German submarine U-482 was a Type VIIC 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...

 of the German

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 Kriegsmarine

Kriegsmarine

The Kriegsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime . It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. She was laid down on 13 February 1942 at Deutsche Werke

Deutsche Werke

Deutsche Werke was a German shipbuilding company founded in 1925 when Kaiserliche Werft Kiel and other shipyards were merged. It came as a result of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I that forced the German defence industry to shrink...

 in 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...

 and went into service on 1 December 1943 under the command of Hartmut von Matuschka.

Career

U-482 made two war patrols from Bergen, Norway, both under the command of Matuschka. The first, which began on August 14, took the U-482 off the coast of Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. Over a nine-day period U-482 sank two freighters, two tankers and the British corvette for a total of . It was the single most successful war patrol by a Type VII U-boat in 1944.

U-482 mounted a second patrol beginning November 18, but was sunk with all hands a week later by the British frigate

Fate

During the war it was thought that the U-482 was not sunk until January 16, 1945, and that she had damaged the escort carrier (later determined to be the work of . Credit for her sinking was given to the ships of British Support Group 22. In the 1990s the British Admiralty revised that assessment and declared that U-482 had possibly struck a mine in the North Channel

North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland)

The North Channel is the strait which separates eastern Northern Ireland from southwestern Scotland...

, off Malin Head

Malin Head

Malin Head , on the Inishowen Peninsula, County Donegal, is usually given as the most northerly headland of the mainland of Ireland . In fact, the most northerly point is actually a headland named Banba's Crown on the Inishowen Peninsula about 2 km to the northeast...

, in early December 1944. In 2005 U-boat researcher Axel Niestlé determined that U-482 was probably sunk by the Ascension west of the Shetland Islands

Shetland Islands

Shetland is a subarctic archipelago of Scotland that lies north and east of mainland Great Britain. The islands lie some to the northeast of Orkney and southeast of the Faroe Islands and form part of the division between the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east. The total...

.

Raiding career

Between August and November 1944 U-482 sailed on two combat patrols, sinking four merchant ships totalling and the . |+Ships attacked by U-482>

Date	Ship	Tons	Nationality	Convoy	Fate
30 August 1944		10,448	United States	CU-36	Sunk at 55°30′N 07°38′W
1 September 1944		1,010	United Kingdom		Sunk at 55°27′N 08°12′W
3 September 1944		4,115	Norway	ONF-251	Sunk at 55°55′N 09°28′W
8 September 1944		15,702	United Kingdom	HX-305	Sunk at 55°27′N 08°01′W
8 September 1944		1,346	United Kingdom	HX-305	Sunk at 55°27′N 08°01′W