Product Information

A great autograph photo of KMDR U-68 blue ink signed,and nice photo, war time autograph…
“Sorry for Sinking You” says U-Boat Commander to Survivors of A Merchant Ship He Had Just Sent to the Bottom of the Sea;

At the outbreak of World War II, he was stationed on the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, participating in the Battle of Westerplatte and Battle of Hel. He transferred to the U-boat service in 1940, at first serving as a watch officer on U-38 before taking command of U-68 in early 1941. Commanding U-68 on five war patrols, patrolling in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Indian Ocean, he was awarded Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross on 13 June 1942 and the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross on 16 November 1942. On the second patrol, Merten helped rescue the crews of the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis and the refuelling ship Python, which had been sunk by the Royal Navy. In January 1943 Merten became the commander of the 26th U-boat Flotilla and in March 1943, Merten was given command of the 24th U-boat Flotilla. In February 1945, he was posted to the posted to the Führer Headquarters in Berlin. At the end of the war, he was taken prisoner of war by US forces and released again in late June 1945.
Korvettenkapitän Karl-Friedrich Merten
Kommandant of U-68
The words in the headline were spoken by Korvettenkapitän Karl-Friedrich Merten, Kommandant of U-68, after sinking the British merchant ship City of Cairo on 6 November 1942. After the ship went down he surfaced, came close abeam one of the lifeboats, and made enquiry of what ship he had sunk.

After being told, he gave them the best course to steer for land and apologized for sinking them. (U-Boats often surfaced in the early years of the war to ask survivors what ship they had sunk