Steel Boat, Iron Hearts

by Hans Goebeler

  The balance of our voyage across the Atlantic was a fine one. The weather was quite calm and we escaped serious attention from the enemy. At one point we even felt confident enough to set up a table on the upper deck and enjoy our lunch alfresco. It was to be the last time in the war that we would be able to travel so far on the surface without molestation from the air.

  Sometimes we were visited by schools of friendly dolphins that jumped and danced next to their big and noisy new playmate. It was marvelous to watch the powerful, playful creatures enjoy their carefree lives, blissfully unaware of the deadly contest being waged by their human cousins. Once, Executive Officer Nollau tried to catch one of the sleek mammals so he could ride on its back. Luckily for the dolphin, and probably for Nollau too, he did not succeed in catching one.

  After three weeks of peaceful cruising, we had nearly completed our transit of the Atlantic. Thus far on our journey we had encountered only a scattering of neutral ships. But on the afternoon of June 28, we spotted a distant ship running a fast straight course toward the southeast. We identified her as a heavily-armed American freighter, Robin Hood type, approximately 7,000 tons. Löwe’s order to action stations sent us into a frenzy of activity, our excited heartbeats rising in tempo with the increased RPMs of the diesels. A fault in our gyrocompass made us fall behind, but after seven hours of racing at top speed, we caught-up to the steamer and moved into firing position. The high-speed sprint had been costly in fuel, but we considered it an investment in victory.

  At exactly 1800 Hours we heard the diving klaxon ring, followed by the humming song of our Siemens electric motors as we slipped down to periscope depth. After another hour of stalking, we were in perfect position for attack. We control room operators busied ourselves with fine adjustments to the boat’s trim as we quietly waited for the freighter to cross our path.

  Löwe’s low, steady voice came over the intercom, breaking the silent tension. “We are starting the attack. Torpedoes…tubes one and two set on three-meter depth, distance 800 meters. Ready…FIRE!”

  The sound room reported the torpedoes running hot and true. The seconds ticked by…22…23…24…Boom! The first torpedo hit just forward of the bridge, sending up a column of water as tall as the mast. An eye blink later, the second exploded just behind the bridge. A perfect set of shots.

  The freighter began slowly sinking, bow first. Lifeboats were being lowered, but Löwe ordered that we remain submerged. The reason was clear from one peek through the attack periscope: in an admirable display of discipline, the enemy gun crews were still manning their battle stations at the ship’s big 4-inch forward deck gun and aft 40mm anti-aircraft weapon. After another hour, the brave gun crews finally abandoned their posts and took to the lifeboats.

  When the hundred or so survivors had moved sufficiently away from the ship, we fired another torpedo, this time set at four-meter depth. It hit in the same spot as the first torpedo and the ship began sinking fast. What a magnificent sight the ship was with its deck crowded with more than 20 twin-engine airplanes, the American flag still flying defiantly as she slipped beneath the waves! Years later I found out that the valiant freighter was the Seathrush, 6,900 tons.

  We spent the better part of the next day reloading spare torpedoes from the racks into the empty torpedo tubes, a difficult and arduous procedure that required the participation of half the crew. Even those not involved in the operation could get no rest because their bunks had to be moved to allow clearance for the 23-foot long black eels. Once that was accomplished, most of our attention centered on the making of the small canvas victory pennant signifying our fifth success.

  Our mood of enthusiasm and pride was so distracting that we off duty crewmen lying in our bunks failed at first to notice the change in diesel RPMs. We had already begun our chase after another victim! A big, very heavily-armed merchantman had been sighted in the bright moonlight, making sharp zig-zags on a generally southerly course. The ship was a fast one, and it took us several anxious hours before we could maneuver into firing position. To our great joy, the intercom finally crackled with Kapitänleutnant Löwe’s order to dive for the firing run.

  We heard the forward tubes hiss and felt the boat gently shudder as two torpedoes were sent speeding toward their target, range 1,200 meters. Then…Whomm! One of the eels hit the ship’s stern and she came to an immediate stop. Once again, brave American Navy gunners refused to leave their battle stations until all other personnel had abandoned ship.

  This grainy images depicts a lifeboat from the 7,400-ton Thomas McKean, which had been steaming on her maiden voyage from New York to Trinidad when U-505 found her. Author’s Collection

  Once the lifeboats were clear of the ship, Löwe brought our boat to the surface to assist any survivors. At first, the men in the lifeboats ducked, thinking we would machine gun them. When they saw we meant them no harm, they pulled along side, nervous but clearly curious about us “ruthless Nazi submariners.”

  We gave medical supplies and some of our precious fresh water to the wounded men in the lifeboats. Our skipper, speaking in English, learned from them that the ship was the brand-new 7,400 ton Thomas McKean, sailing on her maiden voyage from New York to Trinidad. Like the Seathrush, her deck was also crammed with about two dozen large aircraft, all eventually bound for the Soviet port of Baku. It gave us enormous satisfaction knowing those bombers would never reach the Communists fighting against our boys on the Eastern Front.

  Although the Thomas McKean had developed a heavy list to port, she stubbornly refused to sink. Rather than waste another torpedo, the skipper ordered our deck gun crew to finish her off with cannon fire. The gun crew aimed at the waterline, but the slowly listing ship kept lifting the shell holes above the water. It took 80 rounds from our powerful 105mm gun before the flaming ship finally rolled over and sank. Löwe was a former gunnery officer, and he was obviously frustrated with the number of shells it took to sink her.

  The skipper allowed everyone off duty to come out to the upper deck and watch the bittersweet drama of the handsome new ship being sunk. Ironically, it was virtually the only time most of us were able to personally view any of our sinkings. It was quite a fireworks show, and someone snapped a picture of the burning ship.

  After she slipped under the waves, several of the bombers on her deck bobbed up to the surface. Löwe said we needed to make sure the planes sank, so he personally opened fire on them with our little 20mm flak gun. He explained that we needed to remove the evidence of her sinking so we couldn’t be located, but we suspected all the cannon fire had given the old gunnery officer an itchy trigger finger. We certainly didn’t begrudge him his fun, for we had added another victory pennant to our periscope and our spirits were as high as heaven. Once the skipper had satisfied himself, we went back below decks and cleared the area.

  Fifty years after the end of the war, I met one of the survivors of the Thomas McKean at a naval veterans’ reunion in Tampa, Florida. Charles Sanderson was one of the crew members responsible for the maintenance of those 25 aircraft bound for the Soviet Union. The high point of the evening was when he recognized himself in one of the photographs we had taken at the time of the sinking. Sure enough, there was the young Sanderson, with a hat on his head and an oar in his hands, sitting in one of the lifeboats we were rendering aid to. There was no acrimony between the Americans and us Germans at the reunion. We respected their bravery and valor, while they were grateful for our humanity in aiding the survivors. Naturally, I gave Charles a copy of the photo and we have been friends ever since.

  The day after the sinking was spent much as the previous one: loading more torpedoes into the forward tubes and constructing another victory pennant. In the evening we watched a cutter approach the area where the Thomas McKean went down, apparently to rescue survivors. Löwe gave the ship a wide berth.

  During the next week we spotted absolutely nothing. Our double success had obviously scared all other traffic out of the area. As we prowled the waters nor
th of Puerto Rico, the crew took advantage of the lull to go topside and get some fresh air. Some of the boys stayed in the sun a bit too long and got a painful sunburn.

  On July 4, 1942, we entered the Caribbean Sea. The water temperature was 29 degrees Celsius (84 Fahrenheit) and felt like warm bath water. Conditions inside the boat became unbearably hot, especially during the day. I tried to ignore the heat by reading my English language novel by John Knittel, but the dripping condensation soaked the pages until they dissolved into paste. Adding insult to injury, the weather started getting rough. As we passed through the western end of the Caribbean, the weather deteriorated even further. We began to feel like an American Wild West rodeo rider as giant, rolling waves tossed our boat up and down. We rated the conditions as Sea State six-point-four. Löwe radioed headquarters that he was moving closer to the South American coast in order to intercept traffic passing through the Panama Canal.

  As we approached the Colombian coast, air activity increased dramatically, but still we did not encounter any merchant sea traffic. By the second week of July, air alarms became so frequent we could not even stay surfaced long enough to fully charge our compressed air tanks. The alarms took an especially hard toll on the crew, as we were continually deprived of sleep. I distinctly remember one occasion I was enjoying a particularly pleasant dream about Jeanette when the alarm went off. I awoke with a start and my lovely dream was suddenly replaced with the steaming, stinking reality of our existence. I wanted to scream. The alarm had sounded because we had begun chasing a target, but our prey escaped into a thunderstorm and it was all for naught.

  The miserable routine of thunderstorms and air alerts continued for two more weeks. Even the cloak of darkness failed to protect us from the ever-present enemy vultures hovering over our heads. The warm seas were often highly phosphorescent, making our wake shimmer with a glow that could be spotted miles away from the air.

  The situation became worse with the appearance of American “Consolidated” flying boats, which somehow had the ability to spot us in total darkness, even with no phosphorescence. The speed and accuracy with which the aircraft were able to find us caused us to suspect that the enemy planes had been fitted with airborne radar devices. Several times we were surprised in the middle of the night by the blossoming of giant flares that illuminated us as brightly as the noonday sun. When this happened, we had mere seconds to crash dive before the plane circled back for his bombing run. A couple of times we were very nearly sunk by their bombs and depth charges. Over time, we got to be quite expert in the roller coaster game of evading aircraft, but as a result of the constant exertion and stain, our morale and health began deteriorating fast.

  On the afternoon of July 22, we got a bit of diversion that was to have far-reaching consequences. We were lying off the coast of a small island called Courtown Cays when a large three-masted schooner with a luxury car lashed to its deck was spotted 30 degrees off our starboard bow. The beautiful sailing ship was not flying a flag and was making violent zig-zags—the type a ship makes to avoid torpedoes rather than to tack against the wind. The unusual ship excited Löwe’s curiosity, so he ordered surface battle stations.

  The deck gun crew went through their well-practiced drill for preparing the 105mm cannon for action. In less than 30 seconds, the gun was loaded and ready to fire. The skipper shouted to Gunnery Officer Stolzenburg to send a warning shot over the sailing ship’s bow to halt the craft and identify them. Either the gun crew misunderstood the order, or they just plain missed, because the first shot took off the ship’s mainmast. The handsome windjammer looked like a mess, with its mast and sails draping over her elegant decks like a giant tent.

  Despite the damage, the ship refused to stop. Kapitänleutnant Löwe ordered another couple of warning shots to be fired. The ship ran up the Colombian flag but still refused to heave-to. Did they really believe that a de-masted sailing ship could outrun a submarine? We moved our boat into the path of the schooner, whereupon she once again turned to avoid inspection. From the stern of the boat we could see her name: the Roamar out of Cartagena.

  Löwe’s face showed he was struggling with a hard decision. After a moment more of thought, our skipper made a judgment call he would profoundly regret for the rest of his life.

  “Sink her, Stolzenberg, but make it quick.”

  The first round into the ship’s hull was all the convincing the Spanish-speaking crew needed to abandon ship. We waited until the near-hysterical crew was well clear of the ship, then opened fire for effect. It took only a few minutes for our deck gun to make matchsticks out of the 400-ton schooner. It was great fun for our gun crew, but Löwe sensed this was a big mistake. We immediately departed the area, assuming the sailing ship had ample time to radio a report of our presence.

  We all believed we had good reasons for sinking the schooner. Technically, we were totally within our rights to sink a ship in a declared war zone that had refused orders to heave to and allow her cargo to be inspected. Legalities aside, once the first warning shot had de-masted her, we really had no practical choice but to erase the evidence of our presence by sinking her.

  Löwe, however, could not shake the feeling that he had made a tremendous mistake. The Kapitänleutnant, usually a paragon of steely calm, began to show signs of nervous distress. His physical condition worsened dramatically during the next few days and it began to affect his performance. He seemed to be literally worrying himself sick. More and more, our Executive Officer Herbert Nollau began to perform the day-to-day duties of the skipper. (NOTE: Based on his competency during this emergency, Nollau was promoted and became the commanding officer of his own boat, U-534, which was sunk May 5, 1945, by a British Liberator. In 1993, a commercial salvage group raised Nollau’s boat in the Kattegat, out of Denmark. She was taken over by the Warship Preservation Trust, hauled to England in May of 1996, and is now on display at the Nautilus Maritime Museum in Birkenhead, near Liverpool. Thus, in a stunning bit of coincidence, Nollau served on two of the three U-boats that survive today.)

  The remainder of July was spent in a fruitless back-and-forth search of the South American coast for shipping. We suspected that, somehow, the Allies were constantly aware of our position and were directing traffic around us. As it turned out, our suspicions were fully justified. Unbeknownst to us, the Allies were not only triangulating our positions through radio direction finders, they had also cracked our top secret Enigma code and were deciphering our most sensitive messages to and from headquarters.

  Meanwhile, our troubles continued to multiply. The skipper’s face grew more pale by the day and he rarely talked. Nollau continued as he had been, assuming more of the captain’s duties. The seas were also extremely rough: Sea State seven. The boat rolled so much that literally everything on board had to be tied down or it would fall to the floor. The battering of the waves was so severe that one of our forward torpedo tube covers was damaged. As far as we crew members were concerned, it took our constant effort to avoid being thrown to the deck, even when trying to sleep. At least the terrible weather was keeping the Allied aircraft grounded.

  On the last night of July we had a memorable encounter with “St. Elmo’s Fire,” a freak atmospheric condition caused by an electrical charging of the air. The entire conning tower and upper deck was lit in the most miraculous manner with a halo of blue light. By wetting one’s hand, you could even make your fingers glow. Such a phenomenon is grand entertainment if one is sailing on a cruise ship in peacetime, but we only worried about being spotted by our “friends” in the air. Off duty, we heard many old sailors’ superstitions about the meaning of this magical experience.

  Löwe’s condition, meanwhile, continued to deteriorate. Only with the greatest physical exertion and force of will could he manage to perform his duties. It began to become clear that there was physically something very wrong with him—far beyond mere worry over the schooner incident. On August 1, we radioed U-boat Headquarters that we were returning to base due to our com
mander’s health. Naturally, we were disappointed we would be returning with only three victory pennants, but our main thoughts were to save the life of our beloved skipper.

  On the afternoon of August 3, we were once again forced to crash dive due to an attacking aircraft. The big plane swooped down so close we could hear the roar of its engines from inside the sub as we dived. Clearly, the bridge watch had been caught totally unprepared. We were surprised to see Kapitänleutnant Löwe, the color temporarily returned to his face, struggle out of his cabin to address the crew. He remained calm, but using a voice that could not be misunderstood, he reminded us of the need to stay vigilant. No one was punished, though Löwe’s quiet disappointment was penalty enough for us. The sailor whose inattention to duty was primarily responsible for the close call was transferred to another boat before our next patrol, but with no black mark against his record.

  I’m not ashamed to admit that our brush with death threw a real scare into us. The loud rumbling sound of the diesels, which had so often annoyed me, now seemed like a beautiful song announcing our return to base. East of the Antilles we rendezvoused with U-463 in order to take on more diesel fuel. U-463, commanded by First World War submarine veteran Leo Wolfbauer, was one of the “Milk Cow” submarines specially designed to replenish U-boats on the high seas with fuel, torpedoes, and other supplies. Luckily for us, the sea was smooth as a mirror and there was no difficulty in making the diesel fuel hose connection.

  After taking on 25 cubic meters of precious fuel, we bid a hearty farewell to our big-bellied benefactor. We were relieved no aircraft had shown up to torment us; several U-boats had already been sunk by air attacks conducted while docked together in the vulnerable refueling position. U-463 was eventually caught on the surface by a British Halifax bomber and sunk with all hands in May 1943. We were greatly saddened to hear of her loss, considering how crucial she had been to our own safe return.