“Range seven hundred. Folgen?”
“Folgen?” von Schroeter repeated.
“Folgen,” the petty officer on the stern tubes replied to the tower. The T-Schu receiver was feeding the solution into G7a (ATO) torpedo No. 13516.
“Range six-fifty … six hundred … Rohr los!”
The boat seemed to shoot forward slightly, and also up, in reaction both to the discharge of the eel and to the loss of weight on board. Schulz worked quickly to take in 1,600 kilograms of seawater to make good the loss and maintain trim, while above the Old Man and his number two counted down the seconds.
At the end of the eighteen seconds estimated for the run there was a short, high-pitched metallic bang that sounded like a dud—a torpedo hitting without exploding. That close, Hardegen expected a vigorous detonation, and he had withdrawn his eye from the sight fearing that the concussion would bruise the flesh around his brow bones. Now, though, he returned to the sight and saw to his surprise a black detonation column rising exactly between the masts where he had aimed. The hit probably occurred low in the engine room, where its sound was muffled, Hardegen concluded. Ordering the boat to surface, he climbed out onto the dripping bridge platform to see the vessel with its stern already deep in the water. Soon, as the stricken ship’s crew went overside, the bow rose full out of the water and the stern disappeared. After sixteen minutes the bow, too, went under, and no trace of the ship remained save for a spreading silver ring of oil slick and several rafts struggling to get away from its edges. Hardegen approached the rafts and asked the dozen or so men the identification of their ship. “Muskogee,” one of them answered, “United States flag steam tanker, 7,034 GRT, bound from Venezuela to Halifax with a cargo of Bunker C crude.” Rafalski looked her up: built in 1913 at Danzig. An old ship. No wonder she sank so fast, the Old Man wrote into his KTB.21
None of the thirty-four members of Muskogee’s crew was ever found.22
U-123 resumed normal navigation.
At 2000 hours BdU transmitted the boat’s further operation orders: UNRESTRICTED HUNTING FROM HATTERAS TO KEY WEST.23
The Old Man was delighted. Freedom to roam anywhere he pleased, seeking whom he might devour, from the Outer Banks to a semitropical paradise, was a U-boat commander’s dream. He could not have asked for better duty. But other targets like Muskogee no doubt would intervene before he reached the operational area, since, at his present position north-northeast of Bermuda, he was already crossing the eastern edges of the heavily trafficked north-south sea-lanes. At 1823 the next day, in confirmation ofthat prospect, the port ahead lookout sighted two threadlike masts. In his 7 x 50s Hardegen watched the masts for a long while, deciding at last that the hull-down vessel was on a very irregular zig-zag course on /23′s reciprocal, apparently not a part of the north-south traffic at all, but on an independent, unescorted route directly to England. Very daring, Hardegen thought, and the reason therefore it was making such erratic maneuvers, now zigzagging for half an hour on a mean course of 0 degrees, then on a mean of 30 degrees, then on 90 degrees. Ein gewiegter Bursche—a very clever fellow. Hardegen had trouble maintaining contact, which was exactly the purpose of the zigzag. Just before dusk, when the upper works and bridge screen came into view, he was able to identify the vessel as a modern tanker like Norness with short masts and a low, thick funnel. He estimated 9,500 GRT, speed 10.5 knots. After darkness fell the groping of the hunter after the hunted became even more difficult, and hours passed as Hardegen tried to guess which way the wily tanker master would turn next. When a bright moon broke through the clouds it was both a help and a hindrance—a help because the lookouts could keep the weaving target in view, a hindrance because 123′s own surface silhouette and wake became visible. Finally the tanker zigged when it should have zagged, and a large storm cloud crossed below the moon. The combination led the tanker directly in front of the hunter’s bow tubes. Von Schroeter had flooded Number 3 tube, and Schüler had a quick solution on a track angle of 70 degrees. When the huge black target loomed at six hundred meters, Hardegen gave permission to launch. At that distance success was certain. Immediately after von Schroeter hit the launching lever, Hardegen conned the boat hard to starboard for a second launch from the stern. Von Schroeter flooded tube Number 5. During the turn, with the tanker for a few moments only three hundred meters away on a near-parallel course, Hardegen identified a 8.8-cm gun on the stern and two 6.6-cm guns with shields on either side of the stack, also machine guns and searchlights on the bridge. So it was British! None of the guns was manned, though. Had he not yet been sighted?
Von Schroeter turned from the voice pipe to report: “Herr Kaleu! The eel never left the tube! It’s stuck!”
“Damn! Eject the eel!” Hardegen ordered. “Use the mine ejection device! Get it out of there!”
Just then the pipe barked again, and von Schroeter reported: “Tube Number Five has launched!”
“What?!”
“The petty officer in the stern reports a mixer thought he heard an order to launch manually and he hit the lever.”
“Great! A torpedo lost. Just what we need, one of our priceless eels running around out there somewhere, and to what purpose? Do we have panic down there? Put that man on report and keep him away from the tubes!”
Hardegen was furious. With malfunctions and stupid errors like these, that tanker was going to get away from them, particularly since, as he saw now, a thunderstorm was sweeping over the water, giving the target unexpected cover.
“Come to zero-nine-zero,” he told the helmsman, “both ahead full!” He had the speed to catch up if he could keep the target in sight. Rafalski called up to say that the tanker had now definitely sighted them and had transmitted an SSS submarine warning. She gave her name as Empire Steel, British. The data in Gröner had her at 8.150GRT, built in 1941. Her transmitted position at 37-45N, 63-17W was, according to Kaeding, just ten miles south of his DR position. Hardegen acknowledged the message and reflected on how easy it was to overestimate the tonnage of tankers since they had fewer reference points than freighters. But this was a brand-new ship, built during the war, everything modern, nothing improvised. He wanted her.
Empire Steel was now off to the east in the dark and the rain zigzagging for her life. Hardegen estimated that she had increased speed to twelve knots. With his own eighteen-plus knots he managed to keep her in view, but he had no desire to come too close to the enemy’s guns.
“I’m going to keep our bows dead on,” he told von Schroeter, “to present the smallest possible target to her guns. It’s odd that they haven’t manned them, even though they know we’re out here. I’ll bring you in to within nine hundred meters. Permission to launch from that distance. Use a spread of two eels.”
Von Schroeter ordered open the bow caps to tubes numbers 1 and 4, and with the track angle established on the calculator he hit the launch switch. The time was 0300 on the twenty-fourth (CET). At precisely the same moment Hardegen saw the tanker slow her headway and turn to starboard. In his glasses he watched British crewmen race across her deck to man the guns. Evidently the master had decided that his only chance in this deadly encounter was to stand and fight it out. But Hardegen noticed that it was taking the gun crews an awfully long while to load and train. They only had sixty-one seconds in all if the Vorhaltrechner was correct, and it usually was. There still had been no muzzle flashes when—
WHACK!
A tall black geyser of smoke, water, and debris shot up from the forward mast, and seconds later the entire forecastle shuddered from a violent, bright yellow explosion. Gasoline! Two more similar explosions and everything forward of the bridge was a sea of flames such as 123′s bridge had seen only a few times before. After five minutes, when on all other counts she seemed to be doomed, the tanker was still afloat on an even keel and Rafalski reported that she was still putting out distress signals. The bow was burning; so also were the upper deck and structures on the stern, but the fire extinguishing system seemed to be limiti
ng the principal blaze to the forecastle. Now the wind was helping by blowing the forward gasoline flames away from the rest of the ship. There was a lesson here, Hardegen told von Schroeter: Not every exploded tanker is in the locker. He leaned forward to the voice pipe: “Battle stations gun crews!”
Schüler pounded up from his calculator station and took the exterior tower ladder down to the 10.5 gun, the rest of the gun crew and ammunition train following him. After the second artillery shot hit home in the engine room area, Hardegen ordered, “Fire for effect!” and six more shells penetrated the engine room and stern bunkers. Those bunkers held diesel fuel, Hardegen reasoned, since they erupted in red flame with dense, curling black smoke. Now the ship’s ammunition magazines began exploding in a riot of sparks-ammunition that, surprisingly, was never brought to bear on 123. Poor observation and poor training, thought Hardegen. There was no need to continue the bombardment. This tanker had enough holes. Though at a distance, as opposed to what he imagined hand-to-hand fighting to be like, he was able to maintain a clinical, military detachment from the human suffering that he and his boat had caused, it did worry Hardegen that no lifeboats or rafts were seen to get away. Was the master going to go down with his ship? Was the wireless operator, who had stayed at his post? Were the gunners? The other crewmen? In his imagination Hardegen attempted both to comprehend and to erase the disaster. The fires were turning deck paint to black smoke and water to steam. Burning wood from the deckhouse gave off white smoke. Hardegen knew that the men still alive on board were competing with the flames for oxygen and that those who threw themselves into the sea faced being fried in the gasoline film, suffocating in the surface smoke, or lingering in a kapok jacket until starvation and dehydration brought about the same result, though more slowly. Hardegen stood transfixed before the appalling spectacle, the heat and glare so intense on his face that he dared not approach closer even if there were something he could do. The inferno roared as it soared. The belowdecks crew, with his permission, came up, one by one, to experience the display. Finally, five hours after the torpedo hit, the fore part of the ship stood straight up, revealing the jagged torpedo hole that ran from the keel to the rail fifteen meters from the bow. Then the tons of hot metal went down in a cauldron of bubbles and steam. No lifeboats, rafts, or other signs of survivors were visible. But as 123 withdrew on a heading of 260, the lookouts could see for well over an hour tongues of red fire that flickered where the Union Jack had vanished. Like the Old Man they would never forget what they called thereafter the night of the Tankerfackel—the “Tanker Torch.”24
24 March, 1027 (CET). The boat sighted the first U.S. “bee,” a flying boat, probably PBY-Catalina, and dived to escape detection. No bee had been sighted this far out on the first patrol. Hardegen took its appearance to mean that American defenses were now better organized and more venturesome. He decided to stay down for a while. The weather upstairs was worsening, winds force 7-8, headseas 6-7. In such conditions he probably could proceed faster underwater. He took the occasion to mete out punishment to the inattentive mixer who had launched the No. 5 eel, deciding on three days of “hard lying”—sleeping on the floor plates. (He would lift the punishment the next day.25) 123 surfaced at 1800, to find the weather improving somewhat, and remained on the surface making knots the rest of that day, all of the twenty-fifth, and into the twenty-sixth when she entered the southeastern grid numbers of Marinequadrat CA, about three hundred nautical miles off Norfolk and Virginia Beach. At 1903 (CET), with daytime visibility twelve miles, the starboard lookouts made an unusual sighting: several smoke clouds in a line such as one would see in a convoy. Had the Americans started routing their merchant traffic in protective convoys? Hardegen followed the smoke columns until, at dusk, he was able to reassure himself that all the smoke, seemingly in dense bursts, was coming from just one ship. But why, he wondered, was the ship making so much smoke? And why, after darkness fell, did the amount of smoke diminish? Curiously, too, the ship then began zigzagging when her daytime course had been straight ahead on 215 degrees. Hardegen kept his glasses on the strangely behaving vessel, and when the hull materialized he identified it as a normal freighter with a low forecastle and a smooth stern. Structures aft of the stack were unusually high, unlike any he had seen before.
“The target will come from the starboard quarter, Number One,” he said to von Schroeter, “and cross our course on a diagonal. Its mean course is two-one-five. I’ll maintain two-six-four and slow to five knots. There is no sign yet that he’s seen us.” Then to the voice pipe: “Auf Gefechtsstationen!”—“Battle stations!”
A heavy cloud cover hid the moon. The seas continued brisk. With the engine room on starboard slow ahead, the bridge could hear the other boat sounds that the dieseis normally overwhelmed: the snorting and snuffling of the induction valves sucking air into the dieseis, the squish of gumboots on the bridge plates, and the sibilant rush of water through the limber holes on either side of the upper casing. The lookouts could soon also hear the high splash of the blacked-out freighter that came from the starboard quarter and began its pass very close by. Their glasses swept the deck and staffs but descried no flag.
“Range seven hundred,” von Schroeter recited, “speed ten, angle on the bow Red nineteen. Folgen?” He had flooded bow tube Number 2 and its menacing occupant, electric eel Number 9031. “Permission to launch,” Hardegen said when Folgen came back. At exactly 0237 hours (27 March CET) or 2037 (26 March ET) with a perfect track angle of 90 degrees at six hundred-meter range von Schroeter hit the lever. “Los!” He turned to Hardegen: “Forty-eight seconds, Herr Kaleu. Depth Setting three.”
“Very well, Number One.”
The two men stood together silently waiting until von Schroeter said, “Three … two … one …”
WHACK! There was a good clean hit at the front edge of the bridge but a weak detonation with a short debris column. That was surprising. The vessel began to lose way. Hardegen now saw that it was a small prize, perhaps 3,000 GRT. It would be pointless to waste another eel on it. Rafalski sent a message slip up the tower ladder: “Herr Kaleu, it’s signaling: LAT 3600 N LONG 7000 w CAROLYN BURNING FORWARD NOT BAD.” Two minutes later Rafalski sent up another slip: “Now signaling: sos sss sos sss sos sss BT OON 7000 w APPROX SS CAROLYN TORPEDO ATTACK BURNING FORWARD REQUIRE ASSISTANCE.”26
“Stand by, gun crews!” Hardegen ordered. “Have the Midshipman Hölzer come to the bridge!” Young Hölzer should see something like this. “Helmsman, come right ten.” Before manning guns he would cross the target’s wake and close on her starboard side. As he came around he saw two lifeboats, one on each side, filled with men in typical merchant-ship clothing going down the falls into the water. That was fast, he thought. Why did they abandon so soon? The steamer was still making way. In fact, the steamer now began a tight turn to starboard. Hardegen straightened out his course. The steamer continued turning. It was not going down. It was picking up speed! And coming right at them!
“Emergency full ahead!” Hardegen yelled below. With the greater speed he would escape being rammed, but suddenly there were other things to worry about: the steamer’s bulwarks fell away, structures aft of the stack collapsed, tarpaulins were pulled aside, the Stars and Stripes were run up the hoist staff, and one large deck gun and two machine guns began fast firing at the retreating U-boat! The artillery was first short, then long. Geysers of water from the impacts showered over the bridge. A hail of machine-gun iron rattled against the tower and stern casing. Hardegen yelled to the bridge party: “Get down!” He slammed his fist against the cowling: Eine U-Boot falle!—“a U-boat trap!” He wondered how he could have been fooled like a schoolboy!—like a damned beginner!
Eins Zwei Drei was widening the distance, but the American fire persisted—artillery shells that whooshed overhead; red, white, and green tracer fire from machine guns; and now huge depth-charge canisters hurled in their direction. The surface of the sea quaked all around them, and the concussions staggered the bo
at, momentarily cutting out the engines. But then the enemy shot started falling short as 123 pulled out of range, Karlchen’s engines again running at flank speed. For the moment the danger was behind them. The appropriate thing to do was to dive as soon as possible, but Hardegen wondered if the boat was capable. The upper deck had taken hits (he would later count eight) and the explosions of the Wabos underwater could have caused fissures in the hull.
He called down the pipe: “LI, run a low-pressure test to see if we’re still leakproof!” Then he turned to see Hölzer lying wounded on the bridge platform. The sight stunned him. He had not seen the youth fall. Quickly he saw how badly he was hurt: A projectile that had passed through the double-plate steel cladding had exploded in his right thigh and ripped the leg open from the hip joint to the knee. Apparently the bone was shattered; when the lookouts took him in their arms to lower him down the tower ladder the leg seemed to hang by pieces of skin. Conscious throughout, the midshipman made no complaint about his pain. Hardegen followed down and directed that Hölzer be laid before the wireless room, where he applied a tourniquet with Kaeding’s belt to the upper leg and attempted to stanch the flow of blood with a clean towel from the boat’s stores. He also brought morphine from the secure medical locker and gave Hölzer a maximum dose. Then, directing Barth and “Laura” Lorenz to stay by the lad, he returned his attention to the boat. Schulz reported that the hull appeared to be intact, no vital systems were damaged, and the trim was adequate for submerging. Eins Zwei Drei’s impudent luck continued to hold. The Old Man, by this time visibly angry both for having been taken in by the trap and because of the injury done to Hölzer, dived the boat and began setting up for a submerged torpedo launch. The men around him shared the Old Man’s outrage and his fury and more than one expressed the intention to kill Carolyn’s entire crew—the same intention, machinist Horst Seigel reminded others, that Carolyn’s crew had had toward them. This was war and they were getting their first bitter sight of it inside their own boat. Tolle’s wound had been an accident. Holzer’s was from a shot fired in anger.
Operation Drumbeat Page 42