by Mark Zuehlke
The Allies were fortunate that the Kriegsmarine failed to penetrate the defensive screen of aircraft and ships guarding the southern portion of the English Channel. This was not for want of trying. At times, it seemed impossible that the German U-boats and surface ships attempting to close on the beaches and convoy routes should all be thwarted. Certainly, the odds had seemed to favour the Germans on the night of June 7–8, when a 29th MTB Flotilla patrol of four craft commanded by Lieutenant Commander C.A. “Tony” Law aboard MTB 459 encountered two destroyers bearing down on it from Le Havre. Operating in a patrol grid also assigned to Royal Navy destroyers, Law was uncertain whether he faced friend or foe. Consequently, he opted to close on the fast-moving vessels and then issue a challenge. Before he could do so, the two destroyers made their identity known by opening fire at a range of 4,800 yards. The first salvo sent great towers of spray roaring up into the air on all sides of the little boats. Law ordered a charge with pom-pom guns blazing, because the Canadian MTBs had been stripped of their torpedo tubes and refitted with depth charge launchers for an anti-submarine role. Law’s decision to attack rather than take flight, noted a later report, was akin to “going after an eagle with a flyswatter.”1
As the MTB gunners opened fire, the lieutenant commander remembered that the guns were loaded so that the first rounds in the breech were star shells rather than high explosive. These “roared out and landed on the decks of the German destroyers, lighting them up like Christmas trees. The destroyers were a couple of the Möwe class, old, but still formidable. Soon the real stuff came out, and the scarlet glow of red-hot rivets appeared on the enemy’s hulls. The range, now 500 yards, continued to close.”
But not for long, as Law sensibly ordered the MTBs to turn away in line, with MTB 459 on the rear covering the others with a smokescreen. Having decided a quick bee sting was the best that could be achieved without imperilling the MTBs, Law now sought to break off the action. Racing along at twenty-five knots with shells still bracketing the MTBs, Law asked his coxswain what course they were steering. “Northeast, sir,” the man replied.
“For God’s sake, you’re heading straight for Le Havre,” Law snapped. And the destroyers were still “hot on our tails, shooting through the smokescreen.” Law ordered the craft turned about to a northwest heading, and at about 0330 hours the destroyers lost interest in the chase. Frustrated by the lack of torpedo firing capability, which could have enabled the MTBs to damage or even sink the destroyers, Law thought the confrontation a total waste and a poor way to end a two-day-long patrol. Still, he breathed a sigh of relief when the boats sailed into their berths. His tired, unshaven crews were obviously looking forward to a well-deserved rest. That, however, would have to wait, as a visit by Vice-Admiral Percy W. Nelles—head of Canadian Naval Mission Overseas—was imminent.2
The men had barely enough time to clean up and render the MTBs fit for inspection before Nelles stepped aboard at 0800 hours. He quickly congratulated the sailors on their performance over the last two days, ending by congratulating Law and his men “on keeping the enemy away from the anchorages [off Normandy.]” By unwittingly drawing the destroyers into a northeasterly chase, Law had led them back towards their harbour at Le Havre, to which they opted to return after the MTBs escaped, rather than try again to penetrate the naval screen protecting the beaches.3
When Law’s four-boat patrol ended its two-day operation, the other half of 29th MTB Flotilla took over the area of responsibility. With one boat down for repairs, the remaining three were commanded by Royal Canadian Naval Reserve Lieutenant C.A. Burk, who bore the curious nickname of “Daddy Bones,” on MTB 461. The night of June 8–9 saw the seas running hard, with winds blowing force three out of the northwest. Three miles north of Sword Beach, the MTBs received a wireless message vectoring them towards Cap d’Antifer near Le Havre, but were unable to intercept the German ships suspected to be running for their home port. As Burk ordered the flotilla to cut engines so they could try covertly tracking the destroyers, a large star shell “burst overhead, displaying the three boats standing naked against the black background.”4
Although illuminated by the star shell, the MTBs were not immediately fired upon—leading to the suspicion that the intent had been to light up the beaches in preparation for a bombardment. The destroyers were just five hundred yards from the MTBs, which were drifting silently on the flat sea. Burk ordered motors started and crept along in the destroyers’ wake, shadowing their position in the hope of directing other MTBs or destroyers fitted with torpedo launchers against the German vessels. “But before they had more than got underway the enemy opened fire with rapid and accurate salvos for about ten minutes, [until] the MTBs were able to disengage under cover of smoke. MTB 464 took the brunt of the fire since [its] smoke was covering the others and one of [the] gunners, [Frederick T. Armstrong] was killed, while another crewman was seriously wounded in the back. All boats sustained slight damage but no other casualties, due mainly to the effectiveness of the smokescreen and the evasive tactics of the senior officer. Although it was impossible to claim more than a few hits on the enemy by pom-pom and Oerlikon, the enemy had again been successfully reported and stopped from attacking the anchorage,” concluded an official report on the action.5
NOT ALL ROYAL CANADIAN NAVY vessels protecting the convoy routes to Normandy were forced to engage the Germans at such disadvantage in armament as the MTBs of 29th Flotilla. Royal Navy planners had long realized that the “greatest danger to the success of Operation Neptune, both during the assault and the buildup phase,” was presented by the western approaches to the Channel because of the relative lack of geographical limitations on ship movement. The eastern entrance between Dover and Calais was a natural choke point that could be fairly easily barred to entry by German vessels coming out of ports north of Calais. Consequently, German ships based in Le Havre were the main threat on that front, but their numbers were limited. To the west, the situation was entirely different, for the western mouth “lay open to the broad reaches of the Atlantic and at its narrowest point, between Cap de la Hague on the Cherbourg Peninsula and Portland Bill in Dorsetshire, the Channel was 52 miles broad. Further to the west—the waters between Brittany and Cornwall and Devon—England and France were over 100 miles apart. The speed of modern warships had vastly reduced distance, but in this part of the Channel there was still scope for considerable effort on the part of the enemy” to inflict heavy losses on the invasion convoys or to bring guns to bear on the beaches.6
The Germans had many U-boats, small surface craft—such as E- and R-boats—and destroyers concentrated in the large naval bases at Bordeaux, La Rochelle, St. Nazaire, and Lorient. There was also the threat that German ships might move from bases in Norway down the coast of Ireland to gain the western approaches. By the early hours of June 9, the U-boat hazard had been largely thwarted by operations of six escort groups and the Royal Air Force Coastal Command bombers. The Royal Canadian Navy had provided four of these escort groups, of which two were made up of frigates and the other two of destroyers. Frigates New Waterford, Waskesiu, Outremont, Cape Breton, Grou, and Teme formed Escort Group 6, while Matane, Swansea, Stormont, Port Colborne, St. John, and Meon composed Escort Group 9. The destroyers Ottawa, Gatineau, Kootenay, Chaudière, and St. Laurent made up Escort Group 11, and Skeena, Restigouche, Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, and Assiniboine formed Escort Group 12.
For the most part, the frigates, operating outside the Channel in the hundred-mile-wide gap between England and France, endured a boring time trolling without success for U-boats—due to the fact that the German submarine effort was “tentative and uncertain.” False contacts were irritatingly common for, as was true in the Channel itself, average depth in this area was sixty fathoms, the waters churned with strong tides and cross-currents, and the bottom was strewn with wrecks of many centuries of seagoing misfortune. Millions of herring swarming the waters in great schools little helped the situation.7
The same problems
and lack of contact with U-boats plagued the destroyer escort groups working inside the Channel. At about 2000 hours on June 7, however, Escort Group 12 had become locked in a thirty-hour duel with a U-boat thirty miles southwest of Ushant. When Lieutenant Commander D.W. Groos’s Restigouche picked up an asdic (sonar) contact, U-984 commander Oberleutnant Heinz Sieder attempted to “draw first blood” by launching a torpedo that ran out of control and exploded on the sea bottom.8Restigouche replied with a hedgehog attack, whereby a launching system fired twenty-four 7.2-inch depth charges in a pattern that struck the water ahead of the attacking ship. None of the charges would explode unless one or more actually clunked against the target submarine’s hull, after which all the rest would detonate sympathetically. This avoided the surface ship’s asdic being deafened by useless explosions, so there was a better chance of maintaining contact with detected submarines.
When Restigouche’s salvo missed, the four ships adopted a square search pattern. At 2057 hours, an explosion accompanied by an eighty-foot-high column of water about 175 yards abaft of Saskatchewan’s port beam warned that the sub commander was determined to stand and fight rather than using the confused waters to beat an escape. Eighteen minutes later, a shallow running torpedo sped close past Skeena.
Restigouche was coming about slowly at 2125 hours when a lookout sighted a periscope 100 yards off the starboard beam. Lacking sufficient speed for a depth charge attack, the destroyer fired all its guns at the sub. Again, contact was lost. The dance continued, with one destroyer after another establishing contact, sighting a periscope, or detecting great swirls in the water that might mean the U-boat was blowing its tanks to dive deeper.
At the very beginning of the action, the destroyers had deployed an ingenious device developed by the Canadian Navy, known as cat gear, short for Canadian Anti-Acoustic Torpedo. A series of metal bars linked together, it was dropped off the stern and trailed along behind the ship, disrupting the distinctive sound of the propeller that acoustic-guided torpedoes were programmed to seek. The value of this equipment was realized in an unintended way when a torpedo fired at Escort Group 12’s command ship Qu’Appelle inadvertently struck Saskatchewan’s trailing cat gear and exploded. Although the cat gear was destroyed, it had prevented the U-boat from scoring a hit on Qu’Appelle.
Following this engagement, contact was lost, but Commander A.M. McKillop decided to linger in the area, hoping to force the U-boat to surface. Another box search was started at 2240 hours.9Restigouche gained two probable contacts over the next few hours and carried out two attacks, but without result. Finally, at 0600 hours on June 8, McKillop abandoned the square search and formed the ships up in a long line to sweep a greater area at fifteen knots of speed. Until 0930 hours, nothing happened, then a torpedo exploded near where Qu’Appelle was steaming at one end of the line, followed five minutes later by a detonation between Skeena and Restigouche that threw a large column of water into the air just off Skeena’s bow.
Skeena’s Lieutenant Commander P.F.X. Russell reported an excellent contact 950 yards away, with the target moving to the right. Then “a great pale blue swirl off [the] starboard bow” led him to believe the submarine was surfacing. Skeena charged to within 220 yards of the churning water and fired a hedgehog salvo. “Much air and black globules of oil were seen to rise to the surface,” but Russell suspected the hedgehogs had detonated in the sub’s wake. At best, the attack inflicted only limited damage, because no sooner did Skeena turn away than a torpedo passed her bow from left to right and a periscope was sighted off the port side. Shortly thereafter, another explosion erupted between Qu’Appelle and Saskatchewan. At 1000 hours, McKillop’s ship picked up a good contact, but a hedgehog attack left the surface strewn with nothing but dead fish. When Skeena attacked the same contact, it merely added to the carnage. Undaunted, McKillop sent Qu’Appelle dashing towards another contact and launched ten depth charges with no discernible result. The water was now strewn with fish carcasses.
Seething with frustration, McKillop signalled Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth Vice-Admiral Sir Ralph Leatham: “An all day search in terrible asdic conditions produced nothing more than a few tons of fish.”10 Although the pursuit continued until 2100 hours, only a few fleeting contacts resulted and finally Escort Group 12 was ordered to clear the area to avoid being mistaken for a force of German destroyers being hunted nearby by 10th Destroyer Flotilla.
THIS FLOTILLA WAS DIVIDED into two divisions with four ships in each. Five of the destroyers were Tribal class, two Fleet class destroyers, and one a Polish-designed vessel. All four ships in 19th Division were Tribals: HMCSHaida and HMCSHuron were joined by HMS Ashanti and Tartar—which was the flotilla’s command ship under the capable hands of Commander Basil Jones, RN. The Tribals were beautifully designed superdestroyers that displaced 1,960 tons when standard loaded and had twice the firepower of conventional British destroyer designs. Each ship boasted three twin-mounted 4.7-inch guns, one twin 4-inch high-angle gun, and four 21-inch torpedo tubes. Top speed was thirty-six knots and the ships’ crews numbered between 238 and 259.
Haida’s skipper was Commander Harry DeWolf and Huron’s was Lieutenant Commander H.S. Rayner. Both were regular RCN officers, who had built good wartime reputations. Rayner was considered an expert in torpedo warfare and held a Distinguished Service Cross for bravery in a previous action, but DeWolf’s reputation placed him head and shoulders above all peers. Jones considered the Bedford, Nova Scotia native “an outstanding officer, not only in skill but aggressive spirit. Furthermore he had that priceless gift of fortune… of there always being a target in whatever area he was told to operate.”11
On the morning of June 8, Vice-Admiral Leatham, in an unusual move, ordered all eight destroyers of 10th Destroyer Flotilla to concentrate at a point about fifty miles due south of Land’s End. Leatham was responding to a warning from the Ultra cryptographers reading the Kriegsmarine’s Enigma machine, which issued orders controlling surface ship movements. This report confirmed that four destroyers were departing the harbour at Brest, bound for the Channel. At about 1630 hours, Leatham, having in his hand from Ultra the full details of the enemy destroyers’ course and speed, vectored the flotilla onto a northeasterly trending intercept course at twenty-two knots.12 Leatham insisted that the flotilla be precisely sixteen miles north of Île de Bas no later than 2145 hours. From there, the ships would sweep westwards at twenty knots of speed to a point fifteen miles northeast of Île de Vierge and then patrol in a generally reversed direction until 0400 hours. The vice-admiral expected that the flotilla would have by then either encountered the German ships or that his intelligence would have been in error. If by 0400 hours no Germans had appeared, 10th Flotilla was to return to Plymouth.13
Aboard Tartar, Jones instructed his other ship commanders to form up by divisions, with 20th Division two miles off from 19th Division. Each division spread out, so that in the 19th Tartar led, with Ashanti 200 yards astern on her port quarter, Haida 1,200 yards astern on her starboard quarter, and Huron 2,000 yards directly astern of Tartar. In the 20th Division, the Polish-built ORP Blyskawica, HMS Eskimo, the British-built Fleet class ORP Piorun, and HMS Javelin adopted an identical formation.14
As 10th Flotilla began its search, the four German destroyers steamed north on the heading reported by Ultra. These ships constituted the 8th Zerstörerflotille and consisted of three destroyer types. Z-32 and Z-24 were Type 36a destroyers dubbed Narviks, which displaced 3,000 tons, had a top speed of thirty-eight knots, and were armed with five 5.9-inch guns and eight 21.7-inch torpedo tubes. A captured Dutch destroyer, redesignated ZH-1, was slower and smaller than the Narviks and mounted five 4.7-inch guns and eight 21.7-inch torpedo tubes. T-24 was not in the same class as the other three ships at all. A Type 39 fleet torpedo boat, T-24 weighed only 1,300 tons and carried four 4.1-inch guns and six 21.7-inch torpedo tubes for armament. It could also manage no more than twenty-eight knots, which meant that speed—the Narviks’ greatest asset in battle—w
as compromised if the four ships were to fight as a unit.15
By 2200 hours, the 10th Flotilla was on stations north of Île de Bas and started a zigzagging sweep southeastwards at twenty knots. As the hours passed, the crews struggled to remain alert. The ships were blacked out. Everyone had been warned to prepare for surface action. In stuffy cabins below deck or on the bridge, some crewmen monitored various instrument panels, while the steel-helmeted “gunners waited beside the hatches of the opened magazines… grimly phantom-like with the white of anti-flash gloves running up their forearms and white canvas masks drooping from beneath their helmets to their shoulders, leaving only the eyes and noses visible… In the sick bays and wardrooms medical officers and attendants cleared extra space, laid out their instruments, drugs and blood plasma… Seamen off watch sat or lay or slept beside their action stations, on deck, along dimly-lighted companionways, at the foot of ladders; wherever there was room… Deep beneath them the throbbing engines, nursed by men who would have the least chance of escape from disaster, sent the destroyers weaving onward, twenty degrees to starboard, twenty degrees to port along the mean line of their course… The questing beams of radar sought out and returned with the numberless impressions which sent the running green ribbon of each operator’s dial rising in jagged crests and falling away into troughs like the sea about it.”16