Much had changed at Lorient in the six months he had been absent. The Arsenal Maritime and dock areas had been cleaned up, and at Pointe de Keroman near the harbor entrance Organisation Todt, which had built the Autobahnen, Germany’s network of superhighways, was furiously building bombproof shelters for repair and refitting of the IXB and IXC U-boats of Second Flotilla (Tenth Flotilla after January 1942). Hardegen marveled at the colossal size of the two gray structures, Keroman I and II, that were rising side by side from the bank of the Ter River where it met the Scorff. The protective bunkers were each to be 138 by 128 meters, with 18.5-meter elevations. Already he could make out the size of the individual bays, in which U-boats, two abreast, could be reconditioned and provisioned for operations. Towering cranes lifted tons of cement mixed with slag, coarse aggregates, and sand into caissons and wooden forms to create steel-reinforced walls three meters thick, and an even stouter carapace, seven meters thick, that was expected to withstand the most powerful bomb in the British arsenal. Why the RAF did not attack these U-boat lairs while they were still under construction and vulnerable no one could explain. Similar works were under way, Hardegen was told, at other Biscay bases—Brest, St.-Nazaire, and La Pallice. Fifteen thousand workmen—German, French, Czechs, Poles, Dutch, Belgians, Portuguese, Algerians, and Indochinese, most under forced labor conditions—toiled on the vast surfaces under the direction of German engineers and architects. Those not engaged in shaping the walls and roofs were operating locomotives, trucks, cement mixers, wheelbarrows, and other equipment. Huge storage buildings behind the project served as sleeping quarters for the laborers. Guards in field gray with dogs patrolled everywhere, their task to prevent both escapes and sabotage.
In other respects Lorient presented the same relaxed, familiar face, all the more engaging because of the spring air and flowers. Hardegen had time to enjoy it all because his new boat was in dry dock, where, with its dimensions exposed to view, U-123 made the small boat he had just left look like a toy. In company with Oberleutnant zur See Herbert Schneider, his new number one, he inspected the interior, which was being entirely rebuilt. With so many panels, controls, and pipes removed they could see into the very bowels of the boat’s machinery. How it would all be put back together they left to the imagination of the workmen, and Hardegen took advantage of the interval to make trial runs out of harbor with other IXB boats in order to refamiliarize himself with the large boat’s characteristics. He had to appear competent to his new crew when they sortied for action. With the training boat he had just left the crew were at first all new and untried. They had no way of knowing what to expect from their commander. In the case of his new boat the crew were all experienced Atlantic fighters whose commander, Möhle, had won the Knight’s Cross. Hardegen was two years younger than he, had transferred into U-boats from the Luftwaffe, and his only command experience had been in a “dugout canoe.” He had a lot to prove. Nothing so built a crew’s confidence, trust, and general morale as success in sinking ships. He was certain that that success would come to him, and to them. In the meantime, he got to know his men in casual settings, going out with them, for example, in the evenings to a Breton night spot that occupied an old mill and stood picturesquely on a stream. The menu featured the locally famous Brittany oysters and lobsters, which were served by girls in traditional Celtic folk costume. Through these means and others he and his crew became acquainted.
Finally, one Sunday evening, 8 June, with sealed orders from the flotilla commander in hand, he cleared harbor on his first war patrol in the new boat. After passing a navigational point specified on the sealed cover of his orders he opened them and announced their content to the crew over the loudspeaker: They were bound for Africa! They would attack British shipping on the west coast off Freetown, Sierra Leone. Hurrahs rang out from the compartments. Everyone seemed to like the idea of sinking English commerce at night under the Southern Cross. It was to be a new experience for them all. A number of commanders at Lorient had speculated that, with the lengthening of days in spring, nighttime operations in the North Atlantic would diminish and some of them might be sent south to intercept shipping that came from South America and from the Middle East and Far East around the Cape of Good Hope. At Freetown the slower merchantmen assembled to form convoys directly north to England. Faster vessels steamed independently on courses that swung farther out into the Atlantic. What 123 did not know at the time, because of the secrecy of orders, was that in the preceding month seven boats had already sailed against that southern commerce and had had exceptional successes. One boat, M-107, commanded by Admiral Dönitz’s son-in-law, Kptlt. Günter Hessler, had sunk thirteen ships, for which he was awarded the Knight’s Cross.12
Mechanical trouble prevented 123 from reaching her assigned patrol area on time, however. Both 7.5-meter-Iong periscopes, the hand-trained high-angle (ninety-degree) lens with superior light transmission that was used for general observation of sea and sky, and the foot-trained high-magnification attack scope fitted with reticle, or cross hairs, were not hoisting properly from their wells. Two days out of port Hardegen and his crew had to return to base for repairs. After four days in port they were outward bound again, on 16 June. Off the coast of Spain they sighted their first merchantman. It was daylight, so they submerged. Through the periscope Hardegen saw that the vessel was a neutral Spanish-flag steamer; rules of engagement called for it to be left to pass. The Spanish crew had no idea that someone underwater was watching them perform their daily tasks—the seamen washing down the decks, the helmsman watching his compass on the bridge, the cook coming out of the galley and stretching his arms in the warm sunlight. On 20 June, past the Strait of Gibraltar and near the coast of Morocco, Hardegen found a vessel he identified as a legitimate British target. It was daylight again, and he had to make his approach by periscope. In submerged attacks it was the commander who made the target observation, calculated the attack bearing and track, and ordered the torpedo launch. Hardegen now took his seated position at the Standzielsehrohr, the monocular attack-periscope sight in the conning tower just below the hatch and above the control room. By foot pedals he trained the fixed height-of-eye scope, while ordering the E motor telegraph to maintain boat speed below the five knots when vibration in the scope standard rendered vision unsatisfactory for attack. In that small space two other men had to work: the helmsman (Rudergänger) who directed the boat’s course by pushing rudder buttons, left and right, and Schneider, the torpedo officer, who cranked Hardegen’s target data into the Vorhaltrechner, an electromechanical calculator that fed the attack heading into the gyrocompass steering mechanism of the torpedoes in their tubes and continually adjusted that information as the U-boat moved and turned. Given these data in the gyro system a torpedo, when launched, would come onto the correct heading regardless of the direction in which the boat itself was headed. With his left hand Hardegen turned the periscope laterally, while with his right hand he focused the eyepiece in its foam-rubber housing. Now in the graduated lens he could clearly make out the target. It was a freighter, around 4,300 GRT, he estimated, drawing about seven meters draft. He called out the range, course, speed, angle on the bow, and depth setting for the torpedoes. At the same time he shouted descriptive information about the target down the voice pipe so the crew below would be aware what was going on. Those experienced frontline men were wondering, he knew, whether the “new man on board” would make it or not.
When the range closed to 600 meters he gave the order: “Rohr los!” (“Launch!”) The boat gave a small lurch as a burst of compressed air pushed one of their “eels” out of its tube. The excess air vented inboard to prevent exterior surface bubbles; the crew felt the increase of pressure on their eardrums. Below in the control room the LI quickly adjusted the boat’s trim to account for the loss of the torpedo’s weight on board, while Schneider counted the seconds on his stopwatch. The sound man reported the torpedo run as hot, straight, and normal. Itself a small submarine with an electric motor and gui
dance system, the torpedo was speeding on its mission at a depth of 2.5 meters with a cargo of high explosives. Just at the elapsed time predicted for a hit—nothing! Verdammt! What had happened? Apparently the eel had passed astern of the target. Schneider checked the calculator readings and suggested that the calculator had been out of adjustment by nine degrees. Hardegen thought to himself, What a sorry beginning for a commander! They had to attack again, but their underwater speed was so slow that it took until after dusk to catch up with the target vessel and acquire an angle from which to launch again from a submerged position. This time he bypassed the calculator and “went to zero.” Like a duck hunter with his shotgun, he aimed the whole boat at the point where their target would be in so many seconds. Then he launched another eel from a bow tube and started counting. WHACK! A hit! Hardegen sighted the detonation column through the scope. He had led the moving target correctly. Underwater he and the crew could easily hear the screeching of broken metal and the bursting of bulkheads in the victim’s entrails.
As the minutes ticked by, however, he saw no sign that the steamer was sinking. The eel had hit exactly where he had aimed, in the engine room, and the steamer was listing to port and taking water, but still she lay stubbornly afloat. He decided to put another zero-angle torpedo shot into her side, and after he did so he watched as the freighter’s crew went into lifeboats, which were heavily loaded because the two eels had crushed one boat and caused another to foul. As soon as the ship was safely abandoned he surfaced. The watch climbed to the bridge and swept all quadrants of the horizon with binoculars while Hardegen and Schneider studied their wounded prey. Still floating on her port side despite two hits, she refused to go down. Not wanting any English rescue tug to come out and haul the wreck to shore for repair and refitting, Hardegen ordered the gun crew to battle stations: They would have to put some exploding shells into her water-line. Leutnant zur See Horst von Schroeter, the number two and gunnery officer, quickly took his position commanding the 10.5-centimeter gun crew on the foredeck. Artillery shells were passed up from below. Hardegen gave the order:
“Feuererlaubnis!” (“Permission to fire!”)
CRACK!
For a few seconds everyone on top was blinded by the bright orange flash of the ignition. When their eyes adjusted to the twilight again they could see a gaping black hole in the hull of the stopped target. Von Schroeter put several more shells into the hole, and the freighter started going down flat. Soon oil and gasoline were spilling onto the water’s surface and turning the waves red with fire. With a great gurgle the mortally damaged hull at last sank from view, followed by the masts and funnel, while empty oil cans and timber came to the surface, suggesting why the vessel had floated so long. Surface fires continued to blaze and their crimson light played across the faces on the U-boat bridge as, with engines reversed, 123 backed off slowly into the gathering darkness. It was Hardegen’s first submerged attack as a commander, and his first gun action. He thought that the crew felt better about their “new man on board.”13
It was on this surface cruise southward that, one day, while Hardegen rested on his bunk, the radio operator woke him to report: “Herr Kaleu, we’re at war with Russia!” Hardegen could not believe it, but the operator insisted. So he turned on the radiotelephone receiver and listened himself to the news reports from home. The announcement, it turned out, was true. Hardegen was gratified to hear of the successes of the Eastern armies, but the Russian campaign was so far away from his latitudes it bore a certain air of unreality, particularly when later he stood on the bridge at night and reflected on his very different world, one not of tanks on land but of boats gently rising and falling on warm waters that swept quietly and peacefully below Orion, the red-hued Aldebaran, blue-green Sirius, famous Arcturus, and the many other lights in the starry canopy that led seamen from point to point upon the deep. “Where are we?” he would ask his number two, von Schroeter, after the navigator had finished taking a star fix with his sextant. Such and such a latitude and longitude, von Schroeter would reply, and add something like: “Course two-oh-five, Herr Kaleu, portside diesel at slow ahead, clutched to E motors so both screws are on drive. Starboard diesel currently being examined. A water-pump bearing was worn to excess clearance. Should be cleared in two hours. Indicated surface speed seven knots.”
Soon they came within sight of Pico de Teide, the highest mountain of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and in the dark early morning hours of 25 June they reached the neutral friendly Spanish port of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. There, on the outer extremities of the harbor, they tied up alongside a German supply tanker, Corrientes, from which they topped off fuel tanks and drew fresh stores. The fueling and restocking operation, which bore the code name Culebra, would enable Hardegen to continue operations until 23 August.14 At 0640 the same morning, 123 stood out to sea again. Farther down the coast of Africa dolphins played around the bow of the boat and temperatures turned tropical. When the heat inside the boat reached thirty-five degrees Celsius (ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit) Hardegen let groups of crewmen go topside to catch the breeze created by the forward motion of the boat. Some of the men rigged a saltwater shower, which further helped them cool off.
Passage to their assigned operational area off Freetown in Sierra Leone continued without incident until 27 June, in late morning, when the routine was broken by a call on the voice pipe: “Commander to the bridge! Smoke clouds!” Hardegen raced up the ladder and directed his binoculars in the direction indicated. Many times what appeared to be ships’ smoke to a bridge watch turned out to be scraps of cloud, and what were thought to be attacking airplanes changed into sea gulls. This time the watch was right. Those were indeed thin columns of smoke on the southern horizon—a convoy, northbound, range closing. But that wasn’t all. Overhead was a British Short Sunderland flying boat. They knew the type: müde Bienen— “tired bees”—they called them because of the aircraft type’s slow and awkward flight characteristics. The plane carried depth charges. And it was headed straight toward them! ALARM! They submerged. They surfaced. They dived again. The circling Sunderland was keeping them underwater, even though they did not know if it had sighted them. Every so often Hardegen came to periscope depth and made an observation with the sky scope. It would take time to shake the aircraft and get into position for attack. The cat and mouse game continued for hours until, finally, darkness came. Eins Zwei Drei surfaced again, this time under a bright moon. Hardegen followed convoy sighting procedures and by Funk-Telegraphie, or F.T., their wireless transmitter (an abbreviation also used to denote a wireless message) advised BdU of the convoy’s size, course, and speed: twenty-three ships in four columns, course 315 degrees, speed seven knots. As the convov approached, the lookouts made out several destroyers and corvettes on its perimeter. Getting inside their protective screen would be difficult, especially with a moon. But as a nervous bridge watched, Hardegen did it. Closing from windward to reduce the visibility of his bow wake, he soon found himself standing on the surface inside the columns of the convoy itself. It was Kretschmer’s technique—daring and dangerous. Large, pompous shadows, tankers and freighters, pushed past on the right and left at point-blank range.
Now they had to hustle before lookouts spotted !23′s silhouette. Schneider brought up his U boot-Zieloptik, or UZO, the target-aiming binoculars, and affixed it to the UZO post w ith its rotating base and bearing indicator ring. The UZO connected mechanically to the Vorhaltrechner, which computed the target data and fed them into the “brains” of the torpedoes. Schneider now took bearings on three targets in a column of ships to port and gave the orders: “Tubes one, two, and four stand by. Bow caps open.” The eels would go out at one-minute intervals. Hardegen nodded to Schneider when he gave the ready sign. Three times Schneider pressed the launch button and shouted down the voice pipe his confirmations: Los!… Los!… Los! The boat flinched each time in recoil. The electric eels left no wake, so the bridge had no visible way of knowing if they were running true, but
the sound room called up the voice pipe that they were hot, straight, and normal. Hardegen and Schneider watched the second hands on their chronometers. Right on time—WHACK!—an eel exploded against the hull of the first ship they had taken aim at, sending a giant geyser of water skyward. Almost simultaneously another thunderous din came over the water and they watched, fascinated, as a pillar of red-and-yellow flame shot up forward of the bridge on their second target, which was closer to them, and in the fiery illumination they saw the steamer break apart in the middle and settle in the sea. Now, where was the third eel? By this time it, too, should have hit. Hardegen waited an interval, then ordered “hard-a-port” to be in position for a second salvo. Just as he began the turn he saw a high black detonation column in the convoy’s last row, and a second later heard the explosion. He had been lucky. The third torpedo had missed its intended target and, instead, in a diagonal line, had wandered on to hit another ship. It was a hit of pure chance, such as he had seen once before as WO on U-124. (The ships sunk in this convoy, SL 76, on 27 June were British freighter P.L.M. 22, 5,646 GRT, which Hardegen claimed to BdU as a 10,000-ton tanker, and Dutch freighter Oberem, 1,996 GRT, which Hardegen claimed as 2,626 GRT. The third hit damaged a freighter, not identified.15)
Now the whole convoy sprang to life. Ships sailed erratically on evasive courses. The first target, lying mortally wounded just barely above the water’s surface, shot up illuminating flares. Tiny lights on life jackets danced on the waves, identifying the locations of survivors. So far the destroyers and corvettes had missed ¡23, and Hardegen decided to seek cover alongside a lone steamer at the rear of the convoy. That turned out to be a mistake because the steamer’s deck suddenly erupted in light flashes. Artillery! They were being shelled! The steamer had gun crews and she spewed ammunition from deck guns fore and aft. Her aim was bad, however, and, with their much faster surface speed, Hardegen and his crew made off safely. The gun flashes and noise alerted other ships including the escorts and soon star shells and flares were turning night into day, and searchlights were combing the water’s surface. “ALARM!” Hardegen yelled into the voice pipe, and 123 sought the safety of the deep. There would be no more torpedoes just yet.
Operation Drumbeat Page 7