BEGINNINGS
Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière was born of French-German descent in Posen (now Poznań, Poland) on March 18, 1886. At the age of seventeen, he entered the Kaiserliche Marine. After serving on the battleships SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, Schlesien, and Schleswig-Holstein, he served as torpedo officer on the light cruiser SMS Emden from 1911 to 1913.
THE SINKING OF THE GALLIA
At the outbreak of the First World War, Arnauld de la Perière served as an adjutant to admiral Hugo von Pohl in Berlin. Upon mobilization, he was transferred to an active post where he served in the Marine-Luftschiff-Abteilung.
In 1915, Arnauld de la Perière transferred to U-boats. After a course in Pula, he was given command of the U-35 in November 1915. He made fourteen voyages with the U-35 during which he sank 189 merchant vessels and two gunboats for a total of 446,708 GRT. One of his victories was the French troop carrier SS Gallia.
On October 3, 1916, the Gallia left Toulon unescorted for Thessaloniki in Greece carrying 1,650 French soldiers, 350 Serbian soldiers and 350 crew and a cargo of artillery and ammunition. The next day, the U-35, commanded by Arnauld de la Perière, torpedoed her southwest of Sardinia.
The ammunition aboard the Gallia exploded, and the ship sank in fifteen minutes. Because of the rapid sinking, panic broke out on board, resulting in lifeboats capsizing and thousands of soldiers jumping overboard. The ship’s wireless was disabled by the explosions, and they prevented the sending of a distress signal! On October 5th, the French cruiser Châteaurenault rescued the remaining survivors.
About six hundred people were killed in the sinking. A list of missing personnel was published on October 31, 1917 by the Tribunal Civil of Toulon. It gave the names of forty-four sailors and 553 soldiers. Several individual soldiers known by their family members to have died were not on the list. The Serbian soldiers were also excluded.
Nevertheless, it was one of the greatest losses of life in a maritime disaster involving a single French ship. One week after the sinking (October 11th), Arnauld de la Perière was decorated with the “Blue Max”, the Pour le Mérite.
Transferred to the U-139 in May 1918, Arnauld de la Perière sank a further five ships with a combined tonnage of 7,008 GRT. His record number of sunken tonnage and number of sunken ships remains unsurpassed. For his service, he was awarded the Iron Cross (Second and First Class).
INTERWAR YEARS
After the war, Arnauld de la Perière stayed in a vastly reduced (and virtually nonexistent) German Navy. During the 1920s, he served as navigation officer on the old pre-dreadnoughts SMS Hannover and SMS Elsass.
From September 24, 1928 to October 10, 1930, Arnauld de la Perière commanded the light cruiser Emden. Promoted to captain in 1931, he was put on the retired list. He then taught at the Turkish Naval Academy from 1932 to 1938.
DEATH AND LEGACY
At the start of World War II, Arnauld de la Perière was again called up for active duty. He served as naval commandant in Danzig.
Then in March 1940, Arnauld de la Perière was sent to the Low Countries as naval commandant for Belgium and the Netherlands. Promoted to Konteradmiral, he was made naval commandant in Brittany and later for the entire western French seacoast. He was promoted to Vizeadmiral on February 1, 1941.
Transferred to take up command of Navy Group South, Arnauld de la Perière was killed a little over three weeks later (February 24th) when his plane crashed on takeoff near Le Bourget Airport just outside Paris. He was taking part in secret negotiations with the Vichy French government.
With 194 ships and 453,716 gross register tons (GRT) sunk, Arnauld de la Perière is the most successful submarine captain ever. His victories came in the Mediterranean, most of them via his 8.8-cm deck gun. During his career, Arnauld de la Perière fired seventy-four torpedoes, hitting his target thirty-nine times.
Dead at the age of fifty-four, Vizeadmiral Arnauld de la Perière is buried in Berlin at the Invalidenfriedhof.
AWARDS
– Pour le Mérite (October 11, 1916)
– Iron Cross (1914), First and Second Classes
– Knight’s Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern (with swords)
– Order of the Crown, Fourth Class
– U-boat War Badge (1918)
– Service Award Cross
– Hanseatic Cross Hamburg
– Knight’s Cross of the Imperial Austrian Order of Leopold with War Decoration
– Order of the Iron Crown, Third Class with War Decoration (Austria-Hungary)
– Military Merit Cross, Third Class with War Decoration (Austria-Hungary)
– Silver Liakat Medal (with swords)
– Gallipoli Star (Ottoman Empire)
