Operation Drumbeat
Page 61
Important aid in locating U-boat veterans was provided by Jochem Ahme, of the Verband Deutscher U-Bootfahrer e.V. (Association of German U-Boat Mariners), in Hamburg, Germany, who died in May 1989, and by Robert M. Coppock, of the Naval Historical Library, Ministry of Defence, Fulham, London, England. Two skilled translators, Herbert and Kathryn Bubenik, of Unterhaching, Germany, gave particularly valuable assistance to the writer on numerous occasions: indeed, they became so engaged in the U-123 story, and have contributed so substantially to its completion, they may truly be said to have shared in its reconstruction. Mrs. Elsa Fox kindly translated Norwegian materials. I respectfully and gratefully acknowledge the memory of Patrick Beesly, deputy chief of the Submarine Tracking Room, Operational Intelligence Centre, of the British Admiralty during the war years, who graciously afforded me an interview at his home in Lymington, England, in July 1986. Mr. Beesly died unexpectedly the following month. Similar appreciation for his valuable information goes to Captain Kenneth A. Knowles, U.S. Navy (Ret.), who established a U.S. Submarine Tracking Room on the British model in May-June, 1942. Thanks is due also to Rene Estienne, archivist of the Port of Lorient, France, who not only made available the resources of the Marine Nationale Service Historique but arranged for me to inspect the U-boat pens at Pointe de Keroman. Michael L. Hadley, chairman of the Department of Germanic Studies, University of Victoria, Canada, kindly shared Canadian documents on the sinking of SS Cyclops. Additional materials on Cyclops were provided me by the Directorate of History, National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa, Canada.
Special courtesies were extended by historian Gerhard L. Weinberg and by archivists John E. Taylor and Bernard F. Cavalcante. Captain Warren Kiernan, U.S. Navy (Ret.), a former submarine commander, who received the torpedo shooting award in each of the years he held command in the Atlantic Submarine Force, kindly reviewed the manuscript for technical accuracy in the torpedo attack sequences. Harry Cooper and James Frye made possible an extended study of the interior of U-505, a Type IXC boat preserved at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Grateful recognition is owed to staff members who assisted me in my research at the Public Record Office in Kew, England; the American Merchant Marine Museum, Kings Point, New York; the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York; the George C. Marshall Research Library in Lexington, Virginia; and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Certainly none of this investigation would have held together without the invariable help and courtesy of various staffs, particularly that of the Interlibrary Loan Office, of the University Libraries, University of Florida. Charles F. Sidman, historian and dean at Florida, was a supporter throughout, as were the writer’s colleagues and friends Marvin Harris, David M. Chalmers, Eugene Lyon, David A. Cofrin, Helen Armstrong, Raymond Gay-Crosier, Leónidas Roberts, William Goza, and Alexander Stephan. The words of the text were decrypted and processed admirably by Myrna Sulsona, Marian Johnston, and Rebecca Haines. Special thanks for his advice and counsel is owed to my literary agent, Murray Curtin. No writer could have had on board a more discriminating navigator than executive editor at Harper & Row, Buz Wyeth.
To my wife Genevieve Haugen, without whom there would be no book, I pay a thanks that transcends words for her understanding, support, and good humor.
Various persons cited above have kindly read individual chapters of the manuscript while it was in progress but, of course, I alone bear full responsibility for the final work, for the accuracy of my facts, for the authenticity of my reconstruction of events and dialogue, and for the soundness of my interpretations.
About the Author
Michael Gannon became interested in World War II U-boat operations along the American coast while researching a book on the history of Florida. Raised in St. Augustine, he is a graduate of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and a professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
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Praise
Our U-boats are operating close inshore along the coast of the United States of America, so that bathers and sometimes entire coastal cities are witnesses to the drama of war, whose visual climaxes are constituted by the red glorioles of blazing tankers.
—ADMIRAL KARL DöNITZ
For six or seven months the U-boats ravaged American waters almost uncontrolled, and in fact almost brought us to the disaster of an indefinite prolongation of the war.
—WöNITZ S. CHURCHILL The Hinge of Fate
The losses by submarines off our Atlantic seaboard and in the Caribbean now threaten our entire war effort.
—GENERAL GEORGE C. MARSHALL June 1942
Copyright
The author acknowledges permission to reprint lyrics from:
“Tiger Rag,” copyright © 1917 renewed 1960 by Leo Feist, Inc. (EMI Music Publishing). All rights reserved.
“Reuben James,” copyright © 1941 by the Almanac Singers, copyright © 1942 assigned to Bob Miller, Inc. (EMI Unart). All rights reserved.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1990 by Harper & Row, Publishers.
OPERATION DRUMBEAT. Copyright © 1990 by Michael Gannon.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03906-4
First HarperPerennial edition published 1991.
* * *
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Gannon, Michael, 1927-
Operation Drumbeat : the dramatic true story of Germany’s first U-boat attacks along the American coast in World War II / Michael Gannon.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-06-016155-8
1. World War, 1939-1945—Naval operations—Submarine. 2. World War, 1939-1945-Naval operations, German. 3. World War, 1939-1945- Campaigns—North Atlantic Ocean. 4. Merchant marine—United States—History—20th century. 5. Atlantic Coast (North America)—History—20th century. I. Title.
D781.G36 1990
940.54′51-dc20 89-46090
* * *
ISBN: 0-06-092088-2 (pbk.)
95 96 97 98 99 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
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NOTES
Acknowledgments
1. Reinhard Hardegen, “Auf Gefechtsstationen!” U-Boote im Einsatz gegen England und Amerika. Mit eimen Geleitwort von Grossadmiral Dönitz (Leipzig: Boreas-Verlag, 1943).
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br /> Prologue
1. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. [hereafter NARA], Modern Military Branch, Military Archives Division, Record Group [hereafter RG] 457, “German Navy Reports of Intercepted Radio Messages” [X.B. Berichte] Nr. 50/41, p. 8
2. The War Diary of the Operations Division, German Naval Staff, Kriegstagebuch der Seekriegsleitung [hereafter KTB-1/Skl] noted under the date 7 December 1941: “The attacks on the U.S. bases in the Pacific and against Singapore were a complete surprise.” This KTB is in the Operational Archives, U.S. Naval Historical Center [hereafter OA/NHC], Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. All German war diaries (Kriegstagebücher) are hereafter cited with the prefix KTB.
3. NARA, RG 242, PG/30301a/NID, KTB-BdU., 9 December 1941.
4. “The British have detected the complete withdrawal of German U-boats from the Atlantic….” Ibid., 23 December 1941.
5. Karl Doenitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days. Translated by R. H. Stevens in collaboration with David Woodward (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Company, 1959), p. 202.
6. See chapter 13 notes.
7. Michael Salewski, “The Submarine War: A Historical Essay,” in Lothar-Günther Buchheim, U-Boat War, translated by Gudie Lawaetz (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), appendix, n.p.
8. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storni (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948), p. 17.
9. Hitler’s frequent expression was: “I have a reactionary army, a Christian navy, and a National Socialist air force.” Alfred Jodl, in Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 15, p. 194; quoted in Walter Ansel, Hitler Confronts England (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1960), p. 14. That Dönitz himself was a Nazi, if not in 1941-42 then later, is argued in Peter Padfield, Dönitz: The Last Führer (London: Panther Books, 1985); an earlier statement of the argument appears in Michael Salewski, Die Seekriegsleitung, 1939-1945 (Munich: Bernard & Graefe, 1970-75). Although naval personnel were not permitted to join the party, some U-boat officers sympathized with Nazi politics and accepted the Führerprinzip. One such, it appears, was Kptlt. Ernst Vogelsang (U-/J2) who incorporated the swastika into the insignia painted onto the fairwater of his boat’s conning tower.
10. That “courage and patriotism can surely be admired whichever side a man fought on” in the Battle of the Atlantic is the view of British historian Martin Middlebrook, Convoy (New York: William Morrow, 1976), p. x; and of Edward L. Beach, Captain USN (Ret.), “Foreword: An Appreciation by an American Contemporary,” in Herbert A. Werner, ¡ron Coffins (New York: Bantam Books, 1978), p. xiv.
11. New York Times, 15 March 1989.
12. KTB-1/Skl, 16 December 1942. When Reinhard Hardegen read in this manuscript the accounts of survivors of the ships he sank he commented: “It was a terrible emotion for me to learn the fates of the crews of the ships I sank. War is cruel indeed.” Hardegen to writer, Bremen-Oberneuland, West Germany, 20 September 1989.
13. Clay Blair, Jr., Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan (Philadelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1975), pp. 383-86.
14. Ladislas Farago, for example, writing in 1962, imagined that, “The flamboyant skipper of the V-123 observed dancers on the gayly illuminated roof of the Astor Hotel in midtown Manhattan,” an error repeated in numerous publications since; Ladislas Farago, The Tenth Fleet (New York: Ivan Obolensky, Inc., 1962), p. 65. New errors about U-/23 and Paukenschlag mar HomerH. Hickam, Jr., Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War Off America’s East Coast, 1942 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1989). Other books of American origin in which Hardegen and V-123 are mentioned include: Theodore Taylor, Fire on the Beaches (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1958); Edwin P. Hoyt, U-Boats Offshore: When Hitler Struck America (New York: Stein and Dav, 1982); and Gary Gentile, Track of the Gray Wolf: U-Boat Warfare on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, 1942-1945 (New York: Avon Books, 1989).
1. U-Boats Westward
1. U-/25 (Folkers), the first of the five boats out, sortied on 18 December. 123 (Hardegen) would be next, on the 23rd, followed by V-66 on the twenty-fifth and 109 and 130 together on the twenty-seventh.
2. KTB-BdU, 23 December 1941. Schütze’s command, Second U-boat Flotilla, would be joined by Tenth U-boat Flotilla in January 1942.
3. This account is based on Hardegen, “Auf Gefechtsstationen!”, pp. 102, 165.
4. The reconstruction of Schulz’s briefing is based on technical data about Type IXB boats, on the fact that Tolle had to receive such a briefing, and on the assumption that the LI would have been the logical person for the task. The Li’s guess about 123′s destination is meant to convey the fact that no member of the crew knew where the boat was headed; interview with Fritz Rafalski.Bonn, West Germany, December 1986. For comparison the Type IXB boat was twenty feet longer than the fuselage of the most recent Boeing jumbo jet, the 747-400. Again, for comparison, the typical U.S. fleet submarine of WWII was 312 feet long. The USS Bonefish, one of four diesel-electric submarines still operated by the U.S. Navy, built in 1959 and scheduled for decommissioning in 1990, is 219 feet in length, somewhat shorter than the Type IXB. The Soviet Union has approximately one hundred diesel-electric submarines in service at the date of this writing. As a U-boat type the German IX series boats sank more tonnage per boat than any other type, including the better known VII series. The IX series was produced in the following numbers: IXA (8), IXB (14), IXC (143), IXD (2), IXD2 (30). The VII series, one of the most numerous ever built of any warship, was produced in these quantities: VIIA (10), VIIB (24), VIIC (691), VIID (6), VIIF (4).
5. A.L.P. Norrington, ed., The Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), poem no. 52, untitled, p. 104.
2. Down to the Seas
1. Hardegen, “Auf Gefechtsstationen!”, p. 18; William A. Wiedersheim, III, “Officer Personnel Selection in the German Navy, 1925-1945,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings (April, 1947), pp. 445-449. Hitler Youth leaders fared poorly in this selection process. Found emotionally unstable, uncooperative, unintelligent, or overbearing, many were not considered good officer material.
2. The actual presentation of oak leaves to Lehmann-Willenbrock would come on 31 December 1941. His boat, U-96, and he himself as commander, were portrayed in a postwar German novel (and motion picture) as notorious for its technical errors and misrepresentations of officer and crew behavior as it was justly celebrated for its dramatic sequences: Lothar Günther Buchheim, Das Boot (Munich: R. Piper, 1973). Lehmann-Willenbrock died in April 1986.
3. Konteradmiral was equivalent to rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. DöniLz was promoted to that rank in October 1939. He would be promoted to full admiral in March 1942.
4. The account of Hardegen’s early U-boat experiences given in this chapter is drawn from or based on “Auf Gefechtsstationen!”, pp. 13-165; on the war diaries: KTB V-124, NARA, RG 242, PG/30,114/1-13/NID, 11 June 1940-16August 1941; KTB V-147, NARA, RG 242, PG/30,137/2/NID, 16 April 1941-11 May 1941; KTB V-123, NARA, RG 242, PG/30,113/6/NID, 12 May 1941-23 August 1941; PG/30,113/7/NID, 24 August 1941-22 November 1941; on the Schussmeldung für Überwasserstreitkräfte und U-Boote (“shooting report”) for each of the attacks cited in the war diaries; on KTB-BdU (Befehlshaber der Uboote— Commander in Chief U-boats [Donitz and staff]); and on the writer’s interviews with Hardegen and Fritz Rafalski.
5. This attack by V-124 took place on 25 August 1940, twenty-three nautical miles north of the Hebrides. The four vessels belonged to convoy HX 65A. Gross Register Tons (GRT) is the measurement of all the enclosed spaces in a ship expressed in hundreds of cubic feet (2.8317 cubic meters per 100 cubic feet). As a rule the GRT is more than the weight of the ship alone (light displacement tonnage) but less than the weight of the ship fully loaded (loaded displacement tonnage). As will be noted later in the text of this chapter U-boat claims were not always exact, and where not were usually exaggerated. Compare KTB-BdU, 25 August 1940, and Jürgen Rohwer, Axis Submarine Successes, 1939-1945. Introductory Mate
rial Translated by John A. Broadwin (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1983), p. 26.
6. Kommandant an Kommandant: Commander to commander.
7. After the war Scheherazade became the favorite nighttime haunt of Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, who together dominated French intellectual life in the late 1940s and 1950s.
8. The massacre began with Trevisa at 0350 hours Central European Time(CET)on 16 October 1940 and continued to 0504 on 19 October. Where he speaks of the “Long Knives” event in “Auf Gefechtsstationen.’”, pp. 55-58, Hardegen credits Kretschmer [U-99], Endrass [U-46], Frauenheim [U-101], and Bleichrodt [V-48] with 173,000 GRT sunk, when their actual total was closer to 75,000; and where in the same source he gives 325,000 GRT as the two-nights total of all boats, the actual tonnage sunk by all boats (eight in number) was 152,000 GRT. See Jürgen Rohwer, Axis Submarine Successes, pp. 32-34, and The Critical Convoy Battles of March 1943: The Battle for HX.229I SC122 (London: Ian Allan Ltd., 1977), p. 17. Hardegen was merely repeating the tonnage numbers reported by the commanders to BdU where Dönitz accepted them uncritically as a “colossal success”; KTB-BdU, 20 October 1940.
9. E. B. Gasaway, Grev Wolf, Grew Sea (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), p. 77.
10. Rohwer, Axis Submarine Successes, pp. 34-35.