by Clay Blair
17. Includes Greek freighter Peleus, whose survivors Eck was accused of shooting in the water.
18. En route from Penang to France, rescued 135 survivors of the German tanker Brake and returned to Jakarta, Java.
19. Wintermeyer went on to other duty because of his inability to handle personnel.
20. Diverted from the Americas to be a provisional refueler; thereafter patrolled to Freetown.
21. Another gift from Hitler to Japan (“Marco Polo II”), redesignated RO-501. She sailed from Kiel with a German skipper and a Japanese crew, all killed in the sinking.
22. Patrolled from Penang to the Indian Ocean and returned to Penang.
23. Seized by the Japanese, redesignated 1-502.
24. Seized by the Japanese, redesignated 1-506.
25. Seized by the Japanese, redesignated 1-505.
26. Seized by the Japanese, redesignated 1-501.
APPENDIX 5
1. Mützelburg was killed in a swimming accident at sea.
2. Landed agent in New Brunswick, Canada, 11/9/42.
3. Includes destruction of the American gunboat Erie, prototype of Treasury-class U.S. Coast Guard cutters.
4. Planted a fallow minefield near Ambrose Lightship in the approaches to New York on 11/10/42. Sank the one ship by torpedo.
5. Recalled to attack Torch forces, but Steinhoff fell ill and aborted.
6. While outbound, met inbound blockade-runners Regensburg and Pietro Orseolo and gave them Metox gear.
7. Was assigned to carry out a special mission to pick up POWs who were to escape from a prison camp in Canada. After U-376 was correctly assumed to be sunk outbound in Biscay, the mission into the Gulf of St. Lawrence was carried out by the “backup,” U-262. Mission unsuccessful.
8. Outbound, served as a provisional tanker for boats on the North Atlantic run; thereafter laid mines off Halifax on 6/1/42, which sank one ship and damaged another.
9. Guggenberger, who gained fame on U-81 in the Mediterranean for sinking the British carrier Ark Royal, was initially reassigned to commission a new U-boat, but was diverted to France to command U-513.
10. Probably shot down a U.S. Navy Mariner on 8/3.
11. Shot down a Whitley in Biscay on 6/14 and a U.S. Navy B-24 on 8/11.
12. Shot down ASW blimp K-74 near Key West, Florida.
13. Shot down a U.S. Navy Mariner patrol plane.
14. En route to Brazil, diverted to refuel three Monsun boats and returned to France.
15. Refueled U-527 and returned to France.
16. U-230 and U-566 laid minefields at Norfolk on 7/27 and 7/30, respectively, and U-107 laid a field at Charleston on 8/28. No field produced a sinking, but U-566 sank with torpedoes the yacht Alva, built in Kiel and commissioned as the gunboat Plymouth. U-607 was to lay a field at Kingstown, Jamaica, but was sunk outbound in Biscay. U-613 was to lay a field at Jacksonville, Florida, but was lost en route. U-l 17 was to lay a field at New York but was diverted to be a refueler and was lost. U-218 was to lay a field in Trinidad but aborted in Biscay.
17. Shot down a Ventura.
18. Possibly shot down an aircraft from Card.
19. Damaged and interned for the rest of the war in Vigo, Spain.
20. Outbound, met the inbound Japanese submarine “Flieder,” or 1-8.
21. Laid mainefield off Panama on 10/10.
22. Was assigned to carry out special mission Kiebitz (Lapwing) to pick up German POWs, including Otto Kreschmer, who were to escape from a camp in Canada. After the boat was sunk in the Bay of Biscay, the mission was assigned to the backup, U-536.
23. Laid minefield off St. John’s, Newfoundland, on 10/9.
24. Laid minefield at Trinidad on 10/27.
25. Special mission to establish automatic weather station at Martin Bay on the coast of Labrador, 10/23.
26. After this patrol, on 1/26/44, the Kriegsmarine court-martialed Kusch for sedition. Found guilty, he was shot on 5/12/44.
27. Zschech committed suicide on 10/24. First watch officer Paul Meyer assumed command and brought the boat home.
28. First boat to sail on a combat patrol with a snorkel.
29. Laid minefield off Trinidad on 10/27.
30. The Canadian frigate Valleyfield.
31. Sank the American “jeep” carrier Block Island and damaged the American destroyer escort Barr.
32. Met inbound Japanese submarine code-named “Föhre,” formerly code-named “Tanne.”
33. Was to lay minefield off Halifax, but sunk beforehand.
34. The 7,200-ton American Liberty ship George Ade, which Offermann damaged on 9/12, towed to an anchorage by Escape. A hurricane sank George Ade in the anchorage.
35. Was to land an agent, Oskar Mantel, in the Gulf of Maine, but was sunk beforehand. Mantel was among the forty survivors who were rescued by American forces.
36. Canadian frigate Magog, towed to port a total wreck.
37. Also landed two agents, William C. Colepaugh and Eric Gimpel, in Frenchman Bay, Maine, on 11/29/44.
38. Canadian corvette Shawinigan.
39. Canadian minesweeper Clayoquot.
40. Canadian minesweeper Esquimalt.
41. Includes 430-ton American subchaser Eagle 56.
42. American destroyer escort Frederick C. Davis.
APPENDIX 6
1. After surviving an air attack, returned to Baltic and Training Command.
2. The new VII U-644, commanded by twenty-four-year-old Kurt Jensen, joined the Arctic force in mid-March. Doubtless guided by Enigma decrypts, on 417 the British submarine Tuna, commanded by Desmond Martin, found and sank U-644 on her first patrol, near the island of Jan Mayen. Probably with Enigma help, a week later Martin found another Arctic VII, U-302, commanded by Herbert Sickel, but Martin missed with eight torpedoes.
3. Boat rammed by a German ship and decommissioned. Later repaired and recommissioned.
4. In experimental status with a Type VI conning tower.
5. In experimental status with a Type V conning tower.
6. In experimental status with a Type VI conning tower. Sailed to France on this date, arriving 7/23.
7. Sunk off Bergen on 4/19 by the Norwegian submarine Ula.
APPENDIX 7
1. Sank 700-ton British minesweeper Hythe on 10/11/43 and the 1,600-ton American destroyer Bristol on 10/13/43.
2. Damaged French destroyer escort Sénégalais on 5/4/44.
3. Sank the 1,500-ton British destroyer Partridge on 12/18/42 and on 12/22/42 damaged the 16,300-ton British troopship Cameronia.
4. Sank the 2,000-ton British destroyer Martin on 11/10/42, and the 1,600-ton Dutch destroyer Isaac Sweers on 11/13/42.
5. Sank the 23,700-ton British troopship Strathallan on 12/21/42, with five thousand soldiers on board. Ship sank slowly with “small” loss of life.
6. Damaged the 2,650-ton British minelayer-cruiser Manxman.
7. Planted minefields at Brindisi and Bari, on the east coast of Italy, on 11/11/43. Mines damaged the 1,700-ton British destroyer Quail beyond repair and sank the 800-ton British minesweeper Hebe.
8. Damaged the 1,200-ton British sloop Stork on 11/12/42.
9. Sank 1,600-ton American LST 387 and 1,600-ton British LST 333 on 6/22/43, the 800-ton American minesweeper Skill on 8/25/43, and the 1,000-ton British Hunt-class destroyers Tynedale and Holcombe on 12/12/43.
10. Sank the 20,000-ton British troopship Viceroy of India on 11/12/42, damaged the 8,800-ton British cruiser Newfoundland on 7/23/43, and damaged the 9,100-ton British cruiser Birmingham on 11/28/43.
11. Sank the 2,650-ton British minelayer-cruiser Welshman on 2/1/43 and 1,050-ton British Hunt-class destroyer Puckeridge on 9/6/43.
12. Sank the 11,000-ton Dutch troopship Nieuw Zeeland on 11/12/42.
13. Sank the 1,000-ton British Hunt-class destroyer Blean on 12/11/42.
14. Damaged the 1,500-ton British destroyer Porcupine on 12/18/42.
15. Sank 5,300-ton British light cruiser Penelope and American LST 348 off Anzio on
2/20/44.
16. Sank 1,600-ton American destroyer Buck on 10/9/43.
17. Hit the 1,300-ton British frigate Cuckmere with a T-5 on 12/11/43. Ship scrapped. Hit 1,900-ton British destroyer Laforey on 3/30/44. Ship scrapped.
18. Sank the 1,600-ton British LST 418 off Anzio on 2/16/44, 1,600-ton British LST 305 on 2/20/44, and 335-ton American PC on 5/9/44.
19. Sank the 1,300-ton American destroyer escort Fechteler on 5/15/44.
20. Eleven U-boats were destroyed in ports by USAAF heavy bomber air raids.
21. The manpower loss figures in Volume I are not correct. It should be 452, of whom 220 were captured.
APPENDIX 8
HUFF DUFF
Many authorities have asserted that in World War II, land and shipboard high-frequency direction finding (HF/DF or Huff Duff) should rank right up with radar and codebreaking as an anti-U-boat weapon.
Until recently, little was known about Huff Duff and its evolution. Historian Kathleen Broome Williams admirably filled that gap in 1996 with the publication of her book Secret Weapon: U.S. High-Frequency Direction Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic. The following is condensed from her book.
In the 1930s, scientists and engineers in a number of countries secretly developed electronic devices for the specific purpose of taking a bearing on the transmissions of radio traffic in the high-frequency ranges. The military establishments were especially interested in a device capable of nearly instantaneous detection of the new, extremely brief transmissions of German U-boats that were manifest in their prewar exercises and operations.
In several nations, soon to become allies against the Axis, engineers produced Huff Duff devices, albeit slowly.
In Great Britain, the R&D on land and shipboard Huff Duff proceeded under the direction of Robert Watson-Watt, the so-called father of radar. The first British version for shipboard use, FH 1, was installed on the destroyer Hesperus on March 12, 1940, and later that year on a few other convoy escorts and rescue ships. Owing to topside stability problems and electronic interferences, in the early stages of development it was not possible to fit both radar and Huff Duff on the same ship. Inasmuch as British warship captains preferred radar over the less reliable Huff Duff, the latter had a lower R&D priority, and development lagged.
Slowly, British engineers produced improved Huff Duff models FH 2 and FH 3. In October 1941, the FH 3 was first installed on the ex-American Coast Guard cutter Mendota, serving in the Royal Navy as the sloop Culver, along with Type 271 centimetric-wavelength radar. Culver sailed as an escort to West Africa. On the return voyage, as an escort in convoy Sierra Leone 98, Culver was sunk on January 31, 1942, by U-105, a calamity that did nothing to build confidence in Huff Duff.1
By that time, according to Williams, about twenty-five convoy escorts and rescue vessels were fitted with British FH 3 Huff Duff sets. In March 1942, yet another improved model, FH 4, was fitted on the ex-American destroyer Twiggs, serving in the Royal Navy as Leamington. This set performed better, and the Admiralty ordered a total of thirty FH 4s for delivery by the end of the year. By August 1942, seventy Royal Navy vessels were fitted with Huff Duff, mostly FH 3s. It was not until mid-1943 that shipboard Huff Duff sets were commonplace in the Royal Navy, and they were still very much hush-hush. 2
In France, prewar R&D on Huff Duff was carried out at the Laboratoire Téléphonique in Paris, a subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). Maurice E. Deloraine was the director of the lab; Henri Busignies was the leading expert on Huff Duff. This work paralleled that of the British, with whom the French shared electronic secrets until the Germans overran France in May 1940.
By that time, Busignies had built four Huff Duff models that were approximately the equivalent of the British FH 3s. They were automatic and “instantaneous,” fitted with a cathode-ray tube on which a lingering “blip” was displayed, like a radar set. The antenna, based on the universally used Adcock, incorporated a “sense” feature, developed by the Pole W. Struszynski, that distinguished between the actual signal bearing and its reciprocal echo, a breakthrough of transcendent importance. The invading Germans insisted that ITT keep the Paris lab going, but Deloraine, Busignies, and nine other top engineers destroyed the Huff Duff sets and fled with their families to Lisbon with Huff Duff drawings and some key components. These French boarded an American tramp steamer, Siboney, and reached Hobo-ken, New Jersey, on December 31, 1940.
The president of ITT, Sosthenes Behn, directed these French engineers to join ITT’s New York lab, then arranged a meeting between Deloraine and Busignies and representatives of the U.S. Army and Navy. The Americans were distrustful of Behn and ITT because of its business ties to the Germans and refused to give ITT or the French an unlimited security clearance. However, Maxwell K. Goldstein, the U.S. Navy’s Huff Duff expert at the Naval Research Laboratory, already embarked on creating a chain of Atlantic shore-based Huff Duff stations, immediately recognized the advantages of the Busignies design, and the Navy (but not the Army) gave ITT and the Frenchmen a “limited” security clearance and a contract to build four Busignies Huff Duff sets for shipboard use.
The U.S. Navy, experimenting with its own shipboard Huff Duff models as well as the British FH 3s, was slow to embrace the Busignies Huff Duff. Like the British, American warship captains preferred radar over Huff Duff. That preference, plus the distrust of ITT’s loyalty and the withholding of full security clearances for the French engineers, delayed the development of Huff Duff in the United States for months. Tests on the four Busignies sets did not take place until October 1941. Moreover, the reviews were not raves.
Finally, in May 1942, the U.S. Navy embraced Huff Duff. Maxwell Goldstein carried out comparative tests on the new destroyer Corry, fitted with both the British FH 3 and the Busignies model, designated DAQ to distinguish it from the DAJ sets in its shore-based system. Williams wrote that Goldstein chose the DAQ over the British FH 3 and that on June 26, 1942, Admiral King ordered half of all new U.S. destroyers and destroyer escorts to be fitted with DAQs or any improved models. Altogether, Williams wrote, ITT produced about four thousand Huff Duff sets for the U.S. military in World War II. The U.S. Navy presented ITT president Sosthenes Behn and the ITT company high awards. The Americans also awarded Deloraine and Busignies Certificates of Commendation “for outstanding service” in the Allied cause but never granted them unrestricted security clearances.
The popular rush to credit radar, and later codebreaking, for the defeat of the U-boat left the equally effective but less glamorous and more difficult to understand Huff Duff in the shadows.
1. See Volume I, pp. 475-77 and p. 497.
2. As usual, the Canadians were last to receive Huff Duff in quantity. In 1942, the destroyer Restigouche was the first Canadian warship to be fitted with a Huff Duff set. It was said to have been “scrounged” by her captain from a British shipyard.
APPENDIX 9
PRINCIPAL NORTH ATLANTIC CARGO CONVOYS INBOUND TO THE BRITISH ISLES
SEPTEMBER 1, 1942-DECEMBER 31, 1944
1. Sources: The numbers of ships arriving in convoys are derived from British Monthly Antisubmarine Reports, January 1942 to December 1944. The ship loss figures in those reports closely match those of Rohwer’s Axis Submarine Successes. The Rohwer figures are used here. Note well that these figures do not include independent sailings and losses. For earlier years, see Vol. I, Plate 10 and Plate 13, pp. 424 and 698, respectively.
2. Tanker convoys (CU) sailed from the Caribbean and New York to the U.K. in 1943 and via New York in 1944. From August 1943, troop convoys (UT) for Overlord sailed from New York, sometimes merged with CU convoys. Note that tanker convoys from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean battle zone (TM, OT) are not included in this table.
3. From 9/18/42, onward, HX convoys sailed from New York. SC convoys also sailed from New York from September 1942 to April 1943.
4. Plus three 143-ton LCTs.
5. Plus one 143-ton LCT
6. Plus two 14
3-ton LCTs.
7. From June 17, 1943, to the end of the war, SC convoys sailed from Halifax.
8. Includes Polish destroyer Orkan in convoy SC 143.
9. Beginning 3/23/43, CU 1, 2, 3, and 4 sailed at 14.5 knots from the Caribbean; CU 5 from New York; CU 10. from the Caribbean; CU 7, 8, and 9 from New York. Beginning on 8/21/43, UT 1 to 6 sailed at 15 knots from New York. The total, 179 vessels, includes 159 tankers and 20 troopships in UT 1 to UT 6.
10. American destroyer escort Leopold in CU 16 and American tanker Seakay in CU 17.
11. From May to September 1944, HX convoys from New York were subdivided into fast, medium, and slow.
12. Ships of SC convoys sailed in HX convoys June-September 1944.
13. American tanker Jacksonville in CU 36.
14. Eight other tankers of CU convoys sailed directly to France in November.
15. Fast tanker convoys CU 10 to CU 51 sailed about every twelve days from New York, as did the fast troop convoys UT 7 onward. Beginning on 5/3/44, CU 23, 24, 24B, 28, 33, 34. and 35 merged with UT troop convoys 12 to 18, and were temporarily redesignated TCU convoys. After July 1944, the troopship convoys resumed separate status, sailing from New York again as UT.
16. Ship losses amounted to 1 percent of total.
APPENDIX 10
ALLIED AIRCRAFT DEPLOYED IN ASW ROLES IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC AREA1
(BY TYPES AND SQUADRONS, SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1942)
In the early fall of 1942 there were about seven hundred Allied aircraft assigned to frontline antisubmarine warfare (ASW) units based around the perimeter of the North Atlantic where Allied convoys sailed. This figure does not include U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) and U.S. Navy (USN) units in southern Florida assigned to the Gulf Sea Frontier nor those units assigned to the Caribbean and Panama Sea Frontiers. Nor does it include about 150 USN single-engine floatplanes (OS2U, etc.) or the thirty-nine blimps assigned to the Eastern Sea Frontier (ESF). If all of these aircraft were to be included, the total would easily exceed one thousand.