CRACK! The first shot cleared the barrel, and eight of the next nine shells exploded against the bridge and engine room. Hardegen steered to the vessel’s portside where the 3.7 and 2 guns set about rending and tearing the decks and upper works. After five minutes of this fusillade Hardegen ordered a cease-fire and withdrew to the starboard side to study the situation. As he did so the freighter, which was still running at top speed, turned starboard directly at him! Was this another trap? He decided no when the vessel continued the turn past him and offered no fire. To Hardegen’s surprise it made several complete 360-degree turns at high speed. Its rudder must have blocked. It was spinning now like a child’s top, and fires on the bridge spread rapidly as winds, because of the turns, blew jagged orange flames in all directions. Despite the vessel’s speed, two lifeboats and a raft went overside, which was a feat of seamanship. Rafalski called up an intercept from the stricken ship’s wireless: POINT BRAVA [a former name of the vessel, now named SS Alcoa Guide, and apparently used by mistake in the excitement] FROM NORFOLK TO GUADALOUPE. MASTER INJURED, CREW IN LIFEBOATS.46 “That’s what we needed to know,” Hardegen would write in his KTB—that all the crew were safely off the ship and he could now press his bombardment at point-blank range, directing the fire of all guns at the engine room and waterline of the hull, though it was no easy task firing at a rapidly turning target from a high-speed outer circle. Finally, the mangled engines shut down. The freighter slowed to a stop and listed sharply to starboard. The yellow tanks carried overside and floated on the surface. Har-egen’s guns ventilated the hull plates. At 0530 CET (17 April) the tortured vessel, in a billow of hissing fire-fed steam, went down hard by the stern and sank from view. Gunnery Officer Schiiler counted up the ammunition expended: 27 rounds of 10.5, 86 rounds of 3.7, and 120 rounds of 2. The Old Man added 4,834 GRT to his total tonnage, while the LI, Schulz, worried that they had consumed too much of the fuel needed to get home.
Alcoa Guide had departed Weehawken, New Jersey, on 11 April with military cargo for U.S. Army bases in the West Indies and flour for delivery at Point-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe. A U-boat warning caused her to seek protection briefly at Hampton Roads anchorage. At 2150 (ET) on the sixteenth she was again en route independently on a true course of 162 degrees, speed ten knots, blacked out but not zigzagging, with two lookouts on watch in good visibility conditions under bright stars, no moon. At that moment Ordinary Seaman Francis Martens, lookout on the monkey bridge, was startled by an explosion on the starboard side of the saloon deck. Putting the wheel hard right, Martens left the engines running while he raced to his boat station. On deck there was great confusion among the crew as successive shells from a submarine that was clearly visible off the starboard beam exploded against the side. The master, Samuel Leroy Cobb, was throwing codes and confidential papers in a weighted sack from a wing of the bridge when an exploding shell close by knocked him off the bridge and onto the deck winch at Number 3 hatch. There he was found by Second Assistant Engineer Charles E. Mclver and placed in the port lifeboat, which lowered safely during a respite in the shelling. Radio Operator M. E. Chandler got off a distress signal that was acknowledged by WSC, Tuckerton, New Jersey. Black smoke and the “burnt acid” odor of the explosions hung over the ship as the starboard boat made it down the falls and a raft with four men also got away, after which shelling resumed. The crew watched the vessel’s last torments as they distanced themselves from the violence. For two days the lifeboats steered toward land but the badly burned and wounded master and an injured fireman died at sea on the nineteenth. Later the same day the twenty-seven survivors in lifeboats were picked up by USS Broome (DD-210) and landed at Norfolk.
The raft on which able seaman Jules Souza, the chief engineer, a fireman, and a black Virgin Islands seaman escaped became separated early from the lifeboats. At one point it was nearly cut down by the wildly circling freighter, which had not lost steerage (as Hardegen thought) but had been left hard-a-starboard, full ahead, by the bridge. As the freighter passed for the last time Souza saw standing on the poop deck, the only part of the ship not yet aflame, his Filipino seaman cabin-mate, fully dressed, holding a suitcase. Souza wondered about him; he had always thought him “too well educated for his job,” as he later told investigators. Had the Filipino tipped off the submarine about the freighter’s sailing time and route? Was he now waiting to be picked up by the grateful submarine? Whatever the likelihood of a conspiracy, Souza had more immediate problems to worry about. He and his companions were alone on the open sea with marginal amounts of food and water and no sail or oars. All they could do was drift. Two days later, the date when their companions in the lifeboats were rescued, a passing aircraft sighted the raft and signaled, but no vessel arrived as a result. On the twenty-first a zigzagging freighter came within a mile of the raft and even stopped to take a look, but incredibly proceeded on. Now the men became desperate. They had made profligate use of their cask of drinking water, anticipating an early rescue, and more water was lost one day when the spigot on the cask was accidentally left open. The food supply was down to malted milk tablets. On the night of the twenty-third the chief engineer died from exposure. The fireman succumbed the next day. Souza and the black seaman kept the bodies on board hoping, with rescue, to return them to their families. Eight days later the odor of decomposition forced them to give the bodies to the waves. On 12 May, twenty-six days after their ship went down, the two men tasted the last drops from their cask. On the seventeenth, after drinking two quarts of salt water a day, the black man died. Souza, who drank a quart a day, survived into the next day, when a British cargo vessel SS Hororata sighted him and took him aboard. Hospitalized for exposure, malnutrition, and sunburn at Cristobal, Canal Zone, he fully recovered to tell his grim story.47
From Hardegen’s KTB:
23 April
1700. For the first time U-123 received a wireless signal from the Führer. The Commander has been honored with an Oak Leaf Cluster [to the Knight’s Cross]. Everybody was delighted because everybody had earned it. A homemade Knight’s Cross with Cluster was presented me in a festive ceremony in the control room.
26 April
1600. I am ordered by FT. to rendezvous with U-/07 at 1400 on the 28th in Qu BE 7188 and hand over to her my Adressbuch. Since I would reach that position 12 hours earlier I suggest a different meeting point in BE 7289 at 1000.
28 April
1000. I am six miles west of the meeting point.
1100. At the meeting point. I transmit direction bearings since U-107 is not in sight. U-107 then responds with her position. I steam on 120° to meet her.
1150. U-107 in sight.
1230. I am on U-107′s beam prepared to throw the Adressbuch across in a watertight tin can with rope attached. U-107, however, breaks out her rubber dinghy because she wants to thank us with a case of eggs. That was just what we needed this far from our base. She also gives us some mail and we discuss our latest U.S.A. experiences by megaphone.
1245. Course home-85°. Both engines 300 RPM.
1302. U-107 out of sight.48
1 May
0240. BF 4852. Two fishing vessels with lanterns on starboard. 0740. Alarm! Three large aircraft ahead, possibly our own, southwest heading.
1010. Surface. Since we had no problems from the aircraft I continue, surfaced, along the exact approach route into Lorient, frequently checking position because of the mine fields.
1807. A German aircraft HE 115 closes from the northeast. We exchange recognition signals.
2300. We reach outer range of entrance channel Bogenlampe
[Arc Lamp].
2 May
0700. We reach Point Two. 0730. R-boat escort takes us under guard. 1050. We tie up at Lorient. Total nautical miles covered on patrol: 8918. Total submerged: 310.
As 123 made her way into La Rade de Lorient, the familiar Keroman bunkers and Fort Saint-Louis appearing to left and right, the dieseis suddenly coughed and died. What Schulz had feared had happened. They had
run out of fuel. In the silence Hardegen could hear martial strains from the welcoming band on Here in the distance. This was embarrassing. The R-boat escort that had brought them to the harbor entrance, observing their difficulty, made inquiries by wireless and asked if Hardegen wished to have the Flotilla engineer send out an oil barge. Hardegen said no. He would complete the voyage on E motors. The boat’s pride was at stake. His might be the quietest arrival ever heard at here, but it would be done on Hardegen’s own two feet.
Slowly, silently, the boat made her approach. The crew stood at stiff parade rest on the decks fore and aft. Hardegen had stand alongside him on the bridge two officers who had been promoted during the last days at sea: von Schroeter, who was now Oberleutnant zur See, and Mertens, the LI in training, who was now Oberleutnant (Ing.). On the periscope above their heads fluttered eleven pennants with tonnage numbers boldly painted on each, while forward the photographer Meisinger had hung from the cannon barrel enlarged photographs of the five ships that 123 had sunk by gunfire alone. As ¡sere came into view Hardegen sighted not only Admiral Dönitz front and center but also—an unexpected honor—Grossadmiral Raeder. The crowd seemed even larger than after his first American patrol. Among them, as before, were Blitzmädel and Red Cross nurses with large bouquets of flowers and numerous U-boat Kameraden.
After the hawsers were secured Admirals Raeder and Dönitz crossed over the brow for the arrival formalities. Hardegen would receive his Oak Leaf Cluster personally from the Führer, Raeder told him, pointing out that he would be only the eleventh commander so honored, and the eighty-ninth soldier from all the German services to have the cluster. Dönitz gave Hardegen his own earnest congratulations. The grand admiral, who happened to be in Lorient on an inspection, announced to the officers that he would personally review the crew the next day and at that time present Iron Cross decorations to those whom Hardegen recommended. With that said, Raeder dismissed the crew so that they might rush for beer and mail while he and Dönitz took Hardegen to a new terrace dining room of the base officers’ quarters where they were joined for lunch by Commanders Erich Topp (U-552), who had been awarded Oak Leaves twelve days before Hardegen; Karl-Friedrich Merten (U-68), who would win the Knight’s Cross in June and Oak Leaves in November; and Helmut Witte (U-/59), who would win the Knight’s Cross in October.
The next day, following formal dress ceremonies for the crew, Hardegen had his usual debriefing with the Lion, but at Flotilla, not at Kernével: Dönitz had abandoned Kernével on Hitler’s orders on 29 March following a major British commando raid on St. Nazaire, and with Godt and staff was now directing U-boat operations from an apartment complex on the Avenue Maréchal Manoury in Paris. Pleased with Hardegen’s report, Dönitz endorsed the boat’s KTB in these words: “A superbly executed operation. With the fullest use of his equipment and with an exemplary spirit of attack, the Commander has achieved outstanding success, which to this date, without a resup-ply of torpedoes at sea, is unique.”49 Indeed, probably not before or since was U-boat artillery used with such effect as it was by Hardegen in his two American patrols. Dönitz asked Hardegen to write up the principal advice and caution that he would give a U-boat going to America. Eins Zwei Drei’s commander obliged with two single-spaced pages. Among his admonitions were the following:
West of 55° continuously monitor the 600 meter wave band. It is the most important resource for successful operations. Not only when being attacked but also when sighting U-boats or “suspicious craft” or “mysterious lights” ships give their positions and often their courses and speeds. By carefully entering these positions on a chart one can get a good overall picture of ship routes. Then, sailing along those routes guarantees a target.
Once you find a target and it is between you and the coast you can easily measure its speed by steaming about 4000 meters parallel and adjusting your speed to its. Type and size can be determined when it passes in front of coastal lights or lightships.
The most dangerous feature of American waters is marine phosphorescence at night, which is particularly strong off the coast of Florida. If you have to dive in shallow water, that is, within the 20 meter curve, because of aircraft or destroyers, be aware that if you then travel at periscope depth vortices off your screws and cannon will show up as phosphorescence and betray your position.
Since I never had contact by ASDIC I assume that the Americans rely on sound detection. In that I believe they do a good job. When approached by one of their vessels it is best to lie on the bottom and “play dead.” Granted, it is not your normal experience to lie there at 20 or 22 meters and have destroyers and subchasers cruising overhead. You have to have good nerves. The opponent is not tough. He leaves if he doesn’t hear or see anything. When that happens surface immediately and clear out.
The small submarine chasers are dangerous because of their small silhouettes which often don’t show up in the periscope. On the surface they can be detected by their wake but not by their shadow. If they should ever learn to patrol at slow speed they would be fatal.50
Several days later, Hardegen and the twenty-eight-year-old Erich Topp took a Junkers transport flight from Lorient to Rastenburg in East Prussia. There a command vehicle with armed escort took them through the Görlitz forest to the Wolfsschanze, Adolf Hitler’s field headquarters. In an anteroom to the Fiihrer’s office the two officers stood stiffly in dress blues with gray gloves and daggers. Hitler entered smiling in his usual dove gray tunic and black trousers, Iron Cross on his left breast, and eagle with swastika on his upper left sleeve. The two officers saluted. Hitler shook their gloved hands and offered some polite words of congratulations as an aide opened two ornate leather cases each containing the Eichenlaub zum Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes with a hand-lettered parchment certificate. The Führer placed the ribboned decorations around the commanders’ necks, shcok their hands again, and invited the two “aces” into his private dining room for dinner. Numerous Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe general officers were assembled at the table.
Hardegen sat at Hitler’s right. During the vegetarian meal Hitler commented on the Air Force insignia that Hardegen wore on the left breast of his tunic. Hardegen explained that he had been in the naval air arm before it was disbanded and he was assigned to U-boats.
“It was a great mistake abolishing the naval air arm, my Führer,” Hardegen said.
“What?” Hitler asked, surprised.
“The Ubootwaffe desperately needs air coverage of its own—Folke-Wulf 200 Kondor long-range reconnaissance planes to find convoys at sea, and the new Heinkel HE-177s, which not only have the range and fighting power to join us in attacking the convoys but also have the guns to take on the English aircraft over the Bay of Biscay.”
“I don’t think you quite understand our military priorities, young man—” Hitler began.
“Another thing, my Führer. We never would have lost the Bismarck if you had allowed our aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin to be completed. Its planes would have turned back the English attackers.”
“Hardegen!” one of the generals at table interposed.
“And Navy planes can drop torpedoes,” Hardegen continued. “Look at what the Italians did in the Mediterranean, and the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.”
A brief silence followed. When Hardegen resumed every fork was frozen in hand and every eye was on this aviation authority from underwater—all except Topp who stared straight ahead in mortal embarrassment.
“You will forgive me, my Führer,” Hardegen lectured, “if I say that you make the mistake of looking only to the east, while the war will be won or lost in the west—at sea.”
Hitler turned red in the face. He placed his fist on the table and spoke slowly: “Reichsmarschall Goring is enjoying great success with our air forces. He has our aviation strategies correctly in hand. We will have no more talk about these matters.”
Following the meal Hardegen was taken aside by a furious General Alfred Jodl, head of the OKW Operations Staff. “What impertinence!”
he said sharply. “Who do you think you are talking to the Führer like that?”
“Herr General,” Hardegen answered,” the Führer has a right to hear the truth, and I have the duty to speak it.”51
On his return to Lorient, Hardegen was informed that the Keroman repair facilities did not have the heavy equipment required to replace his bent drive shafts and that he would have to take his boat north around the British Isles to drydock in Stettin by way of Kiel. What he was not told was that the English had installed the first metric airborne radar sets in their Sunderlands and Wellingtons, so that he had no explanation for the constant stream of aircraft that forced him down time and again during the passage. On one occasion he and the crew narrowly escaped death when a Sunderland, not sighted until it was too late, carne out of the clouds and pounced on the boat’s swirl as she dived. Through the sky scope Hardegen could see every detail of the aircraft including the faces in the cockpit. And yet nothing happened because of 123′s unimaginable luck. The one bomb dropped was a dud. Hardegen, whose spine shivered in the after chill, decided not to tell the crew on how thin a thread their lives had dangled. North of Scotland their passage became particularly treacherous because of the few hours of actual dark, which were really more like dusk than night, and everyone was greatly relieved to make harbor safely in Norway. For the approach to Kiel, Hardegen raised on both extended periscopes forty-five pennants representing the total number of ships claimed by the two-year-old 123 under himself and predecessor Commander Karl-Heinz Möhle, and on the tower’s front he painted the boat’s overall tonnage claim under both men: 304,975. When he finally tied up at the Blücherbrücke at Kiel the officers were met by their wives. Hardegen’s Barbara had heard him describe triumphal arrivals; this was the first time she had witnessed one. Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, who had almost short-circuited Hardegen’s U-boat career, was also present to meet the boat, which Hardegen accepted as a delicious irony. He listened with acute pleasure to the admiral’s welcoming speech about the achievements of Eins Zwei Drei and her Oak Leaves commander.
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