U-156
U-boat that initiated an international rescue operation after sinking the liner-transport Laconia in the South Atlantic, September 1942. U-156 and three other submarines—two German and one Italian—rescued roughly 1,500 people from the Laconia. After an American bomber attacked the subs, they broke off the rescue operation. Karl Dönitz thereafter ordered his commanders to no longer offer assistance to shipwrecked survivors (the "Laconia Order"), which led to Dönitz's indictment as a war criminal at Nuremberg.

Type: IX C
Built: AG Weser, Bremen
Keel laid: 4 October 1940
Launched: 21 May 1941
Commissioned: 4 September 1941
Commander: KK Werner Hartenstein
Fate: Lost with all 53 hands to air attack by a U.S. Navy Catalina in the Caribbean, 8 March 1943.