Ernst Voigt

Ernst Voigt
Birth date	31 July 1890 (1890-07-31)
Place of birth	Vienenburg, Kreis Goslar, Province of Hanover, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Death date	⚔ August 1917 (1917-09) (aged 27)
Place of death	Southern North Sea
Allegiance	German Empire
Service/branch	Kaiserliche Marine
Years of service	1908–1917
Rank	Oberleutnant zur See
Battles/wars	World War I
Awards	Iron Cross

Ernst Voigt (31 July 1890 – August 1917) was a German naval officer of the Kaiserliche Marine and U-boat commandant (U-Boot-Kommandant), finally 1st Lieutenant at Sea in World War I.

Life

• 1890 Born the son of mine director Ernst Voigt and his wife Anna, née Gebensleben
• March 1908 Abitur
• 31 March 1908 Arrived at the Naval School in Kiel in the afternoon (5 p.m.) of this Sunday with the other sea officer candidates and received the first equipment then march to the old deck officer school (on the corner of Waisenhofstraße / Muhliusstraße) for overnight stay.
• 1 April 1908 First official day with scientific examinations, medical examinations and initial exercises in military conduct.
• 6 April 1908 Final conference: 200 new sea cadets (among them Reinhold Saltzwedel, Wolfgang Steinbauer and Otto-Helmuth von Voigt) were officially accepted from the approximately 260 candidates, plus four sea cadets from the previous year who had to repeat the course due to illness, as well as 16 ship construction trainees and three Romanian officer candidates.
• 7 April 1908 Last chance to wear civilian clothes and explore Kiel on this Sunday, including Imperial Russian warships in the harbor.
• 12 May 1908 Sworn-in (flag oath)
• 13 May 1908 Embarkation for training at sea onboard four ships
  • Voigt was assigned to the SMS "Victoria Louise" which sailed from Kiel to Spain, Italy, Alexandria (Egypt), then returning via Messina (Sicily), Palermo Corfu (Greece), Algiers, Cádiz (Spain) and Lisbon (Portugal).
• Rank list 1910 Special courses
• Rank list 1911 Battleship SMS "Wettin"
• Rank list 1912 to 1914 Battleship SMS "Thüringen"
• March 1915 Transfer to the U-boat weapon

U-boat commands

• SM UB 6: 13 November 1915 to 26 April 1916
• SM UB 23: 31 May 1916 to 9 November 1916
• SM UC 72: 5 December 1916 to August 1917 (Flandern Flotilla)

Ace of the seas

Between 27 January 1916 and 21 August 1917, Voigt sank 80 ships with a total of 71,755 GRT and damaged another 3 ships with a total of 2,570 GRT during his patrols (Feindfahrten). Almost all ships were captured and Voigt allowed the crews to escape with life boats. For his achievements he was nominated for the high order Pour le Merite, but his death preceded the planned award.

Death

The U-boat's means of communication, radio telegraphy, did not allow for cooperation between submarines at that time. There was no shortwave or longwave radio; underwater, any radio communication was impossible, and above water, an antenna had to be erected on two masts to transmit a longwave radio message, which, despite maximum power, had only a limited range. During this period of radio transmission, the submarine was also only partially submersible, making it more vulnerable and unable to launch an attack. Different death dates are given for commandant Ernst Voigt and his crew. Harald Bendert wrote in his 2001 book Die UC-Boote der Kaiserlichen Marine 1914-1918 – Minenkrieg mit U-Booten that SM UC 72 was sunk on 20 August 1917:

The encounter with the U-boat trap "Acton" proved fatal for UC 72. The enemy was fired upon from a great distance, and the crew dived and were seen through the periscope as they climbed into their lifeboats. UC 72 surfaced nearby, missing the camouflaged gun crew who had remained on board, and was sunk.

Although many German submarines, try to save lives instead of firing from a distance, were dishonorably sunk by Q-ships, SM UC 72 does not seem to belong to them, because Voigt sank a British tug and a refrigerated barge of the British War Office on the next day, 21 August 1917 in the Atlantic. Voigt had stopped and scuttled both the tug and the barge it was pulling 130 miles WSW of Ushant, a French island at the southwestern end of the English Channel. There were no casualties, once again, Voigt introduced himself and allowed the crews to take the life boats. Voigt's crew comrade Karl Ruprecht wrote in his 1928 book Chronik des Seeoffizier-Jahrgangs 1908 that SM UC 72 was sunk on 13 September 1917, although although he admits that the date is only an estimate and is based on British radio reports of suspected sinkings. The Laboe Naval Memorial, completed in 1936, lists another date:

Sunk on 22 September 1917, in the southern North Sea by bombs from a British seaplane. 31 dead – no survivors.

The wreck was identified in 2013 by a dive team led by Innes McCartney and Gerry Dowd between the Bay of Biscay and the coast of Flanders. It is now assumed from a military-historical perspective that the German U-boat was sank on or around 24 August 1917. It was apparently mined while home-bound through the Straits of Dover.

Gallery

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Promotions

• 1 April 1908 Seekadett (Crew 1908)
• 10 April 1909 Fähnrich zur See (Officer Cadet)
• 27 September 1911 Leutnant zur See (2nd Lieutenant at Sea)
• 19 September 1914 Oberleutnant zur See (1st Lieutenant at Sea)

Awards and decorations

• Iron Cross (1914), 2nd and 1st Class
• House Order of Hohenzollern, Knight's Cross with Swords (HOH3⚔) on 20 September 1916
• Saxon Military St. Henry Order, Knight’s Cross (SH3) on 23 September 1917 (posthumously)

Further reading

• Karl Ruprecht: Chronik des Seeoffizier-Jahrgangs 1908
  • Volume 1, Göttingen 1928
  • Volume 2, Göttingen 1958