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

by Clay Blair

  † See Volume I, Appendix 6 and Volume II, Appendix 7.

  * The Norwegian corvette Potentilla was credited with the kill on November 20, but in a postwar analysis, the Admiralty concluded that that assessment was “doubtful.” During the chaotic action on the night of November 17-18, any of the several corvettes could have done the deed. The Norwegians saw—and reported—oil and debris that night, but no corvette had time to recover the debris to substantiate a kill.

  * Halifax 213 to 216; Slow 108 to 110; Outbound North (Fast and Slow) 142 to 149.

  † The ship in Slow Convoy 109, the 9,100-ton American tanker Brilliant, was only damaged. However, she sank under tow on December 25, 1943, so she is shown as a loss in November.

  ‡ Including, as related, fifteen ships for 82,800 tons from Slow Convoy 107, which sailed in late October; they were sunk in November.

  § In his analysis, Jürgen Rohwer put the loss from Axis submarines at 131 Allied ships for 817,385 tons, of which 120 for 737,675 tons were accounted for by German U-boats. The tables in Tarrant (1989), which are utilized in this account, put the figure for Axis submarines at 126 ships for 802,160 tons.

  # Engage the Enemy More Closely (1991).

  * Churchill also invited President Roosevelt’s two most senior American advisers in London, Averell Harriman and Admiral Stark, to attend the committee meetings.

  * Two new VIIs, U-302, commanded by Herbert Sickel, and U-629, commanded by Hans-Helmut Bugs, were assigned directly to the Norway Arctic command to conform to Hitler’s minimum force requirements. Another, U-272, commanded by Horst Hepp, collided in the Baltic with U-634, commanded by Hans-Günther Brosin. Both boats sank, but U-634 was later salvaged. Seventy-nine of 108 crewmen were rescued including Hepp and Brosin. Twenty-nine died.

  † The eleven boats provisionally released to Dönitz had first to be overhauled and modified for Atlantic duty. As a result, the transfers were slow: four in January 1943, one in March, two in April, etc.

  * The deflector was by then a standard modification on production-line boats. Upon receiving Thurmann’s report, Dönitz canceled the modification and ordered that all deflectors of this type be removed.

  * Waters apparently adhered to the Coast Guard view that the December 15 kill was improbable. In contrast, official Coast Guard historians have accepted the Admiralty’s assessment. The U-626 was the last of eighteen U-boats sunk by American forces in their first year of the war, 1942—one of them, U-94, shared by U.S. Navy aircraft and the Canadian corvette Oakville. Unassisted Navy aircraft accounted for seven; unassisted destroyers accounted for one; unassisted Army Air Forces aircraft accounted for three; Army aircraft and a Navy destroyer shared one; Navy aircraft and a merchant ship shared one; Coast Guard forces (three cutters, one aircraft) sank the other four.

  * In the year 1942, Canadian forces sank nine U-boats, including U-94, shared with the U.S. Navy. Including U-94, Canadian surface ships accounted for six; unassisted aircraft, for three.

  * Reinhard Hardegen had commanded her on his two celebrated Drumbeat patrols to the United States. She sailed from Germany on December 5, after six months of battle-damage repairs. Her new commander, Horst von Schroeter, had been Hardegen’s first watch officer.

  * Halifax 217 to 220; Slow Convoy 111 to 114; Outbound North and Outbound North (Slow) 150 to 157.

  † Including, notably, the 18,700-ton British liner/troopship Ceramic.

  ‡ See Appendix 3. In the same two-month period, U.S. shipyards alone turned out well over five times these losses: 214 ships of 1.3 million gross tons.

  * British forces sank three other boats in the Bay of Biscay or the approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar: the VIIs U-98, U-411, and the IXC U-517.

  * Grey Wolf, Grey Sea (1970).

  * Bleichrodt did not return to combat. In total ships and tonnage sunk (28 for 162,491 tons) he stood tenth among all U-boats skippers in the war.

  † In early 1943, Patrol Squadrons VP 32, VP 34, VP53, VP 74, VP 81, VP 83, VP 94, and six of the VP 200-VP 212 series served in Fairwing 11.

  ‡ Fairwing 16 absorbed four patrol squadrons from Fairwing 11: VP 74, VP 83, VP 94, and VP 203. Both wings were equipped with Catalinas, Mariners, and Venturas, the latter two aircraft types plagued with serious defects.

  * At the time of the award, his confirmed score was nineteen ships for 77,144 tons.

  * As one step in an apparent attempt to terrorize British ship crews, on March 11, 1943, a German radio propagandist bragged about Nissen’s attack on the C. S. Flight. He said that Nissen poured “streams of tracer bullets” and lobbed hand grenades into the sails and rigging, forcing the “Negro crew” to leap into the sea. At Dönitz’s trial at Nuremberg, British prosecutors introduced a précis of the broadcast as one more example of alleged atrocities committed by U-boats. Probably because no witnesses could be found to corroborate the hearsay radio broadcast, the British prosecutors did not pursue this incident further.

  * Patrol Squadron VP 83 of Fairwing 11, based at Natal, had been reinforced early in January 1943 by two other U.S. Navy patrol squadrons from Fairwing 11, Squadrons 74 and 94. U.S. Army Air Forces aircraft also patrolled this area.

  * At the time of the award, his confirmed score was twenty-seven ships for 125,520 tons.

  * See Volume I, Appendix 17.

  † From September 1 to December 31, 1942, the Allies lost thirty-three tankers to Axis submarines, nineteen in North Atlantic convoys.

  * See Plate 5.

  * As related, Nissen in U-105, homebound from Trinidad, later found and sank the hulk.

  * Initially Seehund was composed of five experienced IXC40s and the new IXD2 U-cruiser U-182. The IXC40s were to be supported by the tanker U-459.

  * Heydemann in U-575 claimed his original twelve internal torpedoes had sunk six ships for 41,000 tons, none of which could be confirmed.

  † On January 16, Herbert Schneider in U-522, who had sunk two tankers in TM 1 for 16,867 tons and damaged another, was awarded a Ritterkreuz. At the time of the award his confirmed score was six ships for about 37,000 tons, plus damage to two others.

  * The IXC U-160, which sailed in early January, replaced U-522 in group Seehund, but U-511 was not replaced. Hence, Seehund was reduced to five boats: U-160, the IXCs U-506, U-509, and U-516, and Clausen’s IXD2 U-cruiser U-182, all supported by the tanker U-459.

  † If Auffermann in U-514 rather than Nissen in U-105 is credited the 8,100-ton tanker British Vigilance of TM 1, the expanded Delphin group sank eleven ships for 89,000 tons.

  * The first RAF “Thousand Plane Raid” hit Cologne on the night of May 30-31, 1942. The bombers killed 474 people, destroyed 3,300 homes, and left 45,000 homeless. Two further “Thousand Plane Raids” followed: at Essen on June 1 (956 aircraft) and at Bremen on June 25 (904 aircraft). On analysis, the second two raids were deemed to be failures and, partly as a consequence, Bomber Command mounted no other “Thousand Plane Raids” in 1942.

  † Heavy-bomber production in Britain and the United States was still relatively modest. In the month of July 1942, for example, British factories turned out 179 such aircraft, fifty less than planned. In 1942 the United States produced 2,576 heavy bombers, an average of 214 per month, which was about 6 percent of the total 42,000 aircraft deliveries. In compliance with the American Army-Navy Agreement of March 1942, the Army Air Forces grudgingly began delivery of B-24s to the American Navy in August. By the end of 1942, the Navy had received fifty-two B-24s, but Admiral King had sent all of them to the Pacific. In 1943 the Americans produced 9,393 heavy bombers, an average of 783 per month, which was about 14 percent of the 67,000 aircraft deliveries.

  * Bomber Command had already raided Rostock, Lübeck, Emden, Bremen, Hamburg, and Wilhelmshaven. As was learned after the war, none of the hundreds of planes involved in these raids had hit a U-boat building yard or any U-boat.

  * Bomber Command managed only three raids on German cities with U-boat building yards in October, and no raids in November or Decembe
r, in part because of terrible weather. Allied intelligence authorities characterized these three raids as “small and inconsequential.” In a memo of January 4, 1943, Churchill groused that “the Americans have not yet succeeded in dropping a single bomb on Germany.”

  * Loch Ewe was a more convenient and comfortable! departure port for Murmansk convoys than Iceland, especially in the icy winter months. Ships from the United States bound for Murmansk crossed the Atlantic in fast Halifax convoys, which sailed from New York.

  * The official stenographer wrote that it was “an hour and a half.’

  * This message was widely repeated, not only on Various naval Engima nets, but also in lower codes, such as the “dockyard” net, Werft, thus providing Allied codebreakers with cribs.

  † Dönitz wrote that he spent most of his time as C in C, Kriegsmarine, at a “somewhat isolated” headquarters in Koralle, about twenty miles north of Berlin center, between Bernau and Eberswalde.

  * In the numerous naval battles associated with the fighting on Guadalcanal, the Americans incurred very heavy warship losses: two fleet carriers {Wasp, Hornet); five heavy cruisers (Astoria, Chicago, Quincy, Northampton, Vincennes); two light cruisers (Atlanta, Juneau); fifteen destroyers; three destroyer/transports; and one troopship. The Australians lost the heavy cruiser Canberra. Many other Allied warships were damaged, some heavily. The Japanese lost one fleet carrier (Ryujo), two battleships (Hiei, Kirishima), three heavy cruisers (Kako, Furutaka, Kingugasa), one light cruiser (Yura), eleven destroyers, six submarines, and twelve troop transports. Comparative warship losses: Allies 29, Japanese 36.

  * Allied and neutral merchant-ship losses are Admiralty figures, which require refinement. In boasting about American ship production, officials such as War Shipping Administrator Admiral Emory S. (Jerry) Land invariably used the larger “deadweight” tonnage figures rather than the smaller “gross” tonnage figures. Hence, on January 5, 1943, Land announced that the United States had built 746 ships (later corrected to 760 ships) for 8 million tons in 1942. The failure of some Allied officials and some historians of the Battle of the Atlantic to draw a distinction between deadweight and gross tonnage figures led to considerable confusion during the war and later. (The gross tonnage of a ship is arrived at by measuring the cubic capacity of the enclosed spaces of the ship and allowing one gross ton for every 100 cubic feet. The deadweight tonnage of a ship is the weight [in tons of 2,240 lbs.] of the cargo she can carry, including fuel, stores, and water.)

  † American yards were to produce 1,949 ships of 19.2 million deadweight or 13 million gross tons in 1943.

  * UGF 1 (thirty-eight ships, fifty-six escorts) was the Torch assualt convoy, Task Force 34. UGF 2 (twenty-four ships, ten escorts) sailed from the United States on November 13, 1942, and ar rived at Casablanca on November 18, designated Task Force 38. There was no UGS 1. UGS 2 (eighty- three ships including escorts) sailed on November 25, designated Task Forces 37 and 39. Thereafter UGF and UGS convoys sailed about every twenty-five days.

  † See Appendix 15 and Plate 5.

  * At the time of the Casablanca conference, January 1943, only twenty-four aircraft of Bomber Command were equipped with H2S radar sets: twelve Stirlings of Squadron 7, and twelve Halifaxes of Squadron 38. The H2S radar was first used in combat over Germany on the night of January 30-31 by six pathfinder aircraft (four Stirlings, two Halifaxes), which found Hamburg in foul weather and marked it with incendiaries for the main bomber formations.

  § He officially replaced Philip de la Ferte” Joubert on February 5, 1943.

  # See Appendix 14.

  * See Appendix 13.

  * In The Defeat of the German U-boats (1994).

  * See Appendix 3.

  * See Plate 1.

  † Mishaps and setbacks continued in the Baltic, delaying the flow of new U-boats to the Atlantic. The worst setback was the delay of the XIV tanker U-490, commanded by Wilhelm Gerlach, age thirty-eight. She sank off Gotenhafen during workup and was in salvage and repair for eight months, a blow to the thin, hard-pressed Atlantic refueler fleet. The VII U-231, commanded by Wolfgang Wenzel, age thirty-five, failed her tactical exercise and had to repeat the test. During another tactical exercise, her sister ship, U-232, commanded by Ernst Ziehm, age twenty-eight, collided with U-649, commanded by Raimund Tiesler, age twenty- three. The U-649 sank with the loss of thirty-five of forty-six crew. Rescued, Tiesler commissioned another VII. The new VII V-416, commanded by Christian Reich, age twenty-seven, hit a mine laid by British aircraft and sank. She was salvaged but relegated to a school boat. Reich commissioned another VII. The new VII U-421, commanded by Hans Kolbus, age twenty-three, also hit a British mine and was severely damaged. The U-643, commanded by Hans-Harald Speidel, age twenty-five, incurred a horrendous series of mechanical difficulties, including a battery explosion, which delayed her readiness for over six months. Rammed the previous fall in a tactical exercise by the IXC40 U-168, commanded by Helmut Pich, U-643 finally sailed after months of repairs.

  * Including the XB U-119, which laid an unsuccessful minefield off Iceland.

  † Including the VIIDs U-217 and U-218, which laid unsuccessful minefields off the coast of England, and U-303, U-410, U-414, and U-616, which entered the Mediterranean.

  ‡ Including the XB U-118, which laid a successful minefield off Gibraltar Strait, and U-224, which entered the Mediterranean.

  § Including the VII U-455 and the XB U-117, which laid minefields off Casablanca on April 10 and April 11. These fields resulted in the sinking of one 3,800-ton French freighter and damage to two other Liberty-type vessels.

  * Including XB U-119, which laid a minefield off Halifax that sank one 3,000-ton freighter and damaged another of 7,100 tons.

  * Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War (1955).

  † In this instance, the calculations of Allied shipping losses by Jürgen Rohwer closely match those of the Admiralty.

  * Includes one experienced boat with a new skipper.

  † Includes eight experienced boats with new skippers.

  ‡ Includes four experienced boats with new skippers.

  § Includes U-71 and U-704, retired to Training Command.

  # Includes two experienced boats with new skippers.

  * Includes U-108, retired to Training Command.

  † Known as SAM ships, 182 were actually transferred to the British.

  ‡‡ From February 1943, nominally Admiral Friedeberg, C in C, U-boats, but in reality Rear Admiral Eberhard Godt, head of U-boat operations; his first staff officer, Günther Hessler; Adalbert Schnee; Peter Cremer; and a few others.

  * Including four transfers from the Arctic: U-376, U-377, U-403, U-456.

  † See especially Rolf Giith (with documentation by Jochen Brennecke) in the German periodical Schiffund Zeit, no. 28 (1988) and Dr. Timothy P. Mulligan, “German U-boat Crews in World War II: Sociology of an Elite,” Journal of Military History (April 1992), as corrected in reprints. Invaluable to the study of this controversy is a list of all U-boat commanders with their date of birth compiled and published by R. Busch and H. J. Roll in the German periodical Der Landser Grosshand, based on data provided by Horst Bredow and staff at the U-boat Archive, Cuxhaven.

  ‡

  * A more sophisticated version, the T-5, called Zaunkdnig (Wren), which was designed to “home” straight at the propeller noise of a target and hit the propeller, was under development.

  * The Admiralty credited Clark with sinking the new U-337, en route to group Jaguar. In a revised edition of his Search, Find and Kill (1995), Franks writes that that “kill” was actually the failed attack on U-632 and that U-337, commanded by Kurt Ruwiedel, was lost to unknown causes.

  * Thurmann was credited with sinking fifteen confirmed ships for 85,500 tons.

  * The Admiralty originally credited a B-24 of the newly arrived American Army Air Forces Antisubmarine Squadron 2, piloted by William L. Sanford, with the kill of U-519. In a postwar review, Admiralty historians concluded that B
ritish convoy escorts, Eva and the heavy cruiser Cornwall, sank U-519. Later yet they declared U-519 lost to unknown causes.

  * In convoy Outbound North (Slow) 160, huge seas capsized and sank the commodore’s flagship, Ville de Tamatave, with the loss of all hands

  † Including two from the Arctic: U-405 and U-591. ;

  * As examples, AA, AB, AC, AD and CA, CB, CD represented specific Type VIIs; BA, BB, BC, BD and DA, DB, DC represented specific Type IXs. MA might be the XB (minelayer) U-116, MB the U-117, etc.

  * See NARA unpublished documents in Record Group 457. These are the tens of thousands of pages of the files from the “Secret Room,” a huge store of information in English, so utterly complete for 1943, 1944, and 1945 that one could almost write a history of the U-boat war from them alone. The files also contain English translations of all messages between U-boat Control and the U-boats at sea and vice versa.

  * One of the corvettes attempted to sink Daghild With gunfire, but failed. Rolf Struckmeier in U-608 finally sank the hulk with a torpedo.

  † When this rescue story leaked, it was widely publicized in the wartime media, which featured Raney (who later rose to vice admiral) and Keene—and the dog “Rickey.” See Webster article, “Someone Get That Damned Dog!”

  * Von Forstner’s confirmed bag in Slow Convoy 118 was six ships for 32,446 tons, plus a Landing Craft, Infantry (LCI) from Daghild. His confirmed score at the time of the award, all on U-402, was thirteen ships sunk for 63,409 tons, plus severe damage to two tankers for 16,731 tons, which were abandoned and sunk by other U-boats.

  † According to Franks in Search, Find and Kill (1995), originally it was erroneously believed that in this attack Sanford sank U-519.

  * See Volume I, p. 301.

  * Credit for these kills remains uncertain. Originally the Admiralty credited a B-24 of Squadron 120, based in Iceland, for the kill of Fraatz’s U-529, In the postwar analysis, it withdrew the credit and speculated that the loss was probably due to an “accident.” According to the war diary of U-boat Control, U-529 was probably at or close to the place where the aircraft claimed a kill that day. Wartime credit for the kill of U-225 (nearby U-529) was certainly wrongly attributed. In the postwar revision, the Admiralty credited the kill of U-225 to a B-24 of Squadron 120, piloted by Reginald T. F. Turner, who was escorting Slow Convoy 119.