Letter markings on Uboat deck?

[uboatfan]

Hello all,


on a picture on ebay i found letter markings ontop of the decks.
The discription from the seller says "Mai1944-AGRU-Front-Polen".

I never read something about letters at front and aft of the boats.

Does anybody have more information about that?

Regards

Uboatfan

PS: Picture show only the part with letters.

[falo]

Hi uboatfan,

AGRU-Front means:
German: "Technische Ausbildungsgruppe fuer Front U-Boote"
English: "Technical training group for front-line U boats"

So this was a group of boats during drill in the baltic sea.


Regards
Falo

[uboatfan]

Hi Falo,

thank you for information.

But i never saw letters on deck of the boats before.
On the picture you can see an "A" and "F" at front of two boats.
On the other boats you can see also letters on aft deck. Looks like "D" and maybe an "E" or "L".
Du to this all uboats seem to have letters at front and aft. But why?

May be this was as a type of flight sight? Like on Battleships.

I know jellow markings and special markings at side of tower at AGRU-Front. But never read or saw letters on the deck.

Regards

Uboatfan

[falo]

Hi Uboatfan,

I suppose these are markings to recognize the single boats from an airplane, maybe for training tactics to attack a ship convoy (?). So the letters are the name of the boats for guiding them by radio, I guess. The Baltic Sea (Polish coast) was for a long time out of range for allied airplanes, so it was a safe training area. Maybe the "Rudel-Tactic" was first trained on the water by conducting the letter named boats from above – just an assumption.

Regards
Falo

[Capt Kremin]

Hi all,
 
Got no proof, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that the boats used during the Norwegian campaign had deck idents.
 
Regards
Jon