Wolfgang Lüth, skipper of the U-43
On December 30, 1941, Wolfgang Lüth and the U-43 departed Lorient. The crew had not lost their touch and on January 12, 1942 at 8:02 a.m. in the mid-Atlantic, the U-43 sank the Swedish 5,246-ton freighter Yngaren, sailing with convoy HX-168 with 4,696 tons of copra, 3,000 tons of manganese ore, trucks and eight aircraft from Bombay, India to Hull; thirty-eight men perished and only two survived the sinking. At 2:54 a.m. on January 14, 1942 the U-43 sank the British 6,641-ton Empire Surf, part of convoy ON-55, bound from Manchester, England for Jacksonville, Florida; the ship was in ballast and went down so swiftly that forty-seven men went with her. The same day at 4:53 a.m. Lüth torpedoed and sank the Panamanian 5,707-ton freighter Chepo, also a member of convoy ON-55 bound from Liverpool for Boston and New York; seventeen men went down with the ship in the frigid North Atlantic. Lüth then sailed the U-43 to Kiel on January 22, 1942, completing the boat’s eleventh war patrol. (Dönitz’s Crews: Germany’s U-Boat Sailors in World War II)
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SS-Oberscharführer Fritz Hartel commanded the First Platoon of the company at Kharkov in February-March 1943 in Tiger 418. At the Kursk Offensive, he was the commander of Tiger 1314 in the First Platoon of the 13th (Heavy) Company. On November 9, 1943 Hartel was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer. Fritz Hartel was posted missing in action on December 30, 1943 near Berdychiv-Khazhyn in the Ukraine. His remains were never found. (Waffen-SS Tiger Crews at Kursk: The Men of SS Panzer Regiments 1, 2 & 3 in Operation Citadel, July 5-15, 1943)