Lieutenant Commander (Korvettenkapitän) Wentzel H. Ahbewas the decorated captain of the Type IXC U-boat U-1324and a survivor of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Bio[]
Ahbe's last order in the closing months of World War II in Europe was to take the U-1324 and its veteran crew along with two passengers from the Kriegsmarine naval base at Kiel to ostensibly return Colonel Matsuda to Batavia (now Jakarta). He succeeded in getting safely to the Indian Ocean, but ran into trouble with United States Navy destroyers near the Nicobar Islands on March 25, 1945, which succeed in fatally crippling the U-1324 with depth charges, leaving it stranded on the seafloor. With only two hours of air left, he relieved his crew of their military duties and allowed them to face death however they chose. Ahbe was a patriot, but he despised the Nazi cause, expressing his bitterness to SS Lieutenant Colonel (Obersturmbannführer) Spielberger that the Nazis had brought Germany to ruin and satisfaction that U-1324’s sinking had meaning if his children would never see the Nazi flag again, leading the latter to shoot him. In their last act of loyalty to their captain, his crew avenged him. Ahbe left behind a wife and two children.
His Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords is sought after by Revy after she and Rock recover 'The Twelve Knights Led by Brunhilda' for its value on the open market. Ahbe is also shown to have received the Iron Cross 1st Class among his other decorations. Additionally, the U-1324 has the famed laughing sawfish emblem of the U-96 from the film "Das Boot".
Trivia[]
- In the English dub, Benny incorrectly states Ahbe's rank as Major.
- He is apparently modeled after Jürgen Prochnow's character from Das Boot. Prochnow's character was in turn modeled after real life U-96 captain Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock.
- Ahbe also shares similarities to Günther Prien, commander of the U-47 and one of World War II's earliest U-boat aces. Both are veteran commanders who held the relatively accomplished rank (for U-boat captains) of Korvettenkapitän and both were awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves (though Ahbe's is one grade higher with swords, which was not available until after Prien's death on March 7, 1941). As well, both captains were highly skilled navigators, with Ahbe having successfully sailed from Kiel to the Indian Ocean before the U-1324's sinking and Prien having braved treacherous North Atlantic waters to infiltrate the Royal Naval basin of Scapa Flow, in which Prien would sink the battleship Royal Oak.