German Submarine U-559 - Aftermath

Aftermath

Grazier and Fasson were awarded the George Cross posthumously, Brown was awarded the George Medal. The Victoria Cross was considered but not awarded, for the ostensible reason that their bravery was not "in the face of the enemy". Another consideration may have been that a Victoria Cross would have drawn unwanted attention to the U-boat capture from German Intelligence. It was also discovered that Brown had lied about his age in order to enlist, and was only 16 years old, making him the youngest recipient of the George Medal. He was discharged and returned home to North Shields, only to die two years later attempting to rescue his younger sister from a house fire.

The Enigma material they retrieved was immensely valuable to the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, who had been unable to read U-boat Enigma for nine months. The captured material allowed them to read the cyphers for several weeks, and to break U-boat Enigma thereafter.

The recovery was one of several such events (e.g., the earlier sinking of U-110), that inspired the fictional account of the submarine capture in the 2000 film U-571.

There is a sequel to the sinking of the U-559. Lieutenant Commander Peter Keeble, in his war autobiography, Ordeal by Water, describes a dive made on a U-boat in the Mediterranean not far from Port Said in 230 ft (70 m) of water. He was told that it was U-307, and that it was thought to have on board a top-secret infra-red sighting device; however, U-307 never operated in those waters. Since HMS Petard had taken an accurate fix on her last resting place, the wreck was easily located. Prior to the dive, Keeble was informed exactly where in the control room the secret device was located. A mock-up of the control room was built so that he could practice locating the device in the dark. That the Allies would have known exactly where a secret device would be located on a U-Boat in general is unlikely; however Brown, the third person to enter the sinking U-559, would have seen the location of the radar device. Keeble was almost certainly fed misinformation to maintain secrecy, he likely dived on U-559. The secret device was successfully recovered, but not before two corpses were encountered: one jammed in the ladder, making it necessary for Keeble to dissect it with his diver's knife. The other's finger ring tapped his helmet several times during his attempt to free the device, and he was obliged to push it away. He assumed the corpses were German seamen, but they were most likely those of Fasson and Grazier since there were no German casualties during the action that sank U-559.