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

by Clay Blair

  The Baker plan called for aircraft to be covering these dozen rectangles at all

  times. They were to fly singly around the legs of the rectangles on the same flight paths at preset intervals. In this way, Baker would cover the entire twenty thousand square miles of water every thirty minutes. This dense coverage would almost certainly prevent most U-boats from surfacing to charge batteries or to refresh the air in the boat and would catch any U-boat on the surface attempting to carry out these routines.

  The historian of U.S. Navy Fleet Air Wing 7 wrote that by D day the wing’s areas of responsibility were substantial. The wing flew seven B-24 missions daily per squadron. With three squadrons participating, that came to twenty-one missions each day. Including the temporarily assigned VB 114, the total increased to twenty-eight missions daily. On about July 1, VB 114 returned to Port Lyautey for further transfer to ASW duty in the Azores, augmenting the British B-17s and Wellingtons already based there. On July 15, owing to the absence of U-boats, the daily missions of Fairwing 7 were reduced to five per squadron, or fifteen aircraft per day.

  Second, surface ships.

  First Sea Lord Cunningham and Bertram Ramsay earmarked ten special task forces, or support groups, to form naval blockade lines running beneath the outer aircraft barriers more or less south from Ireland to Ushant. The task forces, or hunter-killer groups, were comprised of destroyers and frigates. Six groups were Royal Navy; four were Royal Canadian Navy, fulfilling a long-held Canadian desire for offensive action, as opposed to defensive convoy escort. The British groups (numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 14, and 15) were composed of destroyers. The Canadian groups (6, 9, 11, and 12) were composed of five destroyers each (11 and 12), and six frigates each (6 and 9). All ships in these ten groups were fitted with ten centimeter-wavelength search radar, upgraded active (“pinging”) sonar, Hedgehogs, and depth charges, as well as guns ranging in size from 20mm to 4.7 inches.

  Six of these groups (1, 2, 5, 6, 9, and 15), reinforced by three American-built British “jeep” carriers {Emperor, Pursuer, Tracker), formed a north-south “outer naval barrier” 130 miles west of Land’s End. The other four groups (3, 11, 12, and 14), all destroyers, formed a “middle naval barrier” to the east of the outer naval barrier. Including the screens of the three “jeep” carriers, these naval barriers comprised in all about sixty destroyer- or frigate-class warships. Eastward of these lines in the English Channel, other Allied destroyers and frigates formed similar north-south barriers to directly protect the streams of landing forces from any and all German warships (destroyers, torpedo boats, U-boats, midget submarines, and so on).*

  Inasmuch as the Type VII U-boats in French ports were immobile, safely housed in bombproof pens, the best opportunities for kills in the period preceding Neptune lay in Norwegian waters, to be covered by aircraft of 18 Group, and to a lesser extent by 15 Group, based mainly in northern England, Scotland, and islands to the immediate north. Theretofore Coastal Command had been barred from attacking U-boats in Norwegian waters lest its planes hit British-controlled submarines operating there. Hence Coastal Command’s sudden aerial onslaught caught the German U-boats by surprise and resulted in a substantial but largely unheralded victory. From May 1 to D day, aircraft of 15 Group and 18 Group hit twelve U-boats in Norwegian waters, sinking seven and damaging five.

  The stories of the seven U-boats sunk, in brief:

  On May 16 off Trondheim, a Sunderland of Norwegian Squadron 330 of 18 Group, piloted by C. T. Johnsen, attacked a U-boat thought to be the new VIIC U-240, commanded by Günter Link, age twenty-six. Flak killed one airman, wounded two, and heavily damaged the aircraft, which barely made it back to base. * Niestlé discounts this kill, listing U-240 as lost to unknown causes.

  • In the early hours of May 18 off Stadtlandet, a Catalina of British Squadron 210, also of 18 Group, piloted by B. Bastable, sank the new VIIC U-241, commanded by Arno Werr, age twenty-three. Bastable saw “many survivors” in the water, but all hands were lost.

  • On May 24 off Namsos, another Catalina of British Squadron 210 of 18 Group, piloted by a South African, F.W.L. Maxwell, fatally damaged the new VIIC U-476, commanded by Otto Niethmann, age twenty-four. The VIIC U-990> commanded by Hubert Nordheimer, raced to rescue the crew of U-476, Nordheimer took aboard twenty-one Germans, including Niethmann—ten from a raft and eleven from the wrecked hulk—and then sank the abandoned U-476 with a torpedo. Thirty-four other men of U-476 perished.

  • On the following day, May 25, while rescuer Nordheimer in U-990 was preparing to enter Trondheim with an escort, a B-24 of British Squadron 59 of 15 Group, piloted by B. A. Sisson, attacked the formation. Nordheimer and the escort hurled flak at the plane, but U-990’s 37mm flak gun failed and the B-24 dropped six depth charges, which sank the boat. The escort, Patrol Boat V-5901, rescued fifty-two Germans of U-476 and U-990, including Niethmann and Nordheimer. They returned to Germany to command big electro boats.

  • . On May 24, a Sunderland of a British training squadron, OTU 4, piloted by an Australian, T. F Peter Frizell, attacked the new U-675, commanded by Karl- Heinz Sammler, age twenty-five. Frizell dropped five depth charges, one of which hit and bounced off the forward deck and exploded. There were no German survivors. Frizell, an instructor, reported that bodies and wreckage (“oil drums and planking”) rose to the surface.

  • On May 27 off Trondheim, a B-24 of British Squadron 59 of 15 Group, piloted by a lawyer serving in the Canadian Air Force, V. E. Camacho, sank with six depth charges the new VIIC41 U-292y commanded by Werner Schmidt, age twenty-three. There were no survivors. *

  • In the early hours of June 3, a Canso (Catalina) of Canadian Squadron 162 of 18 Group, which had only just transferred to northern Scotland, braved heavy flak and sank with four depth charges the new snort boat U-477, commanded by Karl-Joachim Jenssen, age twenty-three. The pilot, Canadian R. E. MacBride, who circled the site for four hours, reported “at least five” survivors in the water, but they perished as well. The U-477 was the second snort boat (after U-575) to be sunk by Allied aircraft, the first by a land-based plane of Coastal Command.

  The five boats damaged by aircraft of 18 Group were, in brief:

  • On May 17 off Trondheim, a Catalina of Norwegian Squadron 333, piloted by Harald E. Hartmann, hit the newly arrived Arctic VII U-668, commanded by Wolfgang von Eickstedt, age twenty-eight. The Germans shot back and riddled the Catalina, killing one crewman. The damaged U-668 aborted to Trondheim for repairs. Pilot Hartmann limped back to base and landed the Catalina safely.

  • In the same area off Trondheim on May 21, a Sunderland of British training squadron OTU 4, piloted by E. T. King, hit the new Arctic VIIC41 U-995, commanded by Walter Köhntopp. King dropped six depth charges and strafed the boat, wounding five Germans. Köhntopp aborted to Trondheim for repairs and to replenish his crew.

  • On May 24 off Namsos, a Sunderland of Canadian Squadron 423, piloted by R. H. Nesbitt, attacked the VII U-921, commanded by Wolfgang Leu, age twenty-six, who was en route to search for survivors of the lost U-476. When the U-boat’s 37mm flak gun failed, Leu, who was wounded on the bridge, dived the boat, but he could not get below and he perished. His first watch officer, Rainor Lang, who was also wounded, took the boat into Trondheim. A wounded seaman died later. After repairs in Norway, the boat joined the Arctic force, commanded by a new skipper.

  • On May 25, an unidentified aircraft hit the U-276, commanded by Rolf Borchers, age thirty, while she was attempting to assist in the rescue of survivors from the sinking U-476. The U-276 incurred three casualties and such severe damage that she was retired to the Baltic for R&D experiments.

  On May 26 off Trondheim, two Mosquitos of Norwegian Squadron 333, piloted by Jacob M. Jacobsen and Hans Engebrigsten, hit the new nonsnort VII U-958, commanded by Gerhard Groth, age twenty-seven. The 57mm Tsetse cannon fire killed one German crewman and wounded two others. After repairs in Bergen and Kiel, the boat was transferred to the eastern Baltic*

  These British air a
ttacks in Norwegian waters significantly disrupted U-boat operations on the eve of Overlord. Owing to the massive number of air-dropped British offensive mines fouling the Baltic, the Germans had transferred most workup and training exercises to southern Norway, in particular snort familiarization and acclimation. This training could no longer be conducted without the likelihood of British air attacks, which could be especially lethal because most of the U-boat crews were green and the 37mm flak gun was still unreliable and unsafe.

  Moreover, frontline boats of the Arctic force and group Mitte and those transferring to group Landwirt in France were likewise vulnerable. Finally, the loss of about 350 submariners on the seven boats sunk and five boats damaged would have been sufficient to cadre at least eight big electro boats under construction, another setback to that program.

  Brian Baker’s 19 Group, dutifully patrolling the dozen rectangular subdivisions of the western English Channel area throughout the month of May, achieved only minor successes. Baker’s aircraft detected and harassed the five snort boats of group Dragoner carrying out test patrols in the English Channel from May 18 to May 27, and severely damaged the new Type VII nonsnort U-736, commanded by Reinhard Reff, age thirty, which sailed from Norway to Brest on April 1 to reinforce Landwirt.

  The credit for the hit on U-736 in the western area of the English Channel on the night of May 24 is still uncertain. Possibly it was inflicted by a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of British Squadron 612, piloted by a Canadian, Kenneth H. Davies, who did not return from this, his first mission. Or possibly it was inflicted by a Leigh Light-equipped B-24 of British Squadron 224, piloted by E. W. Lindsay, who dropped fourteen depth charges on or near a surfaced U-boat in two runs. Whatever the case, the U-736 limped into Brest under surface-ship escort the next night, May 25, but she did not sail again until August 5.

  U-BOATS DEPLOYED FROM FRANCE IN JUNE VERSUS NEPTUNE

  The Allied maritime forces and aircraft assigned to the Neptune phase of Overlord were enormous beyond imagining: 1,213 warships and 4,126 transports and landing craft, a total of 5,339 vessels. The warships included about two hundred destroyers (thirty-four American), destroyer escorts or frigates, sloops, and corvettes. Covering and backing up the maritime forces were 5,886 Allied bombers and fighters (3,612 American).

  In the early hours of June 6, when the Germans became aware of Neptune, Hans-Rudolf Rösing, chief of U-boats, West, directed group Landwirt to put to sea. Thirty-six Type VIICs responded immediately: eight snort boats (seven from Brest; one from La Pallice) and twenty-eight nonsnorts (nine from Brest; nineteen from Lorient, St. Nazaire, and La Pallice). In subsequent days, seven other snort boats put out, bringing the number of U-boats deployed from France in June to repel Allied invaders to forty-three (fifteen snort boats and twenty-eight nonsnorts) manned by about two thousand German submariners.*

  Fully aware that anti-invasion U-boat operations were to be hazardous in the extreme, upon receiving early word of the landings in the Bay of the Seine, Dönitz exhorted his submarine skippers to throw caution to the winds and make ever greater sacrifices:

  The enemy has started his invasion of Europe. The war has thus entered its decisive phase. If the Anglo-American landing succeeds, it would mean for us the loss of large territories vital to our war economy and an immediate threat to our most important industrial regions without which the war cannot be continued.

  The enemy is at his weakest at the very moment of landing. Everything must be done to hit him at this moment and to inflict such losses on him that he will have no desire ever to try any landings again. Only then, furthermore, can the forces lacking on the Eastern Front be sent there.

  Men of the U-boat arm! On you too the future of our German people depends, now more than at any other time. I therefore require of you the most unstinting action, and no consideration for otherwise valid precautionary measures. Each enemy vessel useful to him for landing is to be subjected to all-out attack, even when there is danger of losing your own U-boat. Every enemy man and enemy weapon destroyed before landing diminishes the enemy’s prospect for success. In this crisis I know that you men of the U-boat arm—who have been tried in the toughest battles—are men on whom I can rely.*

  The Neptune phase of Overlord provided Allied codebreakers with an unforeseen windfall. American and British airborne troops and others in Normandy had been ordered to cut all German communications lines they could find and they did a very good job. At Rösing’s headquarters in Angers on June 8, the communications officer informed U-boat Control in Berlin by “emergency radio circuit” that “all land-line connections with Berlin, Kiel, Wilhelmshaven, Paris, Brest, Aix and La Rochelle were out of order due to enemy action.” In a summary of Overlord operations, American codebreakers wrote,

  With this wholesale breakdown of land-line communications, emergency radio circuits... were put into operation for traffic between Control [and the U-boat] flotillas and other shore authorities. As a result [Enigma] traffic to be processed ... fully tripled in volume. The inner workings of the administrative, supply and command structures of the U-boat force were opened [to the Allies] for direct and current inspection. It became possible to follow U-boat operational orders, reports, controversies, confusions, and troubles of all sorts from one end of the Kriegsmarine hierarchy to the other and back again.

  The thirty-six Landwirt boats that sailed on D day to block Neptune had to contend with Coastal Command’s saturation ASW campaign, Cork (as in corking a bottle), mounted by Brian Baker’s 19 Group with an assist from 15 Group. The twenty-eight nonsnorts were especially vulnerable. Within the first ninety-six hours, British aircraft knocked out over one-third of that group: five sunk, five forced to abort.*

  The stories of the five nonsnorts that were sunk, in brief:

  On June 7 in the Bay of Biscay, a Sunderland of British Squadron 228, piloted by Charles Gordon Drake Lancaster, got the VII U-970, commanded by Hans-Heinrich Ketels, age twenty-six. German seaplanes rescued Ketels and thirteen others of the crew after twenty-three hours in the water. About thirty other Germans perished. Ketels returned to Germany to command a Type XXI electro boat. *

  • In the early hours of June 7, west of Brest, a B-24 of Bristish Squadron 53, piloted by John W. Carmichael, sank the VII U-629, a transfer from the Arctic force, commanded by Hans-Helmut Bugs, age twenty-seven. There were no survivors; three bodies were recovered.

  • Also west of Brest on June 8, a B-24 of Bristish Squadron 224, piloted by Canadian Kenneth Owen Moore, got the veteran U-373, commanded by Detlev von Lehsten, age twenty-six. A fishing smack rescued von Lehsten and forty-six others (who claimed they shot down the B-24) and landed them in France. Two German crewmen perished. Von Lehsten returned to Germany to fit out a big electro boat. Inasmuch as the Admiralty believed—wrongly—that Moore had unprecedentedly sunk U-373 and U-629 in a single sortie, it awarded him a DSO and the crewmen DFCs.

  • On June 9, near the western mouth of the English Channel, a B-24 of British Squadron 120 of 15 Group, on “Cork” patrol, piloted by Alfred Kenneth Sherwood, supposedly sank what was thought to be the new U-740, commanded by Günther Stark, age twenty-seven. However, Niestle lists U-740 as lost to unknown causes.

  • At midday on June 10, off Ushant, four Mosquitos of British Squadron 248, led by Stanley G. Nunn, and a B-24 of British Squadron 206, piloted by Alexander D. S. Dundas, teamed up to get the U-821, commanded by Ulrich Knackfuss, age twenty-three. German launches rescued a number of the crew but another flight of Mosquitos of Squadron 248, commanded by Max Geudj, shot up the launches. Other German launches finally rescued one wounded chief petty officer. All other crew of U-821 perished.

  The stories of the five nonsnorts that were forced to abort, in brief:

  • In the early hours of June 7, a B-24 of British Squadron 53 on Cork patrol, piloted by John William Carmichael, hit and damaged the U-963, commanded by Karl Boddenberg, age thirty. Damaged, Boddenberg returned to Brest within twenty-four hours of sailing and d
ry-docked for emergency repairs.

  • An hour later, pilot Carmichael hit the veteran (ex-flak boat) U-256, commanded by Wilhelm Brauel, age twenty-nine. Damaged, she limped into Brest on June 7. The Germans deemed this oft-battered boat unfit for further combat and decommissioned her. Thereafter Brauel took command of the aged VII U-92, whose skipper, Horst-Thilo Queck, returned to Germany to command a big electro boat.

  Decorated and promoted to Squadron Leader, Carmichael attacked another

  U-boat on June 13-14, but the boat (U-2701) shot down the B-24 with the loss of all hands.

  In the early hours of June 7, a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington and/or a B-24, and perhaps other aircraft as well, hit the U-415, newly commanded by the future author of Iron Coffins, Herbert Werner, age twenty-four. Werner claimed shooting down the Wellington and another aircraft (possibly a B-24) with his 37mm flak gun.* He rightly wrote that, in view of the density of Allied airpower engaged in Cork, he considered his patrol a “suicide” mission and he limped back to Brest with several wounded and severe battle damage. He dry-docked U-415 for emergency repairs, he stated, and went to a hospital to have a slight head wound dressed.

  • In Biscay on the early hours of June 7, several aircraft of 19 Group attacked Hardo Rodler von Roithberg in the VII U-989. Coastal Command gave credit for the damage to a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of British Squadron 179, piloted by W. J. Hill. A B-24 and a flight of Mosquitos that participated in the attack have not been positively identified. Wounded in the thigh by Mosquito gunfire, Rodler von Roithberg aborted to Brest for medical attention.

  • In the early hours of June 8, a Halifax of British Squadron 502, piloted by J. Spurgeon, found the VII U-41 J, commanded by a new skipper, Dieter Sachse, age twenty-six. Attacking into heavy flak, which badly riddled the Halifax, Spurgeon dropped a stick of four 600-pound bombs. The damage forced Sachse to abort to Brest for repairs.