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

by Clay Blair

  These attacks on two major convoys off the South American coast, northbound BT 18 and southbound TJ 1, within the space of about twenty-four hours, caused great consternation in Allied ASW headquarters in that area. Reacting to what was perceived to be a massive U-boat onslaught, Fourth Fleet commander Admiral Jonas Ingram beefed up the air and surface escorts of the convoys in those waters and greatly increased aircraft hunter-killer patrols.

  The result was that the five Type VIIs of the foray to Brazil had a ghastly time. In addition to the nearly unbearable tropical heat and constant worry about fuel replenishment, the VIIs were almost continuously harassed by aircraft. One skipper tersely described the intense hunter-killer activity to Control as: “Air like Biscay, day and night.”

  Only one of these VIIs sank a ship. She was the veteran U-590, with a new skipper, Werner Krüer, age twenty-eight. In a daring attack near the mouth of the Amazon River on July 4, Krüer got the 5,300-ton Brazilian freighter Pelotaslóide, which was escorted by two Brazilian sub chasers. When Krüer reported this sinking, it prompted a saturation U-boat search by Catalinas of U.S. Navy Squadron VP 94, based at Amapá, an airstrip just north of the mouth of the Amazon River.

  One of the Catalinas found and attacked U-590 on July 9. Krüer’s 20mm gunners returned fire and hit the cockpit of the aircraft, killing the pilot, Frank F. Hare, and wounding the radioman. The copilot, J. P. Phelps, attempted a second attack but was repelled and aborted to Belém. Responding to this alert, another Catalina of Navy Squadron VP 94, piloted by Stanley E. Auslander, attacked U-590 and sank her with a salvo of six depth charges. There were no survivors. The Navy awarded pilots Hare and Auslander DFCs, Hare’s posthumously.

  In a period of about ten days, Allied air patrols sank three more VIIs of the Brazil foray and so severely damaged another that it was compelled to abort.

  • On July 19, an Army Air Forces B-24 of Squadron 35, based at Zandery Field, Dutch Guiana (Surinam), found the U-662, commanded by Heinz-Eberhard Müller, age twenty-seven. The aircraft attacked, dropping four depth charges, but they fell wide and Müller’s 20mm gunners repelled a second attack, causing the damaged plane to break off and limp back to base. Later that day, an Army Air Forces B-18 based in French Guinea attacked U-662, but its five depth charges also fell wide. Müller claimed he shot down this plane but he was wrong; she limped home. The next day, July 20, a Catalina of Navy Squadron VP 94 attacked U-662 and it, too, failed to achieve a kill, but the pilot circled out of flak range and called in other forces. These, too, also failed, but on July 21, another Catalina of Squadron VP 94, piloted by R. H. Howland, hit U-662 with machine-gun fire and depth charges. Howland’s gunfire killed the entire bridge watch and the depth charges wrecked the boat.

  Müller ran to the bridge to take over the flak guns. Seconds later the depth charges exploded. The force of the blasts severely wounded Müller and threw him overboard, along with four other men, one of whom soon died. The U-boat appeared to have broken in half; no other men got out. Müller and the three other survivors climbed into one of the two life rafts that the Catalina had dropped and pulled the other raft atop them. Circled by sharks, the four men drifted for sixteen days until they were found by a B-24 and the former luxury yacht Siren, a U.S. Navy vessel that was escorting convoy TJ 4. One of the four Germans died on board Siren, leaving only Müller and two other survivors.*

  In response to an earlier urgent request from Müller for ammo replenishment and unaware of the loss of U-662, Control directed him to rendezvous with a provisional refueler, the IXC U-516, in mid-Atlantic. On July 31, when U-516 reported no sign of U-662 at the meeting place, Control presumed correctly that she was lost.

  •Off Natal on July 22, pilot Renfro Turner, Jr., in a B-24 of Navy Squadron VB 107, found the U-598, commanded by Gottfried Holtorf, age thirty-one. Turner attacked, dropping six depth charges. His alarm brought two other B-24s of VB 107 from Natal. One of these, piloted by John T. Burton, attacked the U-boat but owing to a “personnel error,” the depth charges failed to drop. After that, Renfro Turner made a second attack, dropping his remaining three depth charges. These “appeared to straddle the conning tower” as the U-boat dived.

  Turner returned to Natal, but Burton and the other B-24 established a U-boat “hold down,” circling the area. Shortly after midnight on July 23, yet another B-24 of VB 107, piloted by Charles A. Baldwin, took off from Natal. At dawn, Baldwin spotted U-598 and attacked, inflicting such damage that the U-boat could not dive. About two hours later, two more B-24s of VB 107, piloted by Goree E. Waugh and William R. Ford (who had earlier sunk U-164), attacked jointly at very low altitude. During his attack, Waugh, possibly disabled by the blast of his own depth charges, crashed into the sea. All twelve aircrew were lost. Waugh and his copilot, Robert S. Swan, won posthumous DFCs; the other ten men, Air Medals. Ford in the second plane hit the U-598 with a salvo of depth charges and sank her.

  The German survivors launched two life rafts, and six or seven men got into each. One raft capsized, but two of the men in it survived, the first watch officer, Heinrich Luschin, age twenty-three, and one engine-room petty officer. After about thirteen hours in the water, another aircraft saw the survivors and dropped yet another inflatable raft. Shortly thereafter, the Navy tug Seneca, out searching for survivors, rescued the two Germans. The other raft drifted away and was never seen again. Pilot Ford was awarded a DFC.

  •When U-598 was sunk on July 23, the veteran U-591 was close by. The latter was commanded by a new skipper, Reimar Ziesmer, age twenty-five, replacing Hans-Jürgen Zetzsche, who had been wounded on the boat’s prior patrol. Ziesmer became available when, as related, his new VII, U-236, was wrecked at the building yard in Kiel in an Allied air raid on May 14. The Navy B-24 of Squadron VB 107 that sank U-598 twice attacked Ziesmer in U-591, but each time, rather than shoot it out, he dived and escaped.

  One week later, on July 30, when Ziesmer was farther south off Recife, Navy pilot Walter C. Young, flying a Ventura of the newly arrived Navy Squadron VB 127, found the boat and attacked. In a straight-in run, Young caught U-591 unalert and dropped six depth charges. Too late, Ziesmer ordered the flak guns manned. The depth charges holed U-591 in several places, and she began to sink almost immediately. Ziesmer and twenty-seven other Germans got out of the boat and climbed into life rafts that Young dropped to them. One of the escorts of convoy TJ 2, en route from Trinidad to Rio de Janeiro, which Young had been escorting, rescued the twenty-eight Germans. Apart from Ziesmer, the survivors included two officers, a warrant quartermaster, and a doctor, Günther Feigs.

  •That same day, July 30, another Ventura of another newly arrived Navy squadron, VB 129, was also escorting convoy TJ 2. The pilot, Thomas D. Davies, found the veteran but unalert U-604, commanded by Horst Höltring, age thirty, about one hundred miles east of Macei6. Davies attacked with machine guns and four depth charges, which fell very close. The machine-gun fire mortally wounded the first watch officer and a lookout, and wounded Höltring in his left shoulder and chest. The depth charges wrecked U-604 so badly that there was no chance of getting her back to France. Pilot Davies returned to base claiming a kill. That was close to the truth, but, in fact, U-604’s crew managed to limp away from the scene submerged and later send out a desperate SOS.

  At that time, August Maus in the IXC40 U-185 and Carl Emmermann in the IXC U-172 were the only U-boats left in Brazilian waters. U-boat Control therefore directed Maus and Emmermann to meet U-604 as far off the coast as the latter could get by August 3, remove the crew, and scuttle the boat. En route to the rendezvous on August 1, Maus in U-185 came upon the same convoy, TJ 2, and sank the impressive 8,200-ton Brazilian freighter Bagé.

  Allied intelligence decrypted and DFed the radio chatter concerning the U-604 rendezvous and realized that she had not been sunk after all. Therefore American ASW forces remounted a relentless hunt for her. On August 3, the commander of VB 107, Bertram J. Prueher, found U-604, gave the alarm, and attacked with depth charges, but ag
ain the U-boat dived to safety. While another Navy B-24 of VB 107 circled the area holding U-604 down, Prueher refueled and rearmed his plane and returned and found August Maus in U-185 nearby. Flying into flak, Prueher attacked Maus with four depth charges and machine-gun fire that seriously wounded a man on U-185. Maus escaped; Prueher returned to base with one engine shot out and other flak damage. Two modern destroyers, Moffett (1936) and Jouett (1939), raced out to polish off U-604. Moffett, commanded by Gilbert H. Richards, Jr., got a sonar contact and carried out two depth-charge attacks, but Höltring fooled Richards and a cooperating Navy B-24 with an Aphrodite radar decoy and got away yet again.

  U-boat Control set up a new rendezvous for U-604, U-172, and U-185 farther east on August 11. On the way there, Maus in U-185 met and sank yet another ship, the 7,200-ton British Liberty ship Fort Halkett. This victory raised Maus’s bag for this patrol to an impressive five confirmed ships sunk for 36,781 tons, plus damage to the American tanker S. B. Hunt.

  Per plan, the crippled U-604, the U-172, and the U-185 met on the morning of August 11, about nine hundred miles due east of Natal. Maus in U-185 got there first and took all the fuel oil, ammo, and provisions from the doomed U-604. Since he was to embark half the crew of U-604 when Emmermann arrived, he also took extra mattresses from her. As final arrangements were being set in motion to scuttle the U-604, a four-engine, land-based bomber suddenly appeared out of the overcast.

  This was a B-24 of the U.S. Navy’s Natal-based VB 107, piloted by the squadron commander, Bertram Prueher, who had attacked U-604 on August 3. The beneficiary of naval Enigma decrypts and/or DFing that disclosed the new rendezvous, Prueher had flown the B-24 almost to the limit of its effective combat range. He made two low-level runs at the cluster of U-boats, dropping four depth charges, all of which fell wide. Emmermann in U-172 dived; Maus in U-185 stayed on the surface and shot back. Some of his flak hit Prueher’s B-24, which crashed into the sea, killing all ten on board.

  The loss of Prueher and his aircrew came as a harsh blow to VB 107. For the next three weeks the second in command, Renfro Turner, Jr., who replaced Prueher, mounted an intense search for possible survivors, sending out three to six B-24s per day. Later, in a remarkable gesture of respect for this daring but fatal mission, the commander of Fleet Air Wing 16, Rossmore Lyon, awarded posthumous DFCs to all ten airmen (four officers and six enlisted men).*

  After the B-24 attack, Höltring and the surviving crewmen of U-604 scuttled their wrecked boat and transferred to U-185 as planned. Five days later, on August 16, U-172 and U-185 met and, per the original plan, Emmermann took on board about half (twenty-three) of the crew of U-604. Höltring and the other half of the crew remained on U-185. In response to questions about why he had earlier dived during the B-24 attack and abruptly left the scene, Emmermann replied that the plane had strafed U-172, killing one man and injuring another, that his flak guns were “out of order,” and that he was unable to fight back and had to submerge. Emmermann and Maus continued homeward in search of a provisional refueler.

  In all, the foray to American waters by the twenty boats that sailed in June produced thirteen confirmed sinkings for about 81,000 tons plus three sailing vessels. Credited with over a third of the ships (five) for almost half the tonnage (36,800), Maus in U-185, who had patrolled Brazilian waters, was the clear leader. Fourteen of the twenty boats that reached American waters sank no ships, a devastating failure. Of the twenty boats, ten (50 percent) were sunk in American waters. Most of the ten returning boats had great difficulty obtaining sufficient fuel to get home and four more were to be sunk before reaching France. Hence the outcome of this twenty-boat foray to American waters was an appalling fourteen boats and seven hundred men lost to sink thirteen Allied ships.

  At this same time, U-boat Control sailed eleven June boats to the Freetown area and beyond to the Indian Ocean. Nine boats patrolled the Freetown area. Two were ordered to the Indian Ocean: the new IXD2 U-cruiser U-200, which, as related, was sunk two weeks out from Kiel as she entered the Atlantic; and the IXC40 U-188, which was to join a new foray to Cape Town and the Indian Ocean, group Monsun.

  The nine boats that patrolled the Freetown area included one Type IXC, U-508, and eight Type VIIs. Commanded by Georg Staats, age twenty-seven, who had made a pioneering patrol to the Gulf of Mexico in May 1942, U-508 went beyond Freetown to the Gulf of Guinea, between Accra, Ghana, and Lagos, Nigeria. Staats sank two ships on July 7: the 8,400-ton French De la Salle and the 5,300-ton British Manchester Citizen. These two sinkings earned Staats a Ritterkreuz † He sank one other large ship in this area on July 18, the 7,400-ton British Incomati. After refueling from the IXD2 U-cruiser U-847, serving as a provisional tanker, Staats returned to France on September 14.

  The eight VIIs included Claus von Trotha, age twenty-nine, in U-306 and Ritterkreuz holder Peter Cremer, age thirty-two, returning to his old command, U-333, after a stint on the staff of U-boat Control while he recovered from battle wounds.

  Ordered to patrol American waters, von Trotha in U-306 apparently had made a mistake in decoding the Enigma message assigning his area. Therefore, on July 16, entirely unknown to Control, he was in the waters off Dakar, where he thought he should be. That day he encountered a southbound convoy and chased it for two days toward Freetown. In a series of lone attacks in the face of “heavy” land-based air escort, he claimed he sank four ships for 27,000 tons and that he probably sank another of 5,000 tons. Allied records showed that one British cargo ship, the 5,900-ton Kaipara, was damaged, but no sinkings could be confirmed.

  Peter Cremer in the VII U-333 had a miserable patrol. Apart from the heat, he had not yet fully recovered from his wounds. “In volunteering for service again, I had taken on too much,” he wrote in his memoir. “I was in no way as fit as I had tried to persuade myself and often, when I had to leave the boat for the bridge, I hardly had the strength to dress without help.”

  Besides that, the battle-ravaged U-333 developed numerous mechanical problems. The most serious was the breakdown of both air compressors, the main Junkers and the backup. At about the same time, Kurt Baberg, age twenty-six, in the VII U-618, who had sunk the 5,200-ton British freighter Empire Kohinoor-’off Freetown, also had compressor problems. At the suggestion of U-boat Control, both boats hauled away from the coast and rendezvoused to exchange various spare parts. The exchanges and cannibalizations produced sufficient parts for both Cremer and Baberg to reconstruct one main air compressor and to stay on patrol in the Freetown area. Cremer’s compressor was jury-rigged and was thus a source of “constant anxiety,” not to be relieved until he obtained more spare parts and gear from the new skipper of the veteran U-571, Gustav Lüssow, age twenty-five, and Bernhard Zurmühlen, age thirty-four, in U-600.

  Perhaps encouraged by the successes of Staats in the IXC U-508, U-boat Control concentrated the eight VIIs in the Gulf of Guinea to intercept Allied convoys. None had any luck. Rolf Manke, age twenty-seven, in the U-358, reported that his Metox was out and requested detachment from the group to conduct a lone hunt, but Control told him to stay put—and stay off the air. Cremer in U-333 reported a convoy off Freetown on July 25, but a “destroyer” thwarted his approach. The U-257, commanded by Heinz Rahe, age twenty-seven, and the U-382, commanded by Leopold Koch, age twenty-five, achieved nothing.

  All nine boats soon turned homeward, only to encounter great difficulties in obtaining sufficient fuel to reach France. Control ordered six of the nine to refuel from the provisional tanker U-117, and when she was sunk, her backup, the IXC40 U-525. When she, too, was sunk, six boats refueled from yet another provisional tanker, the veteran IXC U-129, and three boats (U-257, U-358, U-508) refueled from the IXD2 U-cruiser U-847.

  Inbound to France, Cremer wrote, he encountered a “strange” submarine. This turned out to be the big (2,600-ton) Japanese U-cruiser 1-8 (code-named “Flieder” or “Lilac”), arriving from the Far East with wolfram and other scarce cargo. She put into Brest on August 31, carrying an extra fifty s
ubmariners who were to train for and man another gift from Hitler to Tojo, the new IXC40 U-1224 (“Marco Polo II”).*

  In all, the nine boats sent to Freetown and the Gulf of Guinea in June sank four ships for about 26,300 tons and damaged one for 5,900 tons, yet another disappointing foray. Staats in the IXC U-508 sank most of the ships: three for about 21,000 tons. Remarkable for that period, no boat was lost. Whether the absence of losses was owing to the ineptitude of Allied ASW forces in that area or to excessive caution by the skippers or both remains moot. Upon return to France, Koch left U-382 for other duty. In the last days of the war he was killed in Germany.

  In aggregate, twenty-nine June boats actually reached patrol areas in distant waters of the Americas and West Africa: four Type IXs and twenty-five Type VIIs. These boats sank seventeen merchant ships for 107,300 tons and three sailing vessels, against the disastrous loss of fifteen U-boats, including the new IXD2 U-cruiser U-200. Three experienced skippers of IXs, Maus in U-185, Staats in U-508, and Eick in U-510, sank two-thirds of the total: eleven ships for about 77,000 tons. Twenty of the twenty-nine boats sank no ships; von Trotha in U-306 damaged one. However, as intended, these twenty-nine boats tied down a very large number of Allied forces over a huge area of the Atlantic, assured that the Allies would continue convoying, provided experience in the combat zones for the fourteen crews that survived, and relieved the congestion in the five overburdened U-boat bases in France.