by Clay Blair
Max Horton at Western Approaches ordered up yet more reinforcements: Godfrey N. Brewer’s British Support Group 1 at St. John’s, Newfoundland: the sloop Pelican, three frigates, and the ex-Coast Guard cutter Sennen. In view of the foul weather and poor visibility and communications, on May 1 U-boat Control canceled group Star’s pursuit of Outbound North (Slow) 5.
To this point, Star’s chase had produced little. Von Mässenhausen in U-258 had sunk one old 6,200-ton kerosene tanker in ballast. In return, British warships and aircraft sank one Star boat, von Rabenau’s U-528, and had severely damaged two others: Kandler’s U-386 and Junker’s U-532.
Acting on information from B-dienst, U-boat Control was on the lookout for two big, eastbound convoys, Slow Convoy 128 and Halifax 236, guarded by British escorts. To be certain of intercepting these convoys, Control organized and deployed two very large groups between Newfoundland and Greenland:
• Fink (Finch), which comprised twenty-nine boats, of which eleven (38 percent) were on maiden patrols from Germany. Fink was made up of sixteen boats from the dissolved group Specht (three new VIIs; one new IX; two veteran VIIs with new skippers, U-438 and U-662; two veteran IXs; and eight veteran VIIs). To these were added twelve boats from the dissolved group Star (three new IXs, four new VIIs, five veteran VIIs). In addition, one new IXC40, U-531, came from the dissolved group Meise. In sum, twenty-nine boats: seven IXs (five new) and twenty-two VIIs (seven new). One of the skippers was a Ritterkreuz holder, Ulrich Folkers in the veteran Drumbeater IXC U-125.
• Amsel (Blackbird), which was comprised of twenty-four boats from France (five IXs, nineteen VIIs), all experienced or veterans. As an experiment designed to confuse the Allies, Amsel was subdivided into four task forces of six boats each. There were two Ritterkreuz holders in Amsel: Siegfried von Forstner in the VII U-402 of Amsel 1 and Harald Gelhaus in the IXB U-107 of Amsel 2.
Fink-Amsel was the largest congregation of U-boats to be assembled in the same patrol area during the war. Together Fink-Amsel comprised fifty-three U-boats: twelve IXs (five new) and forty-one VIIs (seven new).
Aware from fragmented Enigma decrypts that a very large deployment of U-boats had occurred, threatening Outbound North (Slow) 5, Allied authorities launched Canadian and American aircraft sweeps when the weather permitted. On May 4 the sweeps yielded a kill: a Canso (Catalina) of Canadian Squadron 5 caught the VII U-209 of group Fink, commanded by Werner Winkler, on the surface. The pilot, B. H. Moffit, dived to wave-top altitude and dropped four shallow-set depth charges. One missed, but three straddled the boat closely. On a second attack run, the aircrew saw a large oil patch and pieces of wood with “fresh breaks” and claimed a sinking.
That same day, another Canso of Squadron 5 caught an unalert boat on the surface, believed to be U-438 of group Fink, commanded by Heinrich Heinsohn. The pilot, John W. C. Langmuir, attacked U-438 three times at wave-top altitude, but Heinsohn remained on the surface and fought back with his flak guns. The Canso nose gunner claimed he killed or wounded three Germans on the bridge, but the depth charges fell too wide to inflict any major damage and U-438 escaped, at least for the time being.
The valuable, rerouted Slow Convoy 128 and Halifax 236 slipped through or around the fifty-two surviving U-boats of Fink-Amsel, a dismaying setback for the Germans. However, on the afternoon of May 4, the westbound convoy Outbound North (Slow) 5, disorganized by storms, unwittingly sailed right into this mass of U-boats. At that time, the convoy’s main body consisted of about thirty merchant ships, escorted by seven warships: three destroyers (Oribi, Offa, and Vidette, all low on fuel), the frigate Toy, and three corvettes. The other corvette, Pink, was far astern, escorting a miniconvoy of six ships; six other ships were stragglers.
Within two hours, three Fink VIIs reported the convoy contact: Rolf Manke in U-358, Paul-Friedrich Otto in U-270, and Heinz Hasenschar in U-628. In response, U-boat Control directed forty U-boats to attack the convoy: all of Fink (twenty-eight boats) plus the twelve boats of Amsel 1 and Amsel 2. Control exhorted: “I am certain that you will fight with everything you’ve got. Don’t overestimate your opponent... strike him dead!”
During the next forty-eight hours, May 5-6, a furious naval battle raged amid icebergs and fog. In a notable success, the U-boats sank twelve confirmed ships (two American, ten British or British-controlled) for about 55,800 tons. The high scorer was the Fink VII U-264, commanded by Hartwig Looks, who sank three ships for 15,228 tons, including one damaged earlier by Heinz Hasenschar in U-628. Hasenschar in turn sank one ship for 5,200 tons damaged earlier by the Fink VII U-358, commanded by Rolf Manke, who also hit and sank a 2,900-tonner. The second-highest scorer was the Amsel 2 VII U-266, commanded by Ralf von Jessen, who sank three ships for 12,000 tons. Four other boats sank one ship each.
During the battle, Godfrey Brewer’s British Support Group 1 (the sloop Pelican, frigates Weir, Spey, Jed, and the former Coast Guard cutter Sennen) sailed from St. John’s, and the destroyers Oribi and Offa of J. W. McCoy’s British Support Group 3, both low on fuel, prepared to depart for St. John’s. In the period May 5-6, Allied forces sank six more U-boats, three VIIs and three IXs:
• The VII U-630 of Fink, an Arctic transfer on her first Atlantic patrol, commanded by Heinrich Brodda. She was believed to have been sunk by Canadian Canso or American B-17 aircraft based in Newfoundland.*. There were no survivors.
• The IXC40 U-192 of Fink, a new boat commanded by Werner Happe, age twenty-seven, merely twenty-three days out from Kiel. She was sunk by Loostrife, a corvette of Escort Group B-7, commanded by Harold A. Stonehouse. There were no survivors.
• The VII U-638 of Amsel 1, commanded by Oskar Staudinger, on her second patrol. She sank one 5,500-ton British freighter from the convoy, but was in turn sunk by the corvette Sunflower of Escort Group B-7, commanded by Canadian J. Plomer. There were no survivors.
• The veteran IXC U-125 of Fink, commanded by the Drumbeater and Ritterkreuz holder Ulrich Folkers, who had probably sunk one 4,700-ton British freighter, the Lorient. He was rammed and sunk by the destroyer Oribi, commanded by J.C.A. Ingram with help from the corvette Snowflake, commanded by H. G. Chesterman.
• The new IXC40 U-531 of Fink, commanded by Herbert Neckel, age twenty-six, also twenty-three days out from Kiel. While en route from Kiel to join Fink, Neckel had been attacked by an unidentified aircraft near Iceland that had dropped four bombs or depth charges and had caused “some damage.” She was sunk by the destroyer Vidette, that ship’s second kill in as many days. There were no survivors.
• The VII U-438 of Fink, a veteran boat commanded by the new skipper Heinrich Heinsohn, believed to have been damaged earlier by a Canso of Canadian Squadron 5. The boat was sunk by the sloop Pelican, commanded by Godfrey Brewer of British Support Group 1. There were no survivors.
In addition to these six sinkings on May 5-6, the escorts damaged about a dozen other U-boats, forcing many to abort to a U-tanker and four or five to abort to France. One of the latter was the new IXC40 of Fink, U-533, commanded by Helmut Hennig, rammed by the British corvette Sunflower, commanded by J. Plomer, who was making his first Atlantic crossing in an escort group. Another was the VII U-270, commanded by Paul-Friedrich Otto, who refueled and had been out forty-three days, attached to several groups. Otto reached France on May 15.
One other Amsel boat was lost while homebound. She was the VII U-266, commanded by Ralf von Jessen, the second-highest scorer against Outbound North (Slow) 5. On May 15, while on an ASW patrol over the Bay of Biscay, a Halifax of British Squadron 58, piloted by Wilfred E. Oulton, came out of the sun and sank the inbound U-266 with a salvo of depth charges.
U-boat Control never did sort out exactly which convoy the Fink-Amsel boats attacked nor did Control realize that it was the same convoy that the dissolved group Star had found and chased earlier. The Germans wrongly identified the convoy as Outbound North 180 and claimed that the U-boats had sunk sixteen ships for 90,500 tons from it and also got hits on a corvette and three
other freighters. Six U-boats had been lost, Control logged, “a high and grave” number considering the brevity of operations. Control attributed the losses to enemy radar, which enabled the surface escorts to pinpoint surfaced U-boats at night and in the Grand Banks fog and to air escorts that were able to hide in low-lying clouds and pounce with the advantage of complete surprise.
In summary, the correct story was as follows. Group Star found Outbound North (Slow) 5 on April 27, during an Enigma blackout. On April 27-28, one Star VII, the veteran U-258, commanded by Wilhelm von Mässenhausen, sank one confirmed ship from the convoy, the 6,200-ton American kerosene tanker McKeesport. In turn, Peter Gretton’s Escort Group B-7 and Allied aircraft severely damaged the VII U-386 and the new IXC40s U-528 and U-532. While limping home to France, the U-528 was sunk in Biscay by cooperating British aircraft and surface ships.
After Fink-Amsel had been formed by fifty-three U-boats to attack eastbound convoys, the Outbound North (Slow) 5 blundered into that massive German formation. On May 5-6, eight of these U-boats sank twelve more confirmed ships for about 56,000 tons, raising the grand total of confirmed sinkings in Outbound North (Slow) 5 to thirteen ships for about 62,000 tons. The shrunken Escort Group B-7, temporarily commanded by R. E. Sherwood in the frigate Tay, was reinforced by two British support groups and by Canadian and American aircraft from Newfoundland. These forces sank six more U-boats from May 4 to May 6. Counting U-710, assigned to Star, U-528 of Star, and U-266 of Amsel, German losses in all operations versus Outbound North (Slow) 5 came to a ruinous nine boats (four IXs, five VIIs) and about 450 submariners, including Ritterkreuz holder Ulrich Folkers, killed or left to die in the icy waters. The Allies made no attempt to rescue Germans of these boats in the western Atlantic.
The sinking of what was believed to be six U-boats plus the heavy damage to four or five others in a single convoy battle was viewed as a classic naval victory in the British Isles, and those who fought it drew praise from Winston Churchill, Max Horton, and other high officials. In the postwar years, British and German historians and authors and navalists (including B-7 commander Peter Gretton) were to write extensively about the battle. It thus gradually acquired a string of adjectives such as “fiercest” and “decisive” and was cited by some authors as “a major turning point” in the Battle of the Atlantic. But of course, there was never a defining “turning point,” only a gradually accelerating German defeat from September 1942 onward.
On the German side, when the full extent of the losses became evident, there was alarm and dismay. U-boat Control logged that the “worst enemy” was Allied radar. It not only impeded U-boat attacks but also enabled the convoys to evade U-boat patrol lines. In particular, airborne radar was a menace. It enabled land-based ASW aircraft, which could escort eastbound and westbound convoys nearly all the way across the Atlantic, to find and keep in close contact with the merchant ships, to drive the shadowers off and/or down, and prevent other U-boats from pulling ahead of the convoy to better shooting positions. Worse yet for the Germans, it appeared that the Allies were to assign “jeep” carrier support groups to accompany all the convoys on the North Atlantic run.
To reassure the skippers and crews, Dönitz signaled all U-boats: “I expect you to continue your determined struggle with the enemy and by pitting your ingenuity, ability and toughness against his tricks and technical developments, finally to finish him off.” Remember, Dönitz added, that the enemy has “weak spots everywhere” and was not so efficient as he appeared at first sight. “I believe,” he concluded, “that I shall shortly be able to give you better weapons for this hard struggle of yours “
The loss of four IXs in this action, plus eleven other IXs in March and April—a total of fifteen—stressed the long-held view that the clumsy, slow-diving IXs were unsuitable for hard anticonvoy operations in the North Atlantic. After obtaining authorization from Dönitz, U-boat Control rescinded the recent order that all IXs were to patrol the North Atlantic convoy run. The new IXs outbound from Germany to France were to carry out maiden patrols in the North Atlantic, but those already based in France were to be sent only south or southwest to Freetown, the West Indies, and Brazil.
The study of the IX losses in the North Atlantic in this period led German engineers to tentatively conclude that the more powerful and deeper-sinking Allied depth charges were rupturing and flooding the topside torpedo-storage canisters on both the VIIs and IXs, destabilizing the boats and causing losses. The OKM therefore issued new rules regarding topside canisters. Without exception, VIIs at the battlefronts were to remove all topside canisters. New VIIs under construction were to be fitted with much stronger steel canisters. The IXBs and IXCs were also to remove all canisters. With special permission, IXs patrolling south to West Africa or to the Americas could mount six canisters in place of the usual eight. The new XB minelayers were to be issued six canisters as before, but no XB could install the canisters without special permission. The IXD2 U-cruisers going to distant waters (such as the Indian Ocean) were permitted to retain all twelve topside canisters loaded with G7a air torpedoes.
The Allies sailed eighteen convoys east and west on the North Atlantic run in April,* comprising about nine hundred merchant ships. Thanks to the work of B-dienst, the U-boat groups were able to intercept a great number of these convoys. Yet the convoy defenses in that area had become so formidable with the addition of destroyer and “jeep” carrier support groups and very-long-range aircraft that the masses of U-boats on the North Atlantic run were able to sink only thirty-one ships (including the British destroyer Beverley) from seven of these convoys, most notably six from Halifax 231 and thirteen from Outbound North (Slow) 5. Halifax 232 yielded four victims, the other four convoys merely one to three ships.
In all waters of the world, all Axis submarines sank fifty-six merchant ships for about 328,000 gross tons in April.† This was only about one-half of the merchant ship sinkings achieved in March, a disastrous setback for the Germans, as yet only dimly perceived owing to the overclaims of U-boat skippers. Against the fifty-six Allied ships sunk worldwide, the Germans lost fifteen U-boats in all waters in April (seven IXs, eight VIIs), another ruinous “exchange rate” of 3.7 ships sunk for each U-boat. As in March, the output of American shipyards alone in April was prodigious: 159 ships for about one million gross tons, or nearly three times the number of ships and tonnage lost to U-boats that month.
GROUP DROSSEL: A FUTILE AND COSTLY GESTURE
In the third week of April, the British First and Eighth armies commenced the final encirclement of the dispirited and defeated Axis ground forces in Tunisia, North Africa—the long-delayed culmination of Torch. The Germans and Italians had not the slightest chance of escape. Neither Berlin nor Rome made any effort to evacuate these tens of thousands of defeated troops.
Perhaps for political or psychological reasons, Dönitz directed U-boat Control to send a special group of a dozen VIIs to attack Allied convoys supporting Allied forces in North Africa. It was not a prudent idea to send another attack group to the risky Gibraltar-Azores waters, but apparently Dönitz felt he had no other choice; the Kriegsmarine had to make a final gesture of support for the Afrika Korps.
Designated group Drossel (Thrush), these dozen VIIs sailed from French bases from April 24 to April 27. Among them was the veteran U-436, commanded by Günther Seibecke, who had recently won a Ritterkreuz. As related, three Drossel VIICs did not get out of the Bay of Biscay. Allied aircraft sank U-332 with the loss of all hands and severely damaged the U-437, which was escorted back to France by the U-445.
The nine remaining Drossel boats were to work in close cooperation with Condors based at Bordeaux. On May 3, the aircraft reported two southbound convoys: one composed of twenty-four to twenty-seven “freight barges” and three escorts, the other composed of eleven freighters and six escorts.
The Drossel veterans, U-89, commanded by Dietrich Lohmann, and U-456, commanded by Max-Martin Teichert, found the convoy of “freight barges.” The
ships turned out to be landing craft (LCTs) en route to the Mediterranean for the proposed invasion of Sicily (Husky). Because of their shallow draft, the landing craft were unsuitable torpedo targets. Nonetheless, Lohmann in U-89 shot three torpedoes into the formation. None hit. Inasmuch as no boat found the more promising convoy of eleven freighters and because heavy Allied air cover from Gibraltar to support it was expected, U-boat Control prohibited further searching for that formation.
During that night, May 3-4, two other Drossel boats found the landing-craft convoy: Hans Stock in the veteran U-659, who had just received an emergency change in orders to enter the Mediterranean, and Helmut von Tippelskirch in the experienced U-439. Momentarily distracted by a sudden burst of gunfire from an escort, von Tippelskirch in U-439 rammed Stock in U-659. The impact flooded the bow compartment of U-439, and she began to sink. Von Tippelskirch flashed Stock an SOS by signal lamp, but Stock’s U-659 was also fatally holed and sinking. One of the four convoy escorts, a British PT boat (MGB 670), commanded by R.R.W. Ashby, rescued twelve Germans, three from U-659 and nine from U-439. Both U-boat captains were killed. One of the survivors of U-439 said that the first watch officer was so remorseful over the collision—or so fearful of a Nazi court-martial—that he refused a life preserver, held firmly to a bridge stanchion, and deliberately went down with the boat.