP SPUDNET.
gollark: Websockets are perfect and without flaw, except that you generally need a somewhat complex library for them, even though most things ship with HTTP clients.
gollark: Which reminds me, maybe I ought to add a long polling mode.
gollark: If I had done that, would I say so instead of merely basking in the knowledge that those devices were, hypothetically, part of the PotatOS Computing Network™ and able to do arbitrary computation/networking tasks as required (via SPUDNET)?
gollark: But yes, I totally didn't* remotely install potatOS in place of the firmware on all your network accessible devices.
  • The U-Boat ACE of ACES by William H. Langenberg, Sea Classics, May 2004 on findarticles.com
  • Raiders of the Deep, by Lowell Thomas (Doubleday, Doran & Co., Garden City, NY, 1929).
  • Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière. Erfolgreichster U-Bootkommandant der Seekriegsgeschichte – ein vergessener „Kriegsheld“?, by Clemens Bogedain (Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2016) (ger).
  • Arnauld de la Perière, sous-marinier du Kaiser on www.histomar.net (fr)
  • Helgason, Guðmundur. "WWI U-boat commanders: Kapitänleutnant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière". German and Austrian U-boats of World War I - Kaiserliche Marine - Uboat.net.
  • The Enchanted Circle World War I U-boat video at the Imperial War Museum of a patrol by Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière on U-35. This depicts the finishing off of ships whose crews have been allowed to abandon them, in accordance with rules that Germany followed early in the war. The dynamiting team, deck gun, and one torpedo attack are shown. In six parts, silent with German caption slides.
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