Heinz-Wilhelm Eck

The sinking Peleus left a large debris field, amongst which were several survivors clinging to rafts and wreckage. This debris could betray the presence of U-852 to enemy aircraft and shipping patrolling the area. Eck decided to sink the wreckage with hand grenades and automatic weapons. The question of whether this "dispersal" order explicitly or implicitly encouraged the killing of the sailors in the water, or whether this was an unfortunate example of collateral damage was the subject of a post-war trial. During the trial, Eck acknowledged he realized that by sinking the rafts, he was denying the seamen a chance of survival.

Eck ordered his junior officers to fire into the wreckage in an effort to sink it. Accounts differ greatly as to the number of shots fired and the damage done. The two surviving Greek sailors reported the shooting went on for a long time, and that at least four of their compatriots were killed by it. The German crew's report stated, however, that they had fired several short machine gun bursts into the wreckage and were unable to see their targets in the dark. The men shooting were later proven to be the ship's engineering officer, Hans Lenz (who claimed he had done so under protest to spare an enlisted man from having to do it), Walter Weisspfennig (the ship's doctor who was not supposed to be handling firearms), the second in command August Hoffmann and an enlisted engineer, Wolfgang Schwender (who was under direct orders and fired very few rounds). Eck was also present during the incident; the remaining crew were below decks.

The operation to sink the rafts and wreckage was not hugely successful, but the submarine was able to evade pursuit, and managed to sink the British merchant ship SS Dahomian off Cape Town on 1 April, this time hastily leaving the scene rather than pausing. A few weeks later on 30 April the boat was spotted by a Vickers Wellington bomber flying from Aden, which managed to damage her with depth charges, thus preventing her from diving. Eck went to the Somali coast and beached U-852 on a coral reef while under attack from six bombers of 621 Squadron Royal Air Force. Of Eck's crew of 65, seven were killed and the remaining 58 made it to shore. They were captured by the Somaliland Camel Corps and local militia and sent to prison camps to await the end of the war.

In prison, Lenz provided his captors with a signed confession. This, when combined with the testimony of the Peleus survivors and the log of U-852 (which Eck had failed to destroy), provided conclusive testimony. Following the war's conclusion, all the above named crew members were placed on trial at the Hamburg war trials (an extension of the Nuremberg trials for less prominent war criminals) for the deaths of the steamer's crew. The judge was Melford Stevenson. After a four-day hearing, at which crew members, survivors and experts were called, all five men were found guilty.

Eck, Hoffmann, and Weisspfennig were sentenced to death. Weisspfennig was condemned because as a non-combatant under the Geneva Conventions, he was prohibited from firing weapons even in action. Eck and Hoffmann were executed because in their roles as the boat's senior officers, responsibility for the actions of their crew, as well as their own, fell directly on their shoulders. All three were shot by firing squad at Lüneburg Heath on 30 November 1945.[1] Lenz, due to his protests and his written confession, received a life sentence, while Schwender, the only man involved who had been under direct orders, was sentenced 15 years in prison. Schwender was released from prison on 21 December 1951; Lenz was released on 27 August 1952.

The incident was the only case in which Kriegsmarine U-boat personnel were convicted of war crimes during the Second World War, compared to the thousands of individuals from the other branches of the Wehrmacht.[2] Similar and even worse war crimes had been committed by German submarines during the First World War, as in the case of the machine-gunning of the survivors of the HMHS Llandovery Castle hospital ship. Allied submarines (such as HMS Torbay and USS Wahoo) were also recorded as committing similar actions, though such instances were quietly hushed up at the time and years after the war ended; no legal proceedings were ever carried out against their crews.[3] The crew of the Wahoo could not be tried after the war, because they were by then dead, as were the crew of the German U-247, who had shot the shipwrecked survivors of the fishing trawler Noreen Mary.

However, the historian Dwight R. Messimer from the U.S. Naval Institute came to the conclusion, that "regardless of whether or not Heinz Eck and the others were guilty of war crimes, poor judgment, or of just following orders, the outcome of the trial was Siegerjustiz (victor's justice)".[4]

Gwyn Griffin's best-selling 1967 novel An Operational Necessity was based on the Peleus Incident.[5]