by Clay Blair
The investigation into the disaster led the Admiralty to a drastic decision: Three of the four Canadian ocean-escort groups were to be withdrawn and intensively trained at the British “escort school” at Tobermory. Until the Admiralty deemed them qualified for combat, they were to be replaced by British escort groups, which were to be backstopped by about five British hunter-killer groups (support groups), comprised of warships released from Torch duties, including, in due course, the several “jeep” carriers. The Canadians welcomed the opportunity for intense group training, but they also renewed long-standing demands for modern radar-equipped long-range aircraft and more modern destroyers, the latter to be fitted with the latest and best radar, sonar, and Huff Duff. They also demanded a larger voice in the command and routing of transatlantic convoys and the assignment of escort groups.
With the exception of the success against convoy Outbound North (Slow) 154, the month of December 1942 was another difficult and disappointing time for U-boats on the North Atlantic run. Sixteen Allied convoys comprised of about 650 merchant ships sailed across the Atlantic east and west.* The U-boats were able to mount noteworthy attacks on only three convoys: Halifax 217, Outbound North 153, and Outbound North (Slow) 154. These three battles resulted in the sinking of twenty ships for about 102,400 tons, fourteen for about 70,000 tons from one convoy, Outbound North (Slow) 154. In addition, the boats on the North Atlantic run in December sank seven ships of about 48,400 tons from other convoys and/or singles.† Grand total: twenty-seven ships for about 150,800 tons.
ASSESSMENTS
Because of the lack of precision in most histories of the battles on the North Atlantic convoy run in the fall of 1942, a statistical review of the months of November and December is appropriate.
Owing to the diversions to Torch and the initiation of fast and slow Torch convoys (UGS and GUS), and to the temporary shutdown of Murmansk convoys, Allied convoy traffic on the North Atlantic run in November and December 1942 fell off slightly. A total of 1,218 ships in thirty-one east- and westbound convoys sailed across the Atlantic. Three hundred and twenty ships sailed from New York in eight fast Halifax convoys (213 to 220), and 307 ships sailed from New York in seven Slow convoys (108 to 114). U-boats sank only three—repeat three—of the 627 loaded ships that sailed in eastbound convoys in those two months, a little-noted but absolutely disastrous German naval failure. In the same two months, 591 ships sailed from the British Isles to North America in sixteen fast and slow Outbound North convoys (142 to 157). U-boats sank thirty-one of these empty westbound ships, running up impressive “tonnage war” figures for propaganda purposes, but these westbound losses did not impede imports to the British Isles. Total losses in both eastbound and westbound convoys: thirty-four ships.‡
In this welter of eye-glazing statistics, which Winston Churchill so deplored, it is easy to lose sight of the human factor. Literally hundreds of merchant seamen, sailors, naval gunners, and passengers died ghastly deaths in these sinkings or in lifeboats or on floats or in the icy waters. Particularly noteworthy in December were the 655 deaths incurred when Werner Henke in U-515 sank the liner/troopship Ceramic, after she detached from convoy Outbound North 149. Many of the dead as well as the survivors performed countless acts of heroism that also should not be overlooked.
On the other side of the hill, confirmed U-boat kills by Allied ASW forces on the North Atlantic run in November and December 1942 were among the lowest for any two-month period in the war: five Type VIIs. U.S. Navy air and surface forces accounted for two {U-408, U-626), British air and surface forces, two (U-357, U-611) and Canadian Navy surface forces for one (U-356). Three other U-boats also failed to return: the VII U-l32 (likely the victim of an explosion), the VII U-254 (accidentally rammed and sunk by U-221), and the IXC40 U-184 (perhaps sunk by a Norwegian-manned corvette).* Only eight of the four hundred Germans on these eight boats survived to be captured, all from U-357.
As in prior months, a look at the results achieved by all U-boats sailing in all areas of the North Atlantic in November and December is instructive. The number of new boats and/or new skippers dropped sharply from an average of about 63 percent to about 43 percent, but the average sinkings per boat per patrol declined further to .69 ships. Forty-three boats of the eighty-four putting out (51 percent) sank no ships, continuing a nonproductive trend ominous for the Germans. Viz.
These figures further reinforce the case that even without reading four-rotor naval Enigma, the Allies held an increasingly dominant hand over the U-boat threat in the North Atlantic area. Note especially the forty-three “No Sinkings.” To laboriously prepare eighty-four boats and crews for patrols and have about half of them fail to sink any ships whatsoever was an increasingly futile and wasteful enterprise. Although the terrible winter weather greatly impeded Allied flight operations in this period in that area, sharply reducing the number of U-boats found and killed by aircraft, it equally impeded U-boat operations.
PATROLS TO THE AMERICAS
The anti-Torch and North Atlantic convoy battles absorbed the great majority of U-boats of the Atlantic force. Nonetheless, Dönitz remained convinced that patrols to the waters of Trinidad and Brazil could significantly interrupt the flow of oil and other war materiel to the Mediterranean Basin via Gibraltar and the Indian Ocean. He therefore sailed eleven boats to these waters in November: six IXCs, three aging IXBs, and two VIID (minelayers), which had extended range. Three of the eleven did not get far:
• On the second day out from France, a mechanical failure in the IXC U-66, commanded by Friedrich Markworth, caused serious flooding when the boat dived. Some salt water leaked into a battery compartment, causing chlorine gas to form. Forced to abort, Markworth reversed course, running at maximum speed to France on the surface at night. A Coastal Command radar-equipped Wellington with a Leigh Light, piloted by D. E. Dixon, detected the boat and dropped four depth charges. Unable to dive, Markworth zigzagged wildly to confuse the bombardier, a tactic that worked and enabled the boat to reach port without incurring further damage. Consigned to overhaul—and modification—U-66 did not sail again for two months.
• While crossing the Bay of Biscay, Paul Hartwig in the IXC U-517, who had made a notable first patrol in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, reported diesel-engine failures. During repairs the mechanics found dirt in the fuel system, believed to be the work of saboteurs. Hartwig was tempted to abort, but he pressed on.
On the fifth day of the voyage, November 21, Hartwig concluded he was beyond the dangers posed by Coastal Command’s Biscay patrols and elected to remain on the surface with his Metox rigged. That device picked up aircraft radar signals and Hartwig crash-dived, but it was too late. While on routine defensive ASW patrol, an Albacore torpedo bomber of Squadron 817, based on the carrier Victorious, which was returning to the British Isles, had found U-517. Attacking from the stern, the Albacore dropped three shallow-set depth charges, which blew away the bridge and part of the conning tower and knocked the diesels off their mounts. With no hope of saving the boat, Hartwig surfaced, informed Dönitz of the disaster, and scuttled. Dönitz ordered the outbound U-211 and other boats nearby to render assistance, but they could do nothing. Covered by Victorious aircraft, two destroyers of the British task force fished Hartwig and forty-nine of his crew from the water and took them to England.
• Outbound to Trinidad, the IXC U-513, commanded by Rolf Rüggeberg, who had limped home from his first patrol to the St. Lawrence with a damaged conning tower, also developed trouble in the fuel-oil system. The filters and injectors clogged, he reported. Arrangements were made for Rüggeberg to rendezvous with Karl-Friedrich Merten in U-68, who was returning from Cape Town, to obtain spare parts, including three fuel-injector pumps. Thereupon, Rüggeberg was to overhaul and thoroughly clean both diesels, then run continuously at high speed for twenty-four hours.
Rüggeberg got the pumps from Merten and cleaned the diesels, but nothing worked and he was compelled to abort. The return trip was a nightmare. By using som
e spare parts carried on board and some parts from the number two engine, the mechanics were able to run on the other engine for a while. When number one failed, Rüggeberg submerged and ran on the electric motors while the mechanics used parts from the number one engine to rebuild and restart the other engine. By this method, the boat finally reached Lorient on December 18, after twenty-eight anxious—and fruitless—days at sea. Upon investigation, it was discovered that when the boat was in refit, the interior of her fuel tanks had been painted with an aluminum paint that was either of inferior quality or not allowed to dry adequately. The paint had flaked off and clogged the oil lines, filters, and pumps. The boat did not sail again until late February.
Yet another skipper bound for the Americas developed serious fuel problems. This was the youthful Ritterkreuz holder, Johann Mohr, in the IXB U-124, returning to combat after five months of overhaul and battle-damage repairs. In a history of U-124,* Elizabeth B. Gasaway asserted that the boat’s fuel supply had been “sabotaged” in Lorient with a chemical that caused the fuel pumps to corrode, jamming the fuel-injector valves. Perhaps so, but it may well have been that the aluminum paint inside U-124’s fuel tanks had flaked like that in U-513.
As with U-513, Dönitz directed Mohr to thoroughly clean his engines, then run at full speed for twenty-four hours. Upon completion of the run, Mohr reported that the port diesel was clear but he had to replace a fuel pump and two valves on the starboard engine. Reluctant to abort, he requested a rendezvous with the big XB (minelayer) U-l 18, temporarily serving as a tanker for the Westwall boats, to pick up a new fuel pump and valves and some fresh, clean fuel oil. After this had been done, Mohr ran on the “sabotaged” oil, saving the “clean” oil obtained from U-l 18 for battle. Despite these measures, Gasaway wrote, “one diesel or the other was being repaired nearly every day,” an unspeakable ordeal for the mechanics, working in the heat and humidity of the tropics.
There was also trouble of a different kind in this group of boats. Heinrich Bleichrodt in the cranky old Type IXB U-109, who wore Oak Leaves on his Ritterkreuz, was cracking from the strain of eighteen months of sustained war patrolling. Westbound out of Biscay, he found and boldly attacked a British naval task force, but he was driven off by “destroyers,” who heavily depth-charged the boat. Approaching Trinidad on December 26, Bleichrodt attacked a lone freighter, firing six torpedoes, all of which missed. The freighter in turn dropped “one to three” depth charges, leading Bleichrodt to conclude his quarry was probably a “Q” ship, to be avoided.
That same report contained a shocking postscript. Bleichrodt requested authority to abort the patrol, as Dönitz logged it, “because of his own nervous state.” To help Bleichrodt avoid disgrace and professional ruin—and possibly a Nazi firing squad—Dönitz denied the request, advising U-109 to “carry out operations no matter what happens.” However, four days later, on December 30, U-109 reported that Bleichrodt was no longer capable of complying with those orders. Dönitz responded that U-109 must remain on patrol, “even if it was necessary to hand over command to the first watch officer.” Apparently, the first watch officer did take temporary command and notwithstanding the orders, aborted the patrol. To assist with administration and watch-keeping en route home, U-109 rendezvoused with Ritterkreuz holder Günther Krech in 17-558 and took aboard a warrant quartermaster. Upon arrival in France, Bleichrodt was hospitalized and rehabilitated. Later he was transferred to the Training Command, where he was appointed commander of Flotilla 22.*
As a result of these mishaps, only seven, not eleven, patrols were conducted in American waters by the boats sailing in November, including that of Mohr’s U-124 with defective diesels. Moreover, two of the seven boats were lost soon after reaching their patrol areas, leaving only five.
En route to Brazil, the type IXC U-164, commanded by Otto Fechner, who had made one disappointing patrol to the Caribbean in late summer, developed two small holes in her pressure hull between a battery compartment and a ballast tank. In an attempt to repair the leak, Fechner moored in the lee of remote—and deserted—St. Paul’s Rocks, in the South Atlantic. Although no satisfactory means could be found to stop the leak, Fechner continued to Brazilian waters. After he reached the area on December 27, he requested permission to abort. The request was denied, but he was authorized to withdraw from the coastal shipping lanes and to patrol “remote areas.” In the course of complying with these instructions, Fechner found, stopped—and sank—the 2,600-ton Swedish neutral Brageland, en route to New York with a load of coffee and wool.
By this time, the U.S. Navy had substantially increased ASW air patrols in the Caribbean and Latin America. Long based at San Juan, Puerto Rico, Fleet Air Wing (Fairwing) 11 provided convoy coverage in the Caribbean and also in the waters of Trinidad and as far south as Brazil.† On February 16, 1943, the Navy established Fairwing 16 at Norfolk. Deployed to Natal, Brazil, in April 1943, it took over responsibility from Fairwing 11 for Latin American waters.‡ The British assisted in this area by transferring RAF Squadron 53 of Coastal Command (equipped with Hudsons) to Trinidad.
On January 6, a Catalina of Navy Patrol Squadron VP 83, forward based in Natal, Brazil, found U-164 cruising on the surface, sixty-five miles off the Brazilian coast. The pilot, William R. Ford, attacked immediately, diving to wave-top altitude. The unalert bridge watch on U-164 crash-dived too late. Ford dropped four shallow-set Mark XVII depth charges. Three hit close, apparently blowing U-164 into two halves, which sank immediately. Two seamen who were topside bathing when the attack occurred survived, clinging to torpedo canisters that had been blown overboard. Ford dropped them an inflatable dinghy and seven days later they washed ashore at a fishing village. There, Brazilian authorities took them into custody and turned them over to the U.S. Navy detachment at Natal.
Harro Schacht in the Type IXC U-507, who had pioneered patrols in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazilian waters and participated in the rescue of the Laconia survivors, patrolled the same area off Brazil as did Fechner. In the two weeks from December 27 to January 8, Schacht sank three lone British freighters for 14,200 tons, and captured the captains of two. These sinkings and past claims and overclaims qualified Schacht for a Ritterkreuz, awarded by radio on January 9.* On January 13, in nearly the same place that U-164 was sunk a week earlier, Schacht reported that he had sighted a southbound convoy. It was the first to operate on a newly organized run from Trinidad to Bahia (Salvador), Brazil. Apart from its surface escort of Canadian corvettes and American patrol craft (PCs), the convoy had protection from Catalinas of Patrol Squadron VP 83. One of the Catalinas, piloted by L. Ludwig, spotted U-507 while she was diving, dropped four bombs, and sank her with the loss of all hands as well as the two British POWs. It went down about twenty miles due north of U-164. Schacht had enjoyed the prestige of his Ritterkreuz for merely four days.
Of the five remaining boats, one, the Type IXC U-176, went to Brazilian waters, and the other four patrolled near Trinidad to interdict traffic leaving there for the Mediterranean or Brazil.
While outbound in the South Atlantic to Brazil on November 25, Reiner Dierksen in U-176, who had made one impressive patrol in the North Atlantic, came upon the 6,000-ton Dutch freighter Polydorus. She had sailed on November 8 from the British Isles with convoy Outbound North 145, but a week later, she and fifteen other ships had left the convoy to sail independently to Freetown and elsewhere.
Dierksen had sunk five and a half ships on his maiden patrol and knew what he was about. But Polydorus proved to be one of the most stubborn victims of the U-boat war. In his first attack from a submerged position, on the afternoon of November 25, Dierksen fired four torpedoes. One prematured, and the other three missed. After dark, Dierksen surfaced and attacked Polydorus with his 4.1” deck gun and other topside weapons. The captain of Polydorus, H. Brouwer, evaded and returned fire with his slightly smaller 4” gun, laid a smoke screen, then escaped into a rain squall.
Dierksen continued the chase through the night. At dawn he mounted a
second submerged attack, firing two torpedoes, but the alert Dutch crew saw the torpedoes and evaded. Shortly afterward, U-176 surfaced in broad daylight and again opened fire with her deck gun. Polydorus returned fire with her gun, forcing Dierksen to fall back beyond range. He kept the top hamper of Polydorus in sight and tracked through the day, then, after dark, he pulled ahead slowly. In the early hours of November 27—after nearly forty-eight hours of pursuit—Dierksen got into good position, and undetected, fired two more torpedoes (the seventh and eighth) at this ship. Both hit and Polydorus sank slowly, giving eighty survivors of the eighty-one-man crew time to organize and provision three lifeboats. After merely one day in the boats, a Spanish ship came along, rescued the men, and landed them in the Canary Islands.
Dierksen proceeded westward to Brazilian waters. On December 13 and 16 he sank two other ships. The first, which he boarded and scuttled, was the insignificant 1,600-ton Swedish neutral Scania, which he deemed to be carrying contraband. The second was the 5,900-ton British freighter Observer, which Dierksen sank near Natal. In the second attack, he reported, a “B-24” (if true, a USAAF aircraft) caught and bombed U-176, causing serious damage. Forced to haul far out to sea to make repairs, it was not until January 9 that Dierksen reported that U-176 was again “fully operational.” Thereafter he commenced a long voyage home, slowly crossing the South Atlantic to Freetown, thence northward to a site west of the Canary Islands, where U-176 met the XB (minelayer) U-118 to take on fuel and Metox apparatus to further hand over to twp other inbound boats. The U-176 arrived in France on February 18, completing a voyage of 102 days, during which she sank three ships for 12,400 tons, or an average of one ship every thirty-four days.