The identity of the naval square Wrangelstrasse would have to be established, or guessed at, by the Submarine Tracking Room in Operational Intelligence Centre in London. Otherwise, satisfied that the signal had been accurately translated and that it required no annotation or comment, the number one assigned the text medium-rank priority of two Zs (on a scale of Z to ZZZZZ) and passed both the German and English versions to the Wren head of the indexer shift, who underlined the name of the Greek vessel with red chalk for inclusion in the Naval Section card file. This done, the English text was taken to a teleprinter, where one of a bank of “teleprincesses” typed the HUSH MOST SECRET document into a secure circuit that led directly from this quiet Buckinghamshire backwater to the Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) in the “Citadel,” a concrete blockhouse on the northwest corner of the Admiralty nearest the Mall, which runs from Buckingham Palace to Admiralty Arch.
0600 hours, 3 January 1942. Lieutenant Patrick Beesly was still so new at his job that every morning when he entered the “Citadel” and descended to the underground Submarine Tracking Room (NID 8 [S]) of theOIC, he could anticipate learning something entirely new—and being strictly examined on it by the Tracking Room director, Temporary Commander Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), Special Branch, Rodger Winn. It was easy to feel intimidated by Commander Winn, whose formidable intellect not only prevailed over U-boat movements but carried weight beyond the Tracking Room into the other divisions and functions of the OIC: the Lower War Room for Operations, the Movements Section of the Trade Division, Surface Ship Intelligence, D/F Plotting, Anti-Submarine Warfare (A/SW), and the civilian-manned War Registry, which handled all incoming and outgoing signals. Thirty-eight years old, Winn held degrees from Cambridge and Harvard. He enjoyed a successful civilian career as a barrister and when war broke out volunteered as an interrogator of German prisoners. Somehow in August 1939 he ended up in the Tracking Room where, still a civilian, he demonstrated a quick mastery of U-boat tactics and, somewhat to the annoyance of his superior, a regular RN paymaster captain, who insisted that the feat was impossible, an uncanny ability to predict future U-boat movements. Subsequently, to no one’s surprise in the OIC, he was promoted to temporary commander’s rank in the volunteer reserve and appointed to replace his superior—an unprecedented promotion for a man who had not passed through Dartmouth naval college to regular line or executive officer status. That by dint of mind and will Winn had overcome childhood polio that left him with crippled legs and a humped back further burnished his reputation and influence among OIC colleagues, who, though they did not always find him an easy man to work with—particularly if their own performance seemed not to measure up to his demanding standards—nonetheless admired him enormously.
Patrick Beesly had come into the Tracking Room by a similarly circuitous route. Like Winn, he had dreamed as a boy of joining the Royal Navy but in his case poor eyesight frustrated that dream. After Cambridge he entered upon a career as an insurance broker with Lloyd’s of London. With war on the horizon and eyesight no longer the gatekeeper it was in peacetime he was accepted, in June 1939, in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, Special Branch, where he wore a green stripe on his sleeve to show (as the executive officers’ lobby required) that he and other reservists had not passed through Dartmouth to executive grade. As a twenty-seven-year-old “Greenstriper,” he went to the OIC in July 1940 and started as an assistant to Commander Norman (“Ned”) Denning, who was in charge of Surface Ship Intelligence. With Denning he worked primarily on German raiders operating under merchant ship disguise, until December 1941, when Commander Winn asked for reinforcement of his seriously understaffed Submarine Tracking Room and Beesly was sent over to be deputy director. Thus, at the onset of 1942, two essentially civilian types, Winn and Beesly, presided over the whole of Britain’s intelligence war against the Ubootwaffe and, what was more remarkable, made the principal operational decisions that sent executive officers on their A/SW missions.4 To Winn and Beesly, too, fell the duty of advising their new full-time partner in hostilities, the United States Navy, of U-boat movements that might intrude on U.S. waters.
On this particular morning Beesly entered the Tracking Room through the guarded door off the Main Trade Plot and took his chair in the deputy director’s glass cubicle-office that adjoined Winn’s on the southeast side of a fairly large room, an irregular pentagon in shape, with cream-painted windowless walls that were covered with charts, graphs, pictures of U-boats, and—by Winn’s order—a large photograph of a pensive-looking Admiral Dönitz, since Winn thought of this room as a shadow BdU. Dominating the floor space on the southeast side was the Main North Atlantic Plotting Table, its center just reachable by an arm’s reach. It depicted latitudes and longitudes seventy-three north to five south and one hundred west to sixty east. Tabbed pins on the plot identified all known surface ships, Navy and merchant, all military and seaborne trade convoys, and all operational U-boats. As a precaution against security penetration, particularly when the cleaning women came in the morning or when visitors without proper clearance were brought in by high officials such as the First Sea Lord, the pin tabs bore number and letter codes. U-boat numerals were disguised by double letters: digraphs with initial letters A, C, E, and so on denoted VIIC boats; those of series B, D, F, and so on indicated Type IXs. Thus U-I23 might appear as BH on one patrol and NR on another. A key to the digraphs was kept under seal, though the main plot was so precisely imprinted on Winn’s mind that he (unlike Beesly at this point) never had to consult it. To the northwest side of the room was a table of near equal size bearing a captured German naval grid plot. Farther on, at the northwest point, was a smaller D/F plot table. In the southeast corner sat an ASW observer. There was not a regular officer in the room. The southwest wall held offices for the remainder of the small, overstretched staff: four civilian-suited RNVR watchkeepers, and three women civil servants who provided clerical assistance. The “teleprincesses” occupied an adjoining room from which a Wren called the Secret Lady distributed “Z” messages from BP. In the Tracking Room, Z messages were known as “Z” or “Special Intelligence.” When signals containing or based on their contents went out from OIC to headquarters, base, and fleet commanders, these became known as “Ultra.”5
Beesly’s first task was to prepare for the 0730 review of overnight developments with Winn and for the 0800 scrambler conference call with the commander in chief Western Approaches and the commander in chief Coastal Command. He began by calling for the Secret Lady, who brought him a sheaf of telegram-size sheets each containing a separate naval Enigma decrypt. There had not been much traffic overnight, but one signal intercept suggesting an imminent attack caught his full attention. His eyes moved rapidly across it: u-123 … DIMITRIOS INGLESSIS … DAMAGED RUDDER … 150 MILES FROM. … He knew what Winn would want to have in hand in order to evaluate this signal. He walked across to the file clerk and obtained from her the cards on U-123. Next he looked up Dimitrios Inglessis in Lloyd’s Register of Ships and asked one of the teleprincesses to transmit an overseas cable teleprinter message to Naval Service Headquarters (NSHQ) in Ottawa alerting the Canadian Navy to the threat posed by 123 and asking for an immediate position and status report on Dimitrios. Finally, back in his office, he placed a scrambler phone call to “Professor Corduroy,” as Winn liked to call Harry Hinsley, a twenty-year-old Cambridge undergraduate with long tousled hair and worn corduroy trousers who was the Tracking Room’s regular close contact, along with Section Head Frank Birch, in Naval Section Hut 4 at BP.6 To Hinsley, Beesly expressed the wish of the Tracking Room that he keep a special lookout for all intercepts mentioning U-123 or Dimitrios. By 0720, all his data in hand, he prepared his mind for the questions he was sure—after working three weeks with Winn—the director would ask him or expect him to anticipate in his briefing.
At precisely 0729 the bespectacled wizard Winn came through the door with his pronounced limp, waved a good morning at everyone as far as the two D/F plotters at the end
of the room, and hung his cap and coat in his cubicle-office, nodding at Beesly through the glass wall as he did so. Beesly went out to meet him, and the two men took positions on either side of the main plot.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Beesly.” Winn assumed his customary half-crouched position, supporting his deformed back by leaning stiff-armed on his knuckles against the table. “What does Admiral Dönitz have for us this morning?”
Beesly began. There had been no night actions. From Special Intelligence important new information had arrived on U-123 that he would present at the close of the briefing. The general situation that morning was unchanged from the evening before, except that five boats had continued their advance toward the western Atlantic and there were these several new developments: V-701 reported sighting a convoy at 1045 hours in AM 3377. That would be HG 76. U-134 reported sinking an independently routed vessel in AB 6337, but a check with trade plot showed no ships lost at that position or elsewhere in the last twenty-four hours. And a Royal Navy patrol reported sighting a surfaced U-boat at 0948 hours in AM 2633. He would guess that to be V-333, here (pointing to the spot). Repeated failures of U-79 and U-75 to answer wireless calls from BdU confirmed that those boats had been lost, at the hands, respectively, of Hasty and Hotspur on 20 December and Kipling on the twenty-eighth. And that was all there was on the morning plot.
The final figures for December sinkings had been tallied, he went on, and they amounted to sixty-two thousand tons, the lowest monthly total since May 1940. Twenty 500-tonners continued to operate in the Mediterranean.7 No new Rudeltaktik against transatlantic trade had formed. Only six boats were on stationary Atlantic stations, all near the Azores, although there continued to be a strong advance westward by individual boats, which the Tracking Room could identify as five in number, U-125, 123, 66, 109, and 130. All were 740-tonners, all out of Lorient, the last two of which sortied on 27 December. Additional boats have sortied from various Biscay bases in recent days, all 500-tonners, and those that have sent position reports at ten degrees west were following a westerly heading, 270 or 275, that would take them in the wake of the five boats whose pins were at various points of midocean on the plot.8 The advance westward of the five 740-tonners appeared to have been the reason for the attempted wireless camouflage by V-653 in the North Western Approaches. The ruse de guerre collapsed quickly, as noted before, since BP intercepted the instructions for the dummy signals and the boat was quickly D/Fed as a single source at a more or less stationary position.
The new information just in on U-123 suggested a correction to her course and position. (Beesly handed the Special Intelligence decrypt to Winn.) The Tracking Room first learned of her sortie, position, and probable track on 25 December when she sent her first, and so far only, short signal. The position was disguised, of course, and though the enciphered square went unsolved, Tracking Room knew it was sent at ten degrees west and D/F acquired a good fix, which indicated a westerly heading. By advancing 123′s pin with dividers at an average speed of ten knots, the Tracking Room had the boat closing that morning on the north Newfoundland Bank. This new signal would suggest that she was at a position somewhat to the south of the pin, or at least that Admiral Dönitz assumed she was to the south. NSHQ Ottawa just now teleprinted the Dimitrios position as 48-39N, 48-21W, which was the vicinity of Virgin Rocks. If 123 was anything like 150 to 300 miles from Virgin Rocks, she would be located within a circle thus. (Beesly drew a circle south of the U-123 pin.)
That would be farther south at that longitude than any boat had proceeded thus far in Canadian waters. Had Beesly notified Ottawa of 123′s presence?
Yes, Beesly replied. St. John’s had already answered the distress call with a seagoing tug and two destroyers. The “Wrangelstrasse” position disguise apparently represented the western edge of naval quadrant BC; would Commander Winn agree to moving the pin south to about here (again, Beesly pointed)?
Agreed, Winn said. He was familiar with this boat. It had recently completed a patrol in the Strait of Belle Isle and south of Greenland. En route it torpedoed the AMC Aurania. Its patrol prior to that was off Freetown. Who was its commander and what did the room have on him?
Beesly reached for his cards. Hardegen, he answered. Reinhard Hardegen. Born in Bremen, 18 March 1913. Joined the Kriegsmarine in 1933, made the usual round-the-world cruise as a cadet, and entered the Naval Academy at Mürwik in June 1934. After commissioning was assigned to naval aviation, became a pilot. Crashed in 1936, leaving him with a limp and a bad stomach. Transferred to Uboot-waffe in 1939 and was appointed directly after basic training to U-boat Commanders School. Afterward was assigned as watch officer to the 740-tonner U-124 for two patrols. First command was a training boat, U-147. Took over U-/23 from Karl-Heinz Möhle in May 1941 and made his first patrol off Freetown in June, July, August. Sailed last October-November to Strait of Belle Isle and Greenland. So far as the room knew he had seven sinkings and one damaged to his credit. POW interrogations disclosed that his reputation in the fleet was one of marked aggressiveness, independent and impetuous action—he disobeyed explicit orders from BdU when he torpedoed Aurania in October, as BP learned from intercepts—and daring. That was all that was known, except that he had married Barbara Petersen in Wolfen on 22 June 1938 and had two sons, Klaus-Reinhard and Jörg.
Winn raised his eyes to look past Beesly at the steely gaze of Admiral Dönitz in the wall photograph opposite. What was the Lion up to? Winn’s eyes bored through the photograph in an attempt to read the German’s mind. He was satisfied that he already knew much from D/F and particularly from Special Intelligence, to which even the transposition of grid identifiers and the street-address ciphers had proved permeable. He knew far more from these sources than Tracking Room had ever learned from CX (French agents’ reports), which were uniformly so late in arriving they were operationally useless.9 But what he did not know was the admiral’s current objectives. Why the sudden reversal of course? From pulling all his boats out of the convoy lanes, he had now sent at least five, and it appeared a good many more to follow, into the Atlantic. And all the Special Intelligence and D/F to date could not explain why. The Libyan campaign had not wound down. Dönitz had no more boats on operational status than he had two weeks before, and he had just suffered a series of disastrous losses off Gibraltar. It was a puzzle. Two facts stood out, though, in Winn’s mind: First, a Z message of 29 December had ordered U-125, the first of the western boats to sortie, to delay its advance in naval quadrant BD until 11-/23, 66, J09, and 130 caught up. That could mean that the first boats were meant to form a patrol line. Or—his brow darkened—it could mean that the five boats were scheduled to begin independent operations at the same precise time. Second, the United States had just formally entered the war.
Lifting himself with difficulty from the table’s edge, he said to Beesly: “Be sure that the people upstairs keep Washington informed.” Winn smiled wryly. He rather liked the fact that someone on the other side also had a limp and a bad stomach.10
At the beginning of 1942, while British Naval Intelligence Division stood at the near zenith of its powers, the reputation and influence of its U.S. Navy counterpart in Washington, D.C., lay at ruinous discount. Still stunned by the operational failure that was Pearl Harbor/riddled with recrimination, confusion, intramural feuding, and disaffection, and burdened furthermore by administrative structures that frustrated the evaluation, dissemination, and use of data acquired from German and Japanese sources, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) in the sixth wing on second deck of the Navy Department at Constitution Avenue and 17th Street presented a shocking contrast to the OIC.
Intelligence as a branch or specialty in the U.S. Navy was held in nowhere near the regard it could claim in the Royal Navy. During the period before Pearl Harbor it was not considered a path of advancement for any officer who aspired to the command of a deep draft ship. Even a forceful personality, as that exhibited by Captain Alan G. Kirk, who became d
irector (DN I) of ONI in March 1941, could not long withstand the withering derision of officers in Operations. “Everybody sort of thought Naval Intelligence was striped pants, cookie-pushers, going to parties and so on,” he said in an oral-history interview after the war.11 Kirk thought that ONI should emulate the OIC into whose mysteries he had been initiated while serving as naval attache in London. But his efforts to establish such a center, with a respectable U-boat tracking room, were resisted by the Navy’s dominant Washington personality, fifty-five-year-old, six-foot, lantern-jawed Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly “Terrible” Turner, Director of War Plans (OP-12) in Operations. Holding intelligence types in persistent contempt, Turner treated ONI as no more than a hallway drop-box, raided its data, made up his own estimates, projections, and warnings, which were frequently wrong (as for example, his warning that Japan would invade the Soviet Union rather than, as Kirk and his staff insisted, Southeast Asia), and provoked near mutiny on second deck.
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