Jan. 6, 2007, 8:46PM
Archivist solved a WWII enigma
U-boat captain's child discovers her father knew of her birth before dying
By MICHAEL E. RUANE
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Archivist Timothy Mulligan was back in the stacks that day, running down a long shot.
A National Archives expert on German submarines, Mulligan already had helped a Virginia woman with detailed records of her father's service as a U-boat skipper during World War II. But the woman said she still wondered if her father was aware she had been born just before his boat was sunk near Iceland in 1943.
Mulligan knew that the Allies had broken the German naval code during the war, and that the archives had copies of intercepted messages to the U-boats. Maybe headquarters had radioed the skipper about his daughter. Commanders did such things.
Mulligan, 56, of Lanham, Md., told the story recently as he approached his retirement this week after 34 years of work in the archives. He has written two books about U-boats, helped other scholars research the subject for years, and has written a guide that summarizes the stories of 889 of the German submarines that preyed on Allied shipping during World War II.
But his coup more than 20 years ago — finding a single decoded radio message for a woman seeking to discover the father she never knew — was, he said, his most gratifying moment. It was a researcher's grand slam.
The story began in 1981 with the release of the German movie Das Boot (The Boat), that depicted the squalid and terrifying life of a U-boat crew.
When Mulligan was interviewed about the movie for a story in the Washington Post, his comments caught the attention of Reston, Va.'s Inge Molzahn, a German native whose father, Hans Karpf, had been the captain of U-632.
Molzahn, then 39, called Mulligan and told her story: She was born after her father left on his last patrol, but just a few weeks before his boat was sunk by a British bomber off the coast of Iceland on April 6, 1943.
After the war, she and her mother left Germany for Argentina. Her mother had remarried, and talk of her father was discouraged.
"It was not allowed for me to say anything about my father," Molzahn said in a recent interview in her home.
Now she was desperate for information about the man relatives said she so resembled. She said she had little more than some old snapshots depicting a boyish-looking naval officer in an oversized cap, a handful of war medals and letters her father wrote to her mother.
Mulligan knew that the archives had reams of German naval war documents that had been recovered by the Allies in a castle in Germany where they had been sent for storage.
Mulligan, who had a doctorate in European history, had become an avid student of U-boat crews, traveling to Germany to interview hundreds of sailors and writing about the working-class submariners and their skippers.
"It's such an extraordinary form of warfare," he said.
He quickly tracked down data on Lt. Karpf and U-632, a 220-foot-long Type VIIC boat with a crew of 48, no shower and one usable bathroom. It was the same kind of boat depicted in the movie.
Mulligan turned up one patrol diary penned by the skipper and another compiled by his superiors after he was lost.
Karpf, then 27, had served on two other boats, but had taken U-632 on only two combat patrols and had claimed only two ships before being sunk.
This was typical, Mulligan said.
"The most common experience aboard a German U-boat was to go out and be sunk with all hands before you ever fired a shot," he said.
Working in the main archives building in Washington, he began poring over the dozens of intercepted messages from headquarters to U-632. Most were about combat details.
But then he found something else. On March 24, 1943, Karpf's flotilla headquarters had sent him a simple message: "Hero daughter born on 18 March. Congratulations."
There it was. Fourteen days before his death, the skipper learned he had a child.
Mulligan called Molzahn immediately.
She was stunned.
Now 63, she he has long been grateful to Mulligan. "He opened this whole door for me, this whole knowledge."
Archivist solved a WWII enigma
U-boat captain's child discovers her father knew of her birth before dying
By MICHAEL E. RUANE
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Archivist Timothy Mulligan was back in the stacks that day, running down a long shot.
A National Archives expert on German submarines, Mulligan already had helped a Virginia woman with detailed records of her father's service as a U-boat skipper during World War II. But the woman said she still wondered if her father was aware she had been born just before his boat was sunk near Iceland in 1943.
Mulligan knew that the Allies had broken the German naval code during the war, and that the archives had copies of intercepted messages to the U-boats. Maybe headquarters had radioed the skipper about his daughter. Commanders did such things.
Mulligan, 56, of Lanham, Md., told the story recently as he approached his retirement this week after 34 years of work in the archives. He has written two books about U-boats, helped other scholars research the subject for years, and has written a guide that summarizes the stories of 889 of the German submarines that preyed on Allied shipping during World War II.
But his coup more than 20 years ago — finding a single decoded radio message for a woman seeking to discover the father she never knew — was, he said, his most gratifying moment. It was a researcher's grand slam.
The story began in 1981 with the release of the German movie Das Boot (The Boat), that depicted the squalid and terrifying life of a U-boat crew.
When Mulligan was interviewed about the movie for a story in the Washington Post, his comments caught the attention of Reston, Va.'s Inge Molzahn, a German native whose father, Hans Karpf, had been the captain of U-632.
Molzahn, then 39, called Mulligan and told her story: She was born after her father left on his last patrol, but just a few weeks before his boat was sunk by a British bomber off the coast of Iceland on April 6, 1943.
After the war, she and her mother left Germany for Argentina. Her mother had remarried, and talk of her father was discouraged.
"It was not allowed for me to say anything about my father," Molzahn said in a recent interview in her home.
Now she was desperate for information about the man relatives said she so resembled. She said she had little more than some old snapshots depicting a boyish-looking naval officer in an oversized cap, a handful of war medals and letters her father wrote to her mother.
Mulligan knew that the archives had reams of German naval war documents that had been recovered by the Allies in a castle in Germany where they had been sent for storage.
Mulligan, who had a doctorate in European history, had become an avid student of U-boat crews, traveling to Germany to interview hundreds of sailors and writing about the working-class submariners and their skippers.
"It's such an extraordinary form of warfare," he said.
He quickly tracked down data on Lt. Karpf and U-632, a 220-foot-long Type VIIC boat with a crew of 48, no shower and one usable bathroom. It was the same kind of boat depicted in the movie.
Mulligan turned up one patrol diary penned by the skipper and another compiled by his superiors after he was lost.
Karpf, then 27, had served on two other boats, but had taken U-632 on only two combat patrols and had claimed only two ships before being sunk.
This was typical, Mulligan said.
"The most common experience aboard a German U-boat was to go out and be sunk with all hands before you ever fired a shot," he said.
Working in the main archives building in Washington, he began poring over the dozens of intercepted messages from headquarters to U-632. Most were about combat details.
But then he found something else. On March 24, 1943, Karpf's flotilla headquarters had sent him a simple message: "Hero daughter born on 18 March. Congratulations."
There it was. Fourteen days before his death, the skipper learned he had a child.
Mulligan called Molzahn immediately.
She was stunned.
Now 63, she he has long been grateful to Mulligan. "He opened this whole door for me, this whole knowledge."
