QuickCheck: Did a German submarine dock in Penang in 1939?

SEVERAL years ago, a collection of photos of Penang from the 1890s to the 1980s appeared online, and the caption of one of the photos states that it is of a German submarine – the U-181 – docking at Penang's Swettenham Pier in 1939. Did this really happen as captioned?

VERDICT:

FALSE

This is in fact false because U-181 was not constructed in Bremen, Germany until 1941; it was laid down on March 15, 1941 before being launched on Dec 30 of the same year and then commissioned on May 9, 1942 under the command of Kapitänleutnant Wolfgang Lüth.

Records available online show that U-181 was operating on patrols off South Africa and Mozambique under Lüth before arriving in Penang on August 8, 1944 under the command of Fregattenkapitän Kurt Freiwald, having sailed out from Bordeaux, France on March 16, 1944.

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U-181 would remain in the region, operating out of Penang, Singapore and Batavia under the command of both Friewald and Kapitänleutnant Oskar Herwartz as part of the “Gruppe Monsun” or Monsoon Group operating in the Indian Ocean.

It was then transferred to the Imperial Japanese Navy on May 5, 1945 at Singapore, where it was re-named I 501 on July 15, 1945.

The submarine was ultimately towed out from Singapore by the British and scuttled in the Straits of Melaka on Feb 15, 1946.

Sources:

https://uboat.net/boats/patrols/u181.html

https://uboat.net/boats/u181.htm