Shadow Divers

by Robert Kurson

  U-869 . . . was [originally] bound for the US East Coast [and] allocated a patrol area . . . about 110 miles south-east of New York. . . .

  Chatterton went numb. U-869 was Horenburg’s boat. It was supposed to have been ordered to Gibraltar.

  U-869 . . . may not have received a [new] signal ordering her to Gibraltar. . . .

  Chatterton’s heart pounded against his rib cage.

  In view of atmospheric conditions . . . it is certainly possible that Control’s [new] signal ordering U-869 to the Gibraltar area was not received by the boat. . . .

  Now Chatterton was light-headed.

  In the light, therefore, of the absence of any tangible proof that U-869 had received Control’s signal ordering her to the Gibraltar area, [along with] the evidence of the knife and the proximity of the wreck’s position to U-869’s original patrol area, I would concede that the possibility the wreck is U-869 cannot be ignored.

  Chatterton rushed to the phone and called Kohler.

  “Richie, we just got an unbelievable letter from Coppock. He dropped an atomic bomb. You won’t believe it—”

  “Slow down!” Kohler said. “What’s it say?”

  “It says this: U-869, Horenburg’s boat, the one all the history books say was sunk off Gibraltar, was originally ordered to New York. And not just to New York, but just south of New York, right to our wreck site! It says that headquarters later changed those orders to Gibraltar. But get this, Richie, and I quote: ‘It is certainly possible that Control’s signal ordering U-869 to the Gibraltar area was not received by the boat.’”

  “But what about all the reports that U-869 was sunk off Gibraltar by Allied escort ships?” Kohler asked.

  “We’ve seen how accurate those reports can be, haven’t we?”

  “This is unbelievable. I’m stunned.”

  “Richie, can you conference-call Coppock from your office? We have to ask him to explain where he got this information.”

  “I’m already dialing,” Kohler said.

  A moment later the phone rang at Great Scotland Yard. Coppock had only a few minutes to talk. He told the divers that his information had been gleaned from reading intercepted radio messages between U-869 and U-boat Control in Germany. The intercepted messages and their interpretations by American code breakers, he said, could be found in Washington, D.C.

  Chatterton and Kohler sat flabbergasted. They had seen radio intercepts before but had never dreamed to inspect those relating to U-869, a boat conclusively recorded by history as having been sunk off Gibraltar. None of the experts to whom they had spoken—including Coppock—had thought to do so either.

  “I’m going to D.C. tomorrow to investigate,” Chatterton said. “The whole story is there.”

  Kohler wanted to join Chatterton in Washington, but he was still part of a two-man business and could not free up the time. Instead, Chatterton took Barb Lander, who had long been diving the U-Who and who had shown keen interest in its history. Chatterton promised he would call Kohler with details as they unfolded, and took along several rolls of quarters for pay phones to do so.

  Chatterton and Lander landed first at the National Archives, where they requested Tenth Fleet U-boat intelligence summaries starting on December 8, 1944—the day U-869 had departed for war. Archivists wheeled out cartloads of documents stamped ULTRA—TOP SECRET. Chatterton knew the word Ultra, the name for the Allied monitoring and decrypting of Enigma. For decades after the war, few had fathomed that the Allies had cracked Enigma and had been reading the German mail. Now Chatterton and Lander were about to read it too.

  The divers scanned the U.S. Navy’s intelligence summaries. They found a report dated January 3, 1945. Navy intelligence had intercepted radio messages between U-869 and Control. The code breakers wrote:

  A U/Boat (U-869) now estimated in the central North Atlantic has been ordered to head for a point about 70 miles southeast of the New York approaches.

  Chatterton could scarcely believe what he was reading—that would have put U-869 directly on the wreck site. He pressed further. In a report dated January 17, 1945, navy intelligence wrote:

  The U/Boat heading for the New York approaches, U-869 (Neuerburg), is presently estimated about 180 miles SSE of Flemish Cap. . . . She is expected to arrive in the New York area at the beginning of February.

  Chatterton checked his crew list. Neuerburg was U-869’s commander. He kept reading, his heart charging into his rib cage. In a January 25 report, navy eavesdroppers detected a communication problem between U-869 and Control:

  One U/Boat may be south of Newfoundland heading for New York approaches, although her location is uncertain due to a mix up in orders and Control assumes she is heading for Gibraltar. . . . [But] based on the signals she received it appears likely that U-869 is continuing toward her original heading off New York.

  “I can’t believe it,” Chatterton told Lander. “They were ordered right to our wreck site. Control changed the orders to send the U-boat to Gibraltar. But it looks like U-869 never got those new orders. She just kept heading for New York.”

  “Oh, wow,” Lander said, scanning the document. “Read the rest of what the navy says.”

  The CORE will begin sweeping for this U/Boat shortly prior to proceeding against the U/Boats reporting weather in the North Atlantic.

  “The USS Core was an aircraft carrier attached to a hunter-killer group,” Chatterton said. “The navy knew exactly where U-869 was headed and was lying in wait for her.”

  Chatterton took his quarters and ran to the pay phone. He called Kohler and told him of his discoveries.

  “Incredible,” Kohler said. “The navy sent a hunter-killer group for U-869 but they never got her, never even spotted her—we’d know it if they had. U-boats didn’t get away from hunter-killer groups in 1945, John. This Neuerburg must have been some commander.”

  For a moment there was silence on the line.

  “We didn’t find U-857 at all,” Kohler finally said. “We found U-869.”

  “We found U-869,” Chatterton said. “It was U-869 all along.”

  Still unresolved, however, was the matter of U-869’s reported sinking off Gibraltar by two ships, the L’Indiscret and USS Fowler. Every history book had it recorded that way. Chatterton and Lander raced to the Naval Historical Center and requested attack reports for the sinking of U-869. Minutes later they were looking at butchered history.

  On February 28, 1945, the American destroyer escort USS Fowler picked up a sonar contact in the area west of Rabat, southwest of Gibraltar. The Fowler fired a pattern of thirteen depth charges. Two explosions followed and debris of an “unknown identity” was spotted on the surface. The Fowler fired another pattern of depth charges. When the smoke cleared, crewmen dragged a towel through the debris, which “had the appearance of lumps and balls of heavy oil sludge but no samples were recovered.” The destroyer searched the area for further evidence of damage. It found none.

  Hours later, the French patrol craft L’Indiscret attacked a sonar contact in the same area, which “caused a large black object to break surface and immediately sink.” The boat could not identify the object and spotted no debris.

  Navy intelligence was unimpressed with the attacks and the flimsy evidence produced. They graded each of the attacks “G—No Damage.”

  But, Chatterton could see as he read the reports, postwar assessors soon changed the grade from “G” to “B—Probably Sunk.”

  “Why would they have done that?” Lander asked.

  “I’ve seen this before,” Chatterton said. “The postwar assessors were scrambling to account for lost U-boats. One of those U-boats was U-869. The assessors have no clue about intercepted radio messages—that was top secret—so they don’t know U-869 went to New York. They check the German records. The Germans believed U-869 went to Gibraltar—they think she got the new orders to go to Gibraltar. When she doesn’t come home, the Germans presume her lost off Gibraltar. Then the postwar assessors see these attacks by th
e Fowler and L’Indiscret near Gibraltar. They attach the attacks to U-869, change the grade from G to B, and that settles it for them.”

  Chatterton ran back to the pay phone. He told Kohler that the history books were wrong.

  “We found U-869,” Kohler said. “We found Horenburg, didn’t we?”

  “Horenburg was there the whole time,” Chatterton said. “Think about it, Richie. If there were radio problems between U-869 and Control, Horenburg would have been the guy front and center for it. He was the senior radioman. Listen, Richie, I’m out of quarters. But I’ll tell you this: Horenburg must have been there for it all.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NONE OF US IS COMING BACK

  Deschimag Shipyard, Bremen, Germany, January 1944

  IN THE CHILL MORNING of a new year, as ruins still smoldered in Berlin from fresh British bombings, hundreds of young German men from throughout the country made their way to the Deschimag shipyard in the seaport town of Bremen to begin naval training. Most brought just a simple suitcase of clothes and perhaps a cherished photograph or good-luck charm. Perhaps fifty of these men were told they would be the crew of a submarine temporarily titled W1077. In a few days that submarine would be commissioned as U-869.

  Though only a handful of these men had previous U-boat experience, many either had volunteered for submarine service or had been chosen for it because of their technical skills and backgrounds. They were a young group—average age twenty-one, with twenty-two teenagers, including a seventeen-year-old—and were worlds away from the crews of 1939, when the U-bootwaffe selected only the most elite of the elite.

  Among the most experienced men assigned to U-869 was twenty-two-year-old Herbert Guschewski, a radio operator and veteran of three war patrols, all with U-602. Guschewski counted himself lucky to be alive. He had been ordered off U-602 just before its most recent patrol; heavy U-boat casualties had created a shortage of radio operators, and his services were needed elsewhere. Guschewski was heartbroken—his crewmen were his brothers, his U-boat his home. U-602 set sail for the Mediterranean. It never returned.

  As Guschewski unpacked that evening in Bremen, he heard a knock at his door.

  “Who is it?” Guschewski asked.

  “A fellow crewman,” came the reply.

  Guschewski opened the door. A handsome man with wavy brown hair and jack-of-spades dark eyes asked if he might come inside. The man introduced himself as Martin Horenburg, the Funkmeister assigned to U-869. He told Guschewski that he was looking forward to working with him.

  Guschewski shook Horenburg’s hand, but his heart sank. He had expected to be the crew’s most senior radio operator. But Horenburg ranked higher; he was a Funkmeister, or a radio master. The men spoke briefly before wishing each other a good night. “At least,” Guschewski thought as he closed his door, “this fellow seems bright, capable, and friendly. At least Horenburg seems like a gentleman.”

  It would be a few days before the crew was officially assembled. In the meantime, several men assigned to U-869, including Guschewski and Horenburg, hopped a cable car to the Deschimag shipyard in hopes of glimpsing their U-boat. Inside the gates, diesel fumes collided with sea and fish, dusting the grounds with the perfume of maritime war. The men asked about U-869. A guard directed them to a dock.

  And there she was. Lean and stealthy, her cigar-shaped hull grooved into the water at bow and stern, she appeared an eyebrow of the sea, raised for the moment to observe the curious. Everywhere she was painted overcast gray, the most impossible color to see when the world changed from light to dark or dark to light, the times when U-boats were deadliest. Affixed to U-869’s conning tower were the Olympic rings, the mark of a boat to be commanded by a graduate of the naval class of 1936, the year of the Berlin games. For a moment, Guschewski stood awestruck before the machine. In every way—weaponry, size, design—it seemed superior to the Type VII on which he had previously served. “There is no comparison,” he thought to himself. “This is a great boat. This is something entirely different.”

  For the next two weeks, the men of U-869 joined other crews for general instruction at the shipyard. They would not meet the submarine’s top three officers—the commander, first officer, and chief engineer—until the U-boat’s commissioning in late January. Until then, they could only speculate about the men who would lead them into war.

  Commissioning was scheduled for January 26, 1944. On that day, those assigned to U-869 dressed in formal navy uniforms and made their way to the submarine’s dock. It was the first time the men had come together as a crew. An officer took attendance, calling out names: “Brizius, Dagg, Dietmayer, Dietz . . .” until each of the crewmen had confirmed himself present. All the while, the crew cast their eyes to the side, where a tall, deeply handsome man with black hair, broad shoulders, and penetrating dark eyes was observing the proceedings. They knew this man to be their commander—they could see a nobility in his posture, a certainty in the slowness of his breaths, a strength in his face’s Teutonic angles. The men had grown up in a country wallpapered with images of the heroic and invincible U-boat commander, a man for whom anything was possible. Here, in the form of twenty-six-year-old commander Helmuth Neuerburg, that image had come to life.

  The men climbed aboard the submarine and fell into rows of three on its stern deck, their hands at their sides, standing at attention. Commander Neuerburg looked over his men, over the water, and over Germany. By now, the men knew this to be Neuerburg’s maiden command; some even whispered that he had been a Luftwaffe fighter pilot before volunteering for U-boat service. Neuerburg began to address his men from behind the winter garden’s rail. His speech was short and in proper German, his voice military and exact. He spoke just a few words, all of them official and unemotional. But it took no more than these words for even a U-boat veteran like Guschewski to think, “There is great courage and competence in this man. You do not go against this voice. You do not go against this man.”

  After Neuerburg spoke, he gave the order to raise the ship’s ensign. When the flag reached the top, Neuerburg saluted it not with the Nazi heil but rather in traditional military style.

  “The boat is commissioned,” Neuerburg announced.

  And that was it. No one presented Neuerburg with a model of the U-boat, as had been done for Guschewski’s previous commander on U-602. No brass band played songs of joy and country. The men simply left the boat and returned to shore.

  “We are living in a different time,” Guschewski thought.

  That evening, the officers and crew of U-869 gathered for a celebration dinner at a small guesthouse in Bremen. Seated with Neuerburg were his first officer, twenty-one-year-old Siegfried Brandt, and his chief engineer, thirty-year-old Ludwig Kessler. Guschewski surveyed the sparse room and saw the direction of Germany. Two years earlier, he had attended the commissioning dinner for U-602, a raucous feast of pork roast, dumplings, and wine, followed by a party for the crew—officers and enlisted men alike—at Hamburg’s famed Reeperbahn. There, the men had watched a musical in specially reserved theater seats, then lit up the town. This night, there were no parties. Men ate herring and boiled potatoes at unadorned tables, and washed it down with beer. Conversation was reserved.

  Still, Guschewski was excited. His brother Willi had traveled to Bremen to visit him. Earlier that evening, Guschewski had asked the cook if he might prepare a plate of food for Willi, one for which Guschewski gladly would pay. The cook obliged, and Willi joined his brother and the other crewmen for dinner. Neuerburg rose from his table and approached the brothers.

  “What is this man doing here?” Neuerburg asked.

  “He is my brother, sir,” Guschewski answered. “He made a special trip from Bochum to say good-bye to me.”

  “He is not a member of the crew and is therefore not permitted in the same room as the crew,” Neuerburg said. He turned to Willi. “You must leave immediately, sir. You may take your dinner to a different room in this guesthouse. Your brother may visit you a
fter ten P.M. Go now.”

  Guschewski was stunned. He admired commanders who followed strict military protocol. But he had also prayed that U-869 would be led by a man with a heart. As he watched his brother carry his plate of food from the room, he believed that part of Neuerburg’s character still to be in question.

  Onboard training began after U-869’s commissioning. As the men shimmied through the sub’s three deck hatches, they found themselves in a technological wonderland. Swarms of instruments, gauges, dials, tubing, and wiring forested every centimeter of the boat. Everywhere, the boat smelled of fresh paint and oil and promise. The clocks, as the men had heard, had been set to Berlin time and would remain so no matter where in the world the U-boat traveled. Not a single photo—not of Hitler or of Dönitz—hung anywhere in the boat.

  The men spent the next several days loading the submarine and becoming accustomed to U-boat protocol. No one was expected to salute officers aboard the vessel. Officers addressed one another by first name. In a matter of days, even as the U-boat still remained in port, a bond began to form between crewmen, each of whom likely sensed what Dönitz had written years before: that a U-boat crew was a Schicksalsgemeinschaft—a community bound by fate.

  From the start, the crew studied Neuerburg. Whatever the task, he remained cool and restrained, the picture of military discipline. The men listened for him to make jokes as they walked through the officers’ mess, but they only heard him engaging in serious conversation with Brandt and Kessler, and always in proper German. He used no slang for the U-boat’s equipment and uttered no profanities. Even as news of Germany’s worsening fate trickled into Bremen, Neuerburg betrayed no fear or hesitation. Instead, he spoke of duty, and when he did not speak of duty he acted and stood and moved as if it were his guiding principle. Though naval officers had to yield membership in a political party while on active duty—including the Nazi Party—the crewmen observed Neuerburg’s intensity and wondered if his heart might not belong to the National Socialists. No one, however, wondered about his commitment. As he took them through the first weeks of training, they sensed that this was a man who would die before he disobeyed an order.