The "LI" of U 96 - now Friedrich Grade has disembarked after all!

The longest-lived member of the Naval Officers' Association, retired Captain Friedrich Grade (Crew 35), passed away on Friday, 13 October 2023 in Bornheim am Rhein, just north of Bonn, in the Beethoven retirement home at the age of 107.

The cult film "Das Boot" made U 96 and its technical officer - or chief engineer, as it was known at the time - famous. Friedrich Grade was the last survivor of the submarine U 96, which sank 29 ships and damaged four on eleven voyages during the Second World War. As an LI, he took part in seven voyages until 1941 and recorded his experiences in a secretly written diary, which he made publicly accessible in 2017, 75 years after his last voyage. He completed two more tours of duty on U 183, then switched to training and trained new crews in ship technology until the end of the war. 

Officers of U 96 at the commissioning of the boat in 1940. Photo: U-Boot-Museum Cuxhaven

In his diary, the war correspondent who had embarked on board also found Lothar-Günther Buchheim, who used Grade's last voyage on U 96 as a rough model for the novel "Das Boot", published in 1973. This global bestseller was in turn the basis for Wolfgang Petersen's film of the same name. In the successful film, which was released in cinemas in 1981 (six Oscar nominations), Grade is not mentioned by name, but merely referred to as the "chief engineer" and played by Klaus Wennemann. In later interviews, Grade attests that this actor did a good job and portrayed him quite authentically. The technology in the film was also well shot, but some characters and scenes were a little exaggerated. Well - it was supposed to be a box office hit - and life on board during the enemy voyages was not always "film-ready" either!

Promotional montage for the film "Das Boot". Photo: Screenshot trailer

An interview with Grade about this film, published in November 2016 in Norddeutschland, is worth seeing as a contemporary document:

Watch video

Captain (retired) Friedrich Grade, in Bornheim, 2022 Photo: O. Becher

After the war, he initially worked in Eckernförde and moved to Bonn in 1958 with the establishment of the Ministry of Defence in order to participate in the development of the new submarines as a corvette captain in the German Navy. Friedrich Grade was considered more of a tinkerer and handyman than a soldier. After all, it was this quality that saved the wrecked, grounded boat and its battered crew during the war. Even in his retirement home, the veteran was the place to go for anything that was faulty, even into old age - he ran a "repair cafe", as it would be called today. Even during the coronavirus pandemic, he is said to have developed a guaranteed infection-free game for his flatmates to combat the boredom of quarantine: they played "sink ships" over the house phones. Dryly humorous - and always pragmatic.

Unfortunately, the former submariner Friedrich Grade was no longer able to accompany the submarine "U 17", which passed by his last home, at least a short distance on its way to the Sinsheim Museum of Technology. Unfortunately, at the age of 107, he was no longer quite so "fit for service on board".

One of Germany's oldest citizens, an alert mind and critical spirit, a remarkable person and endearing naval comrade, has now quietly left the ship.