by Clay Blair
Although Allied shipping losses on the North Atlantic run in the first four months of 1943 were of overriding importance, they were not the whole story. U-boats operating in other areas (Middle Atlantic, Arctic, Mediterranean, West Africa, Indian Ocean, Americas) achieved some successes as well. The Admiralty has calculated that all merchant ship losses to Axis submarines in the period under analysis were as follows :†
1943 Ships Lost Gross Tons
January 37 203,128
February 63 359,328
March 108 627,377
April 56 327,943
Totals 264 1,517,776
In the interest of putting the Allied merchant ship situation of this period into better perspective, it is also pertinent to note the output of new vessels in Allied yards. By the winter of 1942-43, the rate of production of ships in American yards alone was truly phenomenal—over twice the rate of losses to all Axis submarines:
1943 Ships Built Gross Tons
January 106 647,000
February 132 792,000
March 149 1,005,000
April 159 1,076,000
Totals 546 3,520,000
From the German perspective, there was certainly no sign that the U-boats in the North Atlantic came close to cutting the line of communications between North America and the British Isles and West Africa in this four-month period. On the contrary, except for the spike in March, achieved by boats sailing mostly in February, successes of the U-boats against North Atlantic convoys in this period steadily declined. The number of nonproductive patrols by attack boats—that trend so ominous for the Germans—continued to rise:
As in 1941 and 1942, Churchill and the Admiralty expressed the gravest concern over Allied shipping losses and continued to raise the possibility of an import crisis in the British Isles, which would force the British to draw down stockpiles to a dangerous level. As in those two earlier years, President Roosevelt’s response to the cries of alarm from London in 1943 was prompt and generous. He directed Admiral Emory S. (Jerry) Land at the War Shipping Administration to transfer to Great Britain under the Lend-Lease Act fifteen new cargo ships per month for ten months, or 150 ships of about one million gross tons, which were to be manned by the estimated ten thousand British merchant mariners who had lost their ships. Furthermore, Roosevelt informed Churchill, he had suggested to Land that the transfers “be increased to twenty” per month for ten months, or two hundred ships of nearly 1.5 million gross tons.††
From this analysis, it is clear that the U-boats of the Atlantic force scored heavily against four eastbound convoys on the North Atlantic run in the first twenty days of March. As stated, the losses in those convoys cannot be dismissed as inconsequential—indeed, they were devastating—but in the overall picture they did not justify the retrospective conclusions at the Admiralty to the effect that the U-boats never came so close to severing the Atlantic lifeline and that possibly convoys were no longer an effective means of defense against U-boats.
The authoritative, contemporaneous British document, the secret “Monthly Anti-Submarine Report” of March 1943, put it this way: “Considering the weight of attacks developed, the convoys came through for the most part remarkably well.”
MORE U-BOAT FAILURES ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC RUN
German U-boat Control‡‡ sailed fifty-six boats against Allied convoy routes in the North and Middle Atlantic in the month of January 1943. These consisted of forty-six VIIs* and even though they were not suitable for convoy attacks, nine IXs and one XB minelayer, U-118. One of the VIIs, U-439, commanded by Wolfgang Sporn, was assigned to carry out a special mission, but that task was canceled and she returned to France after five days. Her skipper went on to other duty and, as one consequence, the boat did not resail until late February.
Another myth that arose in later years was that from 1943 to the end of the war the German U-boat skippers were quite young, age twenty-one or twenty-two, and therefore too immature and inexperienced for command. The German authors Michael Salewski and Lothar-Günther Buchheim were the chief purveyors of this myth. Buchheim, echoing a statement by Dönitz, wrote that “the majority of submariners in the later war years were little more than children.”
Numerous academic and statistical studies have thoroughly refuted these assertions† As can be seen from the dates of birth column in Appendix 1 of this volume, the skippers of the approximately two hundred new boats that reported to battlefronts in 1943 averaged about age twenty-eight. The overwhelming majority (148) averaged age twenty-six.‡ One skipper (in the XB minelayer U-219) was age fifty-two(!), two were in their forties, forty-two were in their thirties. Only six were age twenty-three and one was twenty-two.
As related, in order to properly wage submarine warfare against convoys in the North Atlantic beyond range of most Allied aircraft, it was necessary to refuel many of the Type VIIs. This requirement presented the Germans with a number of difficulties. There were not enough U-tankers to adequately support the large number of VIIs deployed. Refueling in winter weather was chancy, because of the difficulty of navigating and locating the boat’s position when skies were overcast for days on end, and putting oil hoses across in stormy weather and heavy seas.
At that time, January 1943, there were five Type XIV U-tankers, or “Milk Cows,” in the Atlantic force, plus the XB minelayer U-117, serving as a provisional tanker. The XIV U-463 and the U-117 were already at sea supporting VIIs in the North Atlantic, and due to return by the end of the month. The XIV U-459 had just sailed on a special mission to support the second U-boat foray to Cape Town, group Seehund. The XIV U-461, which put out in November, was nearly home, due at St. Nazaire on January 3 for refit and crew leave. Two XIVs, U-460 and U-462, were to sail in January, but U-462 developed mechanical difficulties and had to abort for repairs, and U-460 could not get away until the last day of the month. Therefore, U-boat Control directed that after she laid her minefield, the XB minelayer U-118 was to serve as a provisional tanker in the Middle Atlantic area.
All U-boats assigned to the North Atlantic run sailed into appalling winter storms. The discomfort encountered was unspeakable: massive waves, howling winds, near-freezing temperatures inside the steel hulls. Yet morale on all but a few boats remained high. U-boat Control constantly reminded the crews that every ship sunk helped their comrades on the Eastern Front and elsewhere. They had within their grasp the best, indeed the only, chance to win the war for the Führer and the Fatherland.
Many boats sailing in January carried new weapons:
• Pattern-running or looping FAT air (G7a) torpedoes.
• Electric torpedoes (G7e) fitted with the new Pi2 magnetic pistols.
• “Acoustic” torpedoes. Long in development and issued to only a few boats for battle testing, the “acoustic” torpedo T-3, called Falke (Falcon) was a modified electric (G7e) designed to go into a short circle pattern upon “hearing” the noise of a merchant ship’s propeller at close quarters, improving the chances of a poorly aimed torpedo hitting its target. With a speed of about twenty knots and a range of about 7,200 yards, the T-3 Falke was believed to be effective against ships traveling at speeds up to twelve knots.*
• Increased numbers of antiaircraft guns, including twin 20mm cannons on fore and aft bridge mounts and a new rapid fire 37mm gun mounted on the lower deck immediately aft of the conning tower. To offset the increase in topside weight and underwater resistance, most of the 88mm deck guns on the Type VIIs, now used quite infrequently, were being removed. To enhance concealment while surface running, the bridge and conning-tower profiles of all U-boats were being cut down and smoothed, the first known application of antiradar “stealth” technology.
• Improved passive sonar (or hydrophone) gear. Known as “array” sonar, its “ears” consisted of scores of sensors fitted on the port and starboard bow sections of the boats. In good sea conditions, array sonar could detect the propeller noises of ships in convoys as far as ten to twenty miles away. In foggy weather on the Grand Banks
and around Greenland and Iceland when visibility was often merely a few yards, array sonar provided the Germans with a means of detecting and shadowing convoys and of evading escorts.
Unknown or unconfirmed as yet in Germany, the Allies also had promising new assets:
• More and more ships and aircraft fitted with centimetric-wavelength radar, which the Metox FuMB gear could not detect.
• Ever-increasing numbers of convoy escorts and convoy rescue vessels fitted with Huff Duff, which convoy commanders regarded as equally effective as radar, if not more so, in detecting the presence of shadowing and gathering U-boats.
• More frequent breaks in four-rotor naval Enigma, which yielded sufficient information to enable the Allies to recommence evasive convoy routing.
• An entirely new weapon for aircraft: the solid-propellant rocket. These missiles were 3” in diameter, weighed sixty-six pounds, had a twenty-five-pound, solid steel, armor-piercing warhead and traveled close to the speed of sound. Mounted in racks on the undersides of the aircraft wings, they could be fired singly or in salvos. For optimum results, the rockets were aimed to hit about sixty feet short of the target, entering the water at an angle of about 13 degrees. The unusual shape of the warhead caused the rocket to run shallow—no more than about eight feet—then curve upward to blow a hole in a surfaced U-boat pressure hull below the water line. Of course, the rockets could also be fired “dry,” directly at the exposed superstructure of the U-boat, but that method was considered less effective because it was more difficult to punch through both the superstructure and the pressure hull.
As a result of the transfers and diversions and the prolonged battle with convoy Outbound North (Slow) 154 in December, and the ghastly winter weather, there were not enough U-boats patrolling the North Atlantic on January 1, 1943, to form two full attack groups (“wolf packs”) of thirteen to fifteen boats each. Pending the arrival of the first January boats, U-boat Control directed five boats to refuel from the XB minelayer U-117, then cadre a new group, Jaguar, northeast of Newfoundland to intercept eastbound convoys (Halifax or Slow) and directed fourteen boats to form a full group, Falke (Falcon), southeast of Greenland to intercept Outbound North and Outbound North (Slow) convoys.
The plan to cadre Jaguar and build it up with January boats ran into trouble. The weather was so bad that U-117 could refuel only one of the five boats, the U-662, commanded by Wolfgang Hermann. He, in turn, was forced into an emergency refueling of the U-664, commanded by Adolf Graef, so that the latter could get to France. In view of U~ll7’s dwindling supply of fuel oil, U-boat Control ordered U-440, commanded by Hans Geissler, to abort his proposed refueling and to come home.!
Because of its inability to refuel, the cadre for Jaguar fell apart. Of the five boats, only Horst von Schroeter in the IXB U-123, which had adequate fuel, and Hermann’s refueled U-662 were able to continue operations with Jaguar. In due course, six fresh boats from France and Germany joined the group. These included U-96, the boat that inspired Buchheim’s novel (and film) Das Boot, homebound under command of Hans-Jürgen Hellriegel for’ retirement to the Training Command. She and the other seven Jaguar boats loitered off Newfoundland for days and days without seeing—or hearing—any sign of a convoy.
Group Falke formed a line running southeast from Greenland beyond range of most aircraft on Iceland. Its fourteen boats, seeking westbound convoys, included the Ritterkreuz holder Otto von Bülow in the veteran VII U-404.
One of the converging Falke boats suffered a calamity. She was the new IXC40 U-167, commanded by Kurt Neubert, age thirty-two. Heavy seas smashed the bridge, washing the quartermaster overboard and so badly injuring Neubert that he was forced to abort. The boat arrived in France on January 16, completing a patrol of twenty-seven days. Control appointed a new stripper to command the boat for its next patrol, which was to be even more calamitous.
Hans Karpf, age twenty-six, in the new VII fy-632, reported a convoy on January 9. At first U-boat Control believed it to be the Outbound North convoy Falke had been positioned to intercept. Consequently, five other Falke boats in the vicinity closed on Karpf s signals. As it turned out, there was no Outbound North convoy—it had evaded the patrol line—but in a period of about twenty-four hours, four Falke boats, including Karpf in U-632, encountered and sank four loners, a tanker and three freighters, for about 25,000 tons. These four ships were the only enemy vessels sunk by all the U-boats on the North Atlantic run in the first half of January.
While escorting convoy Outbound North (Slow) 160 on January 15, a B-17 Flying Fortress of British Squadron 206, piloted by Leslie G. Clark, came upon a surfaced U-boat. This was the new Falke boat, U-632, commanded by Hans Karpf. Pilot Clark attacked from an altitude of eighty feet, toggling seven shallow-set depth charges. Three hung up, but the other four fell close to U-632 and damaged her, Clark claimed a U-boat kill—believed to be the first Coastal Command success in the North Atlantic area in nearly three months.*
Days and days passed as Falke searched in vain for the evading westbound convoys. Thoroughly frustrated, Godt wrote testily in the Control war diary that U-boats were “totally unsuitable” for finding convoys. To do so required a very great number of U-boats engaged in wasteful, fruitless waiting. What was urgently needed to find convoys was long-range search aircraft. “If we had airplanes,” Godt wrote, echoing Dönitz, “the war would be very different.”
Inasmuch as Falke had no luck in locating westbound convoys, U-boat Control extended its length by replacing the several boats that had to leave and by the addition of a new group, Habicht (Hawk), which soon grew to nine boats. At its peak strength, Falke-Habicht comprised twenty-seven boats patrolling a line nearly five hundred miles long.
Finally, one of the Habicht boats found a big, fast convoy on January 17. The boat was a new VII, U-268, commanded by Ernst Heydemann, age twenty-six, seventeen days out from Kiel. The convoy was the eastbound Halifax 222, escorted by Canadian group C-l, temporarily comprised of two British destroyers (ex-American four-stack Chesterfield and the Vansittart), an ex-American Canadian four-stack destroyer (St. Croix), and five Canadian corvettes. The big handicap for the Germans was that the convoy was merely 180 miles southwest of Iceland, within easy range of Hudsons or other medium-range aircraft. U-boat Control authorized Heydemann to shoot, but not the other boats of Falke-Habicht. Heydemann chose the biggest target in sight, the 14,500-ton whale factory ship Vestfold, loaded with oil and all kinds of war materiel, including three 150-ton tank landing craft (LCTs). In the massive explosion that destroyed the whale factory, all three LCTs sank, giving Heydemann a score of “four ships” for about 15,000 tons.
U-boat Control was baffled and unhappy. The twenty-seven boats of Falke-Habicht had found no sign of the expected Outbound North (Slow) convoy. By January 19, many of the boats were running low on fuel. Control therefore split the boats (plus about ten new arrivals) into two groups, Haudegen (Broadsword) and Landsknecht (Mercenary). Boats with adequate fuel joined Haudegen on a line running from the southeast tip of Greenland, Cape Farewell. Boats low on fuel joined Landsknecht on a similar line farther southeast but still distant from Coastal Command patrol areas. Counting Jaguar (twelve boats), still in place northeast of Newfoundland, there were then three groups deployed on the North Atlantic run.
Four boats sailed from France on January 16 to join group Landsknecht. One of these was the VII U-553, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Karl Thurmann, which had been in port since September 17—four months. On January 20, he met Heinz Wolf in the outbound VII U-465 and passed him a nautical yearbook. That was the last anyone saw or heard from Thurmann and U-553. The place and cause of his loss were never determined or at least not disclosed. Possibly he was a victim of a yet to be determined Coastal Command air patrol.*
Six new boats (one IX and five VIIs) that sailed from Kiel on January 12 were directed to join group Haudegen southeast of Greenland. While proceeding there, Rolf Manke, age twenty-seven, in the new VII U-358, found a small co
nvoy, UR 59, en route from the British Isles to Iceland (United Kingdom to Reykjavik). Manke tracked in foul weather, then shot. He claimed a 3,500-ton freighter, but in the postwar accounting it was found to be a 1,500-ton Swede. She was only the sixth ship sunk by all the North Atlantic boats in January. No other boat found the convoy. Manke lost it in rainy weather close to the coast and gave up the chase.
The reconstituted group Jaguar and the new group Haudegen were in place in the area east of Newfoundland and southeast of Greenland by January 22. The weather, visibility, and communications were rotten. A Jaguar boat, the aged, Germany-bound VII U-96, commanded by Hans-Jürgen Hellriegel, reported numerous mechanical difficulties. In response, U-boat Control released U-96 for the return trip to Germany and retirement to the Training Command, The other boats searched diligently by eye and sonar for eastbound convoys.
Confusingly, a Haudegen boat, Ulrich Gräf in U-69, and Hellriegel in the aborting U-96 both reported convoy contacts on January 22. Although communications remained poor, U-boat Control concluded correctly that these were two different eastbound convoys, sailing on nearly parallel tracks three hundred miles apart. They were Slow Convoy 117, guarded by British Escort Group B-3 on the southernmost track, and Halifax 223, guarded by American Escort Group A-3, on the northernmost track.
Over the next four days, U-boat Control attempted to micromanage groups Jaguar and Haudegen into positions to attack both convoys. Owing to the poor communications, foul weather, and inexperience of the U-boat crews, the effort was a failure. The two groups sank four ships from the two convoys: