by Clay Blair
# Including special convoy RB 1.
* Stated in the more commonly cited deadweight tons: 1,886,000.
† See chart in Volume I, p. 666.
‡ See Appendix 2. Twenty of thirty-three U-boats that sailed in September and twenty of forty that sailed in October.
* At the time of the award (December 29, 1942), his confirmed score, all on U-106, was eleven ships for 73,413 tons, plus damage to the tanker Salinas and an American freighter for 12,885 tons.
* After changing into civilian clothes, Janowski made his way to New Carlisle with two heavy suitcases, and checked into a hotel to bathe and rest for a few hours. He then checked out, paying in obsolete Canadian bills, and boarded a local train, the first stage in a journey to Montreal. A suspicious hotel clerk notified police, who arrested Janowski at the first train stop, nine miles away. Some sources say the Canadians “turned” Janowski and used him and his radio gear and codes to transmit disinformation to Berlin.
* At the time of the award, his confirmed score was sixteen ships for 74,184 tons.
† At the time of the award, his confirmed score was thirteen ships for 71,704 tons, plus damage to five for about 30,000 tons.
* See Plate 2.
* The TMA was an anchored or moored mine that could be launched from a torpedo tube in depths to 885 feet. Owing to the weight and bulk of the anchor and chain, its warhead was only 474 pounds.
* Injured during an Allied air raid on Bremen, Gysae returned to U-177 from the hospital on crutches. Hence the” crew adopted a crutch for its conning-tower emblem.
* Four Type VIIs, nine Type DCs, and four Type IXD2 U-cruisers. Five of the seventeen boats were commanded by Ritterkreuz holders. These were, in addition to Gysae and Lüth in the U-cruisers, Karl Friedrich Merten and Ernst Bauer in the Type IXCs U-68 and U-126, respectively, and Peter Cre-mer in the Type VII U-333.
* West Point-educated son of the general commanding all Army forces in the central Pacific under Admiral Nimitz.
* These and other details of the event, as recorded at the time by Hartenstein, are taken from an English translation of the war diary of U-156, which was presented at Dönitz’s trial in Nuremberg and included as an appendix in the published record of the war crimes trial of Heinz Eck et al. (See bibliography listing for Cameron.)
* The exact fate of the Italian POWs and the approximate number who drowned locked in holding pens, if any, has not been established. The assertion here of callous inhumanity is taken from an excellent but incomplete account of the disaster, The Laconia Affair (1963), by a French author, Léonce Peillard. In several other places in his account, Peillard states (or quotes others as stating) that the Polish guards refused to unlock the pens. Elsewhere, he writes that hundreds of fear-crazed Italian POWs escaped by rushing the bars en masse and smashing them down. He depicts one Laconia officer leading a group of Italian POWs from the hold to the boat deck. Citing Italians, both Hartenstein and Schacht logged—and informed Dönitz by radio—that the British had badly mistreated the Italian POWs.
† Harden and crew were awarded Air Medals for the “destruction” of one submarine (U-156) and “probable destruction” of another (U-506).
* All survivors rescued by Gloire were interned at Casablanca. Torch forces released the British and Polish survivors, but the fate of the Italians is not known. If not already repatriated, they were recaptured by Torch forces. In gratitude for the French role in the rescue of the Italians, the Axis offered to release an equal number of imprisoned Frenchmen named by the crews of the French ships. On June 10, 1944, the Germans turned over 385 Frenchmen listed by Gloire crewmen, but failed to act on lists submitted by Annamite and Dumont.
* At the time of the award, Hartenstein’s confirmed score was seventeen ships for 88,198 tons, including Laconia.
† The four Type IXs of group EISBÄR, preparing to attack Cape Town, two of the four Type IXD2s bound for the Indian Ocean, five Type IXs, and three Type VIIs patrolling independently.
* Credit to Grossi for sinking two battleships was withdrawn after the war. His confirmed bag in the war was two ships sunk for 10,309 tons and one ship damaged for 5,000 tons. One of the ships sunk was the Spanish neutral Navemar, which had delivered a load of 1,120 Jewish refugees from France to New York and was returning empty to Spain.
* See Volume I, pp. 673-74.
* The Italian skipper Gianfranco Gazzana-Priaroggia in Da Vinci sank four freighters for 26,000 tons.
† In addition to the two supply boats, these were Bauer in U-126; Heyse in U-128; Schendel in U-134; Achilles in U-161; two boats patrolling Brazilian waters, Thilo’s U-174 and Dierksen’s U-176; and two returning Eisbär boats, Helmut Witte’s U-159 and Emmermann’s U-172.
‡ Three other attack boats that proceeded from the replenishment to Brazilian waters sank five other ships.
* At the time of the award, Heyse’s confirmed score was twelve ships sunk for 83,639 tons. Achilles’s confirmed score was eleven ships sunk for 58,518 tons, plus damage to seven ships for 44,427 tons, including the light cruiser Phoebe, which was repaired in an American shipyard and thus out of action for months.
† The four IXCs each set out with twenty-two torpedoes, the four IXD2s each with twenty-four. The Cagni, which had eight bow tubes and six stern tubes, carried an astonishing total of forty-two Italian-made, 17.7” torpedoes on this patrol.
* Not having heard from Sobe since September 18, and unaware that he had reached the Cape, Dönitz logged that there was “no clue” as to the U-179’s loss. Some staffers wrongly presumed that U-179 had been sunk by Allied aircraft near Ascension Island.
* Within a period of about one month, Axis submarines in the South Atlantic sank four big British liners in service as troopships for about 84,000 tons: Laconia, Oronsay, Orcades, and Duchess of Atholl The 11,330-ton British Abosso, sunk on October 30 by U-575 in the North Atlantic, raised British troopship losses to five by November 1, 1942. Seldom mentioned, these troopship losses stand in stark contrast to the nearly perfect safety record of troopships escorted by American warships.
† At the time of the award, his confirmed score was fourteen ships for 77,530 tons.
* At the time of the award, his confirmed score was sixteen ships for 82,135 tons.
† At the time of the award, his confirimed score was twenty-seven ships for 170,175 tons. He stood eighth in tonnage sunk among all U-boat skippers.
* The Benlomond was en route from Cape Town to Dutch Guinea (Surinam). Hit by two torpedoes, she sank instantly about 750 miles east of the mouth of the Amazon River. There was one survivor, Poon Lim, a Chinese mess steward. After a record 133 days on a raft, he was rescued by a Brazilian fishing trawler near Belem, Brazil.
† At the time of the award, his confirmed score was eighteen ships for 100,793 tons. It was noted that with this award, four of the five skippers of the attack boats originally assigned to group Eisbär, including Hartenstein in U-156, won a Ritterkreuz, and the fifth skipper, Merten, won Oak Leaves to his Ritterkreuz.
‡ The patrols averaged 122 days or about four months. Witte in U-159 and Emmermann in U-172 were at sea 135 and 131 days, respectively. All boats refueled twice, once outbound and once inbound.
* This raised the loss of British troopships in this foray to five.
† At the time of the award, Lath’s confirmed score on the ducks U-9 and U-138, the IX U-43, and U-181 was twenty-nine ships for 147,256 tons, including the French submarine Doris.
* The American Jordan Vause, in U-boat Ace (1990).
† Not counting troopships assigned to Torch forces or those sunk in the Mediterranean, or the Abosso sunk in the North Atlantic, but including Oronsay, sunk by Archimede near Freetown. These lamentable troopship losses are not described in full by the official British naval historians or by other British authors. For details, see Plate 4.
* The VIIC U-136, the VIID minelayer U-213, and the IXD2 U-cruiser U-179.
* The veterans U-73, U-81, U-431, U-565, and three
of the four new arrivals, U-458, U-605, and U-660.
* “Ducks” were very small (141-foot, 300-ton) German submarines designed for North Sea operations and the Training Command. Six Type IIB ducks (U-9, U-18, U-19, U-20, U-23, U-24) were dismantled and floated on river barges to Galatic, Romania, reassembled, and organized into Combat Flotilla 30, which operated from Constanta. According to Rohwer (Successes), the little flotilla sank six confirmed Soviet freighters for 28,303 tons and maybe two minesweepers and a submarine. No ducks returned from the Black Sea.
† See Volume I, pp. 337-38.
* See Volume I, pp. 652-53.
† Petard’s crew reached six hundred feet with some missiles of a ten-charge pattern by plugging the holes in the hydrostatic pistols with soap.
* For their bravery, Fasson and Grazier were posthumously awarded the George Cross, and Canteen Assistant Tommy Brown was awarded the George Medal. When it was learned that Brown was only sixteen years old and had falsified his age by a year in order to join the Royal Navy, he was discharged immediately. In 1944, Brown was killed attempting to rescue his younger sister, who was trapped in a burning building.
† See Fighting Destroyer (1976), by one of Petard’s officers, G. Gordon Connell. In a candid afterword, Rear Admiral G. C. Leslie, R.N., wrote that only a “few” destroyer captains in the Royal Navy went through the war “without a breakdown” and that during Thornton’s command of Petard, “the strain became too great to bear.” Later, however, Thornton was given command of another destroyer.
‡ At the time of the award, his confirmed score was five ships sunk for 14,542 tons, including the Australian sloop Parramatta.
* Ernst-Ulrich Brülier’s U-407, Quaet-Faslem’s U-595, Günter Jahn’s U-596, Albrecht Brandi’s U-617, and Walter Going’s U-755.
* Eisenhower’s naval aide, Harry C. Butcher, noted in his diary, My Three Years with Eisenhower (1946), that Churchill said: “Kiss Darlan’s stern if you have to, but get the French Navy.”
† When a British naval task force leapfrogged about one hundred miles east to Bougie on November 11-14, Axis aircraft sank three big troop transports, a cargo vessel, and two warships and badly damaged the new 8,000-ton monitor Roberts, which mounted two 15” guns, eight 4” guns, and many smaller weapons.
* These four U.S. Navy carriers were hurried conversions of big tankers. They were longer than the “jeep” carriers (about 555 feet versus 495 feet) and carried more aircraft (thirty-two versus fifteen to twenty-five). They had two elevators to the hangar deck and two catapults.
* Dakar fell to the Allies without a fight on November 23. Subsequently, the unfinished battleship Richelieu and a half dozen French cruisers and other vessels sailed to the United States for refits and modernization.
† Down went seventy-seven warships: the old battleship Provence, two modern battle cruisers, Dunkerque and Strasbourg, seven cruisers, thirty-two destroyers, sixteen submarines, including Caiman and Fresnel, which had just escaped from North Africa, a seaplane tender, and eighteen sloops and smaller craft. Four other submarines sailed from Toulon: Glorieux, Iris, Marsouin, and Casabianca. Iris reached Spain, where she was interned for the rest of the war. The other three reached Algiers.
* Six veteran boats undergoing refit, overhaul, upgrade, or battle-damage repair could not sail: U-83 and U-97 at Salamis; U-371 and U-375 at Pola; U-453 and U-562 at La Spezia. However, by December 1, 1942, five of these six were at sea in combat operations, except for the badly damaged U-97.
* Kreisch added that U-boats were not, as was customary, to give highest priority to aircraft carriers and battleships but to amphibious forces and merchant ships.
* An attempt by the Germans to establish a temporary forward U-boat base at Cagliari, on the southern coast of Sardinia, failed. On November 11, a British submarine sank the U-boat mother ship, Bengasi, off Cape Ferrato, northeast Sardinia. Lost were forty G7e electric torpedoes, a year’s supply of food for U-boat crews, plus U-boat fuel and lube oil.
† At the time of the award, his confirmed score was only five ships for 13,000 tons. The fact that his was the only U-boat to sink Torch warships—the destroyers Martin and Isaac Sweers—doubtless figured strongly in the award.
* At the time of the award, his confirmed score, all on U-81, was five ships for about 40,000 tons, including, of course, the British carrier Ark Royal, plus five sailing ships. His new ship was the IXD2 U-847, the first of a special series of six U-cruisers (U-847 to U-852) that were to be commanded only by Ritterkreuz holders, including Wilhelm Rollmann and Heinz-Otto Schultze. Almost immediately after commissioning U-847, however, Guggenberger was transferred to France to take command of an IXC whose skipper had been sacked.
† A submerged noisemaker, designed to confuse enemy sonar operators.
* The white flag was probably raised to deter the killing and wounding of German crewmen and to invite rescue of the survivors. Doubtless the loyal, defiant, and resourceful von Tiesenhausen would have scuttled upon the arrival of a surface ship.
† Allied forces also sank three Italian submarines in the Mediterranean in the first two weeks of November: Antonio Sciesa by United States Army Air Forces aircraft, Granito by the British submarine Saracen (which had earlier sunk U-335 near the Shetlands), and Emo by the British ASW trawler Lord Nuffield.
* The other, U-258, aborted owing to the “illness” of the skipper, Wilhelm von Mässenhausen, who temporarily left the boat on returning to France. She was replaced by U-257, commanded by Heinz Rahe, who also aborted owing to the “illness” of the engineering officer and a serious leak.
† And the U.S. submarine defense of the Philippines in 1941 and Midway Island in 1942.
† Twenty-two Italian submarines deployed against Torch forces. These sank or polished off four ships at or near Bougie Bay: the 16,600-ton troopship Narkunda, the 13,482-ton troopship Awatea, the 2,400-ton antiaircraft cruiser Tynwald, and the 850-ton minesweeper Algerine. Awatea and Tynwald had previously been damaged by the Luftwaffe, Jürgen Rohwer wrote, and “settled to the bottom.”
* In all of 1942, U-boats in the Mediterranean sank twelve warships, eleven of them British: the aircraft carrier Eagle; two light cruisers, Naiad and Hermione; five destroyers (Gurkha, Jaguar, Martin, Partridge, Porcupine), and three Hunt-class destroyers (Blean, Grove, Heythrop). The other warship was the Dutch destroyer Isaac Sweers.
† “Experience with the First Bomber Command in antisubmarine operations since March indicates that the effective employment of air forces against submarines demands rapid communication, mobility, and freedom from the restrictions inherent in command systems based upon area responsibility “ (emphasis added).
* Stalking the U-boat (1994).
* Three squadrons of Hudsons (48, 233, 500), one squadron of Catalinas and Sunderlands (202), and one squadron (179) of Leigh Light-equipped Wellingtons.
* These ASW B-24s were stripped of standard gear required for high-altitude daylight bombing—armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, engine turbochargers, machine-gun turrets, and so on—and were fitted with four forward-firing 20mm cannons. A part of the bomb bay was modified to carry extra fuel, greatly extending the range but cutting the depth-charge payload to about sixteen.
† Confusingly, on March 1, 1943, the consolidated unit was redesignated USAAF 2037th Wing (Provisional) and finally, on June 21, 1943, 480th Group.
* Kessler claimed one hit on the Queen Elizabeth but failed to specify it was the ocean liner, not the battleship of the same name, thereby causing considerable confusion at U-boat headquarters. The hit could not be confirmed. Among the passengers on the liner was the senior codebreaker and bombe designer Alan Turing, who, as related, was embarked on an official visit to the United States.
* From November 1, 1942, U.S. Navy Patrol Wings, usually composed of a headquarters and three aircraft squadrons, were redesignated Fleet Air Wings or Fairwings. The one in Morocco, Fair-wing 15, was commanded by George A. Seitz.
* The Admiralty initially
credited the kill of U-98 to a Hudson. This wrong assessment led to confusion and to further wrong assessments and misplaced kill credits at this time. To avoid further confusion the Admiralty errors are not detailed here.
† The seven other “jeep” and light carriers survived Torch but were not immediately available for Atlantic convoy escort as originally intended. The Admiralty was not satisfied with the aircraft fuel-handling systems on the American-built “jeep” carriers, to say nothing of the ill-performing main-propulsion plants. Hence, upon arrival in the British Isles, Archer, Biter, and Dasher went into shipyards for extensive modification, or “anglicization.” Ironically, Dasher’s modified fuel-handling system blew up and sank the carrier in the Firth of Clyde on March 27, 1943. The two survivors, Archer and Biter, finally began convoy escort in April 1943. Three of the four American semi-”jeeps,” Sangamon, Suwannee, and Chenango (heavily damaged in a storm on the homeward voyage), went from Torch to the States to the Pacific. The fourth, Santee, remained in the Atlantic Fleet for ASW missions, but she, too, . had first to undergo refit, modernization, and aircrew training, which required about six months.
* U-108, U-218, U-263, U-413, U-509, U-566, U-613, U-752.
† U-91, U-92, U-185, U-519, U-564.
‡ See Volume I, pp. 395-404.
* Counting the 279 persons lost on the destroyer tender Hecla and those on the damaged destroyer Marne, Henke had caused the deaths of about one thousand persons on this single anti-Torch patrol.
† At the time of the award, his confirmed score was ten ships for 71,677 tons.
‡ Believing Hororata had run into the island of Flores in the Azores for repairs, Dönitz directed Walter Schug in the Type VIIB U-86 to secretly cut her mooring chains and when she drifted into international waters, sink her. However, Schug could not find Hororata, and the scheme was abandoned.
* In addition, on the night of December 11-12, Italian frogmen swimming from the submarine Ambra with attachable, timed explosives, sank one 1,500-ton freighter and damaged three others for 18,800 tons in Algiers harbor.