Operation Drumbeat

by Michael Gannon

  The aircraft finally went away and the boat surfaced, but the wind came up and reached force eight just in time for the start of Har-degen’s next watch. This time, he was dressed appropriately in a leather suit, oilskin coat, a Südwester (sou’wester) on his head, and heavy rubber boots. The waves were higher than before. It was daytime and he watched them with awe. He also looked about to familiarize himself with the U-shaped Type-IXB bridge. It was a tightly confined space made all the more so by the large periscope housing that ran half the length down the center line. The housing contained the retracted standards of two periscopes, one forward for underwater sky observation, the other aft for submerged torpedo attacks. Facing forward on the bridge Hardegen could see arrayed close together, where the bridge met the wind, the Siemens gyrocompass repeater, surface conning voice pipe, slot for the retracted direction finder (DF) loop, engine room telegraph, and, underfoot, the tower hatch. Off center to port and slightly astern stood the target-aiming post used for surface attacks. Farther astern on the cowling were, portside, the commander’s flagpole; screened ventilator shafts, port and starboard; and portside, the hole for the long-range extendable antenna. Two other holes in the periscope housing permitted extension of short-range antennae. Altogether there was very little room for five men to collect, much less to move about, and where they stood Hardegen and the four lookouts were only five meters above the water. As the waves rose around them the men ducked their heads and braced themselves against the periscope housing. The tower hatch was closed. They were alone against the sea. And here it came! As they flinched and turned their heads crests of the huge waves slugged the back of their necks like closed fists. Slowly the boat would level out and the foaming water would run off. Then a quick glance around the horizon with their binoculars, and the seas would hit them again. After four hours of that Hardegen’s neck was so tired he decided to take the water full in the face. Then the watch was over and he worked his way down the ladder into the security of the boat. Cold and wet all over, his beard and eyebrows covered with salt and his eyes stinging from the lash of the sea, he wondered if he could do that again.

  By evening the waves abated, the sky cleared, and the star-strewn heaven arched over 124. Moonlight played on the white chops and the dark frame of the U-boat appeared to be ebony dipped in liquid silver. Foam from the bow and stern wakes showed plainly. One of the ratings on night watch mistook a darting dolphin for a—“torpedo track on port side!” But better to make that kind of mistake than one of omission. In a few days they passed the Shetland Islands and made for the open Atlantic where the Edelweissboot and Hardegen had their first experience attacking a convoy. The date was 25 August 1940, at dusk. Close to the English coast in the Western Approaches, where their primary mission was weather reporting, the bridge watch sighted distant smoke trails in the binoculars and shouted down the voice pipe, “Commander to the bridge!” Schulz headed up the ladder with Hardegen right behind him and, after adjusting his Zeiss lens, confirmed smoke and mastheads outlined against the sinking sun. (It was Eastbound Convoy HX 65A, in six columns, position some twenty-three nautical miles north of the Hebrides.) Schulz asked for both dieseis full ahead as he maneuvered the boat into torpedo launching position. Several times he had to back off as destroyer escorts moved in their direction, but the guard vessels failed to sight 124′% low-surface silhouette in the gathering darkness. Finally, Schulz had the long parallel lines of ships in perfect attack alignment. Range, speed, and angle on the bow were computed. Now, in quick order, four torpedoes sped from the bow tubes, each meant for a separate target. Excitedly Hardegen watched the ship shadows to see what would happen. There! A bright red flame appeared on the side of a freighter, and the sound of the explosion reached him quickly afterward. Then a detonation column appeared on a second freighter. And then on a third, which sank almost immediately, its stern standing steep out of the water. The fourth torpedo missed its intended mark, but to everyone’s surprise it ranged to the rear of the convoy and found its own target, yet another freighter, which ripped apart from a boiler explosion and sank in three minutes’ time. It was a proud beginning for 124, whose crew rejoiced at the hits.4 (For its part the convoy counted the casualties, all British freighters: Harpalyce, 5,169 Gross Register Tons [GRT], sunk; Firecrest, 5,394 tons, sunk; Stakesby, 3,900 tons, damaged. The fourth hit claimed by Schulz has never been identified.5)

  The Edelweissboot’s celebration was short-lived. Destroyers steamed down the direction from which the attack had obviously come. Searchlights played back and forth across the water, star shells and signal flares began turning night into day. “Alarm!” Schulz yelled into the voice pipe and the bridge watch leaped down the ladder into the control room, dogging the tower hatch cover behind them. The chief engineer, whom the crew called the LI, had already begun flooding the boat, which went down on a steep forward incline, changing as it did from diesel to quiet electric power from batteries. Almost at once Hardegen could hear through the hull the onrushing swish-swish-swish of a destroyer’s screws. And soon after the boat rocked violently. Click-CLANG! Click-CLANG! Depth charges exploded directly above them—canisters of high explosive cordite that created pressure waves to split open a U-boat’s hull. Inside the boat steel frames rang with reverberations and shattered glass from bulbs and instruments flew in all directions. Then three more charges bounced them rudely about: Click-CLANG! Click-CLAMGl Click-CLANGl And no sooner were those steel hammershocks concluded than, WHAM!, the boat was jolted by a completely different force. The bow rose sharply. The LI worked desperately to recover trim and maintain depth. What had happened? One look at the navigator’s plot told Schulz that they had slammed into the English coast in the form of an underwater cliff. Schulz killed power and hugged the cliff. The collision was a lucky accident, as it turned out, because after an hour their British pursuers, usually persistent in holding contact with a submerged U-boat, decided that they had lost their target and gave up the hunt. Hardegen’s second experience of depth-charging was over. Overall he had mixed emotions of elation and relief, and he spent some time musing how small each man was in contrast to the enormous battle in which they were engaged.

  As a result of their encounter with the English coast, the bow tubes no longer functioned and Dönitz reassigned 124 to weather reporting at 20 degrees West; eventually, orders came directing her to proceed to the newly opened U-boat base at Lorient for repairs. Minesweepers met the boat as Schulz and his crew approached the Brittany coast and a second boat returning from action joined them on the final surface run to harbor. Its commander sent a flag signal to 124: K. AN K. HOW DID YOU BEND YOUR SNOUT OUT OF SHAPE?6 Schulz knew that his bow was damaged but hardly thought that the problem was that visible. When he sent Hardegen and a number of ratings forward to have a look they were astonished to find that below the upper casing the bow was torn wide open. The entire outer steel plating was in shreds, and the jagged edges had rusted. It was clear that as she completed what would come to be called the grosse Kurve (big bend)—the voyage from Germany to the Atlantic to Brittany—the Edelweissboot would remain in port for quite a while.

  Lorient was not then the modern, fortified U-boat base it would become by the time of Germany’s declaration of war on the United States a year and a half later. The city and naval base had been captured without a shot by the Wehrmacht on 21 June 1940. Two days later Dönitz arrived by plane to investigate its potential for a main U-boat operations base and dockyard. He found it ideal for both purposes and requisitioned a sardine merchant’s chateau at Kernével near Larmor-Plage at the mouth of the harbor to serve as his personal headquarters. He would move into the building the following October. At the end of June advance parties from the Krupp Germania yards at Kiel and from Organisation Todt, the German construction conglomerate run by Reichsminister Dr. Fritz Todt, were on site to begin restructuring the port. By the next month facilities were adequate to receive U-boat Flotilla II from Wilhelmshaven. The first boat to arrive, on 7 July, was U-30,
commanded by Kptlt. Fritz-Julius Lemp. By the date of U-124′s arrival on 16 September there still were no usable wharves or docks, so as a temporary expedient the hulls of old wooden prison boats, including that of here, were raised to serve as pontoons where U-boats could tie up. That was where Schulz docked, alongside here, on the right bank of the Scorff Estuary, and handed J24 over to the dockyard workmen.

  The old French navy base on the Scorff, like Lorient itself, presented a picture of neglect and dilapidation. On one side were rusting old battleships that had been used by the French for housing. On another side were wrecked wharves, broken cranes, and burned-out oil tanks. Original plans called for the crew to take up lodgings in the Arsenal Maritime but they had to go instead to a small hotel, the Pigeon Blanc, because the naval quarters were found to be uninhabitable. French African troops who last occupied the barracks building before its capture had left it in such foul disorder that not until German workmen cleaned the floor did anyone know it was stone. The Second Flotilla staff that had come in from Wilhelmshaven discovered a bounty of supplies left behind by British troops—uniforms, shoes, tropical kits, arms, ammunition, food, and other items the enemy had not had time to remove or destroy, so rapid was the Wehrmacht capture of the Biscay ports. U-boat officers and men were given permission to wear the captured British army battle dress with their own insignia and collar bands, and many did so because—as Hardegen hated to admit—it was more comfortable than their own uniform cloth. Many would wear the British uniforms on board when their boats next sortied. The sight of German officers and crew standing at attention on deck in British battle dress was a shock to some newly arrived German naval officers and reporters from the Propaganda Ministry who came by to watch departures. The Edehveissboot’s crew watched numerous such departures during the weeks required to make their own boat seaworthy again. The crew had the opportunity to spend some of that time at a new rest hostel in Quiberon, where they could walk on the beach, go swimming if the water was not too cold, ride horseback, or just relax. Many of the men frequented the local cafés and courted the pretty Breton girls. Hardegen thought they deserved all the recreation they could get. In a very short while they would be bound away again in the cramped, dark, dangerous space of a U-boat at sea.

  At first Schulz and his officers were put up in the old French Naval Prefecture, where the French admiral, his family, and staff had resided. Later they moved to a beach house at Larmor-Plage, a seaside area near the city where they could swim or walk in a park with flower gardens or just do nothing. From their windows they could catch the tangy scents from the foreshore and watch the Breton fishermen in their blue boats with red sails passing back and forth in front of the old stone island Fort St .-Louis, which guarded the entrance to the harbor. It was idyllic—except, that is, when the base nearby was bombed by British aircraft, which happened eleven days after their arrival in port. The bombers came in at high speed from the northeast at three hundred meters’ altitude, directly over their heads, and released to hit the U-boats at their moorings. They failed in that, but their bombs did kill a number of U-boat crewmen and shore station personnel.

  One day the officers were summoned to the base for a ceremony. Admiral Dönitz flew in from Germany to present awards. Kptlt. Fritz Frauenheim of U-10J received the Knight’s Cross, and Schulz received the Iron Cross Second and First Class. Some of 124′s crew members also received the Iron Cross. Soon after that a number of other Knight’s Cross winners put into Lorient. Hardegen met and listened with fascination to Günther Prien, the “Bull of Scapa,” who had sunk the British battleship Royal Oak in Scapa Flow at the start of the war; Otto Kretschmer, the “tonnage king”; Joachim Schepke and Engelbert Endrass, who each accounted for 100,000 tons sunk. Lorient was becoming known as the “port of the aces.” While still awaiting completion of repairs, Hardegen had a chance to go to Paris with a driver taking courier mail. For several days he took in the usual sights and, with understandable pride, watched the daily noontime Wehrmacht Guards Regiment parade from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Elysees to the brass strains of “Preussens Gloria”—“Prussia’s Glory.” With other U-boat officers he met in his hotel he strolled at night through Montmartre, poking his head into cabarets and bars, and lingering to hear “J’attendrai” sung by Lucienne Boyer and “La Vie en rose” by the “little sparrow,” Edith Piaf. He and his friends ended up at the nightclub Scheherazade, which with its wandering violinists, soulful Russian music, and champagne for six marks, would quickly become the favorite Parisian hangout of U-boat officers from every base in France.7

  Eventually the repairs to the bow and general refitting on the Edelweissboot were completed. Hardegen had asked for and received permission to stay on as WO and Kommandantenschüler (commander in training) with the same commander. A second war patrol and he would qualify for the U-boat badge. On 5 October he and his comrades sortied from Lorient into the Bay of Biscay on 124′s second Feindfahrt. Once in the Atlantic they encountered heavy seas and the bridge watches were pure torment. When Hardegen was finally semidry after one watch, he experienced the dread of donning still-damp, clammy leathers for the next. Over his gray-green jacket and trousers he wore a heavy raincoat with a towel around the neck. A sou’wester and high sea boots completed his protection. Even then he was soaked through. With a following sea the bridge was constantly awash—the reason why U-boat men called it the “bathtub.” And when the water was accompanied by a strong wind it could be a dangerous place to stand. On one occasion, before they could get their steel-reinforced leather harnesses attached to the bridge railings, he, Schulz, and the first mate were almost swept overboard. They had heard of men lost like that on other boats.

  During the first stages of this second cruise Schulz put the crew through numerous practice emergency dives, since some of the original crew had been transferred to Petty Officer School and their replacements were greener than Hardegen. They had real emergencies, too, as time and again 124 had to dive to avoid British aircraft. Before long, however, they sighted their first steamer in the Western Approaches south of Ireland. She came out of a rainsquall in the early morning hours of 16 October. Schulz lost her briefly in the haze, but at 0345 Central European Time (CET) he sank her with a single torpedo from nine hundred meters out. Funkmaat (Radio Operator) Fritz Rafalski called out to Schulz: “It’s Trevisa— signaling s-s-s for submarine—now signaling S-I-N-K-I-N-G.” Schulz told Hardegen to look her up in the merchant registry and book of ship silhouettes that every boat kept on board. He reported back: “Trevisa is a British steamer, 1,813 tons.” The crew celebrated their kill with a festive dinner, made the more enjoyable by a break in the weather. As the boat rode more smoothly Rafalski played radio music through the loudspeaker system while the cook served up food from their still-fresh stores: pork, sauerkraut, peas, and fruit. Some of the crew, who had trained as bakers and had found proper baking pans in France, produced their culinary specialties for dessert. Had Schulz and his men known what they had started with the sinking of Trevisa, there would have been even greater cause for celebration, for Trevisa, part of convoy SC 7, was the first of thirty-seven ships from that formation and from convoy HX 79, which blundered by, to be torpedoed within the space of four successive nights in the Western Approaches off Rockall Bank near Ireland. Participating in the sharklike feeding frenzy were Knight’s Cross aces Prien (U-47), Kretschmer (U-99), Schepke (U-100), Endrass (U-46), Frauenheim (U-707), and Heinrich Liebe (U-3S); also present were Heinrich Bleichiodt (V-48) who fourteen months later in U-/09 would sail with Hardegen to North America on Operation Paukenschlag; and Karl-Heinz Möhle, who commanded the boat (U-/2J) that Reinhard Hardegen would soon make famous. The merchant ship massacre became known in the fleet as die Nacht der Langen Messer (“The Night of the Long Knives”), a phrase that originated as a description of Hitler’s bloody purge of Ernst Röhm and his SA (“storm troopers”) in 1934.8

  Schulz’s post-Trevisa party was premature, however. Three hours after his
success 124 was spotted by three British destroyers, which kept the hastily submerged boat under attack. Pattern after pattern of Wasserbomben, or depth charges, which U-boat men called Wabos for short, fell loudly and dangerously around Hardegen and his mates. Each time the deadly canisters dropped from the destroyers’ fantails, the Click! of their firing pistols preceding the CLANG! of their explosions, the boat heaved, lights flickered, glass cracked, and men held on tightly to any available support, including each other. With the silent-running E motors and the ballast tanks filling with seawater Schulz took 124 deeper into the protective water, as far as eight meters below factory-certified depth, in order to escape the mauling. There, hung as it were on a string, and well below the priming depth of the Wabos, they waited out the savage battering. As the hours passed 124′s interior air became oppressively stale and foul, and carbon dioxide built up to dangerous levels. Schulz issued potassium cartridges for the men to breathe through, since potash neutralized the C02. Crewmen who did not have emergency duties were sent to their bunks as a means of conserving oxygen. The historian of U-124 has written about Hardegen in this crisis: “The cold-blooded courage that would later make Hardegen a great U-boat commander was already obvious as he roamed through the boat, checking the damage and supervising repairs. His blue eyes were calm and unafraid, and men who might have panicked were strengthened by the young officer who controlled his own fear so completely, talking and joking with the men as they worked.”9