German U-Boat Wreck Discovered in Java Sea Near Indonesia

IO9 recently reported that a sunken World War II era U-boat was discovered in the Java Sea, just west of Indonesia, that was almost certainly part of a submarine wolf pack called “Monsun Gruppe” that operated far from the European theater.

German U Boats were the terror of the Atlantic in the early parts of World War II, operating in groups called “wolf packs” to sink allied shipping. However growing British and American naval strength and the use of the convoy system eroded the effectiveness of the U-boats. Eventually the hunters became the hunted and allied shipping crossed the Atlantic at will.

What is not widely known is that the Germans, with Italian and Japanese assistance, operated a wolf pack of U-boats in the Far East with the goal of cutting off Britain’s supply lines and, later, smuggling strategic materials from the Pacific territories back to Germany.

The Monsun Gruppe operated out of Japanese bases in occupied Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies, and preyed on allied shipping in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific between 1943 and the end of the European war in 1945. Starting in 1944, the far eastern area became untenable for Monsun Gruppe boats and many attempted to return to Europe stuffed with strategic minerals such as zinc, tin, and rubber. Only two made it back to Norway and of those only one made in back to Germany, where it surrendered to victorious allies.

The wreck is thought to be either the U-168, sunk by a Dutch submarine in February, 1945 or the U-183, sunk in April, 1945, shortly before the Nazi surrender in Europe.

The Indonesian archeologists who are diving on the wreck have already found a number of artifacts “including tableware with Nazi insignias, batteries, binoculars, a bottle of hair oil – and 17 skeletons.” Thus far the exact identity of the U-boat and the names of her crew have yet to be ascertained.