Johannes Lohs
Encyclopedia
Lieutenant junior grade Johannes Lohs (June 24, 1889 - August 14, 1918) was a successful and highly decorated German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...

 commander
Commander
Commander is a naval rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service. Commander is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the armed forces, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Commander as a naval...

 in the Kaiserliche Marine
Kaiserliche Marine
The Imperial German Navy was the German Navy created at the time of the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 1871 and 1919, growing out of the small Prussian Navy and Norddeutsche Bundesmarine, which primarily had the mission of coastal defense. Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded...

 during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

In his time as commander of and he succeeded in sinking several ships for a total tonnage of approximately .

Early life

Johannes Lohs was born June 24, 1889 at Einsiedel, Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....

. He was son of plant owner Oswald Lohs. He first went to school in his home village and later a grammar school in Chemnitz
Chemnitz
Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Chemnitz is an independent city which is not part of any county and seat of the government region Direktionsbezirk Chemnitz. Located in the northern foothills of the Ore Mountains, it is a part of the Saxon triangle...

.

He entered the Kaiserliche Marine on April 1, 1909 and had several commands as Fähnrich zur See and served from October 1, 1912 on the cruiser on which he saw half of the world.

World War I

Lohs saw action for the very first time on August 28, 1914 and was promoted Leutnant zur See in the autumn of 1915. He then moved to U-Bootschule for a period, but got his first U-boat command on UC-75 on the March 17, 1917, on which he did 9 patrols off the British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 coast. On January 2, 1918 he became Commanding officer
Commanding officer
The commanding officer is the officer in command of a military unit. Typically, the commanding officer has ultimate authority over the unit, and is usually given wide latitude to run the unit as he sees fit, within the bounds of military law...

 of the UB-57, taking over the command of this boat from another legendary U-boat commander, Otto Steinbrinck
Otto Steinbrinck
Brigadier General Otto Steinbrinck was a German industrialist and an accused in the Nuremberg Flick Trial....

. Lohs had also some very good ideas on U-boat warfare and new tactics and on April 24, 1918 he received the Pour le Mérite
Pour le Mérite
The Pour le Mérite, known informally as the Blue Max , was the Kingdom of Prussia's highest military order for German soldiers until the end of World War I....

.

On August 3, 1918 he sailed from Zeebrugge
Zeebrugge
Zeebrugge is a village on the coast of Belgium and a subdivision of Bruges, for which it is the modern port. Zeebrugge serves as both the international port of Bruges-Zeebrugge and a seafront resort with hotels, cafés, a marina and a beach.-Location:...

 for the last time. The last contact he made with the base was on the evening of the August 14, as UB-57 was homeward bound roughly in the area of the Sandiette Bank, east of the Strait of Dover
Strait of Dover
The Strait of Dover or Dover Strait is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel. The shortest distance across the strait is from the South Foreland, 6 kilometres northeast of Dover in the county of Kent, England, to Cap Gris Nez, a cape near to Calais in the French of...

. Nothing more was heard. UB-57 is believed to have run onto a mine. Lohs' body washed up on shore a week later and he is buried in the military cemetery at Vlissingen.

On October 4, 1937 the 3rd U-boat Flotilla was named after him at Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...

.
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