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

by Clay Blair

  The Allies sank or caused the loss of seven of the sixteen boats engaged in these interbase transfers. In brief:

  • On the afternoon of August 9, a B-24 of British Squadron 53 of 19 Group, piloted by R.T.F. Gates, spotted a mile-long oil slick in the Bay of Biscay and then a submerged U-boat at the apex of the slick. This was the nonsnort U-608, commanded by Wolfgang Reisener, age twenty-five, en route from Lorient to La Pallice. Gates dropped a marker and six depth charges, then alerted British Support Group 2, composed of the sloops Starling and Wren and the Squid-equipped frigate Loch Killin.

  About an hour and a half later, the British hunter-killer group arrived at the scene, guided by a Sunderland. The ships found scraps of wood believed to be from the decking of a U-boat. However, the group could not get a sonar contact. Assuming the U-boat lay damaged on the bottom, Starling departed, leaving Wren, commanded by S.RJ. Woods, and Loch Killin to continue the search. Finally, at about ten o’clock that evening, Wren detected U-608 and dropped a salvo of depth charges that utterly wrecked the boat. In the early hours of August 10, Reisener surfaced and scuttled. Wren rescued all fifty-one men from U-608. Wing Commander Gates was awarded a DFC and promoted to Group Captain.

  In World War I, Allied aircraft sank only one confirmed U-boat. In World War II, land-and sea-based Allied aircraft, which proved to be the most effective U-boat killers, were involved in the sinking or destruction of 324 U-boats. Photos of some of the Allied antisubmarine aircraft may be found in Volume I. Others follow here.

  Indisputably the most effective anti-U-boat aircraft in World War II was the American-built Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber, shown here with British markings

  Another effective anti-U-boat aircraft was the American-built Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

  Yet another was the British-built Handley Page Halifax.

  The American-built Martin Mariner flying boat was designed to supplement or replace Catalinas and Sunderlands. However, owing to defects, the plane was a marginal anti-U-boat weapon.

  The British-built Arm-strong-Whitworth Whitley was employed extensively on anti-U-boat patrols in the earlier years of the war, but it was ultimately downgraded to a trainer.

  The British-built Vickers-Armstrong Wellington, fitted with radar and a powerful searchlight, proved to be a highly effective, medium-range antisubmarine workhorse, especially at night over the Bay of Biscay.

  Another workhorse anti-U-boat aircraft was the American-designed Lockheed Hudson, first cousin of the U.S. Navy’s Lockheed PV Ventura and the U.S.A.A.F.’s B-34.

  The long-range German Focke-Wulf Condor 200, military version of a civilian airliner, was pressed into service to hunt down convoys for the benefit of the U-boats and to attack Allied aircraft protecting the convoys. However, the plane and the aircrews were not suited to these tasks and failed.

  Medium-range Junkers 88 (JU-88s) were deployed to western France to repel Allied air attacks on U-boats in the Bay of Biscay. The planes were suitable for that task but were always in short supply.

  RAF Coastal Command deployed two types of fighter-interceptors over the Bay of Biscay and elsewhere to deal with the Focke-Wulf Condors and JU-88s. The first was a prewar British design, the Bristol Beaufighter.

  The second was the DeHavilland Mosquito, some of which were armed with 57mm nose cannons and were thus capable of attacking U-boats beyond the range of the German 20mm and 37mm antiaircraft arrays.

  From 1943, Allied escort carriers, such as the Santee shown here, were stationed in or near convoys to provide additional protection from U-boats. The carriers, in turn, were protected by several extra destroyers, frigates, or destroyer escorts.

  Carrier aircraft attacked U-boats in teams. The pilot of this Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter (British Martlet) attacked first, strafing the U-boat with machine guns to knock out the exposed German antiaircraft gunners on the bridgeworks.

  The second attack was mounted by the crew of this Grumman TBF Avenger. Conceived originally as an antiwarship torpedo bomber, the Avenger, armed with depth charges or Mark XXIV “Fido” homing torpedoes, was a rugged and highly effective anti-U-boat weapon.

  All convoy surface escorts and warships of hunter-killer groups grew in size and firepower as the war progressed through 1942 to 1945. In addition to the three antisubmarine warships pictured in Volume I, the following warships were produced in very large quantities by Allied shipyards.

  The 110-foot U.S. Navy submarine chaser (SC) 642. American shipyards turned out hundreds of these small warships. They were useful as training vessels or for convoy escort in relatively calm waters, such as the Gulf of Mexico, where no enemy aircraft were present.

  The 173-foot U.S. Navy patrol craft (PC) 565. American yards produced 417 of these small warships. They were also useful as training vessels and as convoy escorts in relatively calm waters where no enemy aircraft were present.

  The 306-foot U.S. Navy destroyer escort (DE) Levy. American shipyards built 573 warships of this or similar classes. They were not fast, but with at-sea refueling, they were perfectly suited for convoy escort.

  The 304-foot British-designed River-class frigate (PF) U.S.S. Natchez. The frigate was similar to the destroyer escort in size, characteristics, and armament. American yards turned out ninety-eight frigates and gave twenty-one of them to the Royal Navy. The Natchez (PF 2) was built in a Canadian shipyard and lent to the U.S. Navy.

  The 310-foot U.S. Navy fleet destroyer (DD) Harding. Fast and heavily armed, this destroyer type was the most formidable and effective of the blue-water convoy escorts and suited for operations where enemy aircraft were present.

  The heavily laden Liberty ship Mark Twain en route to a slot in a convoy column. U.S. shipyards mass-produced 2,700 Liberty ships in World War II, far outstripping U-boat successes against Allied merchant ships.

  The Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation, Portland, Oregon, one of dozens of wartime yards that produced Liberty ships.

  Nine Liberty ships lined up at the California Shipbuilding Corporation in Los Angeles give an idea of the magnitude of the work turned out by this wartime shipyard.

  Allied surface ships and aircraft relentlessly hunted down U-boats at sea. Here, three American destroyer escorts, Gandy, Joyce, and Peterson, manned by Coast Guard crews, destroy the Type IXC40 U-550 on April 16, 1944. The ships rescued twelve German survivors

  Aircraft from the American hunter-killer group built around the “jeep” carrier Card attacked and sank this Type VIIC U-664 on August 9, 1943. The Card group rescued forty-four German crewmen.

  An American hunter-killer group built around the “jeep” carrier Guadalcanal captured the Type IXC U-505 on June 4, 1944. Secretly towed to Bermuda Island, she yielded intelligence of great value to the Allies. Fully intact, in the postwar years she became a prime exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

  In 1996, salvors raised the Type IXC40 U-534, sunk off Denmark by RAF aircraft in the closing days of the war. She was barged to Liverpool, England, to become an exhibit in nearby Birkenhead.

  In the last few months of the war, the Germans commissioned two types of electro boats, one small and one large, capable of high sprint speed. This is a small Type XXIII, U-2361, which put in to England after the war for demolition. Armed with merely two torpedoes and too small for blue-water operations, these tiny U-boats were all but useless.

  The larger Type XXI electro boat was developed too late in the war to influence the outcome. Bombing attacks by Allied aircraft destroyed many under construction in shipyards like this. None saw combat.

  The U.S. Navy was allotted several Type XXI electro boats for evaluation purposes. The U-2513 shown here had been commanded briefly by one of the leading German U-boat aces, Erich Topp. As described in the Foreword of Volume I, the author boarded and inspected U-2513, which moored alongside his own submarine, U.S.S. Guardfish, at the U.S.N. Submarine Base, New London, Connecticut.

  Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as he appeared in German propaganda photos (
left) and as he appeared on trial at Nuremberg. He conducted a hard and tough but clean naval war. Of the senior Nazis tried at Nuremberg, Dönitz received the lightest sentence: ten years and twenty days in Spandau prison.

  A number of dead or captured German submariners were buried on U.S. soil during the war. This is the grave of a leading U-boat ace, Werner Henke, skipper of the IXC U-515, which was sunk April 9, 1944. Henke committed suicide at a secret POW interrogation center, Fort Hunt, Virginia, and was buried at Fort Meade, Maryland, now the home of the National Security Agency. Secret admirers frequently decorate Henke’s grave with flowers or a German flag.

  • In the early hours of August 12, the nonsnort U-981, temporarily commanded by Günther Keller, age twenty-five, en route from Lorient to La Pallice, hit a British mine. A Halifax of British Squadron 502 of 19 Group, piloted by J. Capey, saw and attacked the disabled boat with five 600-pound bombs. Soon other British aircraft converged on the scene. The mine and the bombs destroyed U-981. Twelve Germans were killed in the sinking, but forty men survived.

  Luckily for the survivors, the snort boat U-309, commanded by Hans-Gert Mahrholz, en route from Brest to La Pallice with about fifty crew and fifty passengers, was close by. Mahrholz rescued the forty men, including Keller, and took them into La Pallice. Owing to “nervous exhaustion,” Mahrholz was declared too ill for command and went on to other duty. Keller returned to Germany to command a new snort boat. The journalist-photographer Lothar-Gunther Buchheim (author of the novel Das Boot) was on board U-309 for this transfer voyage and after daylight, he was able to take dramatic pictures* of the forty survivors huddled in blankets topside on U-309.

  • Six unidentified twin-engine British aircraft detected, hit, and damaged the nonsnort U-766, commanded by Hans-Dietrich Wilke, age thirty-two, while the boat was en route from Brest to Bordeaux, from August 8 to 18. On the eleventh day of this harrowing voyage, Wilke reached the mouth of the Gironde, but due to enemy mines, Rösing redirected the boat to La Pallice. Upon arrival there on August 20, the U-766 was declared unfit for further war service and decommissioned. To deter her capture, on September 15 the Germans disabled the boat. Wilke went on to command of another VII, U-382, earmarked for evacuation from La Pallice to Norway. The U-766, a French war prize, was recommissioned Laubie.

  • Shortly after midnight on August 12, a Leigh Light-equipped Sunderland of Australian Squadron 461 of 19 Group, piloted by Donald A. Little, detected a surfaced U-boat off Lorient. This was the veteran nonsnort U-270, en route from Lorient to La Pallice. As related, this boat had been declared unfit for combat and her skipper, Paul-Friedrich Otto, and the entire crew had returned to Germany to commission a big electro boat. She was manned by a scratch crew from Lorient, commanded by Heinrich Schreiber, age twenty-seven, and also had on board about thirty other submariners, a total of eighty-one men. She carried two snorts lashed flat to the topside deck and snort spare parts below.

  When the Sunderland commenced its attack, Schreiber remained on the surface and opened fire with his flak guns. Nonetheless, the pilot held his course and dropped six depth charges, which closely straddled U-270. Seeing that these had wrecked the boat beyond repair, Schreiber ordered abandon ship and opened the bow torpedo-room loading hatch to speed the sinking. The Canadian destroyers Ottawa II and St Laurent of Support Group 11, boldly operating in the Bay of Biscay, recovered seventy-one of the eighty-one Germans, including Schreiber.

  • On August 14, a B-24 of British Squadron 53 of 19 Group, piloted by Gilbert G. Potier, detected and attacked the nonsnort U-6I8, commanded by Erich Faust, age twenty-three, en route from Brest to La Pallice. Two British frigates of Support Group 3, Duckworth and Essington, came up to assist in the kill. There were no survivors of U-6I8. The British awarded pilot Potier a second DFC.

  On August 18, Canadian Support Group 11, composed of four destroyers,* Group 12, which had been operating in Biscay also but was temporarily sent to shipyards because of accidents and mechanical breakdowns. Saskatchewan went to Canada for refit; Skeena and Ou’Appelle to England for extended repairs after a collision; Assiniboine, fresh from refit, to England after being “seriously damaged” by a “premature depth-charge explosion.” Some of these problems could be attributed to the thirst of the Canadian destroyer crews for offensive action. Restigouche remained with Support Group 11 only a week before she, too, aborted to England with “defects “

  • detected and attacked the snort boat U-62I, commanded by a hero of the channel battles, Ritterkreuz holder Hermann Stuckmann, who was en route from Brest to La Pallice. The Admiralty doubted that this attack resulted in a kill, but in a postwar reassessment, it credited the three remaining Canadian destroyers, Chaudiere, Kootenay, and Ottawa II. There were no German survivors. Stuckmann had enjoyed the prestige of his Ritterkreuz for only eight days.

  • On the same day, August 18, a Sunderland of British Squadron 201 of 19 Group, piloted by Leslie H. Baveystock, who had sunk the VII U-955 on D day plus one, detected and attacked the famous old IXB U-I07, en route from Lorient to La Pallice. Commanded by Karl-Heinz Fritz, age twenty-three, the U-I07 had recently been fitted with a snort and was earmarked for evacuation to Norway, thence to Germany and retirement. There were no survivors. For this second confirmed U-boat kill, the British awarded Baveystock a DSO.

  Apart from Mahrholz in the snort boat U-309, eight other U-boats that embarked on interbase transfers reached their destinations. These were: U-763, U-953, and U-963 from Brest to La Pallice, Bordeaux, and La Pallice, respectively; the U-260 from Lorient to La Pallice; the U-28I and U-437 from St. Nazaire to La Pallice; and the U-445 and U-650 from La Pallice to Lorient, each of the latter with about seventy-five tons of ammo. Upon arrival at their destinations, all of these boats, as well as U-309, were ordered to prepare for evacuation to Norway.

  EVACUATION OF THE TYPE VIIS FROM FRANCE

  From early August when Allied forces wheeled into Brittany, Dönitz assumed that the U-boat bases could not be held. The Allied invasion of southern France on August 15 (Dragoon) reinforced that assumption. Dönitz therefore directed the Chief, U-boats West, Hans-Rudolf Rösing, to prepare to evacuate to Norway all U-boats deemed fit to make the long (two-thousand-mile) and dangerous voyage, taking along certain key personnel, as much fuel oil as possible, and some valuable gear, such as spare radar and radar-detector sets, T-5 homing torpedoes, and the like. U-boats deemed unfit for the voyage were to be decommissioned and demolished.* All German personnel left at the deactivated bases, including submariners and submarine technicians, were to join the ground forces defending those places.

  The evacuation orders set in motion a reorganization or disbandment of the flotilla commands and a frenetic effort to equip all remaining VIIs with snorts and appoint temporary skippers and crews to man those boats whose captains and crew were unable to get back to the French bases from leave in Germany.

  In Brest, in compliance with orders from Dönitz, the commander of Combat Flotilla 9, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock (who had served on U-96, portrayed in Buchheim’s novel Das Boot), made plans to evacuate to Norway on a Type VII. Dönitz named Ritterkreuz holder Werner Winter (formerly of U-103), who was commander of Combat Flotilla 1 at Brest, temporary commander of naval defenses at this besieged and battered base.

  In Lorient, in compliance with orders from Dönitz, Ritterkreuz holder Günter Kuhnke (formerly of U-28 and U-125), commander of Combat Flotilla 10, also prepared to evacuate by U-boat. Dönitz merged Combat Flotilla 10 with Combat Flotilla 2 at Lorient, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Ernst Kals (formerly of U-130). Kals reorganized the personnel of the two merged flotillas as Stiitzpunkt Lorient to defend that place.

  At St. Nazaire, Dönitz ordered the commander of Combat Flotilla 6, Carl Emmermann (formerly of U-172), who wore the Ritterkreuz with Oak Leaves, to return to Germany (by auto, a wild ride) to command Training Flotilla 31, which was to develop tactics for the big Type XXI electro boat. Dönitz merged Combat Flotilla 6 with Combat Flotilla 7 at
St. Nazaire, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Adolf-Cornelius Piening (formerly of U-155). Piening reorganized the personnel of the two merged flotillas as Stiitzpunkt St. Nazaire to defend the city.

  At La Pallice, which was to become the last redoubt of the operational U-boats in France, Ritterkreuz holder Richard Zapp (formerly of U-66) remained commander of Combat Flotilla 3. However, he was outranked on August 8 when Hans-Rudolf Rösing arrived with a special radio-communications truck and established the temporary headquarters of Chief U-boats, West, in that port.

  At Bordeaux, the commander of Combat Flotilla 12, Klaus Scholtz (formerly of U-108), who wore Oak Leaves on his Ritterkreuz, came under intense pressure when Dragoon forces landed in southern France against slim German opposition on August 15. His operations were further handicapped when Allied aircraft heavily mined the Gironde River, the long waterway into Bordeaux. Owing to the rapid advances of Dragoon forces and to the infestation of Allied mines, Bordeaux was the first U-boat base in France to be closed down and completely evacuated of operational submarines and submarine personnel.

  During the chaotic events of August and September, thirty Type VIIs were evacuated from France to Norway.* Perhaps owing to the catastrophic U-boat losses or to the collapse of German forces in Normandy, or both, Dönitz felt the need to issue another exhortation. He radioed all U-boat skippers engaged in the evacuation: