Hitler’s U-Boat War- The Hunted 1942-45

by Clay Blair

  Hauling back to Atlantic waters east of Trinidad, Lassen in U-160 operated in loose cooperation with Müller-Stöckheim in U-67 from time to time in the ensuing days. Lassen sank three more freighters for 18,200 tons, bringing his confirmed bag to an impressive eight ships for 44,900 tons. Müller-Stöckheim sank three ships for 16,000 tons and damaged two others for 11,700 tons. These successes raised Müller-Stöckheim’s confirmed sinkings for the patrol to four vessels for 20,500 tons, which, combined with past claims and overclaims, was sufficient to earn a Ritterkreuz.†

  Six of the seven boats sailing in October reached American waters. Four IXs patrolled the Trinidad area. Two IXs set off for Brazil, One of them, U-511, was recalled and diverted to attack Torch forces; the other, U-174, continued as planned. A single Type VII, U-608, was ordered to plant a minefield in the approaches to New York harbor.

  The first of the four IXs sailing to the Trinidad area was the IXC U-505, commanded by a young new skipper, Peter Zschech, who had been first watch officer of the famous U-124. Born October 1, 1918, Zschech was only twenty-three years old when he assumed command of U-505 on September 15 and celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday three days before he sailed. On November 7 he sank a 7,200-ton British freighter sixty miles due east of Trinidad. That sinking drew saturation air coverage to the site. Nonetheless, on November 9, Zschech attacked another freighter, firing four torpedoes. All missed.

  While U-505 was cruising on the surface on the afternoon of November 10, a twin-engine aircraft came out of the sun and attacked before the boat could dive. The plane dropped a string of shallow-set depth charges, which savaged the boat, blew up the plane, and severely wounded two Germans, including the second watch officer and a crewman. Another crewman, Hans Joachim Decker, wrote:

  It looked as if a bulldozer had run over the deck—twisted steel, crumpled sheet metal, broken and twisted pipelines. Sections of the false hull [superstructure] had disappeared. The 37mm antiaircraft cannon had been blown overboard. And from behind the ship streamed an ever widening ribbon of thick, black substance. The bombs had split open our fuel tanks. A nice track that was. ... Below, we discovered that the after bulkhead of the engine room had buckled; the water had come from our fresh water cooling pipes, smashed in by a huge dent in the pressure hull over the port diesel.

  No U-boat had ever sustained such massive damage and survived, Decker wrote. Running east on one engine to elude other Trinidad-based aircraft, the crew worked feverishly to repair the worst of the damage so that the boat could dive. Thirteen long days later, on November 22, U-505 rendezvoused with the tanker U-462. Zschech left the wounded second watch officer in the care of the doctor on U-462, which was returning to France, took on fuel and a Metox set, and limped onward to France, arriving on December 12. The U-505 was in battle-damage repair and modification for the next seven months.

  The other three IXs sailing for the Trinidad area in October were badly in need of successes. In a prior eighty-one-day patrol to the Caribbean under the command of Walther Kölle, U-154 had sunk only one 65-ton trawler. Her new skipper, Heinrich Schuch, came from the U-105, which had been badly damaged in the Bay of Biscay by a Coastal Command Sunderland in June. In a prior patrol to the Caribbean, Kurt-Edward Engelmann, in U-163, had been forced to abort and sank nothing, and Georg Staats in U-508 had sunk only two Cuban coasters for 2,700 tons.

  The three boats arrived in the Trinidad area in early November. East of the Windward Islands chain, Engelmann in U-163 sank the first ship, a 5,200-ton British freighter. Nearby, on November 8 and 9, Heinrich Schuch in U-154 sank two British freighters for 12,700 tons.

  Two of the boats slipped into the Caribbean via the Mona Passage: Staats in U-508 and Engelmann in U-163. West of Trinidad, on November 7, Staats sank two freighters for 12,400 tons, one American and one British. On November 12, Engelmann found and attacked a Trinidad-Aruba-Guantánamo Bay convoy, TAG 20. He claimed sinking a 5,000-ton freighter and a fleet destroyer and damage to a 6,000-ton freighter, but, in fact, he only hit and severely damaged one of the escorts. She was the big (328-foot, 2,000-ton) U.S. Navy gunboat Erie (prototype of the Treasury-class Coast Guard cutters), awesomely armed with four 6” guns. Fires ignited Erie’s ammo locker, killing seven men and wounding eleven, and forcing the, rest of the crew to abandon ship. Several days later, fire-fighting specialists boarded Erie, and a tug towed her into the harbor at Curaçao, where she capsized and sank on December 5.

  These attacks froze traffic inside the Caribbean temporarily and drew heavy air patrols. Accordingly, Engelmann, whose Metox was out, and Staats withdrew to the fruitful hunting grounds in the Atlantic east and southeast of Trinidad. There Engelmann sank two freighters for 9,800 tons, bringing his confirmed bag for the patrol to four ships for 17,000 tons, plus damage to a 7,100-ton American tanker. Remaining in the area east of the Windward Islands chain, Schuch sank one other British freighter for 5,200 tons, raising his confirmed bag to three ships for about 18,000 tons. In an impressive display of seamanship and fighting skill, Staats sank by torpedo alone seven more freighters for 37,800 tons in the Atlantic between Trinidad and British Guiana from November 17 to December 8. These successes raised Staats’s confirmed bag for this patrol to an impressive nine ships for 50,300 tons, the fourth-best U-boat patrol to American waters.*

  Ulrich Thilo in U-174, who had made one luckless patrol in the North Atlantic, carried the U-boat war to Brazilian waters. In three days, from October 31 to November 2, he sank three freighters for 20,300 tons, but a long, arduous month passed before he sank another ship, a 5,000-ton Norwegian freighter. After refueling from the tanker U-461 in mid-Atlantic, Thilo returned to Brazilian waters and on December 15 sank the 5,500-ton American freighter Alcoa Rambler. That success raised his sinkings for the patrol to five ships for 30,800 tons.

  The sinking of the Alcoa Rambler drew an Allied counterattack. Possibly, two Catalinas of U.S. Navy Squadron VP 83 based at Natal found U-174. Pilot Wall first spotted the U-boat on the surface. He attacked with depth charges, forcing the boat to crash dive. Near this site later in the day, another Catalina of VP 83 piloted by Bertram J. Prueher attacked a surfaced U-boat, perhaps U-174. Prueher reported “evidence of considerable damage” but claimed no definite kill. Thilo in U-174 reported to U-boat Control that “a number of depth charges” fell after the sinking and that owing to a shortage of fuel, he was headed home. About two weeks after this incident, Prueher was named commander of Squadron VP 83. As will be described, later in the year he was killed in a daring attack on another U-boat.

  To carry out the oft-delayed—and hazardous—mission of mining New York harbor, Dönitz chose Rolf Struckmeier in the Type VII U-608, who had made one promising patrol in the North Atlantic versus convoy Outbound North 127. Struckmeier took aboard ten TMA mines,* plus as many torpedoes as he could carry, and sailed on October 20. He planted the field near the Ambrose lightship in the approaches to New York on November 10, but it was discovered and swept and did not produce any sinkings. While loitering off New York on November 16, Struckmeier sank a 5,600-ton British freighter that was sailing alone.

  Struckmeier’s return voyage was a nightmare. Promised a refueling from Ebe Schnoor’s U-460, he, too, was caught in the raging storm that delayed the tanker’s refueling operations for six days. As a consequence, on November 27 Struckmeier ran dry of fuel and could only drift. In response to his call for help, Klaus Bargsten in the Type IXC U-521 found U-608 and gave her fuel enough to reach the tanker, U-460. After replenishment, Struckmeier took U-608 home to France without further incident.

  Although the patrol of the Type VII U-608 yielded little, the patrols by Type IXs to Trinidad and Latin America were remunerative. Altogether, the five Type IXs that sailed to those areas in October sank twenty-two ships for 123,200 tons, an average of 4.4 ships for 24,600 tons per boat per patrol.

  The combined results of the eighteen patrols mounted to the Americas in September and October (including aborts) came to fifty-three confirmed shi
ps sunk for 302,400 tons. This was only four ships shy of the fifty-seven ships sunk by the seventy-three attack boats (including aborts) that sailed to the North Atlantic run in the same two months. Inasmuch as neither side reported sinkings by geographic area, sinkings in the Caribbean and southwest Atlantic—especially those in November—helped foster the wrong impression that the U-boats on the North Atlantic run were carrying out a “massacre.”

  After analyzing the returns from American waters, which resulted in no U-boat losses, naturally Dönitz planned to continue the campaign in the same areas—but only by long-range Type IXs and Type VIID minelayers. As will be seen, notwithstanding Torch, eleven U-boats sailed to American waters in November. However, three Type IXs were lost and only one boat produced a worthwhile return, and after November 1942, the U-boat campaign to American waters was curtailed drastically.

  THE LACONIA AFFAIR

  The very good returns of the twenty-eight boats that sailed to the South Atlantic during the early summer of 1942 and the increased availability of U-tankers prompted Dönitz to continue U-boat patrols in that area during the late summer and fall. Most of the boats bound for southern waters were attached to three groups:

  • ILTIS. Comprised of the Type IXB U-107 and five Type VIIs formerly of group Blücher, group Iitis (Pole Cat) was ordered to rake southward for Sierra Leone convoys from an area near the Azores to Freetown. Two of the ex-Blücher Type VIIs, Horst Dieterichs in U-406 and Günther Reeder in the Type VIID (minelayer) U-214, soon turned back for France. The other four boats continued to Freetown, but found no convoys.

  • EISBÄR. Comprised of four veteran Type IXCs, supported by the tanker U-459, group Eisbär (Polar Bear) was to carry out a surprise attack at Cape Town, South Africa, and if feasible and advisable, go farther eastward into the Indian Ocean. While southbound near the Azores on August 27, one of the Eisbär boats, Werner Hartenstein’s U-156, joined group Blücher’s attack on convoy Sierra Leone 119 and sank the 6,000-ton British freighter Clan Macwirter, a straggler. South of the equator, Karl-Friedrich Merten in U-68 torpedoed the 5,300-ton British vessel Trevilley, captured her captain and chief engineer, and put her under with one hundred rounds from his deck gun.

  • THE U-CRUISER FORCE. Not really a formal group—hence it sailed unnamed—the force was comprised of four big, new Type IXD2s, commanded by two senior ex-flotilla commanders, Hans Ibbeken in U-178 and Ernst Sobe in U-179, and by two younger Ritterkreuz holders, Robert Gysae in U-177* and Wolfgang Lüth in U-18L The force was to round the Cape of Good Hope more or less at the same time and operate against unconvoyed Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean. En route to the Atlantic, Gysae in U-177 lost a man overboard in heavy seas and was attacked by a Coastal Command aircraft, but its bombs fell wide. Nearing the Atlantic, Lüth in U-181 was also attacked by a Coastal Command aircraft. It dropped one “close” bomb and summoned several surface warships, which dropped thirty depth charges at U-181 during a ten-hour search.

  In addition to the foregoing, Dönitz directed that five other veteran boats (four Type IXCs and one Type VII), sailing singly, patrol to Freetown or farther south along the African coast to the Gulf of Guinea. These brought the number of attack boats sailing southward in late August and September to Freetown or beyond to seventeen.* The boats were to be supported by three U-tankers and by two ex-Dutch submarines converted to torpedo-supply boats. Three Italian submarines, Barbarigo, Archimede, and Cappellini, also independently patrolled southern Atlantic waters at this time.

  On the morning of September 12, Werner Hartenstein in U-156, a Type IXC of group Eisbär en route to Cape Town, spotted the second enemy ship of his patrol. She was a big one: the 19,700-ton British Cunard White Star passenger liner Laconia, serving as a troopship. Northbound from Cape Town to the British Isles, Laconia was sailing alone about nine hundred miles south of Freetown. There were about 2,700 people on board, including 1,800 Italian POWs, 268 British military personnel, 103 Free Poles who were guarding the Italians, and about 80 women and children.

  Remaining hull-down beyond the horizon, Hartenstein tracked Laconia until dark, then ran in by the light of a full moon to make a surface attack. He fired two bow torpedoes. One hit forward, the other amidships. Laconia stopped dead in the water. The crew lowered lifeboats and threw over rafts. The radio operator sent out a submarine warning (SSS), giving the name of the ship and her position, adding that Laconia had been torpedoed. No Allied radio monitors picked up this warning or the distress message, or a second one Laconia broadcast four minutes later. But Hartenstein heard them and doubtless his pulse quickened. Counting confirmed claims on his two prior patrols to the Caribbean and the Clan Macwirter sunk in Sierra Leone 119, Laconia’s 20,000 tons brought his sinkings to 100,000 tons and made him eligible for a Ritterkreuz.

  Laconia had enough lifeboats and rafts to support all 2,700 persons aboard her, including the POWs. But owing to the sharp list of the ship, many boats and rafts could not be launched. Others were improperly launched and capsized or swamped. Chaos reigned on the boat decks. Many lifeboats entered the water and pulled away half full or less. Laconia’s captain, Rudolph Sharp, brave and defiant to the end, chose to go down with his ship, which sank about an hour and a half after the torpedoes hit. The noise of her exploding boilers attracted scores of sharks to the scene. They attacked the hundreds of survivors who had jumped into the sea wearing life preservers.

  Circling the sinking ship in the darkness at a safe distance, Hartenstein watched her lowering away lifeboats. Then he heard men shouting in Italian, “Aiuto! Aiuto!” (“Help! Help!”). He fished out several of the Italians and from them learned to his shock and dismay that they were survivors of a shipment of hundreds of Italian POWs from North Africa. They told Hartenstein that both torpedoes exploded in POW pens deep in the ship’s hold, killing hundreds. The Poles who were assigned to guard the POWs refused to unbolt the doors on the pens and consequently hundreds of Italians who survived the torpedoes went down with the ship. Several hundred or more broke out of one pen and scrambled topside, but they were refused places in lifeboats at gun and bayonet point.

  According to the rules of war being observed by Axis and Allies alike, Hartenstein was in no way guilty of any infraction. Laconia was armed (two 4.7” naval guns, six 3” antiaircraft guns, and so on), zigzagging, and blacked out, hence a legitimate submarine target. Inasmuch as the U-boat rules discouraged—or even prohibited—rescue or capture of survivors of sunken ships (except captains and chief engineers), Hartenstein was free to resume his journey to Cape Town, leaving all the survivors, including the Italians, to fend for themselves. But he did not. Perhaps concerned that the accidental killing and stranding of so many Italian soldiers could cause a serious political rupture in the Axis high command, and/or deeply moved by humanitarian considerations, Hartenstein launched a rescue operation. In two hours, he fished out ninety Italians, many suffering from bayonet wounds or shark bites.

  There were “hundreds” more Italians floating in the water, many without life jackets, clinging to wreckage. Hartenstein soon realized he could not take them all on board. Nor could he leave them behind. What they urgently needed were more U-boats. He therefore notified Dönitz of the situation—that Laconia “unfortunately” carried “1,500 Italian POWs”—and requested instructions. Approving Hartenstein’s rescue operation, Dönitz immediately directed seven other U-boats to proceed at high speed to the disaster scene: the other four U-boats of group Eisbär, including the tanker U-459, plus Erich Würdemann’s U-506, in the Gulf of Guinea, and Harro Schacht’s U-507, homebound from a foray to Brazil, and the Italian submarine Cappellini, commanded by Marco Revedin. Dönitz then notified Berlin of the situation, the action he had taken, and of a hastily concocted plan to have the eight rescue submarines land the survivors in the port of Bingerville, on the Vichy French Ivory Coast, about six hundred miles to the northeast.

  Berlin had other ideas. Professing to be humiliated and outraged by the loss of Italian comrades,
Hitler declared that Hartenstein should have said nothing, quietly submerged, and left the scene. He insisted that nothing was to interfere with Eisbär’s surprise attack on Cape Town, which was designed to deliver a crippling blow to military supplies destined for the British in Egypt and the Soviets, via the Persian Gulf. In response to this tirade, Admiral Raeder directed Dönitz to disengage all Eisbär boats from the Laconia rescue, including Hartenstein’s U-156, and send them onward to Cape Town, per the original plan. Wiedemann’s U-506, Schacht’s U-507, and Revedin’s Cappellini were to take on Hartenstein’s Italian survivors and to pick up other Italians if they could be rescued without endangering the boats. No British or other Allied survivors were to be rescued, only Italians. In place of landing the survivors in Bingerville, Raeder was to request that the Vichy French send warships from Dakar and/or the Ivory Coast to meet the U-boats at sea and take off the survivors.

  In the meantime, Hartenstein fished out about four hundred survivors. He took 193, including 172 Italians and twenty-one British men and women, on board U-156 and put the others in lifeboats. In response to queries from Dönitz, he described the sinking and the scene in detail and suggested “a diplomatic neutralization” (i.e., a temporary cease-fire) in the area in order to effect a safe rescue of both Allied and Axis survivors. Dönitz relayed this unusual proposal to Berlin, but Admiral Raeder and the OKM rejected it, in part because Hitler in his rage had directed that no word of the Laconia sinking or the proposed Axis rescue be transmitted to the Allies, and in part because Raeder did not think it wise to enter into a “deal” with the untrustworthy Allies.