Black May

by Michael Gannon

  First hit was the 5,136-GRT Selvistan, owned by the Hindustan Steamship Company of Newcastle, whose First Officer, Mr. C. D. Head, was on the bridge at the time. To port side he sighted something moving near the surface that he took to be a porpoise, since it was “spouting water.” It crossed in front of Argon’s bow in the adjoining column and then, halfway to Selvistan, it leaped above the surface, revealing itself to be a torpedo. Head described it as “silvery grey,” and thought that because of its slow speed, perhaps 10 to 12 knots, it was nearing the end of its run (G7a torpedoes normally ran at 40 knots, G7es at 30). Though he rang Full Speed Ahead and put the helm hard to port, the ship lacked sufficient speed to swing clear and the torpedo impacted the port side with a dull explosion in No. 5 hold, showing no flash, but sending hatch, beams, and ballast skyward. No more than five seconds later, a second, unseen torpedo punctured the No. 4 hold with exactly the same effects and result.

  Quickly, the steamer settled by the stern, and in a matter of only two minutes submerged from view. In that fractional amount of time it was not possible to lower either of the two main lifeboats, but the Master and crew did manage to launch two small bridge boats and the forward starboard raft, on which, or clinging to which, they floated off. Five crewmen were declared missing and one other man, a D.E.M.S. gunner, had a grave head wound from which he would die before rescue. First Officer Head stated later that the Indian firemen, who were the only men to share his boat, “were simply no use at all; they just sat in the boat, praying to Allah to save them, but not attempting to do anything to save themselves.” Fortunately, after three-quarters of an hour, the forty men who survived were lifted on board the frigate Tay. Since Tay s asdic was inoperable, Sherwood had assigned his own vessel to the rescue mission while directing Offa and Oribi to carry out Observant around the sinking position.

  Second to be hit by U-266 was the 5,306-GRT Gharinda, owned by the British India Steam Navigation Company of Glasgow. This freighter, with a large crew of ninety-two, including six Navy and four Army gunners, had straggled on 3 May, owing to heavy weather, and had not regained contact with the convoy until 1100 on the 4th. “About two minutes” after Selvistan was torpedoed, Gharinda s Master, Captain R. Stone, estimated, this second British vessel was struck by a torpedo in No. 1 hold on her port side. There was a flash, a very loud explosion, and a towering column of water that rained down on the bridge, carrying with it the hatches of No. 1 hold. The force of the explosion twisted both derricks and blew them over to starboard. Since the ship began to settle rapidly by the head, Stone threw overboard the Confidential Books and rang Abandon Ship. Five of the six lifeboats were successfully lowered except that, owing to a crewman’s error, one of the five nose-dived into the sea and swamped.

  Stone made a quick inspection of the ship to make sure no one had been left behind, then joined one of the boats. A short time later, he entertained the notion of returning to his ship to see if she could be saved, even though the propeller and rudder were out of the water. The notion, however, was doused by Tay, which arrived on the scene and began “hauling up” the survivors; Stone related tersely that he had been “hauled up by the scruff of my neck.” Sherwood told Stone that he could not indulge him in his desire to return, because he had to go after the survivors of Bonde, which also had been torpedoed. Bereft because of the loss of his ship, Stone could have drawn comfort from the fact, had he known it, that his was one of only two ships torpedoed in ONS.5 that did not lose a single man. If First Officer Head was disappointed with the performance of his Indian crewmen off Selvistan, Stone was favorably impressed by his own sixty-eight Indians, of whom he said:

  I am extremely pleased with the native crew, because they showed no sign of panic at any time. I think this is partly due to the fact that on board my ship no English is spoken, all orders are given in the language of the natives, which I consider helps them to understand what is going on, and therefore they are not liable to panic. I would specially like to mention the Indian Quarter Master, Shareatullah, son of Aboth Allee, who in spite of the debris which was falling on the Bridge, remained at his post at the wheel until ordered to his boat by me.36

  The thirteenth and final ONS.5 merchantman to die at sea was bantam Bonde in column 8. Chief Officer M. MacLellan of S.S. Baron Graham remembered:

  The Bonde was the little ship we all admired so much in that convoy. In such a vast expanse of sea, she looked so tiny as she courageously battled through the heavy weather, frequently disappearing from view completely in the heavy seas and swells. The first thing I used to do as daylight broke in my morning watch was to look for our little friend, and if she was still bobbing along the day was made.37

  To Captain Stone of Gharinda we owe our knowledge of what happened to Bonde. Just after his own ship was torpedoed, Stone was on the bridge about to throw his Confidential Books overboard when he saw the Oerlikon gunners on Bonde open 20mm fire against a periscope sighted close on her starboard beam. It was the first time in ONS.5’s voyage that D.E.M.S. gunners engaged a U-boat. Stone ordered his own Oerlikons to fire in the direction where Bonde s shots were splashing. A few seconds later, he saw and tracked a torpedo wake approaching Bonde s starboard side. The nearby Vidette also reported seeing torpedo tracks on the steamer’s starboard beam. “Then,” said Captain John Gates of Baron Graham, who was also watching, “there was an explosion and [Bonde] seemed to jump up in the water. When the smoke and spray of the explosion had cleared away, the Bonde was already standing on her end with her bow and foredeck vertically out of the water. I looked away for a few seconds and in that time the ship sank.”38 There had been no time to lower boats or rafts. When Tay came around to pick up survivors she found only twelve men from the crew of thirty-eight.

  Alarmed by the sudden loss of three ships, Commodore Brook ordered an emergency turn of 90° to port, which was executed successfully beginning at 1950. He would resume base course at 2045, at which hour Sherwood ordered the escorts to resume station, excepting Offa and Oribi, which had been conducting Observant around the sinkings. At 2039 Offa gained a firm asdic contact and during the next hour and 38 minutes made five large-pattern attacks.39 Oribi joined in the hunt but was unable to acquire contact. McCoy’s onslaught resulted in extensive damage to U-266, the slayer of Selvistan, Gharinda, and Bonde. Kptlt. von Jessen reported suffering damage to diving tank No. 3, trim cells, Junkers air compressor, and starboard dynamotors. Forced to move off for repairs, the boat never rejoined the Fink line, eventually being sunk by an aircraft on 15 May.40 With no evidence of a kill or damage, Offa broke off the action and shaped course for the convoy, taking Oribi with her. Explained McCoy: “Heavy W/T activity indicated that the convoy was threatened with annihilation and I considered it imperative to return to it before dark.”41

  In the meantime, at 1954, a VLR Liberator, Aircraft J/120 from Reykjavik, appeared overhead and made R/T contact with Sherwood. Its appearance gladdened everyone in the convoy. Sherwood asked the pilot to search astern for stragglers and wrecks. This the Liberator was able to do for only 45 minutes until, reaching PLE, the pilot and Sherwood had this exchange: Aircraft: “Don’t want to go, but have to.” Tay. “Thank you for your help.”42 Commodore Brook observed that this Iceland-based bomber was the first air escort he had seen since 2 May, “though air support was so sadly needed.”43 (He must have missed seeing the Fortress from Gander on the 3rd; the two Cansos from Gander on the 4th were too distant to be seen.) He might have wondered, though, why he was not seeing aircraft from Newfoundland at this hour late on the 5th, when Gander and Torbay were not far distant. An RCAF Canso of Eastern Air Command did sight four “single vessels,” probably stragglers, between 0810 and 0845 earlier in the day but made no contact with ONS-5’s main body.44 A second Canso intended as escort for the convoy crashed on takeoff from Gander, killing five crew members. According to a message from RCAF headquarters in Ottawa on 7 May, a Fortress from Gander met ONS.5 during a ten-hour sweep on the 5th, though its presence was no
t observed by either Sherwood or Brook. The message containing this information about the Canso and the Fortress was sent to Washington to counter “comment” in the U.S. Navy Department that, “Apparently there was no air support for ONS.5 on 5 May and this [was] assumed to be due to weather.” The RCAF response essentially agreed that foggy weather was the reason.45

  At ONS.5’s position the Atlantic surface was calm, there was no wind, and the air was heavy with drizzle and mist. The convoy ships in contact with the Commodore numbered twenty-three in ten columns, on course 202°. As darkness embraced the wrinkled sea and a high volume of HF/DF activity engaged Tay s receivers, Sherwood once again deployed his close escort forces for nighttime vigil: Tay ahead, his broken asdic on listening watch only; Sunflower on the port bow; Vidette on the starboard bow; Snowflake on the port quarter; and Loosestrife on the starboard quarter. The port and starboard beams were uncovered. Pink was still occupied with her small flock astern, and the two EG3 destroyers Offa and Oribi were assigned to positions five miles out on each bow. At BdU in Berlin, Admirals Donitz and Godt were drawing up their own plans for the night, expressed in four W/T exhortations to the Fink boats, of which fifteen are known to have been in contact with the convoy in the evening and early nighttime hours.46

  HASENSCHAR CONVOY BOATS SHOULD REPORT THEIR CONTACTS AND POSITIONS MORE FREQUENTLY.

  ALL ARE TO MAKE THE MOST OF THE GREAT OPPORTUNITY TONIGHT OFFERS.

  TO THE MEASURE THAT THEIR ANTI-AIRCRAFT ARMAMENT IS IN ORDER BOATS ARE TO STAY ON THE SURFACE AND FIRE WHEN AIRCRAFT APPEAR. THE AIRCRAFT WILL THEN SOON CEASE TO ATTACK.

  IF THERE ARE NO MORE MERCHANTMEN THERE TO BE SHOT UP SINK THE ESCORT VESSELS MAKING FULL USE OF MAGNETIC EXPLODERS.47

  The mist of early night thickened to fog and drizzle. The U-boats could be seen, phantomlike, mustering on the surface. Tay sighted seven boats in close proximity. They may have been the same seven seen by Günter Gretschel in U-707:

  I am positioned within sight of seven boats, in front of the convoy. I wanted to make a joint attack in the darkness. Unfortunately, the weather has thwarted our plans. The visibility has gotten very bad, with fog and drizzle, and this makes any attack impossible in the pitch-black night.48

  Gretschel and the weather notwithstanding, between the hours of 2252 on the 5th and 0947 on the 6th the Fink boats made no fewer than twenty-four attempted attacks on the convoy from every direction except ahead. And at battle’s end the night did not belong to the U-Bootwaffe, as Berlin had expected. Instead, thanks to a dense fog bank, to shipborne centimetric radar, and to the pluck and skill of the escort Captains, the night belonged to the Royal Navy, which not only protected ONS.5 and Pink’s Party from further harm, but sank four of the U-boat attackers and damaged and repeatedly drove off other boats or forced them to dive.

  The escorts made twenty attacks of their own during the hours named. Every ship of B7 and EG3 was engaged, churning at full speed across the ocean surface in this direction or that, throwing and dropping D/Cs, firing guns, or ramming, then quickly rejoining the screen. Ships of First Escort (Support) Group, when they came on the scene at 0600, similarly threw themselves at the enemy with great energy. In the midst of which actions Commodore Brook ordered another convoy emergency turn, 90° to starboard at 2310, resuming course at 2336, and evasive turns to 186° at 0100 and to 156° at 0200, in conditions when visibility was one mile by 2202 and 100 yards by 0100! Around and inside the convoy columns, combat was fierce, continuous, and confusing. Proving that sea warfare is one of the most confounding of human activities, the night of 5/6 May proceeded in such seeming disarray that at its conclusion, Sherwood threw up his hands and conceded, “It is quite out of the question to give a detailed account in chronological order.”49

  In the narrative that follows an effort will be made to place a template of order over the tortured seascape by focusing on the principal actions of individual escorts, while leaving aside the parries and thrusts that had no known results. Throughout, it bears keeping in mind that whereas the shipborne Type 271 RDF (radar) oscilloscopes were displaying to Sherwood’s men bright, clear U-boat echoes that conveyed enemy positions and ranges, the U-boat Commanders, lacking comparable equipment, were groping about blind. Said Günter Gretschel on U-707: “Surfaced, pitchblack night, fog, can’t see your hand in front of your face” [Hand nicht vor dem Augen zu sehen].50 Advantage: U.K.

  7

  BEYOND ALL PRAISE

  The Battle for ONS.5

  In the submarine war there had been plenty of setbacks and crises. Such things are unavoidable in any form of warfare. But we had always overcome them because the fighting efficiency of the U-boat arm had remained steady. Now, however, the situation had changed.

  KARL DÖNITZ

  The seven-day battle fought against thirty U-boats is marked only by latitude and longitude and has no name by which it will be remembered; but it was, in its own way, as decisive as Quiberon Bay or the Nile.

  CAPTAIN STEPHEN W. ROSKILL,

  D.S.C., R.N.

  AT 2309* ON THE 5th, Vidette was in escort position “C,” starboard bow of a fog-blurred convoy anxiously keeping station by whistle, when she acquired a radar contact nearly dead ahead bearing 200°, range 5,100 yards. Hart sounded action stations, altered course slightly, and increased speed to 18, then to 20 knots. At 2317 a second, smaller echo came in from a radar contact bearing 190°, 7,200 yards. Six minutes later, Hart sighted a U-boat ahead steaming away at high speed. Directly after the sighting, the U-boat commenced a dive and by 2325½ it was fully submerged 700 yards ahead. Hart ran over the still-visible diving swirl and at 2326½ fired the first of a ten-charge pattern; the tenth D/C left the throwers 25 seconds later. Nearly a minute after the last gray geyser, the bridge personnel, D/C crews, and engine room ratings heard a large underwater explosion, after which members of the D/C party as well as the Engineer Officer at the top of the engine room hatch observed a dark column of water rising between 300 and 600 yards astern.

  Hart considered the U-boat to be seriously damaged if not destroyed. The NHB/MOD reassessment credits him with the destruction of U-531, a Type IXC/40 boat commanded by Kptlt. Herbert Neckel. Launched only nine months earlier by the Deutsche Werke yard at Hamburg, U-531 was on her first war cruise, having sortied from Kiel on 13 April. Two and a half hours earlier, this boat had reported sighting two destroyers in qu AJ 8368. Neckel, a native of Kiel, had earlier served under Kptlt. Fritz-Julius Lemp on U-jo, which had sunk the British passenger liner Athenia on the first day of the war, with the loss of 112 passengers. Now his war was over, too.

  Instead of seeking an asdic confirmation, Hart went after the second radar contact, which was then at range 2,000 yards. Reaching 900 yards, he sighted the U-boat, which soon after appeared to alter course 30° to starboard and to dive. At 2333½ Hart laid a five-charge pattern over the submerged boat’s estimated position. After opening range to 1,200 yards, he returned to sweep the area by asdic, but made no contact. While returning to his escort station, he swept the position of his first attack, but there, too, he made no contact. It may well be that one of the U-boats known to have been damaged this night suffered that hurt from Vidette’s second attack, probably U-707 (Gretschel), which recorded suffering D/C damage at about that time.1

  After resuming station at 0125, Vidette went an hour without a contact, until at 0226 radar showed a U-boat bearing 230°, range 1,500 yards. Increasing speed to 20 knots, Hart altered course toward the target, but just past range 700 yards the radar echo disappeared into the ground wave. Starshell fired was of little use in the existing fog, but Hart dropped one D/C set to 50 feet just to assure the intruder that he was not being ignored.2 Back in station, Vidette obtained, and pursued, two other radar contacts, at 0310 and 0341, but with no better luck than she had on the 0226 chase.

  Then, at 0406, when the destroyer was sweeping back to the convoy screen, her luck changed. The asdic operator reported a contact. One minute later, the contact was classified as “
submarine,” bearing 097°, range 800 yards. Hart decided to attack with the Hedgehog, and at 700 yards he told the H.H. crew that he would give the order to fire by voice pipe, since, owing to electrical shorts caused by water penetration, the fire buzzer was not reliable. The recorder showed a relative speed of approach to the target of nine knots; it showed, furthermore, that the U-boat was moving slightly to the right, calling for a deflection of 3° right on the projectile pattern. With the last center bearing at 108° and the gun put at iii° to allow for a 3° throw-off to the right, Hart gave the fire order at 0408½

  All twenty-four H.H. bombs were successfully fired and there were no prematures on impact with the water. About three seconds after the last splash, lookouts heard two distinct underwater explosions—H.H. projectiles, which were not fused for depth, did not ordinarily explode unless their nose pistols struck a solid object—and, furthermore, observed flashes. Shortly afterward, the Asdic Control Officer reported “very loud” blowing of tanks and “metallic banging noises.” As Vidette maintained course and speed, the First Lieutenant and the D/C party reported that the U-boat appeared to be surfacing on the starboard side. It did not do so, but on that side there was a pronounced disturbance on the surface that Hart thought was caused by air escaping the U-boat.