German submarine U-977 was a World War II Type VIIC U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine which escaped to Argentina after Germany's surrender. The submarine's voyage to Argentina led to legends, apocryphal stories and conspiracy theories that it and had transported escaping Nazi leaders (such as Adolf Hitler) and/or Nazi gold to South America, that it had made a secret voyage to Antarctica, and even that it sank the Brazilian cruiser Bahia as the last act of the Battle of the Atlantic. Design German Type VIIC submarines were preceded by the shorter Type VIIB submarines. U-977 was powered by two Germaniawerft F46 four-stroke, six-cylinder supercharged diesel engines while surfaced and two Brown, Boveri & Cie GG UB 720/8 double-acting electric motors while submerged. She had two shafts and two propellers. U-977 had a complement of between 44 and 60 men. FLAK gun U-977 mounted a single 3.7 cm Flakzwilling M42U gun on the rare LM 43U mount. The LM 43U mount was the final design of mount used on U-boats and is only known to be installed on (, , , , and ). The 3.7 cm Flak M42U was the marine version of the 3.7 cm Flak, used by the Kriegsmarine on Type VII and Type IX U-boats. Service history U-977 was launched on 31 March 1943. She was used in training and made no war patrols during her first two years of service. On 2 May 1945 she was sent on her first war patrol, sailing from Kristiansand, Norway, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Heinz Schäffer (1921–1979). Schäffer's orders were to enter the British port of Southampton and sink any shipping there. This would have been a very dangerous assignment for a Type VII boat. When Admiral Dönitz ordered all attack submarines to stand down on 5 May 1945, U-977 was outbound north of Scotland. Voyage to Argentina Oblt.z.S. Schäffer decided to sail to Argentina rather than surrender. During later interrogation, Schäffer said his main reason was a German propaganda broadcast by Goebbels, which claimed that the Allies' Morgenthau Plan would turn Germany into a "goat pasture" and that all German men would be "enslaved and sterilized". Other factors were remembrances of the poor conditions and long delays that German POWs suffered through, in being repatriated at the end of World War I (see Forced labor of Germans after World War II), and the hope of better living conditions