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

by Clay Blair

  • Robert Schetelig in the new VII U-229 sank the 5,000-ton British freighter Nailsea Court (and damaged the 3,700-ton British freighter Coulmore).

  • Kurt Lange in the new IXC40 U-530 sank the 3,100-ton Swedish freighter Milos.

  • Herbert Brünning in the U-642 sank the 2,100-ton British freighter Leadgate.

  Meanwhile, Allied authorities had ordered air and surface escorts from Iceland to reinforce Slow Convoy 121. Aircraft arrived early on March 9. Later in the day two Treasury-class Coast Guard cutters, Bibb and Ingham, an American four-stack destroyer, Babbitt, and two British corvettes, Campion and Mallow, joined, increasing the escort to ten warships: three American Treasury-class cutters, two American four-stack destroyers, and five corvettes, three British and two Canadian. These plus heavy air cover forced U-boat Control to cancel operations.

  One U-boat was lost on March 10. Commanded by Bernhard Muller, age twenty-six, she was the new VII U-633, which sailed from Kiel on February 20 in company with seven other new boats. She and the others had been assigned to the first Neuland group, then to Ostmark. In wartime, the Admiralty credited a B-17 of Squadron 220 with the kill. In a postwar reassessment, however, it credited the British merchant ship Scorton, commanded by T. Glover, with her destruction by ramming. The U-633 went down with all hands, reducing group Ostmark to nine boats.

  Based on flash reports from the boats, U-boat Control sent along to the OKM a conservative estimate of successes: thirteen ships sunk for 73,000 tons, plus three for 19,500 tons hit and possibly sunk. The confirmed number was twelve of the fifty-nine ships in the convoy sunk for 55,661 tons (plus the two 143-ton LCTs) and one ship of 3,700 tons damaged. Unaware that the new VII U-633 had been sunk en route to join Ostmark, U-boat Control reported no losses. Eleven other boats had been attacked by air and surface escorts with depth charges and bombs, but none had incurred serious damage.

  The Americans of Escort Group A-3 met polite but stinging criticism in the British Isles. In two consecutive Atlantic crossings the group had run up a dubious record of sorts: fourteen ships for 80,000 tons lost from Outbound North 166 en route to the States (February 21-25) and on the return voyage (March 7-10), twelve ships for about 56,000 tons from Slow Convoy 121—altogether twenty-six ships for about 144,000 tons. Unaware that they had run a gauntlet of twenty-six U-boats, the Americans blamed the losses in Slow Convoy 121 on the fact that apart from too few escorts they had not had sufficient turnaround time at Argentia and St. John’s to repair defective sonar, radar, radios, and Huff Duff sets and to properly rest the crews.

  Coming behind Slow Convoy 121 was the fast Halifax 228, which sailed from New York on February 27 with eighty ships, but twenty put into Halifax. Comprised of sixty merchant ships plus LCTs, it was guarded by British Escort Group B-3, commanded by the skilled veteran A. A. Tait in the destroyer Harvester. Besides Harvester, the close escort included the British destroyer Escapade; two Polish-manned destroyers, Burza and Garland; and five corvettes, two British and three French. All told, nine warships: four destroyers and five corvettes.

  The convoy was backed up by the first American “jeep” carrier support group to sail: the 10,000-ton Bogue, which carried twenty-one aircraft of Squadron VC 9, nine Wildcat fighters and twelve Avenger torpedo bombers. She was escorted by two four-stack destroyers, Belknap and George E. Badger, which had been converted to seaplane tenders, based at Argentia, Newfoundland. This group sailed from Argentia on March 5. Owing to the brutal weather on the North Atlantic run, the inability of the short-legged destroyers to refuel at sea, and the difficulty of launching and recovering aircraft as well as to defective depth-charge and bomb releases in the Avengers, on March 10 Bogue aborted to Argentia. En route the group rescued twenty-one desperate survivors of the merchant ship Jonathan Sturges, sunk from convoy Outbound North 166 on February 24 by Günter Gretschel in U- 707*

  Allied authorities routed Halifax 228 well north of Slow Convoy 121 to avoid the teeming U-boats on the latter’s trail. The evasive rerouting sent the convoy directly into the patrol line of the rebuilt group Neuland; which on March 10 consisted of thirteen boats, twelve of which had made one or more prior patrols. One of the boats, (7-227, commanded by Hans Trojer, had sunk the 3,000-ton Norwegian Jamaica while en route to join the Neuland group.

  The first of the Neuland boats to contact convoy Halifax 228 was the U-336, commanded by Hans Hunger, one week into his second patrol. He found it on March 10, mere hours after the Bogue group had departed. Upon receiving Hunger’s report on March 10, U-boat Control directed five other boats—the outbound U-333 and four inbound—to join Neuland, raising its strength to eighteen boats, of which only two (Heinz Forster’s U-359 and Helmut Dauter’s U-448) were new boats on first patrols.

  During the first night, March 10-11, Hunger in U-336 brought up nine boats. Hans Trojer in U-221 opened the assault in a snow squall. His torpedoes hit and demolished two ships loaded with ammunition, the 5,400-ton British Tucurinca and the 6,600-ton American Andrea F. Luckenbach, and damaged the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Lawton B. Edwards. Trojer logged that the Tucurinca blew apart with awesome force, hurling “hundreds of steel plates ... through the air like sheets of paper.” Some of the debris hit Trojer’s attack periscope, bending it so that it would not lower fully. Thereafter, he wrote, escorts counterattacked U-221, dropping eight depth charges. These caused a serious leak in the conning-tower hatch, allowing “a mass of water” to enter the boat. Thoroughly shaken by the ammo explosions, the depth charges, and the flooding, Trojer broke off the chase to make repairs.

  In the early hours of March 11, four other boats got hits.

  • Albert Langfeld in the VII U-444, eleven days into his second patrol, damaged the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship William M. Gorgas.

  • Friedrich Deetz in the VII U-757 sank that ship with a finishing shot as well as the 5,000-ton Norwegian ammunition freighter Brant County. The force of the ammo explosion “seriously damaged” U-757 and injured some personnel on the bridge. Deetz made contact with Heinrich Müller-Edzards in U-590 who still had a doctor on board, then aborted to France at high speed. Crossing Biscay, Deetz teamed up with Heinz Forster in the VII U-359, who had refueled from the XB minelayer U-119, and their combined flak power repelled an attack by an unidentified B-24 Liberator on March 16. The U-757 was out of action for four months.

  • Walter Schug in U-86 and Horst Dieterichs in U-406 both claimed FAT hits on ships that, if valid, had to include the 5,500-ton British freighter Jamaica Producer. Despite the damage, she reached port.

  The nine warships of Tait’s escort group had a frenetic night chasing radar, Huff Duff, and sonar contacts. Near dawn, Tait, in the destroyer Harvester, sighted a U-boat on the surface. This was Albert Langfeld in the VII U-444. Ordering his gunners to open fire, Tait rang up full speed and rammed U-444, riding up and over her afterdeck. Somehow the blow failed to hole U-444 sufficiently to sink her immediately and she became entangled in Harvester’s propeller shaft. By the time the two vessels broke free, Harvester’s propeller shafts and propellers were so badly damaged that she could only crawl on one engine, a perilous predicament with eighteen U-boats converging on the area. Busy saving his own ship, Tait rescued only one of the forty-five Germans of U-444 and later, fifty American survivors of the William M. Gorgas.

  One of the four homebound boats diverted to reinforce group Neuland was the VII U-432, a veteran with a new skipper, Hermann Eckhardt, age twenty-six, who came from command of the 600-ton Italian-built Romanian submarine Delfinul in the Black Sea. Longtime crewmen such as the first watch officer, Josef Bröhl, who had helped the former skipper of U-432, Heinz-Otto Schultze, win his Ritterkreuz, believed Eckhardt was too overconfident and undertrained for combat on the North Atlantic run. Nonetheless, when he found Harvester lying-to dead in the water, Eckhardt fired two conventional electrics at her by periscope from a distance of six hundred and seven hundred yards. Both hit and Harvester sank with the loss of 149 men, including Ta
it.

  Earlier, Tait had summoned the Free French corvette Aconit, commanded by Jean Levasseur, to close and screen Harvester. Aconit belatedly arrived to find no Harvester, but a sea teeming with her survivors and those of the William M. Gorgas and one German clinging to rafts and wreckage. At the same time, Aconit spotted the U-444, which Harvester had rammed, still afloat. Leaving the survivors temporarily, Levasseur raced at U-444 and rammed her so hard the U-boat split in two and sank immediately. Levasseur fished out three Germans, making four men (all enlisted) picked up from U-444 by Escort Group B-3.

  Returning to the scene where Harvester had sunk, Aconit unexpectedly got a good sonar contact. This was Harvester’s killer, U-432, still at periscope depth. After sinking Harvester, Eckhardt had opened a bottle of champagne so the officers could celebrate, after which the officers and crew had begun to eat lunch or to sleep. When the first two salvos (ten depth charges) from Aconit fell, U-432 was deaf and blind. The hydrophone operator was washing the champagne glasses; the first watch officer had gone to bed. The close explosions caused extensive damage and drove U-432 to a record one thousand feet.

  The depth to which U-432 plunged so terrified all hands that Eckhardt decided to surface in broad daylight and attempt to outrun his attacker. When U-432 popped up, Aconit was merely a half mile away. The French spotted the U-boat and instantly opened fire with the 4” gun and other weapons. This heavy gunfire probably killed Eckhardt and many other Germans who were topside. Aconit closed U-432 slowly, intending to put a boarding party on her directly from her bow, but the heavy seas threw her at the U-boat. Unintentionally, Aconit rammed U-432, which sank instantly, taking down over half of the forty-six men of the crew. Aconit rescued twenty Germans, including first watch officer Bröhl. She then returned to the area where the survivors of Harvester and Gorgas were adrift and took them all aboard. The rescued included twenty-four Germans—four from U-444, twenty from U-432.

  By March 12, Halifax 228 was too close to aircraft bases in Iceland to risk further U-boat operations. U-boat Control reported six ships (including a tanker) sunk for nearly 50,000 tons, plus hits on two other ships, which presumably sank, and probable hits on four other ships. The confirmed result was four merchant ships (no tankers) for about 24,000 tons sunk, plus Harvester. The U-boats hit two other merchant ships, but both reached port. The Germans presumed U-444 to have been lost in the battle but did not learn of the loss of U-432 until later.

  The battle with Halifax 228 was actually a humiliating defeat for the U-boat force. The eighteen U-boats of Neuland, operating in fair weather, had sunk only four merchant ships out of sixty, plus Harvester. In return, two boats had been lost, a ruinous “exchange rate” of two merchant ships sunk for each U-boat lost. In this case, as in others, radar-equipped Allied aircraft swarming over the convoy had been the decisive factor, even though none of the aircraft sank or even damaged a U-boat.

  Several of the Neuland boats refueled from the XB minelayer U-119 before heading homeward. U-boat Control ordered one of these VIIs, the U-659, commanded by Hans Stock, to meet and escort Weber in U-709, who was still without a radio transmitter. The two boats were to travel at “high speed.” Both reached Brest, U- 709 on March 18, U-659 on March 20.

  In the first fifteen days of March 1943, while the Atlantic Convoy Conference met in Washington, the dozens of U-boats on the North Atlantic run managed to mount telling attacks on only two sixty-ship eastbound convoys: Slow Convoy 121 and Halifax 228. Of these 120 ships (plus LSTs), the U-boats sank twelve from Slow Convoy 121 and four plus Harvester from Halifax 228. One hundred and four east-bound merchant ships in these convoys (86 percent) reached their destinations.

  As related, in March the German codebreakers at B-dienst provided an unprecedented flow of data on nearly all of the Atlantic convoys. They may well have benefitted from the heavy Allied radio traffic generated in connection with various aspects of the Atlantic Convoy Conference, including the specific sailing dates and routing of convoys and stragglers. As also related, owing to the issuance of a new German short-signal weather-reporting codebook, the Allied codebreakers lost four-rotor naval Enigma from March 10 to March 19. This temporary loss, plus the unprecedented number of U-boats operating against the North Atlantic run, made it more difficult for the Allies to evade the various attack groups.

  The loss of these sixteen loaded eastbound merchant ships on the “decisive” North Atlantic lifeline was a tough blow, but it hardly justified the doom-and-gloom view of convoying at the Admiralty. Moreover, to make good the loss of British imports, a special Halifax convoy (229A) was added in March* and by April, Halifax and Outbound North convoys of sixty merchant ships each were to sail every five days. However, as related, Allied merchant-ship losses in the Middle Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and elsewhere during the first half of March were also unusually heavy, adding to the alarm at the Admiralty. Moreover, in the immediate days ahead a true disaster took place on the North Atlantic run.

  THE GREATEST CONVOY BATTLES OF THE WAR

  Group Raubgraf (Robber Baron) was created to intercept the flow of Outbound North and Outbound North (Slow) convoys sailing to the Americas. Composed of thirteen boats detached from groups Wildfang, Burggraf and the original group Neuland, it was positioned in the “Air Gap” on a line running south from Greenland.

  The anticipated prey for group Raubgraf were convoys Outbound North (Slow) 169 (thirty-seven merchant ships) and Outbound North 170 (fifty-two merchant ships). The first, ONS 169, was guarded by the British Escort Group B-4, commanded by E.C.L. Day in the destroyer Highlander. The group consisted of seven warships: three destroyers and four corvettes. However, one of the destroyers, Vimy, aborted to Iceland for repairs. The second convoy, ON 170, was guarded by the British Escort Group B-2, under a temporary commander, inasmuch as Donald Macintyre’s flagship, the destroyer Hesperus, was in repair after ramming U-357. The group thus consisted of only six warships: two destroyers, a new 1,500-ton sloop, Whimbrel (flagship), and three British corvettes.

  To avoid group Neuland’s battle with Halifax 228, the Admiralty routed Outbound North (Slow) 169 on a northerly track. Off Greenland the convoy ran into a violent storm that scattered its ships all over the ocean and damaged many. In such weather it was impossible for the U-boats to carry out a coordinated hunt. Consequently, group Raubgraf could not find that convoy. However, three of the VIIs found and sank three stragglers.

  • Klemens Schamong, age twenty-six in the new VII U-468, got the abandoned 6,500-ton British tanker Empire Light of Outbound North 168, previously damaged by Hinrich-Oskar Bernbeck in the new VII U-638.

  • Max Kruschka in U-621, embarked on his third patrol, sank the 3,400-ton British freighter Baron Kinnard from Outbound North (Slow) 169.

  • Gerhard Feiler, on his second patrol in U-653, sank the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Thomas Hooker, from the same convoy.

  Owing to the storm, Outbound North (Slow) 169 arrived off Cape Cod piecemeal. The escort group, including the destroyers Highlander and Beverley and the Canadian corvette Sherbrooke, put into St. John’s, Newfoundland, on March 11. Highlander and Sherbrooke had incurred such heavy storm damage that they had to go into dry dock for rushed repairs. They were thus to be delayed in departing St. John’s to escort the eastbound convoy, Halifax 229.

  The fast Outbound North 170 came right in the wake of 169. Two of its merchant ships aborted and one, Empire Puma, straggled, leaving forty-nine ships in the formation. This convoy also followed a northerly track and ran into violent storms that demasted some ships and smashed the top hamper of others. Having DFed sinking and other reports from the Raubgraf boats, the temporary escort group commander employed clever evasive courses to get around the group. Even so, five Raubgraf boats made contact with Outbound North 170. In response, Allied authorities ordered seven warships (three destroyers, two corvettes, and two minesweepers) to sail at once from St. John’s, as well as the American four-stack destroyer Upshur, which was alr
eady at sea in the area, en route to Iceland. When the skies partially cleared on March 14, long-range aircraft (Cansos, B-17s) from Newfoundland commenced patrols over the convoy.

  Although he only had six warships when the U-boats found the convoy, the escort commander in the sloop Whimbrel utilized them skillfully. He directed one corvette, Heather, to haul well away from the convoy and fire snowflakes (star shells), thereby creating a diversion, then changed the convoy’s course to dead south. He directed another corvette, Gentian, to attack the green skipper Klemens Schamong in U-468, who was shadowing and broadcasting position reports. Gentian held U-468 down for several hours, carrying out three depth-charge attacks. Faulty position reports from Bernhard Zurmühlen in U-600 and Schamong in U-468 led U-boat Control to believe the convoy was headed southwest rather than due south, as was the case. Thus Raubgraf chased in the wrong direction and Outbound North 170 eventually reached the jurisdiction of the local Canadian escort without loss of a single ship to U-boats.

  After this action, two Raubgraf VIIs reported “engine damage” and set a course to France. These were Dietrich Lohmann in U-89 and Gerhard Feiler in U-653, both of whom had earlier refueled in the operational area. Lohmann reached home on March 28, completing a barren patrol of sixty-four days. Feiler, who had sunk one straggling American Liberty ship and damaged a tanker, helped locate a convoy that led to the greatest battle in the Atlantic naval war.

  The eastbound Slow Convoy 122, composed of fifty merchant ships, sailed from New York with a Canadian local escort on March 5. On the second day out, the convoy ran into a gale. Three ships aborted to New York and six to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Three, including Clarissa Radcliffe, were declared stragglers. On March 9, a feeder convoy of fourteen ships from Halifax, including the rescue ship Zamalek, joined the convoy. After all the aborts and the comings and goings, the convoy consisted of fifty laden merchant ships, including five bound for Iceland and forty-five for the British Isles (two of the latter were LSTs).