Interrogation of UO 6242/41S                     U-701                                       September 10, 1942
	Bruno Faust by Capt. H.W. Boesch
	A. Good day.     Q. Good day.  How are you?     A. Very well, thank you, sir.     Q. Do you get cigarettes and reading material now?     A. We received cigarettes, but no reading material.     Q. I gave the order, to give you some reading material.  What else would you like to have?     A. I would like to get some reading material, that is all.     Q. All right.  I came to talk some more with you.  I want to find out what your opinion is about certain things, because you will soon be sent to a different camp for the duration.  As you most probably know, we have good camps, some others are better still, and some of them are bad.  After this conversation, you will be sent to one of them, depending on the outcome of our present little chat.     A. I see.     Q. We have had some prisoners who did not behave themselves very well.  They used to complain constantly, they were never satisfied, you know.  You have people like that.     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Of course, they will be treated accordingly.     A. I don't think I have complained so far.     Q. No, you haven't.     A. I complained only once; that was when we were handcuffed.  I felt like a gangster.     Q. Well, we must be careful, because it happened that Prisoners, German Prisoners, escaped from Canadian prison camps.
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	A. That is true; in fact, I have met one of them in Germany.     Q. Did he escape from an American Camp?     A. No sir.  An English one, he escaped from Canada.     Q. How did he do it?     A. He jumped the boat on his way to Canada.     Q. He did not swim to Germany did he?     A. He jumped out of the ship shortly before they reached the Coast then he made his way to Germany.     Q. You see, it happens, and that is why we take those precautionary measures.     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Let us see now.  You have enough cigarettes now, and what else do you need?     A. A book or some papers perhaps.     Q. I will see what I can do about it.     A. Thank you, sir.     Q. The other day you told me something about a plane that had been shot down over Bielefeld, and furthermore you told me that the English pilot was wounded.     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Would you relate that story to me again?  Was he treated well?     A. Yes he was.  He was handled very carefully, and brought to the nearest first aid station.  These they took good care of his burns and wounds by a doctor.  He was an English officer.     Q. That is what I like to hear.     A. Of course, we expect the same thing from our enemies.     Q. Naturally, one hand washes the other.     A. Yes, sir.
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	Q. He wa shot down over Bielefeld?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Did they shoot down many?     A. No, that is the only one I know about.     Q. Did he drop any bombs before he was shot down?     A. I think he did.     Q. Actually there is not much of value in Bielefeld, is there?     A. Well, there are a few factories which are producing material for the Army and the English probably know that.  The Germans do the same thing.  Only, it is too bad that the civilian population is always affected by it.     Q. Yes.  Have they inflicted much damage?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Only one plane was shot down?     A. Yes, however, that happened in 1940.     Q. Well, were any civilians killed?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Exactly what did they hit?     A. Mainly big stores.  Damage was particularly heavy in the inner part of the city.     Q. Did they score any hits on apartment houses and such?     A. Oh, yes.  The city is a densely populated spot.     Q. It is different here entirely.  Here the cities consist mostly of business houses, and homes are outside of the business district.     A. I see.     Q. That was in 1940.  Did they bomb the city in 1941, too?     A. Yes, in the summer of 1941 they bombed the city again.
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	Q. The inner part of the city again?     A. Yes, sir.  Whole blocks of business houses and department stores were damaged, or destroyed.     Q. Has it been rebuilt since then?     A. No, the damage inflicted was too great.     Q. I guess it is a pretty tough job to rebuild all these business houses.     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Do you know how many people were killed and wounded during that raid?     A. I don't know exactly how many were killed, but it must have been hundreds.     Q. That was in 1940?     A. Yes sir.     Q. The whole Ruhr valley was bombed that time.  Essen, Dusiburg and many more towns.     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Were you home during last winter?     A. In March.     Q. I was told that you had a very severe winter, and that potatoes froze in the ground.     A. I don't know anything about that.     Q. But you know that the potatoes were rationed.     A. Yes, sir.  That is all on account of the war.  Most everything is rationed.  Coffee, butter, eggs, etc.     Q. Don't you get substitutes?     A. Yes, we do.     Q. Do you get enough sugar?     A. Yes, to a certain extent.     Q. I remember during the last war the Germans used lots of pills and added them to coffee instead of sugar.  Saccharine pills they called them.
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	A. Frankly, I have not seen any yet.     Q. One of the boys told me about that trip you made to Iceland.     A. I did not participate on that trip.     Q. You did not?     A. No, sir.     Q. How come?     A. I have only made one trip on the U-Degen.     Q. Oh, that is right.  You were at La Rochelle as I remember it?     A. Yes.     Q. Did you get enough to eat there?     A. Yes, sir, the navy has plenty to eat, yet.     Q. Is that so.  How about the French, do they have enough food?  I have seen pictures showing French children begging for food in the streets.     A. It is in France just as it is in Germany.  The Distribution of food is the same.     Q. I see.  Tell me, did you see any U-boat shelters in La Rochelle, like they have in St. Nazaire?     A. No, they are in La Pallice     Q. How big is La Pallice?     A. I have only been there once.     Q. Didn't you go into the port of La Rochelle?     A. No, the went to La Pallice.     Q. Is that the case you must have had some sort of shelter there for the boats?     A. Yes, they  were just like those in St. Nazaire.     Q. How far is it from La Rochelle to La Pallice?     A. Not very far.     Q. How many U-boats did they keep there at the time you were there?     A. I don't know.
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	Q. Did you not see any?     A. Once I saw one pull out of the harbor.     Q. Was it a big one?     A. A 500 ton boat.     Q. I thought you had bigger ones of 1600 tons, for example.     A. I did not see any of that size.     Q. Did you see any 1000 ton ones?     A. No, however I have seen some of 750 tons.     Q. Of course, 750 ton boats, that is nothing new.  We have captured several of them.  How long were you in La Rochelle?     A. About 4 months.     Q. From October to January?     A. No, from the end of December until May.     Q. I see.  And then you went on furlough?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. After that you joined the U-Degen?     A. Yes.     Q. Now you joined the U-Degen in 1942, where were you before you came to La Rochelle?     A. I was on a different U-boat before.     Q. What was the name of it?     A. U-Troger (?)  I made one trip with him.     Q. Where does Troger come from?     A. I don't know, but he is dead anyway.     Q. Did the boat sink?     A. Yes sir, it sank with full complement.     Q. Where did he go on his last trip?     A. No, too, went to Iceland and North Atlantic.
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	Q. And he left port before December 1941?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. We were not at war then.     A. No, sir.     Q. How many ships did you sink your first trip?     A. None at all.     Q. Where were you trained?     A. In Eckernfoerde.     Q. That is near Flensburg, isn't it?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Did your boat leave from Kiel?     A. No sir, we left from St. Nazaire and went to Lorient, from where we finally left for the South Atlantic.     Q. Oh yes, I remember.     Q. Did you ever go through the Kiel Canal?     A. No sir.     Q. Then you must have gone through the Skaggerak to get to St. Nazaire.     A. You must have misunderstood me, sir.  We went by train to St. Nazaire and left  by boat from there.     Q. Oh, I see.  Via Cologne and Paris?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Did you stop off in Paris?     A. Yes, sir.  Our train only stopped there for a very short time.     Q. Did you see any damage inflicted upon Paris?     A. No, sir.     Q. Did you ever see the Graf Zeppelin?     A. No, sir.
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	Q. Can you tell me anything about the listening devices aboard a U-boat?  How you detect airplanes, and so on?     A. There are none.     Q. The only way to find out then would be sighting them?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Don't you think you are a little late in spotting a plane sometimes?     A. Yes.  If we had listening devices for planes we wouldn't be here.     Q. A plane can hide behind the clouds and suddenly they take a dive out of those clouds and spot you.  That would not leave you any time to submerge would it?     A. We watch out for them.     Q. That may be so.  I thought you had a certain listening device like those used on destroyers and other ships.     A. No, sir.     Q. Well, suppose you sight a plane, then you submerge  immediately, don't you?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. Do you know how long it takes to submerge to a certain depth?     A. I don't know.     Q. Can you give me a rough idea?     A. Just a few seconds.     Q. SECONDS?     A. Yes, sir.     Q. How could you possibly close the top of your conning tower and then submerge within a few seconds?     A. That all goes very fast.  We have so called "E Motor" which is driven by batteries.  This motor is put into action during the process of submerging.  We can change gears while submerging, making it possible to crash-dive so quickly.  No other navy has this kind of device.
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	Q. What do you call this machine again?     A. "E Maschiene".     Q. What does "E" stand for?     A. That stands for electric, because it is an electric motor.  The electricity is supplied by batteries.     Q. Oh, now I understand.  At what angle do you go down?     A. I would say approximately fifty degrees.     Q. Being in the Army, I have no idea how all this works, and cannot even imagine how it is done.  Anyway, according to your story, you should be able to crash-dive in no time at all.     A. Yes, sir.     Q. How deep down do you usually go?     A. I have no idea.     Q. But you should be able to give me a rough idea.  About 40 meters maybe?     A. (Does not answer).     Q. Some fellow told me the other day that they went down as far as 150 meters?     A. I cannot tell exactly.     Q. Of course, you stay down below the water until the attacking craft has gone.     A. Yes.     Q. How do you know whether or not the attacker has gone.  You can only guess, I suppose.     A. Yes sir, we have no other way of telling.     Q. I really thought you had some sort of detector by which you could tell the presence of another ship or plane.  Do you know anything about your torpedoes.  As far as I know, you have electric and air torpedoes and some of them are kept on the outside of the boat.
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	A. I don't know.     Q. You don't know?     A. That is the secret of secrets.     Q. What is so secretive about it?  As far as I'm concerned, I don't know anything about it anyway, after all I belong to the Army and not to the Navy.  I am only trying to get a rough idea of all this.     A. I don't know too much about it myself.     Q. Even if you would tell me, I could not make any use of it anyway.  I am not a technical man and besides I won't be able to memorize all this.     A. You might not be able to use it, but your Navy will be able to.     Q. How could I tell them?  I would not be able to relay anything technical, because I don't know anything about it.     A. But if you know, for example, where these torpedoes are located, what size they are, how fast they go, and so on, all this will enable you to figure out different things.  You could figure out how long it takes for one torpedo to travel at a certain distance and so on.  We are at war now and I simply cannot tell you these things.     Q. On, stop it.  You know well enough that I am not a Navy Officer.     A. I know that of course.     Q. When you tell me these things there is no harm in it.  I only ask these questions because I am personally interested and like to have some idea as to the working of a submarine.     A. I realize that.     Q. I am trying to learn.  I like to know a little about it so as to be able to converse about it.     A. Yes, but still you would be able to use it.
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	Q. I could not possibly remember that, for instance, the torpedoes are kept outside and that they are brought inside the boat whenever you want to use them.  I would not be able to remember this in two or three hours from now.     A. That might be.     Q. I have no idea of how you do it.  Maybe it takes you two hours to switch these torpedoes to the inside and maybe you have to do it at a certain time.  During darkness maybe.  How about telling me.     A. It does not take two or three hours to bring them inside.  It goes much faster.     Q. As I said before, I do not have the slightest idea.     A. Well, it takes about half an hour to get one of the air torpedoes inside the ship under perfect conditions with an efficient crew.     Q. Half an hour for both of them, or only one?     A. No, only one.  To bring both of them in would take 45 min to one hr.     Q. You see, I know very little about it.  I am only interested because I have been on a U-boat once.  Of course, at that time I did not know that I would ever meet specialists of U-boats.     A. Was it a German U-boat you were on?     Q. I have seen a German one in Honolulu at one time.  That one was on a world cruise, I believe.     A. Was it an old ship?     Q. I guess so, it was in 1934, or maybe it was 1935 or 36.  That is more or less the reason for my being so interested.     A. Yes.     Q. Well, I am going to see to it that you will be sent to a good camp, together with your friend.     A. I would like very much to be together with him.  Good bye.
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