Schlachtschiff Bismarck | D A S__W A H R E__G E S I C H T__E I N E S_

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Hubert Behme

Maschinengefreiter
Herbert Engmann
(13.1.1920 - 2.4.2007)
from Hamburg

Herbert Engmann was born in 1920 in the postwar era of Germany. His family was from Silesia and came to Hamburg, because his father put out to sea in the merchant marine for 16 years, and, therefore, had developed close contacts within this city. His father was spared from war deployment because at the outbreak of war his ship was interned in the Cameroon. He spent five years in internment captivity on the Isle of Man.
Herbert was born and raised in Hamburg/Eimsbüttel. In 1926, he entered elementary school in the city section of Eppendorf, and he finished in 1934. After this he started the training as machinist at the firm of "Bauermeister", which produced chocolate [praline] machines.
In 1937 he volunteered for the navy. The four year long training period [at the factory] was followed by half a year of Arbeitsdienst [compulsory labor service] and then he was called up for service in the navy.
He started his 6 months basic training in Saßnitz on the Island of Rügen, and this was followed by another half year at the naval school in Kiel. In October 1939, Herbert boarded the cruiser Karlsruhe as seaman - machinery. This ship was docked in Wilhelmshaven for reconstruction after having completing a world cruise. The ship sailed to the Baltic Sea in November 1939 for sea trials, subsequently it returned to Wilhelmshaven to complete the work. Then the Karlsruhe sailed as part of the Norway mission where she sustained a troublesome torpedo hit which caused the total failure of the machinery equipment and the ship was lost. The crew was transferred to torpedo boats which brought them back to Germany. Because of the temporary secrecy regarding the sinking, the crew was disembarked into a barrack ship and was not allowed on land until a few days later. The entire machinery personnel, approximately 200 men, and other members of the crew with other career ladders of the Karlsruhe were sent to Hamburg aboard the Bismarck for construction training. Herbert reports about the new life aboard Bismarck: "Nobody was able to know all the others, since there were 2300 men. Sometimes, on land, you would run into someone you knew. 'Man, what are you riding on?' 'Well, on the Bismarck!' ". During the construction training time, Herbert worked in the technical office on plans for the construction of the machinery equipment, in particular the turbines, and there he was later actually assigned, turbine room - center. He was on the ship for the sea trials. He says: "We then had gunnery practice. When the 38's fired, we all had to clear the decks because of the air blasts. Some boats got crushed [he means the boats stowed onboard]."
In April 1941, in the meantime the Bismarck had back in Hamburg for finishing up work and renewed sea trials in the Baltic Sea, Herbert became ill for a few days with a sore throat. And there in the ship's sickbay, the so-called "Schlenz" [sack out time], he lived through a board visit by Josef Goebels. He reports: "He asked: 'what wrong with you?' The 1st Officer Oels then told him that that the artificial ventilation [air conditioning] is to blame and that I could a cold."

Herbert Engmann auf dem Eifelturm

A short time thereafter, Herbert was transferred and reassigned to the 2nd Admiral of the Baltic Sea Station, and subsequently, he was transferred to Hamburg to the Admiral Scheer where he was to serve in a prize crew. Then he was moved farther away to St. Nazaire, to a tanker that was supposed to sail with the Scheer. This plan was ditched and so Herbert came back to Germany, back to the 2nd Admiral of the Baltic Sea Station. Because of this, he applied for torpedo-recovery boat duty. After practice torpedo firing by the U boats at the target ships, the torpedo-recovery boats rounded up the practice torpedoes.
Herbert reports: "The torpedoes (without warheads) were set for 10 meter water depth and therefore the torpedo went trough under the ship. Normally this would have been a hit, if they had been properly set.
There were many duds among them, either surface travelers or circlers or bottom seekers, and one time even we received a hit. Nothing much happened. The occurred as follows: there was a fair amount of seas, and as we heeled hard to starboard, we received the hit. Well, we had a hole about as big as the torpedo [diameter]. When the ship righted itself again, the hole was above the waterline."
While performing his tour of duty in the torpedo recovery boats, Herbert is sent to Wesermünde for NCO training and is promoted to mate.
On 13 February 1943 Herbert expierences his second sinkink after having been sunk in the Karlsruhe. This time he is traveling in a convoy back to Germany aboard a first world war torpedo recovery boat which had been rebuilt in Holland, although it was really no longer seaworthy. 30 nautical miles west of Terschelling 9one of the last Dutch island in front of the German coast), the boat finds itself in a storm of force 11 winds. A burst pipe in the boiler renders the ship un-maneuverable. The ship drifts in the storm for 16 hours, and then the crew decides to jump into the three degree cold water. Herbert sees legs stick out of the water, they are the legs of those who have put on their lifejackets improperly. After 1 ½ hours he is fished out of the water by a sentry boat. He has hypothermia. Today he still insists that the thick clothing saved him. Two of his comrades are washed up dead on the distant North Sea shore, and they are identified by their dog tags. The 13th of February is for Herbert like a second birthday. Towards the end of the war, Herbert was participating in the saving of refugees from the East. The refugees were brought from Pillau to Gotenhafen and then to Swinemünde.
Then there was the final assignment to the naval tank pursuit regiment to Zewen, but there was no more combat, since the German Armed Forces had surrendered on 9 May 1945.

Herbert, just like the entire U boat personnel, is interned. He arrives at a barracks compound of the former naval radar training section in Eiderstedt. He is released in August, but this did not mean that his navy service time had ended, since he reported voluntarily to the GMSA (German Minesweeping Administration) in order secure the "round one". Working out of Cuxhaven, he swept mines off Helgoland and England.
While on land liberty in Cuxhaven he meets his second wife Elfriede. As he says, his first marriage was a Sunday marriage, done during the war, they never really saw each other and after the war it was all over. Elfriede at that time was already widowed, her husband fell aboard Tirpitz shortly after they were married. Already on the second day Herbert musters up all his strength and asked her determinedly if she would marry him. Success!
In 1947 the GMSA was disbanded because of Russia's insistence and thus Herbert with Elfriede returned to Hamburg to assigned living quarters, classified as "100% uninhabitable" consisting of 17 square meters and shared with three other residents. They had to adjust and make do as well as they could.
At first, he finds work in an metal shop were he repairs boilers of wrecked locomotives. He is laid off and begins work at the Stülken shipyard. There he remains for 16 years. He build exhaust pipelines for Diesel engines for various merchant ships until he is hired away by the insulation plumbers of a subcontractor and he changes his field of work. Twelve years later, the plant changes over to airconditioning and ventilation equipment and again Herbert changes his field of work. He continues to work until 1980 and retires at age 60. Herbert Engmann kept his intrest for the seafaring over the years, unfortunately he passed away in April 2007 at the age of 87.

Additional material:
Pictures of the navy

Source: Herbert Engmann/ Hamburg