(4) BOATS WILL FORM THE GROUP DRUMBEAT.4
Immediately the officers’ eyes flashed from the decrypt to the chart.
“As you can see, gentlemen,” Hardegen said, “Attack Area Two corresponds exactly with the initial target zone in our Operation Order—New York to Atlantic City. Nothing new there. Folkers and Zapp will be nearby, Folkers farther off New York and New Jersey, Zapp off Cape Hatteras. Kals will be in Cabot Strait off Cape Breton Island and Bleichrodt southeast of Halifax. So Group Hardegen will be the only boats to hit the U.S.A. as such, at least at the start. And our particular boat can go as far south as Hatteras if we wish. The really new information in this signal is the attack date. I’ve already informed the Puster. You have my permission to inform the rest of the crew. Now let’s make sure we make our area on time. Chief, maintain the dieseis at both ahead half. That’s about the best speed that we can make in these hard head seas. Anything more and we’ll start undercutting. Number One, check the DR line with Kaeding. We haven’t had a star sight for days. Number Two, resume bridge watch and keep your eyes peeled. We’re fast approaching coastwise traffic.”
Earlier that day at 2000 hours (1400 ET), the bridge had sighted the two threadlike masts of a hull down sailing vessel, course 300°, that von Schroeter estimated at six hundred GRT. It was the first vessel that 123 had sighted since the Dimitrios Inglessis debacle. Following standing orders, von Schroeter took an evasive course. Now as the sky grew dark and the boat’s log entered 10 January, German time, the snow, which had lightened somewhat earlier in the day, thickened and began to lay a heavy carpet of slush across the bridge deck. Von Schroeter decided to close the hatch. He and the lookouts stood alone with their 7 x 50 magnified images of snow and their fantasies, von Schroeter imagining New York skyscrapers looming out of the white wall forward. Belowdeck crewmen went about their tasks as best they could in the fusty, twisting compartments. “Langspleiss” guarded his head against the violent rolls. Hannes struggled to keep his pots on the burners. “Kraxel” and “Icke” cursed the damp rot. “Lackl” examined his hands, green from verdigris on the rungs of the tower ladder. Tolle kept an arm wrapped warily around the guard rail of his bunk. Rafalski stared hard at a photo of his girlfriend Wally and worried: 13 was not a good date at all.
0730 hours British Zone Time, 10 January, London, OIC, Submarine Tracking Room.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Beeslv. I see in the Times this morning that the Board of Admiralty has released news of the loss of our cruiser Galatea off Alexandria three weeks ago—by U-557, wasn’t it? I always worry that some newspaper liaison type upstairs will name the U-boat that caused a sinking and absolutely compromise our game. Let’s not forward those identifications in the future unless First Sea Lord demands it. And you seem to have a lot of paper in your hand this cold morning.”
“Yes, sir.” Tracking Room could now conclude confidently, Beesly said, that the enemy had returned to the North Atlantic in great strength. Tracking had good data on the VIIC, or 500-tonner, group that was headed to previously worked operational areas, and as of that morning the room had first notice of the attack areas assigned to the five 740-tonners approaching the North American coast. First the twelve 500-ton boats. Intercepts revealed that they formed Gruppe Ziethen, and the data clearly suggested that they were destined for stations on the Newfoundland Bank and off Nova Scotia, as the chart pins displayed. The boats were U-84, 86, 87, 135, 203, 333, 552, 553, 582, 654, 701, and 754. As noted earlier, they already had two sinkings on their outward passage. U-87 sank Cardita west of Ireland on 31 December and U-701— that was the boat fresh from training that had sighted HG 76 and lost its second watch officer overboard on the thirty-first—sank Baron Erskine southeast of Greenland on the sixth. When all twelve boats were in place they could be expected to constitute a formidable rake.
“Recommendation?” Winn asked.
“Notify convoys to evade,” Beesly replied.
“Of course. But it will be hard to divert our formations if Group Ziethen moves about. Now, the seven-hundred-forty-tonners?”
Beesly reported that Special Intelligence had come in over night on the attack areas assigned to U-66, 109, 123, ¡25, and 130. The intercept also gave the group name for the first time. Curiously, the attack areas in the intercept bore Roman-numeral designations rather than Marinequadrat numerals. The anomaly suggested that the attack areas were so unlike previously worked areas that it was more appropriate to mark them off on a chart by that means.
Beesly handed the decrypt to Winn who placed it on the plot table between his knuckles and stared at it for a full minute, mumbling several times, “Paukenschlag.” Then, looking up, he said to Beesly that the Roman indicators could mean that Admiral Dönitz was dealing with a coastline—not just with positions at sea—but with a coastline that included positions at sea. Winn studied the five 740-tonner pins that Beesly had been advancing at ten knots day by day in a cluster toward the Canadian and New England coasts. He pointed out to Beesly that without any transmissions from those boats, which obviously were observing wireless silence, the two of them would have to deduce position and destination from other sources. Now they knew where V-123 had been on 3 January—here (pointing) off Virgin Rocks—because of the Dimitrios show. And that was too southerly a trajectory for anyone who was intending to follow the Great Circle to Newfoundland Bank. It was not too far south for someone intending to work off Halifax, however. But U-123 would have been southeast off Halifax already by 10 January—that very day. So their next clue was in this present signal, item two, namely: FOLKERS HARDEGEN ZAPP CONTINUE ADVANCE 10 JANUARY EARLY. BDU COUNTS ON YOUR ARRIVING IN ATTACK AREA 13 JANUARY. “Advance” was the controlling word. Those three boats were probably together, or more or less so, and they were destined for contiguous attack areas: one, two, and three. Since he and Beesly knew of U-123′s position a week before, Winn suggested that it would not be difficult using a divider to calculate the point to which that particular boat might advance three days hence. And that position would then help put a fix on the other two boats.
Winn set the divider for a ten-knot advance over twenty-four hours and placed one pointer southeast of Halifax. Then, working from the intercept’s time of origin in Central European Time, he advanced the divider westward across the intervening three-day time period. The result described an arc that included the Canadian and U.S. seaboards as far south as Delaware Bay. Hardegen certainly and probably also Folkers and Zapp would go at least as far as New York, Winn concluded, if they kept pushing at a ten-knot speed, and it was clear from the intercept that BdU was counting on their doing so. That would be Tracking Room’s “working fiction.” Admiralty should make certain, he said, that those trajectories made it onto the U.S. Navy daily situation maps in Washington. As for the other two boats, 109 and 130, Winn was less sure of their courses because, unlike V-123, BdU had not provided a recent reference point. They, too, were ordered to be on station by the same 13 January. Did that mean that their assigned attack areas were nearby the others? A Z message of 29 December had ordered U-/25, the first out of Lorient, to wait in square BD for the other boats to catch up. That was all that was known. There was just no way of deciding about 709 and 130, Winn concluded, whether their stations would be shoreward or seaward. The only really hard recent information they had, he reminded Beesly, was on 123. That boat was the key. No doubt about it. She at least was going as far as New York.
Winn stood up stiffly. “How’s your German, Beesly? The language chaps at Bletchley Park have translated the code word for this group—Paukenschlag—as ‘Drumbeat.’ If that is a correct translation, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, the word may tell us something of the Germans’ intentions. We’ll have to think about that. In the meantime”—Winn glanced at Dönitz’s photograph—“we have the Lion to thank for our fix on Lieutenant Commander Hardegen. His wireless to Hardegen about Dimitrios was most obliging. Either he or Hardegen may favor us agai
n before the next three days are out.”5
Beesly suggested that they needed all the favors they could get. Five more 740-tonners were now at sea—V-103, 106, 107, 108, ana 128. The first two had advanced to square BD. The last had just sortied from Lorient.
Winn nodded and limped to his office for the 0800 conference call to Western Approaches and Coastal Command.
1200 hours (CET), 0500 (ET), 11 January, U-123 on the surface, both ahead half, position CB 4332, south of Halifax and Liverpool, due east of a point between New York and Philadelphia, course heading 270. Winds from the northwest at 4-5, sky overcast, seas 4, visibility 12. Distance covered the preceding day: 183 nautical miles. The boat had passed through the worst of the storm. The ceaseless pounding was over. Seas continued to be brisk with high swells, but the once-driving head seas had diminished to confused waves that canceled each other out. The boat, which had shaken and strained and groaned for so long, resumed its usual elephant dance, while exhausted crewmen nursed their cuts and bruises and rediscovered their appetites. Now, as Har-degen sat on his bunk, he read one after another the distress signals and damage reports that Rafalski handed across to him. They came from ships that unlike 123 had been unable to defy the mauling winds and seas. Seven ships from loaded convoy SC 34 that had departed Sydney on 9 January were forced by weather damage to seek shelter at St. John’s, Newfoundland. Three Canadian destroyers were battered so hard they had to be withdrawn from the escort force.6 Two U.S. destroyers, fourstackers Badger and Cole, bound for rendezvous with a returning convoy in ballast, suffered badly. Badger’s mainmast snapped at bridge level, and Cole sustained structural damage to side plating and Number 1 gun; Cole’s deck log registered a port roll of sixty-eight degrees.7 Still other ships, naval and merchant, were pleading for radio direction signals from Halifax, Nantucket, or New York. From the six-hundred- and eight-hundred-meter wavelengths, Rafalski picked up sos signals. The Russian Nikolina Batkovia lost her rudder in square AJ 68, and her crew had taken to lifeboats. Another steamer, Africander, sank from sea damage in BC 58. The pitiless Atlantic.
Hardegen would later remember: “A look into Lloyd’s Register told us that these were old hulks built between 1904 and 1907. The enemy was apparently already forced to send cranky old boats like these across the North Atlantic, probably heavily overloaded. Well, that allowed us to draw interesting conclusions about the shipping situation. I think it was hardly necessary to lend a helping hand in this kind of weather. The ships would surely go into the depths by themselves, and we could keep our torpedoes for better targets.”8
At 1600 Hardegen mounted to the bridge for a personal look around with binoculars. There was good late-morning light and visibility was ten. Hoffmann had the watch. The seamen lookouts, who were a different breed from the mixers and other technicians on board, practiced their own rhythmic, painstaking art. With rubber-cushioned eyepieces held tightly against their browbones they slowly swept the binocular lenses by fingertip control, left to right, across the sectors of the horizon assigned to them. At the end of each sweep they let the heavy glasses hang for a few seconds on their neck straps while they flexed their triceps and scanned the sky and horizon with unaided eyes. Then, glasses raised again, they resumed their magnified search, this time from right to left. The ritualistic vigil continued uninterrupted except when spray or, as frequently happened to the bridge watch now, mist covered the lenses, requiring the lookouts to call for leather or cotton wipers or to send the glasses below for cleaning. The lookouts were experienced enough by this Feindfahrt that they knew what to look for as they moved their lenses back and forth, inch by inch: thin smoke trails that usually were the first betrayals of a steamer; masts that ordinarily materialized at ten thousand to twelve thousand meters on a clear day; dots and specks that became aircraft faster than anyone could predict. They knew that in order to pick out the shadow of a blacked-out ship at night they had to look not where it might be but a little above the horizon. They also knew the tricks that seascapes played on the best of observers: deceptive cloud formations, mirages, floating logs, whale spouts, cloud shadows and phosphorescence at night, and momentary near blindness that afflicted those lookouts who had not prepared for night watches by wearing red goggles beforehand. Each seaman lookout was aware that his duty, no matter how mind-numbing and tiring to eyes and arms, was the most critical duty post on the boat if 123 was to find targets. And no one wanted more that the boat should find targets than the technical crew below who craved to be rid of the torpedoes on the floor of the bow compartment so that they could move about in something approaching comfort. The failure at Virgin Rocks had put the technicians on edge. Thus, even though the boat was not due to begin attacking until the thirteenth, every eye on the bridge hoped to find a target so tempting that the Old Man could not pass it up.
The M IV/IT Carl Zeiss 7 x 50 binoculars, without case, weighed two pounds, eight ounces, as compared with the other best 7 x 50s in the Atlantic at the time—the British Barr and Stroud Pattern 1900A, which weighed a full pound more. The Zeiss was seven inches long, the Barr and Stroud nine. The Zeiss internal glass surfaces were bloomed to reduce reflection losses, not so the Barr and Stroud. The diameter of objective for both was 50 mm. The Zeiss glass was striking for its high light transmission, 80 percent compared to 66 percent for the un-bloomed Pattern 1900A. The Zeiss provided excellent eye freedom in that it was not necessary for the observer’s eye to hold rigidly to one position in order to maintain the best optical performance. Movement of the observer’s eyes across the axis had little or no effect on the quality of definition in the various regions of the field of view, whereas in the Pattern 1900A any slight movement of the observer’s eyes across the axis resulted in serious optical deterioration. The distance between the eye point and the eye lens, which determined the ease and comfort with which the instrument could be used, was preferable in the Zeiss, providing better eye relief. In comparisons of watertight-ness, the Zeiss again was clearly superior: a Zeiss immersed in water for ten minutes showed no bubbling, whereas a Stroud and Barr bubbled within two minutes. A pair of loose didymium glass filters with a strong absorption band in the yellow of the spectrum could be fitted to the Zeiss eyepieces, enabling nearby boats to communicate with each other at night by yellow lights.9
At 1635 the starboard ahead lookout suddenly stiffened like a dog on point. When he saw it happen, Hardegen whipped his own binoculars to eye level and followed the lookout’s lead.
“Herr Kaleu—” the lookout began.
“Yes, I see it,” Hardegen interrupted him. A small cloud curled south against the horizon at two points to starboard. “Headed north, hull down, can’t see the tops. We’ll have to get the angle on him and investigate. Right full rudder! Come to zero-three-five! Both ahead full!”
The bridge rolled port as the helmsman’s rudders resisted the sea on the starboard side and the dieseis thundered away at full power. After an hour’s chase, first the ship’s funnel and then the forward-connected double masts came into view. At Hardegen’s order Kaeding handed Gröner up through the hatch. Flipping through the pages Hardegen came to the silhouettes that fit. Smokestack higher than its masts, this had to be a British steamer of the Alfred Holt Shipping Company, Blue Funnel Line. And the double masts meant ten thousand GRT or better. The Lion said that the boats should not pass up a vessel that size, and here was one as big as life. Paukenschlag was going to start a little earlier than the thirteenth. Gradually, with 123 on a slowly closing near-parallel course, Hardegen was able to obtain a better image in the glasses. Course of the steamer 038, he estimated, probably bound for Sydney or Halifax. A slight zigzag. Speed nine knots or better. Eins Zwei Drei pushed hard to get in front. At 2400 (1800 ET) dusk fell, then winter darkness. It was time to break off the parallel chase and close range on a heading of 350. Hardegen gave the order. Hoffmann brought up the UZO (Uboot-Zieloptik) target-aiming binocular apparatus and attached it to the UZO post. These pressure-tight Zeiss, Jena UDF 7 x 50 309
torpedo-control binoculars, with swastika and eagle markings on fourteen-inch barrels, weighed fourteen pounds. One of the barrels, which were equipped with tubular sun and spray shades and rubber eyeguards, was fitted with a graticule (aiming line) that glowed at night, having been painted with a luminous compound. A dimmer operated by a small lever near the right eyepiece controlled illumination of the graticule line from hell (light) to dunkel (dark), at opposite ends of its movement. Provided the eye was fully dark-adapted the bright-line graticule could be seen against a maximum sky brightness of .00005 candles per square foot. (The brightness of a clear starlit sky was about .00001 to .00003 c/sq. ft.) Thus the graticule could be seen at all sky brightnesses as either a bright or a dark line.10 It was the dimming lever that Hoffmann now operated back and forth in order to acquire optimal use of the aiming line in that evening’s sky conditions.
“UZO is set, Herr Kaleu,” he reported.
“Very well, Number One.”
In the dark and haze Hardegen had difficulty following the target, which was traveling completely darkened on a zigzag course. Twice when he thought he had an optimum ninety-degree launching angle staked out he had to take a parallel course again in order to stay in front at an acceptable range.
“Target speed nine knots, Herr Kaleu,” reported Hoffmann, basing his estimate on /23′s own speed as well as on the target’s ship type and bow wake.
“Yes, that’s our problem,” Hardegen acknowledged. “Helmsman, come to three zero zero.”
Finally, at 0145 hours (CET), they had what Hardegen calculated was their best opportunity. Range to target was reduced from three thousand to fifteen hundred meters and the torpedo track angle was eighty-five degrees. He called for engines both ahead half and handed over the approach to Hoffmann, who had followed the target through the rough alignment sight atop the UZO barrels and now placed his eyes in the cups.
Operation Drumbeat Page 27