by Clay Blair
Detected and tracked by Enigma decrypts, Huff Duff, and radar, none of these four boats achieved much more. Lauzemis in U-68 shot at a fast freighter but missed. He was then forced to withdraw to the Atlantic because, as he said, his “Metox failed.” He sank no more ships and returned to France after refueling from the provisional tanker, XB minelayer U-117.
Braving strong aircraft and blimp patrols in the Florida Straits on April 1 and 3, Ritterkreuz holder Piening in U-155, who had found no targets in the Gulf of Mexico, sank a 1,000-ton Norwegian freighter and atomized the 6,900-ton American tanker Gulfstate, which was loaded with gasoline. On his return to France he was bombed in the Bay of Biscay by an unidentified Allied aircraft on the night of April 27, but he remained on the surface and repelled the aircraft with his flak guns and reached Lorient.
Although Maus in U-185 was also harassed—and bombed—by aircraft and blimps, he sank another American Liberty ship, the 7,200-ton John Sevier, in the Windward Passage, bringing his bag to three ships for 20, 000 tons. He then returned to France.
Schäfer in U-183 sank no ships other than the 2,500-ton Honduran.
In all, this four-boat “surprise attack” and subsequent actions netted eight ships for 41,200 tons, a disappointing average of two ships per boat per patrol.
The IXs operating in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and South American waters in March 1943 sank eleven ships for 60,800 tons. The Italian submarine Bar-barigo, commanded by Roberto Rigoli, sank two other freighters for 12,131 tons off the Brazilian coast. The total sinkings, thirteen ships for 72,900 tons, also contributed to the general impression that in March 1943, U-boats nearly cut the vital lifeline between the Americas and the British Isles.
Six IXs sailed to American waters in March and early April. One, the U-129, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Hans Witt, was to enter the Caribbean and patrol off Panama, but owing to excessively high battery temperatures, he had to cancel that plan. He joined three other boats, U-161, U-174, and U-176, to attack shipping in Canadian and United States coastal waters, which had not been patrolled for six months. The other two IXs, U-128 and U-154, were to patrol off Brazil.
After the voyage to Panama was canceled, Witt in U-129 was directed to reconnoiter Bermuda, then Cape Hatteras. En route to Bermuda he found and sank the impressive 129800-ton British vessel Melbourne Star. Off Bermuda he saw no targets and was harassed by intense air and surface ASW patrols. Finding thin traffic off Cape Hatteras, Witt went farther south. On April 24 he sank the 6,500-ton American freighter Santa Catalina. On April 26 he missed a large American submarine with three torpedoes, misidentified as a “Narwhal-class.” Off North Carolina on May 5, he sank the 7,300-ton Panamanian tanker Panarn. He then returned to France, having bagged three ships for 26,590 tons, the best patrol by tonnage sunk of any boat in American waters in the first half of 1943.
The next two boats to sail were Ritterkreuz holder Albrecht Achilles in U-161 and a new skipper, Wolfgang Grandefeld, age twenty-six, in U-174. Both had to first carry out special missions. Substituting for the lost U-163, Achilles in U-161 was directed to meet the inbound blockade-runner Regensburg, to give her special instructions. Grandefeld in U-174 was directed to meet the inbound blockade-runner Karin (ex-Kota Nopan) for the same task. Unknown to the Germans, on March 10 the American cruiser Savannah and destroyer Eberle had intercepted Karin in the Middle Atlantic and forced her to scuttle.
Not without difficulties, Achilles and Grandefeld attempted to carry out these special tasks. On March 23, Achilles found Regensburg and passed to her documents and verbal instructions. Achilles was then directed to meet the inbound Italian blockade-runner Pietro Orseolo, and give her instructions. He performed this task on March 27, then went west to patrol the area between Nova Scotia and New York. A submarine torpedo hit the Pietro Orseolo, but she limped into Bordeaux on April 1. Unable to find the lost Karin, Grandefeld in U-174 was directed to rendezvous with another inbound blockade-runner, Irene (ex-Silvaplana). Grandefeld met Irene on April 6 and carried out his task.
The British tracked Regensburg closely, benefitting from the many Enigma decrypts concerning her routing and U-boat protection and rescue assignments. The Regensburg was to transit the Denmark Strait^ then proceed to Norway, then to the Baltic. Berlin ordered U-boat Control to deploy three new Atlantic boats along her projected path: the IXC40 U-191, commanded by Helmut Fiehn, age twenty-seven, and the VIIs U-469 and U-635, commanded respectively by Emil Claussen, age twenty-five, and Heinz Eckelmann, age twenty-six. On March 25, an Ireland-based B-17 of British Squadron 206, piloted by Willis Roxburg, sank the U-469 with depth charges. On March 30, a British task force, including the heavy cruiser Glasgow, intercepted and sank Regensburg. There were no survivors of these German losses.
The British also closely tracked the next blockade-runner, Irene, inbound to Bordeaux. Owing to the embarrassing loss of Regensburg, when Dönitz learned that U-174 had met Irene, he issued a “personal order” to U-boat Control to sail at once four U-boats (two IXs, two VIIs) specifically to escort Irene across the Bay of Biscay. Control selected four boats that had been detailed to make patrols to the Americas. The two IXs, U-128 and U-176, sailed from Lorient on April 6; the two VIIs, JJ-262 and U-376, sailed from La Pallice the same day. Subsequently Dönitz ordered these U-boats to escort Irene into Vigo, Spain, for temporary refuge.
The British, meanwhile, rushed aircraft and a naval task force of light vessels to the scene. On April 10, the minelayer Adventure, en route from the Mediterranean to the British Isles, came upon Irene and opened fire, forcing the Germans to scuttle and take to the lifeboats. The British captured the Irene crew and cast off the empty lifeboats.
When Dönitz got word of this latest Kriegsmarine fiasco, he directed that German aircraft and the four U-boats sent to escort Irene were to search thoroughly for German survivors. Meanwhile, he recalled one of four outbound blockade-runners, the Italian-manned Himalaya, escorted by four German destroyers, which had sailed from Bordeaux on March 29. The other three proceeded to the Far East, but one, Portland, was intercepted on April 13 and sunk by the Free French cruiser Georges Leygues.*
German aircraft found eight lifeboats from Irene but no sign of life. The four U-boats searched until April 12, but they too could find nothing of Irene or her crew. Control thereafter ordered the two IXs, U-128 and U-176, and the two VIIs, U-262 and U-376, to proceed to the Americas. However, one VII did not respond: the ex-Arctic U-376, commanded by Friedrich Marks. The Admiralty initially credited a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of British Squadron 172, piloted by G. H. White-ley, with the kill of U-376, but subsequently declared her lost to unknown causes.
Achilles in U-161 had a miserable patrol to the Americas. Hunted relentlessly by strong surface and air ASW forces in Canadian waters, he was forced under time and again. Finally, on April 26, he found a fast convoy southeast of Nova Scotia. He got off a contact report and shadowed but a diesel engine failed and he lost the convoy. On May 19 he found the 255-ton Canadian sailing ship Angelus. After the crew had abandoned ship, Achilles sank her by gun and returned to France, ending an unsuccessful patrol, his first. Owing to the intense ASW measures, he declared, U-boat patrols to the Canadian and United States coasts were “hopeless.”*
Grandefeld in U-174 literally followed in the wake of U-161 by about ten days. Patrolling southeast of Nova Scotia, on April 17 he found what he believed to be a subsection of a Halifax convoy. He shadowed and attempted to attack, he reported, but he was thwarted by foul weather and escorts. Nine days later, on April 26, he probably picked up the convoy report of Achilles in U-161. He was in a good position to intercept it southeast of Nova Scotia, but on the next day, April 27, a Ventura of Navy Squadron VP 125, newly based in Newfoundland to provide convoy support, found U-174 running on the surface. The pilot, Thomas Kinaszczuk, commenced an attack, but Grandefeld remained on the surface, shooting at the Ventura with all topside weapons. Braving the flak smashing into his wings and fuselage, Kinaszczuk came in very low and dro
pped four shallow-set depth charges. Three exploded in a close straddle, hurtling U-174 bow up. She sank stern first, straight up, with the loss of all hands. Kinaszczuk earned a Navy Cross.
Reiner Dierksen in U-176, who had diverted to escort the doomed blockade-runner Irene, was ordered to patrol the Gulf of Mexico. In the Middle Atlantic on April 20, he rendezvoused with Piening, homebound in U-155, to team firsthand about conditions in the gulf.
The first watch officer on U-155’s first two patrols, Alfred Eick, who had left to replace Neitzel as commander of U-510, worried that Dierksen was too headstrong and incautious, that he would soon come to grief. Eick’s premonition proved to be correct. On the night of May 13, Dierksen sank two small tankers in the Old Bahama Channel off the north coast of Cuba, the 2,200-ton American Nickeliner, and the 2,000-ton Cuban Mambu. The sinkings prompted the Caribbean Sea Frontier to mount a vigorous U-boat hunt. As a result, on the morning of May 15, an American OS2U Kingfisher floatplane of Navy Scouting Squadron VS 62 spotted U-176 in the Old Bahama Channel about one hundred miles east of Havana. Seeing a small convoy approaching, the scout plane dropped a smoke bomb where U-176 had crash-dived, then coaxed one of the three convoy escorts to the scene, the Cuban Sub Chaser (SQ 13, one of a dozen ex-American eighty-three-foot Coast Guard cutters given to Cuba.
The SC 13 reported an excellent sonar contact at four hundred yards and she ran in and dropped three depth charges, set for 100, 150, and 200 feet. After the third explosion, the SC 13 heard a “loud” secondary explosion. When the noise abated and the roiling water settled, SC 13 regained sonar contact at five hundred yards and dropped two more depth charges set for 200 and 250 feet. These explosions brought up “brown” or “muddy” water and slight traces of oil. The escort puttered around some more, then rejoined the convoy after an absence of merely one hour. Incensed by the lack of tenacity shown by the Cuban escort, American naval authorities recommended that the skipper be censured. No credit for a kill was granted, but, remarkably, this eighty-three-foot Cuban cutter had sunk U-176 with the loss of all hands with merely five depth charges.
Had the U-176 survived, she might have encountered a special American troop convoy. This was BT 203, which sailed from New York to the Pacific—the first troopship convoy in over a year to leave from an Atlantic port for the Pacific. The convoy, comprised of four big liners escorted by four American destroyers (Buck, Nicholson, Swanson, and Wilkes), arrived in Panama unmolested by U-boats and proceeded onward to the Pacific.
The two IXs bound for Brazil were veterans, both commanded by new skippers: Hermann Steinert, age twenty-six, in U-128 and Oskar Heinz Kusch, age twenty-five, in U-154.
Steinert in U-128, who also had diverted to escort the Irene, was first to find a target. On May 8 he encountered a loner and attacked her at night, firing three salvos of two torpedoes each. To Steinert’s chagrin, all six torpedoes missed and the ship got away. After this puzzling failure, the crew downloaded four (of eight) air torpedoes from the topside canisters.
A week later, on May 16, while patrolling off Bahia (Salvador) in support of convoy TB 13, southbound from Trinidad to Bahia, a Mariner flying boat of the Navy’s Squadron VP 74 found U-128 and attacked. Steinert crash-dived; the depth charges fell wide, causing no damage. That night a Catalina flew out to reestablish contact—and hold the U-boat down—but the plane had no radar and could not find U-128. Charging batteries, Steinert cruised northward on the surface toward Recife during the night. Near dawn he submerged and promptly picked up the convoy on sonar at about ten miles. After he had established its course and speed by sonar, Steinert surfaced in order to run to a better shooting position.
That morning—May 17—two other Mariners of Squadron VP 74, equipped with centimetric-wavelength radar, were assigned to provide air escort for the convoy. Both aircraft detected U-128 on radar, one at eighteen miles, the other at twenty-eight miles. The closest Mariner, flown by Howland S. Davis, attacked first, dropping six shallow-set depth charges from an altitude of sixty feet. Steinert saw the plane coming and attempted to crash-dive, but the hydraulic system malfunctioned and the ballast-tank vents had to be opened by hand, a slow process. While she was still struggling to get under, the depth charges exploded around U-128. The other Mariner, flown by Harold C. Carey, arrived and dropped six more shallow-set depth charges from an altitude of one hundred feet. The twelve depth charges wrecked U-128. The aircrews added four thousand rounds of 50-caliber machine-gun fire.
In response to requests from the airmen for assistance, two modern American destroyers, Moffett (1936) and Jouett (1939), came charging up at flank speed. Both destroyers opened up with 5” guns, firing an astonishing 247 rounds. This fire and/or scuttling sank the wrecked U-128. Moffett fished out fifty-one of U-128’s fifty-four-man crew, including Steinert. Four of the survivors, including U-128’s chief engineer, died on board Moffett. The remaining forty-seven POWs were delivered to naval authorities at Recife. Steinert, his first watch officer, Siegfried Sterzing, and eleven others were flown immediately to the United States for interrogation. The POWs wondered why neither Moffett nor Jouett had made an effort to board U-128 to gather intelligence documents. The reason was that those destroyers had no parties trained for boarding sinking U-boats.
Left alone in these distant waters, Oskar-Heinz Kusch, new skipper of U-154, conducted an aggressive patrol. In late May he intercepted convoy BT 14, northbound from Bahia to Trinidad and attacked it on the surface at night. He claimed sinking three freighters for 21,500 tons, plus possibly a 6,000-ton tanker and damage to an 8,000-ton tanker. His confirmed score was one 8,200-ton American tanker, John Worthington, sunk and two American ships (one tanker, one freighter) for 15,800 tons damaged.
When Kusch reported that his Metox was “permanently out,” U-boat Control authorized him to slowly withdraw from American waters on a homebound course. In the meantime, Control directed Siegfried Kietz in U-126, which was severely damaged by an air attack off Freetown on June 15, to meet Kusch in U-154 and return to France in company. These two veteran boats with green skippers met near the Azores on June 29, where Kusch missed a fast freighter with two torpedoes.
A Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of British Squadron 172, piloted by the Rhodesian Alex Coumbis, got U-126 or U-154 on radar in the Bay of Biscay in the early hours of July 3. Coumbis lined up and attacked a U-boat that proved to be Kietz in U-126. Nothing more was ever heard from U-126. Kusch in U-154 witnessed the attack from close quarters. Incorrectly surmising that U-126 had dived to safety, Kusch reported the attack to be “unsuccessful.” The U-154 then proceeded to Lorient alone, arriving safely three days later.
The commander of Combat Flotilla 2, Ritterkreuz holder Ernst Kals, wrote that Kusch, who had served as a watch officer on U-103 under Ritterkreuz holder Werner Winter and Gustav-Adolf Janssen for eighteen months, had made a good first patrol and was well qualified to be a U-boat commander. However, Kusch’s first watch officer, the reservist Ulrich Abel, a doctor of laws and fanatical Nazi, was of the opposite opinion and because of that, very big trouble lay ahead for Kusch.
The thirteen Type IXs that sailed to the Americas from January through early April sank twenty-two confirmed ships for 121,200 tons. This was an average of about 1.7 ships for 9,300 tons sunk per boat per patrol, a drastic decline from the same period the year before, when the IXs ranged freely in American waters. Four of the thirteen boats were lost: Ritterkreuz holder Werner Hartenstein’s U-156, Wolfgang Grandefeld’s U-174, Reiner Dierksen’s U-176, and Hermann Steinert’s U-128. Since the drastic decline in returns was obscured by gross overclaims, such as those of Neitzel in U-510, U-boat Control planned to continue—and perhaps even increase—patrols to American waters despite the heavy losses.
The Italians sent five large Bordeaux-based submarines to patrol Brazilian waters from February to April 1943. As related, only one of these boats, Barbarigo, commanded by Roberto Rigoli, had any success. She sank three confirmed freighters for 15,600 tons: a Spaniard, a Braz
ilian, and the American Stag Hound, 8,600 tons.
One of the Italian boats was lost: Archimede, commanded by Guido Saccardo. On April 15, a Catalina of U.S. Navy Squadron VP 83, based in Natal, Brazil, spotted Archimede running on the surface. The pilot, T. E. Robertson, attacked with bombs and depth charges in the face of flak from Archimede, which dived, then resurfaced, circling uncontrollably. A second Catalina of VP 83, piloted by G. Bradford, Jr., arrived and attacked with four depth charges from fifty feet. Thereafter, both aircraft strafed Archimede until she sank, leaving nineteen survivors in the water. Each Catalina dropped a raft, then departed. Twenty-nine days later, one raft containing a lone survivor, coxswain Giuseppe Lococo, washed ashore near the mouth of the Amazon River. Subsequently, Brazilian authorities turned him over to the Americans at Belem. All other Italians perished.
During this period U-boat Control mounted one special mission to Canada. It was supervised by the second staff officer, Ritterkreuz holder Peter Cremer, recovering from the severe injuries he incurred on his boat, U-333.
Most U-boat POWs captured by British or Commonwealth forces were eventually transferred to camps in Canada. Some of them continued to communicate with Admiral Dönitz or U-boat Control by encoded messages in letters to their families. Fully alive to these “secret” communications, Allied intelligence officers continued to break the simple code (Irland) and monitor the messages, taking care not to reveal that they were doing so because the information gained from them was sometimes of military value. Copies of the decrypted letters were exchanged between Washington, London, and Ottawa. Some letters were stopped, but most were allowed to go forward to Germany through Red Cross channels.
For a long period of time, some German U-boat POWs incarcerated at Camp 70, near the city of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, had been planning an intricate escape. The plan was to break out and make their way to the East Coast (110 air miles), thence by stolen small boat across Northumberland Strait (fifteen miles) to thinly populated Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where a U-boat could pick them up.