by Clay Blair
Allied forces sank seven of the eleven before they completed these transit patrols. Therefore only four snort boats reached France from Norway and one, U-673, came there by mistake. The stories of the seven lost snort boats, in brief:
• While approaching the western end of the English Channel, the U-767, commanded by Walter Dankleff, age thirty-seven, sank the 1,370-ton British frigate Mourne on June 15. Three days later, on June 18, British Support Group 14, composed of five veteran destroyers (Fame, Havelock, Hotspur, Icarus, Inconstant), detected U-767. Attacking with her Hedgehog, Fame reported “two or three hits at ninety-five feet.” Fame, Havelock, and Inconstant then carried out three deliberate depth-charge attacks in the next hour.
These attacks wrecked U-767 and drove her to the bottom at a depth of 240 feet. Remarkably, one of the fifty-man crew, a stoker, Walter Schmietenknop, escaped through a torpedo tube amid the depth charges and rose to the surface to be rescued by Fame. All other Germans perished.
• While passing near the Faeroes on the night of June 15, the U-971, commanded by Walter Zeplien, age twenty-five, repelled an attack by a Sunderland of British training squadron OTU 4. Five nights later, on June 20, as Zeplien approached the western mouth of the English Channel, a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of Canadian Squadron 407, piloted by F H. Foster, attacked with depth charges and damaged three of U-97Fs four bow tubes. On June 21, two other Coastal Command aircraft hit the boat: a Sunderland of British Squadron 228 and a Halifax of British Squadron 502. Although several of his torpedo tubes were wrecked, Zeplien attempted but was unable to comply with orders from Hans- Rudolf Rösing to proceed to Cherbourg to attack big ships shelling that place.
Hounded by Allied air and surface ASW forces, on June 24 Zeplien aborted his patrol and headed for Brest. However, a B-24 of Czechoslovak Squadron 311, piloted by Jan Vella, sighted U-971, attacked with rockets and depth charges, and homed in two destroyers, the British Eskimo and the Canadian Haida. When depth charges from the two ships wrecked and flooded the boat knee deep, Zeplien issued a round of beer, thanked the men for their loyalty, then ordered them to surface and scuttle. The Allied destroyers rescued Zeplien and fifty-one others of U-971; one German perished.
The U-988, commanded by Erich Dobberstein, age twenty-four. Very little is known with certainty about the loss of this boat. She made her “passage report” (upon reaching the North Atlantic) on D day, June 6. Two days later, Control ordered her (and three other snort boats from Norway) to the Allied landing area in the Bay of the Seine at maximum speed, cruising on the surface when possible. On June 16, Control assumed she had reached the English Channel and so logged. Two nights later, on June 18, U-988 reported that she had been attacked by an aircraft. Although Control assumed she reached the landing area and subsequently ordered her to Lorient, nothing further was ever heard from U-988*
• The U-1191, commanded by Peter Grau, age twenty-four, reached the western entrance of the English Channel, but apparently had no opportunity to attack Allied forces. In wartime, the Admiralty credited two British frigates, Affleck and Balfour, with the kill of U-1191 on June 25 but recently declared the cause to be unknown. There were no survivors.
• The U-678, commanded by Guido Hyronimus, age twenty-five, who had lost his first command, U-670, in a Baltic collision, reached the Bay of the Seine in late June. On the night of July 5-6, Hyronimus attacked a convoy but had no success. Three warships, the Canadian destroyers Ottawa and Kootenay of Support Group 11 and the British corvette Statice of the convoy escort, pounced on and sank the U-678 with the loss of all hands.
• The U-243, commanded by Hans Martens, age twenty-six, shot down a JU-88 by mistake on the night of June 9-10 and almost torpedoed a recalled non- snort boat, U-1000. Five days later, Martens aborted to Bergen with a badly dam aged diesel engine and resailed to the English Channel on June 20. En route, Control diverted the U-243 to Brest.
On the afternoon of July 8, a Sunderland of Australian Squadron 10 of 19 Group, piloted by William Boris Tilley, found U-243 on the surface about ninety miles from Brest and attacked with machine guns and depth charges. Another Sunderland of that squadron and a U.S. Navy B-24 of Squadron VB 105, piloted by Aurelian H. Cooledge, joined the attack and both dropped depth charges. These attacks mortally wounded Martens and flak gunners topside. Belowdecks, the engineer, Wolfgang Heinze, scuttled and went down with the boat. British destroyers of hunter-killer Support Group 14 rescued thirty-eight of the fifty-man crew.
• The U-719, commanded by Klaus-Dietrich Steffens, age twenty-six, was directed to patrol the mouth of North Channel. On June 26, British forces detected the boat and launched an intense air and surface hunt. The British destroyer Bull dog, commanded by J. H. Pennell, delivered the coup de grace to U-719 west of Bloody Foreland. There were no German survivors.
The four snort boats from Norway that ultimately reached France did so with difficulties. In brief:
• The U-480, commanded by Hans-Joachim Forster, age twenty-four, sailed from Norway on June 10 to the Bay of the Seine. The outer hull of this boat had a coating of antisonar material (Alberich). Four days out, on June 13, a Canso of Canadian Squadron 162, piloted by Laurance Sherman, attacked U-480. The German flak gunners riddled the Canso, forcing Sherman to ditch. Three of the eight airmen, including Sherman, died in the crash; five got into an inflatable raft. Four of the five survivors died on the raft. On the tenth day after the crash, June 22, a Norwegian whaler rescued the lone survivor, J. E. Roberts, and turned him over to the Germans. Hans-Rudolf Rösing directed Forster in U-480 to abort his voyage to the Bay of the Seine and to put into Brest. The U-480 arrived there on July 6 but did not resail for a month.
• The U-671, commanded by Wolfgang Hegewald, age twenty-six, reached the Bay of the Seine on June 25. During the following week, enemy warships hounded and harassed U-671, thwarting any attacks on enemy vessels, except a single T-5 that malfunctioned and missed a “destroyer.” While the boat was bottomed at 203 feet on July 2, a group of “destroyers” detected her and attacked with depth charges. Hegewald fired two T-5s at these ships but both torpedoes failed. After finally shaking the hunters, Hegewald realized that U-671 was badly damaged and he aborted to Boulogne, arriving on July 5 with a completely dead battery. Inasmuch as there were no submarine technicians in that place, Rösing ordered thirty from St. Nazaire to repair U-671 in Boulogne.
• The U-247, commanded by Gerhard Matschulat, age twenty-four, was directed to patrol off northwest Scotland near the mouth of North Minch, between the Butt of Lewis and Cape Wrath. In the late daylight hours of July 5, Matschulat came upon a half dozen armed fishing trawlers about eighteen miles west of Cape Wrath. He chose one, the 207-ton Noreen Mary, for a target and shot three torpedoes at her.
All missiles malfunctioned or missed, a frustrating outcome that prompted Matschulat to surface and sink the trawler with his flak guns. The gunfire killed six of the ten men on the trawler, including the skipper, John Flockhart. Two other men perished in the water. Another trawler, Lady Madeleine, rescued two survivors, William Pryde, who said he had forty-eight shrapnel wounds, and James MacAlister, who reported fourteen wounds. Later, in a sworn affidavit, MacAlister accused Matschulat of shooting at him while he clung to the wreckage of a lifeboat.*
Matschulat patrolled North Minch for another week without further success. He then set sail for Brest, arriving on July 27. In his postpatrol debriefing, he reported that U-247 had neither seen by periscope nor heard by hydrophones any convoys. His flotilla commander approved the sinking of the trawler and praised Matschulat for his “great offensive spirit and verve.”
• The U-673, commanded by Heinz-Gerd Sauer, age twenty-nine, carried out a weather-reporting patrol south of Iceland partly to battle test his experimental Type VI bridge configuration. Control directed Sauer to return U-673 to Norway, but he did not get this message and proceeded to France. Surprised by the arrival of the boat off Lorient on July 21, Rösing directed Sauer to put into St. Nazai
re. Upon his arrival there on July 23, Sauer went on to other duty.
Eleven new snort boats survived the surprise Allied air assault off Norway in May and early June and sailed to reinforce the Atlantic U-boat force. Seven of these were lost. About 350 more submariners in those boats failed to return (eighty-seven were captured), enough to cadre another eight big electro boats. The other four positively sank two ships: the 1,370-ton British frigate Mourne and the 207-ton fishing trawler Noreen Mary.
All told, between June 3 and July 8, the Allies sank fourteen snort boats opposing Neptune, three operating from France and eleven en route from Norway to France. The figure includes another four snort boats lost in Norwegian waters, as will be described: the VIICs U-423, U-478, and U-715, and the IXC40 U-1225. About six hundred Germans serving on these boats were lost, 105 captured,*
FURTHER ALLIED ATTACKS ON U-BOATS IN NORWEGIAN WATERS
Group Mine (Central), the twenty-odd VIIs based in southern Norway being held on six hours notice to repel an Allied invasion of that area or Denmark, was not a model of the legendary German efficiency on D day, June 6. Rather, it was a ragtag group composed of nonsnort VIIs recalled from transfer to France, and other VIIs, some still in workup, which sailed from ports in southern Norway and Kiel. On June 8, only ten VIIs of Mitte were in place at sea. Including the recalled VIIs, on June 9 Mitte at sea increased to twelve boats and on June 11, to sixteen, its peak strength. Inasmuch as the Allies showed no signs of invading Norway or Denmark, on June 24 Dönitz directed that the Mitte group at sea be reduced to six boats and transferred the surplus boats to the Arctic or to the Baltic Sea to help repel Soviet forces advancing from the east.
While the land battles raged on the Normandy beachhead, the Allies continued the vigorous campaign against U-boats in Norwegian waters. In the three weeks from June 11 to July 3, Allied forces knocked out another thirteen U-boats: six sunk, seven forced to abort to Norway, one of the latter so badly damaged that she was retired. The stories of the seven lost boats, in brief:
• North of the Shetlands on the afternoon of June 11, a Canso of Canadian Squadron 162 of 18 Group, piloted by Laurance Sherman, attacked the new non-snort VII U-980, commanded by Herman Dahms, age twenty-eight. The German flak gunners threw up heavy fire but Sherman bore through to drop four depth charges that sank U-980. Sherman reported wreckage and “about thirty-five men” in the water. None of these Germans survived. As related, three days later pilot Sherman attacked the France-bound snort boat U-480, only to be shot up and forced to ditch, resulting in his death and the loss of six of his seven crew.
• Off Trondheim on June 13, yet another Canso of the Iceland-based Canadian Squadron 162, piloted by Wing Commander Cecil St. George William Chapman, sighted the periscope and snort of the new U-715, commanded by Helmut Röttger, age twenty-five. Chapman forced U-715 to the surface with four depth charges, then killed three of her crew on deck with machine-gun fire. Röttger, in turn, raked the Canso with his 37mm flak gun and Chapman was forced to ditch. Three of the eight crewmen of the Canso perished; five were picked up by a British air-sea rescue launch after eight hours adrift in the water. Wing Commander Chapman received an immediate DSO. The second pilot, J. M. McRae, and the three others also won high awards.
The U-715 sank in this action. British air-sea rescue launches picked up sixteen of the forty-five Germans, but Röttger was not among them. The German survivors told British interrogators that Röttger had “lost control of himself during the air attack” and “shot himself during the sinking.”
• Off Narvik on June 15, the British submarine Satyr, commanded by T. S. Weston, sank the Arctic-bound nonsnort U-987, commanded by Hilmer Karl Schreyer, age twenty-eight, onetime enlisted quartermaster on Günther Krech’s highly successful U-558. In his attack, Weston fired a full bow salvo of six torpedoes. Two fouled and prematured, but two hit U-987, Weston thought. There were no German survivors.
• Off Stadtlandet on June 17, a Catalina of Norwegian Squadron 333 of 18 Group, piloted by Carl Fredrik Krafft, sank the new snort boat U-423, commanded by Klaus Hackländer, age twenty-seven. The U-423 had sailed from Kiel on June 9 and was en route from Norway to France. There were no survivors.
• Off Trondheim on June 24, yet another Canso of Canadian Squadron 162, piloted by David E. Hornell, found the new Type IXC40 snort boat U-1225, commanded by Ernst Sauerberg, age thirty, who was outbound for a weather-reporting patrol. As airman Hornell began his attack, Sauerberg stayed on the surface and threw up heavy flak that blew off the starboard engine of the Canso and set the wing on fire.
Heroically carrying out his attack plan, Hornell sank U-1225 with depth charges and then ditched. He and his copilot, Bernard C. Denomy, and six other airmen piled into a single life raft. Two enlisted men died in the raft. Eventually a Catalina of Norwegian Squadron 333, piloted by the aforementioned Carl Krafft, and a Warwich of British Squadron 281 found the six survivors and directed an air-sea rescue launch to the scene. Hornell died on board the launch, but five Canadian airmen lived.
British authorities awarded Hornell a posthumous Victoria Cross, the first such high honor to be earned by a Canadian airman and the first for Coastal Command. Second pilot Denomy got a DSO and the other four men received high awards. The Norwegian airmen reported “thirty-five to forty” Germans of U-1225 in the water, but none survived.
• Off Trondheim on June 26, a B-24 of British Squadron 86 of 18 Group, piloted by Geoffrey William Tyndall Parker, sank the Mine boat U-317, a nonsnort VIIC41, commanded by Peter Rahlf, age thirty-five, making his first war patrol. There were no survivors. Although badly damaged by flak, Parker was able to fly the B-24 to an alternate base, after which the plane was scrapped.
• On June 30, another Canso of Canadian Squadron 162, flown by R. E. McBride (who, as related, had sunk U-477 on June 3), sighted the periscope of the new snort boat U-478, commanded by Rudolf Rademacher, age twenty-five. Circling the area near the submerged U-boat, McBride homed in a Sunderland and two B-24s of British Squadron 86 and set up an aerial hunt to exhaustion. Already low on fuel, the Sunderland soon had to leave; but three hours later, when U-478 surfaced, McBride in the Canso and the two B-24s were still circling nearby.
Flying into heavy flak that damaged his Canso, McBride attempted to depth-charge U-478, but the charges failed to release. Thereupon he homed in one of the B-24s, piloted by N.E.M. Smith, which sank U-478 with six depth charges. There were no German survivors.
The stories of the six U-boats that aborted, in brief:
• The snort boat VIIC U-290, commanded by Helmut Herglotz, age twenty-six. On the afternoon of June 14, a Mosquito of Norwegian Squadron 333, crewed by Erling U. Johansen and Lauritz Humlen, attacked U-290 with the 57mm Tsetse cannon and a single depth charge. Herglotz claimed he shot down an Allied aircraft, but that assertion has not been confirmed in postwar records. Having incurred eight wounded, he aborted to Egersund. After repairs and remanning, the boat went to the eastern Baltic in August.
• The new Type VIIC41 snort boat U-998, commanded by the ill-starred old hand Hans Fiedler, age twenty-nine, second skipper of Reinhard Suhren’s famous VII U-564, which was forced to scuttle off Spain with aircraft damage. On the afternoon of June 16, the same Norwegian Mosquito, crewed by Johansen and Humlen, attacked U-998 with 57mm cannon fire and two depth charges. Fiedler incurred “severe” damage, called for help, and aborted. Upon limping into Bergen, this severely damaged boat was retired, * and Fiedler went to France to command a third boat.
• The new IXC40 snort boat U-804, commanded by Herbert Meyer, age thirty-three, outbound for a weather patrol. While attempting to assist Hans Fiedler in the damaged U-998 on the evening of June 16, another Mosquito of Norwegian Squadron 333, crewed by Jacob M. Jacobsen and Per C. Hansen, hit U-804. Meyer shot down the Mosquito but incurred eight wounded (three serious) and also aborted to Bergen. Another of the France-bound recalled nonsnort boats, U-1000, commanded by Willi Müller age thirty-two, rescued Jacobsen and
Hansen, and aborted to Norway. After repairs and remanning in Norway, on June 19 Meyer in U-804 resailed to the Atlantic for a weather patrol. Subsequently, Müller took the U-l000 to the eastern Baltic.
When Allied intelligence DFed the weather reports from Meyer in U-804, the American Tenth Fleet diverted a homebound hunter-killer group, built around the “jeep” carrier Wake Island, to kill the boat. On August 2, the American destroyer escorts Fiske and Douglas L. Howard of this group spotted U-804 on the surface and attacked. Meyer dived and fired three T-5s at his pursuers. One hit the Fiske, which broke in half and sank in ten minutes. Thirty men perished and fifty were wounded. Another American destroyer escort of the group, Farquhar, rescued 186 men of Fiske (including the fifty wounded) and sped west to Argentia.
Meyer in U-804 continued his weather-reporting patrol and returned safely to Norway on October 7, completing a voyage of 111 days.
• The new VII snort boat U-743, commanded by Helmut Kandzior, age twenty-four, outbound from Kiel to Norway. On June 20, a B-24 of British Squadron 86 of 18 Group, piloted by an Australian, E. D. Moffit, hit the U-743 with eight depth charges. In this attack, which damaged the boat, one German gunner was killed and two were wounded and Kandzior aborted to Bergen. After repairs in Norway, the boat resailed to the Atlantic in late August. While on a mission in another B-24 on June 26, Moffit and his aircrew disappeared.