by Clay Blair
Twenty-nine VIIs sailed from Norway in February, fifteen of them new boats making first patrols. Twelve were deep-diving VIIC41s. These boats sank sixteen Allied ships for 50,000 tons. Sixteen boats (55 percent) were lost with about eight hundred crew, eighty-eight of whom were captured, † For the second month in 1945, the Germans lost one U-boat for every Allied ship sunk, continuing the ruinous exchange rate.
Some February VII patrols in brief:
• The new VIIC41 U-1302, commanded by Wolfgang Herwartz, sailed from Norway on February 6. The boat snorted southabout Ireland, thence northeast into St. George’s Channel to an area off Milford Haven. There on February 28, Herwartz sank two small freighters, the 1,926-ton Panamanian Soreldoc and the 646-ton British Norfolk Coast In the same area three days later, on March 2, he sank two larger freighters inbound from the transatlantic Slow Convoy 167, the 4,536-ton British King Edgar and the 3,204-ton Norwegian Novasli. Total: four ships for 10,312 tons.
In terms of numbers of ships sunk, this was the best VII war patrol of 1945. However, the crew of U-1302 did not live to savor the achievement. Five nights later, on March 6, in the same area, the frigate La Hulloise of the Canadian hunter-killer Support Group 25, northbound in the Irish Sea, got a radar contact on U-1302’$ snorkel and periscope. Her skipper, John Brock, fixed a spotlight on the snort and periscope, forcing the U-boat deep. Brock did not attack but her alarm brought up two other frigates of the group, Strathadam and Thetford Mines. While the other two frigates held sonar contact, Howard Quinn in Strathadam made a perfect Hedgehog attack that destroyed U-1302. German food, books, clothing, shoes, snapshots, and “numerous other small objects,” including a harmonica, rose to the surface, but no German survivors or bodies.
• The new U-681, commanded by Werner Gebauer, sailed from Kristiansand on February 16. En route to the English Channel on March 6, Gebauer shot a T-5 at an ASW trawler, but it missed. Five days later, on March 11, while running submerged, the U-681 smashed into a rock near Land’s End and was so badly damaged that Gebauer surfaced to abandon ship and scuttle. As it happened, a B-24 of U.S. Navy Squadron VB 103, piloted by Norman R. Field, spotted the stranded U-681 and attacked from an altitude of one hundred feet, dropping eight depth charges that destroyed the boat. The crew jumped into the water, some with dinghies. In response to Field’s alarm, ships of British Support Group 2 came up and the frigate Loch Fada rescued thirty-eight Germans, including Gebauer. Pilot Field received both a British and an American DFC.
• The VIIC41 U-1003, commanded by Werner Strübing, sailed from Bergen for his second patrol on February 19. Control initially directed the boat to the English Channel but later it shifted the target area to North Channel and, possibly, the Irish Sea via that entry way. About seventeen days out, the snort blocked and felled a number of crewmen, but others made repairs while U-1003 lay in a remote bay on the west coast of Ireland. Strübing, who was dispirited and defeatist, according to some of his crewmen, reluctantly resumed the patrol.
While snorting off Loch Foyle, the waterway to the big Allied naval base at Londonderry, Northern Ireland, a few minutes before midnight on March 20, an undetected ship smashed into the upper works of U-1003. That ship was the Canadian frigate New Glasgow, outbound from Londonderry with three other frigates of Canadian hunter-killer Support Group 26. According to the Canadian naval historian Joseph Schull, when New Glasgow spotted U-1003’s snort, “she bore in at high speed” and hit the enemy vessel “with a grinding crash” and, although herself damaged badly, attacked with 600-pound depth charges and a Hedgehog.
Allied ASW doctrine of that time called for surface ships to hunt to exhaustion any possible U-boat contact, however uncertain, and to press all nearby warships into the chase. Thus while New Glasgow, commanded by Reader M. Hanbury, prepared to put back into Londonderry for repairs to her collision damage, three frigates of Canadian hunter-killer Support Group 25 raced out from Londonderry. and six warships of Canadian Escort Group C-4 joined the four remaining frigates of Canadian Support Group 26. In all, fourteen Canadian warships (including New Glasgow) hunted U-1003 for many, many hours without success.
The collision with and depth charges from New Glasgow severely damaged U-1003. The snort and attack periscope were bent flat back. The bridge rails, radar antennae, and one twin 20mm were carried away. Seawater flooded through a warped hatch into the conning tower and into the control room below. After slipping away, Strübing bottomed for about forty-eight hours to make repairs, but the damage was too great for the crew to overcome.
Shortly after midnight, March 23, Strübing surfaced to run to the coast of Ireland and beach. Some Canadian warships that were still in the vicinity got U-1003 on radar. Seeing these approaching warships, Strübing gave up the fight and at 4:30 a.m., scuttled and abandoned ship. Sixteen Germans, including Strübing, perished in the sinking. Some hours later, the Canadian frigate Thetford Mines of Support Group 25, inbound to Londonderry, picked up thirty-three German survivors from life rafts or dinghies, but two died before the frigate reached port.
• The veteran U-260, commanded by Klaus Becker, one of the last boats to evacuate from France, sailed from Kristiansand on February 21. Three weeks later, on March 12, while going southabout Ireland into St. George’s Channel, the U-260 hit a mine off Fastnet. As a result of the damage, Becker could not dive U-260 and reported that fact to Control, which ordered him to scuttle. When Becker and his crew struggled ashore, Irish authorities interned them.
The U-246, commanded by Ernst Raabe, left Bergen on her second patrol on February 22, and snorted southabout Ireland into the English Channel. Near the Lizard on the night of March 29, Raabe found a convoy and shot a T-5 at one of the trailing escorts, the Canadian frigate Teme. It hit and blew off about sixty feet of the frigate’s stern, but fortunately killed only four men. A Canadian sister ship, New Waterford, hunted for the U-boat while salvage vessels towed Teme into Falmouth, where she was declared a total wreck. That same night, it was thought another of the close escorts, the American-built British destroyer escort Duckworth, found, attacked, and sank U-246 with the loss of all hands.* However, Alex Niestl6 attributes her loss to unknown causes.
The new U-1195, commanded by Ernst Cordes, sailed from Bergen on February 24. He was the skipper who had drifted his VII, U-763, into the British naval base at Spithead during Overlord. He was therefore well acquainted with the difficult currents and shallow water in the English Channel and there was every expectation that U-1195 would survive. It took Cordes twenty-seven days to reach the English Channel. In St. George’s Channel on March 21, he found coastal convoy BTC 103 off Milford Haven. He shot and probably hit the American Liberty ship James Eagan Layne† which was so badly damaged that she had to be scrapped.
While bottomed off Portsmouth on the morning of April 6, Cordes heard the noise of ship propellers and rose to periscope depth to find an oncoming small coastal convoy, VWP 16. He fired T-5s at two different ships and sank the impressive 11,420-ton British freighter Cuba. She was by far the largest ship sunk by a U-boat in 1945.
Cordes bottomed U-1195 at ninety-eight feet, but the escorts easily found her and depth charges began to fall. The British destroyer Watchman, commanded by J. R. Clarke, carried out a deadly Hedgehog attack. Holed, the bow compartment of U-1195 flooded knee deep in two minutes and the men abandoned the room. When Cordes tried to surface, he found the boat was too heavily flooded and gave orders for a submerged escape from the control and after-torpedo rooms. The Watchman fished out eighteen Germans (of forty-nine), but Cordes was not among the survivors.
Twenty-nine VIIs sailed from Norway to British waters in March 1945. Fifteen were new boats on maiden patrols. In all, these U-boats sank nine ships for 20,000 tons, an average of one-third of a ship per boat per patrol. Seventeen of the twenty-eight (60 percent) that sailed were sunk, a loss of another eight hundred German submariners, fifty-four of whom were captured.*
Some March VII patrols, in brief:
• The
new VIIC41 U-1024, commanded by Hans-Joachim Gutteck, sailed from Kristiansand on March 3. Control directed him to go southabout Ireland and up through St. George’s Channel to the Irish Sea to an area near Anglesey.
While in St. George’s Channel, Gutteck conducted an aggressive patrol. On about April 4, he shot two torpedoes at a “corvette” and claimed a sinking, but it was not confirmed in Allied records. Several days later off Holyhead, he came upon inbound transatlantic convoy Halifax 346 and fired two torpedoes into the huge formation. One missile misfired, but the other hit the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship James W. Nesmith. Gutteck claimed she sank, but although badly damaged, Nesmith made port. Convoy escorts counterattacked U-1024, but Gutteck eluded them and bottomed in a hollow until they canceled the hunt.
While still in the Holyhead area on the morning of April 12, U-1024 sighted yet another formation of big ships: what Gutteck described as a 12,000-ton ocean liner and four other vessels of 8,000 to 12,000 tons. He shot three torpedoes at the formation and claimed sinking the 12,000-ton ocean liner, a freighter of 8,000 tons, and another of 6,000 tons, bringing his total claims for the patrol to one corvette and three merchantmen for 28,000 tons sunk and one 6,000-ton merchantman damaged. Allied records confirmed only one sinking in this third attack, the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Will Rogers, making Gutteck’s actual score one 7,200-ton Liberty ship sunk and one 7,200-ton Liberty ship damaged.
British hunter-killer Support Group 8, patrolling nearby, pounced on U-1024. That evening one of the frigates, Loch Glendhu, blew U-1024 to the surface with a Squid attack. Two other frigates, Loch Achray and Loch More, joined in the hunt. Believing his U-boat to be doomed, Gutteck ordered the crew to abandon ship and scuttle, but the scuttling went awry and salvage parties from the frigates boarded and captured U-1024 and obtained valuable gear and papers.† In this melee, eight Germans were killed, including Gutteck, who shot himself, or so the Germans asserted. The British held the other thirty-seven German crewmen belowdecks on U-1024. One frigate, Loch More, took the U-boat in tow, but a thick fog enveloped the formation and shortly after midnight on April 13, U-1024 broke loose, swamped, and sank. The frigates rescued the thirty-seven German survivors.
• The U-1202, commanded by Rolf Thomsen, sailed from Bergen on her second patrol on March 4. Thomsen had won a Ritterkreuz for his bold, solo attack on a convoy in St. George’s Channel on December 10 during his first patrol. He had claimed sinking four freighters for 26,000 tons, but only one, the American Liberty ship Dan Beard, was confirmed.
Thomsen conducted what Control believed to be another sensational patrol. On March 21, he claimed that he sank a destroyer and got two hits on a “jeep” carrier that produced sinking noises, but neither claim was confirmed. Ten days later he claimed he hit two Liberty-size ships and sank both for a total of 14,000 tons. However, these sinkings could not be confirmed either. In the same area on the following day, April 1, Thomsen claimed that he sank two corvettes and damaged another 7,000-ton freighter. Again, none of these successes could be confirmed.
However, inasmuch as Thomsen’s total claims in two patrols were a destroyer, two corvettes, and six freighters for 40,000 tons sunk, as well as damage to a carrier and another big freighter, Dönitz awarded Thomsen Oak Leaves to his Ritterkreuz. This was the first such high honor to be given an Atlantic skipper since the Oak Leaves awarded to Werner Henke, skipper of 17-575, nearly two years earlier.*
Thomsen returned U-1202 to Norway on April 27. He did not make another patrol. The U-1202 was sunk in Bergen on May 10 and later salvaged by the Norwegian Navy, which rechristened her Kynn.
• The new VIIC41 U-1023, commanded by Heinrich Schroeteler, sailed from Norway on March 7. This was Schroeteler’s second command. Earlier, he had been skipper of one of the first Type VII snort boats in the Atlantic, U-667. Almost alone he had praised the snort (“He who knows how to snorkel lives longer”) in a long message that Dönitz distributed widely throughout the U-boat service to build confidence in the device. After four patrols on U-667, Schroeteler had left the boat to relieve Adalbert Schnee as first staff officer in U-boat Control, Berlin. There he met and married the daughter of Admiral Rolf von der Marwitz.
Schroeteler was a free spirit with an artistic temperament. He did not like desk duty in Berlin. He persuaded Dönitz’s son-in-law, Günter Hessler, to send him back to sea. In Norway, Schnee gave him command of U-1023, replacing her first skipper. Merely to be different, he said later, Schroeteler did not wear the traditional captain’s white cap.
Schroeteler conducted an aggressive patrol. Southbound off North Channel on April 9, he intercepted Slow Convoy 171 and fired three torpedoes into the formation, almost hitting the Canadian frigate Capilano. Ten days later, he came upon another convoy off the southern tip of Ireland. He shot three torpedoes into this formation and claimed sinking an 8,000-ton freighter, but it was not confirmed in Allied records. In the same area four days later, he came upon a coastal convoy, TBC 135, and shot two torpedoes at a 10,000-ton freighter. He claimed another possible sinking, but it was not so. Allied records showed that he hit—and damaged—the 7,300-ton British freighter Riverton, but she made port. Upon receiving word of Schroeteler’s supposed three big successes for 26,000 tons, Dönitz presented him a Ritterkreuz by radio, the last such award to a U-boat skipper in the war.
Proceeding into the English Channel on May 6, near Portland, Schroeteler shot a T-5 at a “destroyer” or “corvette.” It hit and sank the vessel, which proved to be the small (335-ton) British minesweeper NYMS 382. She was the last Allied warship to be sunk by a U-boat in the war. Upon receiving word of the German surrender, Schroeteler put into Portland on May 12, completing a forty-nine-day cruise,†
• The new VIIC41 U-1063, commanded by Karl-Heinz Stephan, sailed from Kristiansand on March 12 to patrol the mouth of the English Channel between Land’s End and Brest: Stephan attempted to navigate submerged by means of an Elektra-Sonne antenna mounted on the snort, but the system was not yet reliable. Off Land’s End shortly before midnight on April 15, Stephan rose to periscope depth to take a navigational bearing on the English coast, snort raised and ready.
British Support Group 17 got a radar contact on U-1063’s snort. The very capable frigate Loch Killin carried out three attacks, dropping twenty-one depth charges. German survivors said these attacks damaged U-1063, but not enough to justify Stephan’s panicky order to surface and abandon ship. When the U-boat popped up, Loch Killin raked her with gunfire, killing several Germans. Others, including Stephan, the second watch officer, and a chief petty officer, drowned. The frigates rescued seventeen German survivors.
• The U-396, commanded by a new skipper, Hillmar Siemon, also sailed from Norway on March 13. His primary mission was to report weather, and secondarily to sink ships. It was thought that while the boat was homebound near the Orkneys, a B-24 of British Squadron 86, piloted by J. T. Laurence, attacked and sank the boat with the loss of all hands. However, Niestlé writes that U-396 was lost to unknown causes.
• One of the newly arrived VIICs, U-905, commanded by Bernhard Schwar-ting, also sailed from Norway on March 13. It was believed that on March 20, a B-24 of British Squadron 86, piloted by N.E.M. Smith, possibly spotted U-905 west of the Orkney Islands. The aircraft attacked with two Fido homing torpedoes. On March 31, Control directed Schwarting to patrol west of the English Channel, but nothing further was ever heard from U-905. *
• Another newly arrived VIIC41, the U-321, commanded by Fritz Berends, sailed from Kristiansand on March 17. On April 2, a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of Polish Squadron 304, piloted by R. Marczak, spotted her snort and periscope about 150 miles off Cape Clear, the southernmost tip of Ireland. The boat dipped under but Marczak attacked at an altitude of 120 feet with six depth charges which, it was assumed, destroyed U-321. Nothing further was ever heard from her.
• The new VIIC, U-1106, commanded by Erwin Bartke, age thirty-three, sailed from Kristiansand on March 23. Bartke had commis
sioned and commanded the “Milk Cow” tanker U-488 from February 1943 to March 1944. On the seventh day out from Norway, the crew of a B-24 of British Squadron 224, piloted by M. A. Graham, spotted a snort and periscope. Graham attacked with depth charges, which blew the stern of the boat to the surface. He then dropped a pattern of sonobuoys that returned noises that sounded like a dying U-boat. Nothing further was heard from U-1106.
• Another VIIC41, the U-326, commanded by Peter Matthes, sailed from Bergen on March 29. Nearly a month later, on April 25, while on patrol just southwest of Brest, a B-24 of U.S. Navy Squadron VB 103, piloted by Dwight D. Nott, sighted a snort and a periscope. Nott attacked with depth charges, reporting that the snort jumped out of the water. Later the aircrew saw a body floating on the surface. This was the end of U-326 and all hands.
• The new VIIC41, U-1107, commanded by Fritz Parduhn, sailed from Horten on March 30. West of Brest on April 18, Parduhn came upon the transatlantic convoy Halifax 348 and boldly attacked. His torpedoes sank two valuable loaded ships: the 8,000-ton British tanker Empire Gold and the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Cyrus H. McCormick. In terms of confirmed tonnage sunk (15,209), this was the third best patrol of any VII in 1945.
It was a victory not long celebrated by the Germans. On April 30 a Catalina of U.S. Navy Squadron VP 63, piloted by Frederick G. Lake, spotted the snort spray of U-1107 near the western mouth of the English Channel. Lake carried out a textbook retrobomb attack on the snort, firing twenty-four retrorockets from an altitude of one hundred feet. Debris rose to the surface. Responding to Lake’s alarms, British hunter-killer Group 1, sixty miles away, came up and got a bottom sonar contact and found oil.