Sensors

First patrol

The submarine left Kiel on her first patrol on 20 February 1943. Her route to the Atlantic took her through the gap between Iceland and the Faeroe Islands. On 9 March she sank the Swedish ship Milos in mid-Atlantic, at a point roughly equidistant from the southern tip of Greenland, Iceland and northwest Scotland. She also sank the American Sunoil on 5 April after the tanker had already been hit by U-563. She then made her way to the port of Lorient in occupied France, arriving on 22 April.

Second, third and fourth patrols

These three forays were relatively uneventful, apart from her home port being moved to Bordeaux and then La Pallice.

Fifth patrol

Her fifth patrol took her to the Caribbean Sea where she attacked and damaged the American tanker Chapultepec on 26 December 1943. She was forced to return to France when she was rammed by the tanker Esso Buffalo on 29 December. She arrived at Lorient on 22 February 1944.

Sixth patrol

For her sixth sortie, U-530 departed Lorient on 22 May 1944 ultimately for operations in the Trinidad area. On her outward voyage she was to rendezvous with the Japanese submarine I-52 and supply the larger boat with a Naxos radar detector, a radar operator and a German navigator to help I-52 complete her journey.

The two submarines rendezvoused on 23 June in mid-Atlantic, 850 nmi (1,570 km; 980 mi) west of the Cape Verde Islands. The Allies had been informed of the rendezvous and directed the escort carrier Bogue (CVE-9) to the scene; her aircraft managed to sink I-52 with an acoustic torpedo.^[3] U-530 returned to base, this time Flensburg, after 133 days at sea.

A short journey from Kiel to Horten Naval Base in southern Norway on from 19 to 23 February was her recorded next move, but it did not count as a patrol.

Seventh patrol and surrender

U-530 departed Horten on 3 March 1945 to operate off of New York, operating as close as two or three miles off Long Island. On about 4 May the submarine sighted a convoy and attacked with three torpedoes: two missed while the third had a battery explosion and did not leave the tube. U-530 attacked a second convoy 6 May with five torpedoes and a third the next day with two more, all of which missed.^{[upper-alpha 1]}

U-530 did not initially surrender at war's end, as ordered by Admiral Dönitz; instead the crew headed for Argentina and ultimately surrendered to the Argentine Navy on 10 July 1945 at Mar del Plata. Prior to their arrival the crew dumped the five remaining torpedoes^{[upper-alpha 2]}, anti-aircraft gun ammunition, secret papers, and the ship's log overboard.^[4][5]

Her captain, Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth, did not explain why it had taken him more than two months to reach Mar del Plata, why the submarine had jettisoned its deck gun^{[upper-alpha 3]}, or why the crew carried no identification.

The unexpected arrival of U-530 started many rumors. Brazilian Admiral Jorge Dodsworth Martins said he believed that U-530 could have sunk the cruiser Bahia, while Admiral Dudal Teixeira, also a Brazilian, believed that U-530 had come from Japan. An Argentine reporter claimed that he had seen a Buenos Aires provincial police report to the effect that a strange submarine had surfaced off the lower Argentine coast and had landed a high-ranking officer and a civilian who might have been Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in disguise.^[6] U-977, which arrived in Mar del Plata on 17 August, was also accused of sinking Bahia; however, an inquiry eventually found that the cruiser had been sunk due to a gunnery accident.^[7]

The Argentine Naval Ministry issued an official communique stating that U-530 did not sink the Bahia, that no Nazi leader or high-ranking military officers were aboard, and that U-530 had landed no one on the coast of Argentina before surrendering.^[6]

The crew of U-530 were interned. They and the boat were then transferred to the United States. The submarine was sunk as a target on 28 November 1947 by a torpedo from American submarine USS Toro.