by Clay Blair
† Depleted to support naval operations in the Mediterranean and other distant waters, the Home Fleet then consisted of the old carrier Furious, the old battleship Anson, the new battleship Duke of York, five heavy cruisers, and smaller craft. The American carrier Ranger, the heavy cruisers Augusta and Tuscaloosa, and five destroyers remained with the Home Fleet until the end of November.
* U-314, U-425, U-716, U-739, U-957.
* The veteran U-601, commanded by a new skipper, Otto Hansen, age twenty-five; the newly joined U-716, commanded by Hans Dunkelberg, age twenty-five; and the experienced U-277, commanded by Robert Lübsen, age twenty-seven.
* U-278, U-312, U-313, U-472, U-965, U-990.
* Nonetheless, a court of inquiry convened later. The William D. Porter went to the Pacific with a new skipper. She was sunk by Japanese kamikazes on June 10, 1945, but her entire crew was saved.
† Besides providing a place for airfields to base ASW aircraft and facilities to refuel surface escorts, the Azores became a vital way station for the thousands of aircraft en route from the States to the British Isles and Mediterranean Basin. This new mid-Atlantic route, replacing the South Atlantic route (Puerto Rico-Brazil-Ascension-Dakar, and so on), saved much time and wear and tear on aircraft engines.
* The senior naval staffs moved into the emergency locations code-named “Tannenburg” and “Bismarck” (in Eberswalke), but communications were so inadequate that Dönitz had to direct Kriegsmarine headquarters in Kiel to temporarily take over. He established a temporary headquarters at U-boat Control in Steinplatz.
* See Zimmerman, The Great Naval Battle of Ottawa (1989).
* The Japanese cruiser submarines 1-29 and 1-34 sailed to France from the Far East with cargo on November 12. Exploiting decrypts of enemy codes, the British submarine Taurus, commanded by Mervyn Wingfield, sank I-34 on the day it sailed from Penang; the I-29 reached Bordeaux on March 11, 1944.
† For example, see charts in The War at Sea, vol. 3, part 1, by Stephen W. Roskill (1960), p. 365; and The U-boat Offensive by V. E. Tarrant (1989), pp. 128 and 167.
‡ A token force of older ducks deployed in the Black Sea
§ Two experimental Walter hydrogen-peroxide “ducks” U-792 and U-794, commissioned in mid-November 1943.
* Accidents in the Baltic continued. The IXC40s U-803 and U-854, commanded by Karl Schimpf and Horst Weiher, respectively, struck mines and sank. Schimpf and thirty-four crew survived; nine men perished. Schimpf went on to command a Type XXI “electro boat.” Weiher and all but seven of his crew perished. A surface ship rammed and sank the VII U-738, commanded by Erich-Michael Hoffmann, with the loss of Hoffmann and twenty-one men; twenty-four men survived. The VII U-286, commanded by Willi Dietrich, and the VII U-1013, commanded by Gerhard Linck, collided and both sank. Dietrich and twenty-five men of U-286 survived. Twenty-six of the crew of U-1013 were saved, but Linck and twenty-four others perished. Later, the U-286 was salvaged, rehabilitated, and returned to service. The VIIB U-28, a school boat commanded by Dieter Sachse, sank by accident at dockside in Newstadt. She was salvaged but retired in August. The school duck U-7, commanded by Günther Loeschke, sank in a diving accident with the loss of Loeschke and all twenty-eight others. The school duck U-2, commanded by Wolfgang Schwarzkopf, collided with a fishing steamer and sank. Eighteen men including Schwarzkopf survived; seventeen died. The VII U-681, commanded by Helmut Bach, who was “night blind,” rammed three ships and a breakwater before Bach was finally relieved by another skipper.
† Not counting VIIF supply boats, IXD2 U-cruisers, one XB minelayer, and one XIV tanker.
* Seven of these were recalled to French bases.
† Four assigned to weather reporting.
§ Does not include group Dragoner.
‡ Includes U-cruisers, U-tankers, provisional U-tankers, U-cargo, and U-minelayers, but not U-boats en route to the Mediterranean.
# Claims and the actuality: two battleships claimed (two sunk); fifteen heavy and light cruisers (four); five aircraft carriers (five); 111 destroyers (thirty-one); twenty corvettes (thirteen); and thirty-one other escorts (seventeen). In addition, U-boats sank one big Coast Guard cutter and five submarines.
* Warwick and three other destroyers (Havelock, Vimy, Volunteer) of British close Escort Group B-5 aborted with heavy sea damage, Rayner wrote in his war memoir, Escort (1955). The convoy that B-5 was to escort was unable to form, Rayner explained. Its fifty-odd merchant ships were scattered far and wide.
* The U-455, commanded by Hans-Martin Scheibe; the U-967, commanded by Herbert Loeder; and the U-969, commanded by Max Dobbert.
† U-544, U-549, U-763, U-846, U-960, among others.
‡ Floating wooden poles sixteen feet tall (counterbalanced by a steel anchoring tube of equal length) to which dipoles were attached to simulate a U-boat on the surface to attract enemy radar.
* The Catalinas of U.S. Navy Patrol Squadron VP 63, equipped with Magnetic Airborne Detector (MAD) gear, transferred from Wales to Morocco on December 14, 1943, replacing the Catalinas of Patrol Squadrons VP 73 and VP 92, which returned to the States. From Morocco, VP 63 established a MAD “barrier” across the Strait of Gibraltar consisting of two Catalinas (MADCATS) a day on ten-hour flights.
* In the first week of January, Allied aircraft hit three other inbound boats: the VII U-275, the new VII U-421, and the new IXC40 U-541, but all limped into French bases by January 11.
† Allied aircraft hit two other outbound boats on January 5, U-650 and U-666, but they made repairs at sea and continued their patrols.
* U-91, U-238, U-256, U-709, U-963.
* American intelligence reports state that U-953 actually tangled with escorts of the opposite-sailing, merged convoys Outbound South 64 and KMS 38, which were nearby.
† Later, on May 2, 1944, the freighter John Morton rammed Parrott off Norfolk. Although beached, Parrott was deemed too far gone for repairs.
* According to the war diary at Control, eight other U-boats reported specific 37mm gun failures at about this time: U-382, U-547, U-592, U-621, U-641, U-764, U-845, and U-984. Other failures certainly occurred, but they were not recorded in the diary. Some skippers also reported 37mm ammo failure, apparently a “rapid decay.” In one case, ammunition exploded in the barrel.
† The U-boat Peril (1987).
* Allied aircraft employed sonobuoys by the thousands. The hydrophonic tracking system was difficult to master and was seldom effective.
* Squid, in effect an improved, much more powerful and sophisticated Hedgehog, automatically tracked its quarry from sonar bearings and depth recordings fed into a fire-control computer, thus in theory eliminating targeting guesswork. The Squid fired up to three 12”, 390-pound projectiles with 207-pound Minol warheads. Unlike Hedgehog projectiles that required contact hits to detonate, the Squid projectiles were triggered by automated time fuses, good to a depth of nine hundred feet. The British gave the Americans a Squid that was installed on the U.S. Navy frigate Asheville on April 6, 1944, for testing, but the U.S. did not mass-produce this weapon for the Battle of the Atlantic.
† This “precious haul” (presumably an Enigma and keys and/or short-signal books) has not been described.
* At the time of the award, his confirmed score—all on U-413—was four ships for 30,139 tons, including Warwick.
* A radioman on U-764, Heinz F. K. Guske, harshly criticized Bremen’s failure to attack in his shrill book, The War Diaries of U-764: Fact or Fiction? Guske, in turn, has been denounced by his shipmates for manufacturing lies.
† Failure of the Germans to equip U-boats with search radar, such as Hohentwiel until January 1944 was another example of the low state of science and engineering in Hitler’s Germany, especially in electronics. American submarines patrolling Japanese waters had been fitted with war-decisive search radar eighteen months earlier, in the summer of 1942.
‡ A B-24 of Squadron 53, piloted by D. A. Bell, and a Halifax of Squadron 502, piloted by F. T. Culling-Mannix.
* British “jeep” carriers sailing to these waters in February included the British-built Nairana and Activity and the American-built Fencer, Pursuer, and Striker.
* The U-545 was the tenth Type IX to be lost on operations in the North Atlantic in four months. The others were U-508, U-536, U-538, U-540, U-542, U-544, U-841, U-842, and U-844. All but U-508 were new boats on maiden patrols from Germany. About five hundred men were lost (forty-four captured) in these sinkings.
* 1944 was a leap year, adding one day to February.
* The carrier has not yet been identified. There were half a dozen “jeep” carriers in or near this area on March 10-11, so many, in fact, that they worked in pairs
† Escort Commander (1956).
* After the 7,400-ton Empire Housman, the 7,200-ton Sumner 1. Kimball, and the 1,735-ton Margit.
† These hush-hush aircraft were on secret detached duty from British Squadron 618.
* In the five months since November 20, 1943, this was the ninth U-boat kill in which Canadian forces played a sole, dominant, or conspicuous role: the VIIs U-257, U-283, U-448, U-575, U-625, and U-744, and the IXC40s U-536 and U-845 being the previous eight.
* For example, the battle of Norway in the spring of 1940; North Africa in the fall of 1942; Sicily and Salerno in the summer of 1943; Anzio in early 1944. American submarines had failed in similar defensive roles in the Philippines in 1941-1942 and at Midway Island and the Aleutian chain in the summer of 1942.
* Some accounts erroneously credit the U-765 with the hit on Donnell.
* The IXD2 U-cruiser U-859, passing through the North Atlantic area, sank one other merchant ship for 6,300 tons, the Panamanian Colin.
† British Asphodel, Gould, LST 362, Warwick, Woodpecker; American Donnell and Leopold.
‡ U-91, U-257, snort boat U-264, U-358, U-406, U-448, U-473, snort boat U-575, U-744, U-761, U-765.
§ These flotillas were commanded by Hans Cohausz and Rolf Rüggeberg, respectively.
* The U-973 as well as U-673 of the Arctic force were fitted with new type VI conning towers that had a flat bandstand forward. Owing to the instability and displacement of fuel tanks in favor of greater ammo storage, the Type VI conning tower was declared unsatisfactory for the Atlantic U-boat force. The U-362 of the same force had a similar conning tower, Type V.
* On April 19, the new Norwegian submarine Via (British-built ex-Varne), commanded by R. M. Sars, sank Heinz Wolff in the new U-974 as he was setting off from Bergen to France. German forces rescued Wolff and seven of his crew.
* The U-421, commanded by Hans Kolbus; the U-466, commanded by Gerhard Thäter; the U-471, commanded by Friedrich Kloevekorn.
† At the time of the award, his confirmed score, all on U-371 in the Mediterranean, was nine ships sunk for 41,317 tons, including the American destroyer Bristol, the British ASW trawler Jura, and the 700-ton British minecraft Hythe, plus damage to four ships for 28,072 tons.
* The U-960, commanded by Günter Heinrich.
† Neger (literally “nigger”) was a racial slur and wordplay on the name of the designer, Richard Mohr, whose surname means “Moor.”
* Probably so chosen because they could fit inside the tiny cockpit with the rigid plastic dome.
* Remarkably, naval technicians grafted the stern of the destroyer escort Holder, which lost her bow in the Mediterranean in a fight with the Luftwaffe, to the bow of Menges to make one complete ship. Menges returned to Atlantic escort duty in November 1944.
* The U.S. Navy’s designation was “Operation Monstrous.”
* Twelve British: Blean, Gurkha II, Grove, Heythrop, Holcombe, Jaguar, Laforey, Martin, Partridge, Puckeridge, Quail, and Tyndale. Three American: Bristol, Buck, Fechteler. One Dutch: Isaac Sweers.
* Including the U-l 78 that sailed from Penang to France on November 27, 1943.
† This was a flagrant British use of Enigma decrypts to achieve a tactical success. British historians have harshly criticized Admiral King for similar usages. Other examples of such usage by the British abound. See the British campaign versus Bismarck’s supply ships and the inbound German blockade-runners.
* Several Japanese submarines in final forays to the Indian Ocean operated near Lüdden. On February 12, Toshiaki Fukumura in 1-27 sank the 7,500-ton British troopship Khedive Ismail from a thinly escorted convoy with the loss of one thousand persons, including Wrens and nurses. Too late to thwart this little-known tragedy, two of the three escorts, the destroyers Petard and Paladin, sank 1-27. The Allies charged that Japanese skippers of this foray, Kazuro Ebato in RO-111, Tatsunosuke Ariizumi in 1-8, Denshicki Nakagawa in 1-37, and T. Kusaka in 1-26, murdered scores of survivors from the British freighter Daisy Moller, the tanker British Chivalry, the Dutch freighter Tjisalak, and the American Liberty ship Richard Hovey
† At the time of the award, his confirmed score was eight freighters for about 51,000 tons, the ex-American four-stack British destroyer Beverley, plus the seven dhows and damage to a 10,000-ton tanker.
* On February 14 in the Straits of Malacca, the British submarine Tally-Ho, commanded by a former enlisted torpedoman, L.W.A. Bennington, sank the ex-Italian Giuliana, redesignated U-IT23, temporarily commanded by Hans-Werner Striegler from the ex-Italian boat Torelli, redesignated U-IT25. Striegler and thirteen men were rescued by Japanese ships. Subsequently, Striegler returned to command U-IT25, which was assigned to transport duty between Singapore and Japan. In September 1944, Striegler was replaced by Alfred Meier, age thirty-six (from U-183). Striegler took command of the IXD2 U-cruiser U-196, which was thought to have been sunk in mid-November 1944, in the Sunda Strait, possibly by a mine planted by the British submarine Porpoise. Striegler and all hands were lost. When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Japanese seized U-IT25 and redesignated it 1-504, but she made no further voyages.
* As will be described, the fifth boat of the series, U-851, was soon missing.
* Including Mavris, eighteen Greeks; eight British; three Chinese; two Egyptians; and one man each from Aden, Chile, Poland, and the Soviet Union.
† Asked later if it was not clear to him “that through sinking the wreckage and rafts you would also sink the survivors,” Eck responded: “It was clear to me that the possibility of saving their lives disappeared.”
* The Peleus atrocity provided the basis for a 1967 novel, An Operational Necessity, by British author Gwyn Griffin. It was a best-seller in the United States. The German edition was entitled Der letze Zeuge [The Last Witness].
† Moehle’s testimony to the effect that he briefed some new skippers in that vein, reflecting desired (but unspoken) policy at U-boat Control, led to charges against him. He was found guilty, but he served only five years in prison, probably a deal in return for his anti-Dönitz testimony. See Madsen (1998).
‡ The large, former Italian submarine Fenzi, redesignated U-IT21, had been declared unfit and was decommissioned in Bordeaux.
* For reasons unclear, the Allies did not present Leupold’s allegation at Eck’s, Moehle’s, or Dönitz’s war-crimes trials.
* The Japanese U-cruiser 1-29 (German code designation uU-Kiefer”), which departed Japan on December 17, 1943, arrived at Bordeaux on March 11 with a cargo of rubber, wolfram, and two tons of gold bullion and twenty-five senior Japanese liaison officers. She sailed for Japan on April 16, with a cargo of the latest German radar and radar detectors and radar jammers, Bolde, ten Enigma machines, medicine, and so on. She embarked twelve officers and eight students for the homeward trip. She reached Penang but while en route to Japan, she was sunk on July 26, near the island of Luzon, by the American submarine Sawfish. As will be described, another Japanese U-cruiser, 1-52 (German code designation “U-Tanne” or Fir Tree, later changed to Fohre, or Pine Tree), sailed from the Far East to Bordeaux with cargo, including two tons of gold, and fourteen passengers.
† Hezlet, who later sank the Japanese heavy cruiser Ashigara, rose to vice admiral, was commander of the British submarine force 1959-61, and pub
lished an influential book, The Submarine and Sea Power. An unconfirmed (and doubtful) media report in 1972 asserted that salvors had found U-859 and had taken from her “thirty tons of mercury,” valued at $17.7 million.
* For a vivid account of this sinking, see the memoir of the Armed Guard commander, McCor-mick, Two Years Behind the Mast (1991).
* In a patrol from Penang to the Indian Ocean and back to Penang in May and June, Fritz Schneewind in U-183 sank one ship for 7,200 tons.
† U-177, U-198, U-851, U-852, U-859, U-860.
‡ U-168, U-183, U-532, U-IT24, U-1T25.
§ U-181, U-196, U-537, U-843, U-861, U-1062.
* “Regular, Parallel, Slide, Cilly, Drag, Pluggable Series and Poly Grenades,” “Inverted 530s,” “Bulldozer,” and so on.
† Ralph Erskine wrote that “there were almost 39,000 Triton decrypts in the 28 months between December 1942 and the end of the war.”
‡ In another memo, dated April 1, 1944, Engstrom wrote that the British “have found their designs unsuccessful and the maintenance problem difficult so that the large proportion of their high speed equipment is out of commission most of the time. Probably for this reason and due to the volume of three-wheel non-Naval traffic, British production was shifted almost completely to three-wheel machines and the burden of the high speed problem has been shifted to us.”
* At the time of the award, von Schroder’s confirmed score—all on U-123—was six ships for about 28,000 tons, including the British submarine P-615, plus shared credit with U-435 for the 7,100-ton British freighter Empire Shackleton. Kaeding was one of seven enlisted submariners to win the Ritterkreuz.
* Abel’s Harvard College classmate (1937), writer/journalist E. J. Kahn, Jr., recounted the events that followed in a long piece in The New Yorker magazine on February 8, 1988, condensed and republished in Naval History magazine, Summer 1988.
* The “mattress”-type antenna, stored in a bridge recess, could be raised and lowered hydraulically.
* Verdammter Atlantik: Schicksale deutscher U-Boot-Fahrer (1982).