Steel Boat, Iron Hearts

by Hans Goebeler

  Other members of the crew, however, did not have such good luck during their furloughs. Many of them, especially those who visited Berlin, Frankfurt, and other large cities, spent most of their leave huddled in air raid shelters. The stories they told of life under the shadow of Allied bombers were not pretty. The purpose of the bombing may have been to break our morale, but I can tell you that seeing the suffering being inflicted on our families and friends only inspired us to fight even harder.

  We worked like crazy during the next two weeks to get U-505 ready for her scheduled sailing date. Meanwhile, we watched the shipyard workers like hawks for any sign of sabotage. They sensed our obvious mistrust, and they developed a resentful attitude toward us because of it. We didn’t mind one bit. Better safe than sorry!

  Starting on the 18th, we began loading our boat with torpedoes, provisions, and supplies. Some of the new guys in the crew, fresh out of Submarine School, said that our boat smelled sweet like a whorehouse because of all the Colibri perfume we sprinkled on our spare clothes and ourselves.

  “Wait until you have to empty the pail in the diesel room a few times,” I told them. “You’ll wish you still smelled like a Hure after that!”

  By the afternoon of the 19th, we were ready to sail. We had the obligatory visits by Flotilla officers, as well as a good-sized crowd of civilian well-wishers for our departure. We knew the French Resistance had been using some of the local girls to extract information out of us. To avoid giving any useful intelligence to the enemy, we tried to feed the girls lies and misinformation regarding our boat’s technical details and sailing date. Despite our precautions, however, there were a large number of mademoiselles waiting at the dock to see us off. Who knows, perhaps one of us talked in his sleep? For whatever reason, the girls of Lorient always seemed to know as much about our sailing schedule as we did.

  Late on the afternoon of December 20, we waved our caps and bade farewell to Lorient. Once our boat was clear of the pier, we increased speed to one-half and headed for the mouth of the harbor. Heavy clouds hung overhead like giant gray cotton balls as we made our way towards open sea.

  When we reached the 200-meter depth line, we prepared to make our final test dive. Given our past experience with sabotage, there was a certain amount of anxiety as we slipped underneath the waves. Thirty meters…fifty meters…eighty meters…everything all right so far.

  At 120 meters, however, we started to hear a suspicious noise. After another ten meters, a gurgling sound began. A moment later, with a loud hiss, we began taking on water.

  We soon located the source of the leak: a faulty welding seam on a cable flange. More sabotage! Lange cursed the shipyard workers with every bad word in the sailor’s rich dictionary of curses. There was no alternative but to return to port for more repairs. We dove one last time to see if there was anything else we should know about and, discovering nothing else, headed for home.

  Within a couple of hours we were once again tied to our pier in Bunker Skorff. Most of the crew boarded buses for our barracks, but the Board Watch, me included, was left behind to tend the boat. Lange must have really raised hell with the shipyard officials, because one-half hour after we docked, a large group of workers came running on board like a bunch of whipped dogs. The repairs, they said, would take a few days to complete.

  Although we were frustrated with having yet another mission aborted by shoddy and/or malicious workmanship, we were not displeased with the prospect of spending the Christmas holiday in port. Our Chief Navigator Alfred Reinig, who was also responsible for keeping the crew’s pay records, told us that only two of the crewmen had any Reich Marks left in their accounts. Luckily, he was able to convince the military bureaucrats in the Finance Department to give us an advance on our next pay. That little cash advance kept us afloat for the next few days while the repairs were completed. “Afloat” is an appropriate word since virtually every Pfennig was spent on liqueur to drink.

  At noon on December 24, the day we call “Holy Eve,” we had a Christmas celebration sponsored by the Flotilla. By order of our skipper, all drinking had to stop at midnight. We knew this meant that we would be sailing the next day—Christmas Day. Twelve hours of feasting and drinking were enough, though, even for us. At midnight, we turned into our bunks and tried to get some sleep.

  Sure enough, we departed Lorient the next day. With three minesweepers as escort, we sailed back to the 200-meter depth line. This time, our test dive was performed without incident. But when we surfaced and started the diesels, the starboard engine burst into flame! It took us several harrowing minutes to extinguish the smoky fire. Once the smoke and fumes had been blown out of the compartment, Lange ordered us to submerge to effect repairs.

  It wasn’t until that evening that Diesel Chief Fricke reported that the repairs were complete. We all walked by the troublesome engine and spat on it for good luck before it was fired-up for a test. The engine functioned just fine and soon the diesels were singing their familiar hissing hammering song as we knifed through the Bay.

  After the batteries were fully recharged, we heard the skipper’s unmistakable baritone voice on the intercom ordering the boat to dive. I was laying off-duty in my bunk, listening intently to the sounds of our boat as it step-by-step slipped beneath the waves. When we heard the hiss-hiss-hiss of compressed air opening the relief valves on the diving tanks, we all reflexively braced ourselves so that we would not slip out of our bunks as the boat pitched downward. Within a few minutes, we were cruising at a depth of seventy meters, the soft hum of the electric motors lulling us to sleep.

  We were awakened the next morning by the rush of cold air being sucked through the boat to the diesels. We threw on some thick sweaters and woolen caps and reported for duty. It was still a bit strange to enter the control room and see Lange instead of Zschech as skipper. But everything we had seen so far convinced us that Lange was our man. He always smelled like cigarettes and often insisted on “shooting the stars” with the sextant himself. There was no doubt in our hearts and minds that this gruff Old Salt was exactly the kind of skipper we needed.

  The first few days of our passage through the Bay of Biscay passed uneventfully. The weather was typical for the winter: choppy waves and low, dark gray overcast clouds. The temperature inside the boat plummeted as we moved further into a very frigid cold front.

  Around 1400 hours on the 28th, we started hearing the muffled boom of ship artillery and aircraft bombs exploding in the distance. The barrage continued unabated for more than two hours. After sundown, we cautiously surfaced to recharge the batteries. There was lots of radio traffic in the air, most of it enemy transmissions.

  At 1910 hours, we received an FT ordering four boats (including U-505) to proceed at top speed to Sea Square BE6938. There was no explanation, but we assumed it had something to do with the gunfire we had been hearing. Within minutes we were smashing our way through the breakers at maximum speed, southeast toward our rendezvous point. Ice cold spray drenched the bridge watch as they scanned the horizon for signs of battle.

  Tensions ran high among us crew members. We were very excited to get back into action. As we drew closer to our destination, we could plainly see flashes of gunfire. Just as we entered the designated Sea Square, however, the fire slackened and then died away completely.

  At 2042 hours, we received a long FT from Flotilla Headquarters. It informed us that a group of our destroyers and fast torpedo boats had been battling a superior force of British warships located in Sea Square BE6930. German Destroyer Z-27 was dead in the water, location BE3938. The four remaining destroyers were trying to fight their way westward. Six of our torpedo boats were attempting to escape toward the east. We were ordered to render immediate assistance to Destroyer Z-27, and to attack any enemy naval units we should encounter.

  A few minutes later, we received an update through FT. We were advised the enemy group consisted of cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft—present location unknown. We were ordered to search fo
r survivors from the Z-27, which implied the destroyer had sunk. Given the frigid temperature of the sea, we knew the men in the sea would not last long in the freezing water.

  We found ourselves shivering uncontrollably, half from the cold and half from the excitement. It had been a long time since we had gone into action—far too long for our tastes. And now, a chance to tangle with warships! The glory of sinking an enemy cruiser filled our imaginations.

  Our first priority, however, was rescuing those boys from the Z-27. We entered our destination Sea Square in the early morning hours of the 29th. Sea conditions were becoming rougher, with very poor visibility. Spotting survivors in this kind of weather would be quite a challenge, to say the least. With the size of the waves we were encountering, our only chance of finding them was if we spotted each other as we were both riding the crest of a swell. We were not optimistic. Nevertheless, we began gathering all of our woolen blankets while Toni brewed pot after pot of hot coffee. We prayed that we could save at least some of our sailors from the freezing water.

  At 0140 hours, we spotted a red flare almost directly astern of our boat. We wheeled around and began a zig-zag search pattern. A couple of hours later, we located two German sailors floating in “pipe boats”—one-man life rafts designed to help men survive winter sea conditions. The freezing cold swells made their retrieval very difficult, but we finally managed to fish them out of the water. They were slightly injured and very, very cold. They were having shivering fits from hypothermia, so we took them down to the electric engine room and stripped off their wet clothing. After rubbing them dry to help circulation, we gave them some dry clothing and put them into warm bunks.

  Meanwhile, the weather continued to deteriorate. A freezing north wind was whipping up, blowing the tops off the waves. Visibility from the bridge was virtually nil. To make matters worse, the motor malfunctioned on our Wanze device, our tiny new radar detector, further handicapping us. We were all thinking of the poor boys out there in that ice cold water, and how small our chances were of finding any more of them before it was too late.

  Despite dismal odds, Lange was up on the bridge, soaking wet and freezing cold, but he refused to give up on the men. We could see him standing there, smoking cigarette after cigarette, shouting orders over the roar of the wind. He was like the eye of a hurricane: a pillar of utter calm surrounded by the storm. More confirmation that he was a skipper we could be proud of.

  Our skipper also had a lot of confidence in us. After the war, Lange told me personally that he was very impressed with our professionalism. He never had a doubt that we were a well-trained and able crew, and was very happy he had us instead of a newly-assembled crew. This is absolute refutation of the opinion of some writers that our spirit had been broken after the Zschech affair, and that we should have been split-up and dispersed as replacements to other boats.

  For the next hour, we rumbled back and forth in zig-zag search patterns. With ten-foot swells crashing over our upper deck, visibility was virtually zero. But there was no question of giving up. Up on the bridge, Lange and the rest of the watch crew strained their eyes to spot something through the darkness. Below decks, we continued to ready the boat for more survivors. We couldn’t stop thinking of those poor boys out there, exposed to the freezing blasts of wind and sea. We prayed that God would put His thumb between them and the inevitable fate that awaits all sailors exposed to a winter ocean storm.

  Just before dawn, one of the bridge watch crew caught a quick glimpse of something being lifted above the whitecaps by the crest of a big wave. As we approached the spot, we could see a group of seven life rafts tied together. Lange maneuvered our boat so that our conning tower sheltered the cluster of rafts in our lee. As we pulled along side, we realized they were German sailors—more than two dozen of them. They were in pitiful condition, hardly able to grab the towline we tossed to them. One by one, we hauled the men on board.

  The last one to leave the life rafts was Korvettenkapitän Wirich von Gortzen, skipper of torpedo boat T-25. Needless to say, he was very grateful to us for rescuing them. He told us his torpedo boat had been sunk by naval gunfire during a savage encounter with British cruisers. On our trip back to base, we learned it was his T-25 that had rescued the crew of one of our sister boats, U-106, when it was attacked by British aircraft in the Bay of Biscay earlier that year. We were happy to return the favor to our comrades in the Kriegsmarine.

  Everyone not on duty was detailed to helping the newly rescued men. Those fellows were in miserable shape! Several of them were deep in hypothermic shock. One of the biggest problems was finding space for them all. Since we had just left port, our decks were still piled high with provisions. There wasn’t enough room on our sub for a dog to lay down. Despite the sardine can conditions, however, we tried to give the sailors the impression they were not in the way.

  Meanwhile, the weather continued to worsen. Our guests were not used to the motions of our boat and turned green. Spit pans were brought out, but most of them just threw up into the bilge. They were very apologetic for making such a mess, but we just tried to make a joke of it.

  “Don’t worry about it!” we assured them. “It just means our cook Toni will have an easy day today. He’ll just collect it all up and serve it tonight for stew. It will save us from using our own rations!” Rough sailor talk like that made them laugh and relax a bit.

  At 0545 hours, we spotted a red star emergency flare off our port bow. Korvettenkapitän von Gartzen thought it might be some of his crew who had been separated from the others by the ferocity of the storm. Unfortunately, whoever fired the flare must have slipped beneath the waves by the time we reached him. Von Gartzen was beside himself with worry about the fate of his missing crewmen.

  Conditions were getting too rough on the surface to continue the search, so Lange ordered us down to 40 meters. Our passengers’ eyes got wide as soup bowls when the boat tilted down and began slipping beneath the waves. They calmed down a bit when the boat leveled off, but a few of the sailors already delirious from hypothermia began to rant and panic. To keep them from hurting themselves or others, we were forced to carry them to the aft crew quarters and tie them up in hammocks. After an hour or so of warming up, most of them started acting normal again.

  Around 0930 Lange brought us up to periscope depth to take another look around. Much to our disbelief, the weather had actually gotten worse since we submerged. The Old Man was looking through the periscope when we heard him growl, “Verdammte Tommies!” (“Damned Tommies!”), and lowered the periscope in disgust. He told us we had just passed a large group of empty life preservers. The survivors had probably been chilled to unconsciousness and slipped through the arm straps, or had simply given up and decided to end their freezing misery. After a moment, Lange regained his composure and raised the periscope to once again resume the search. Nothing could be seen but the raging sea.

  Around noon, Toni served lunch. Our comrades from the T-25 got served first. After they had finished, the plates were scraped more or less clean and we were served our food. Their hunger satisfied, the boys from the T-boat tried to find a place to lay down and sleep. Meanwhile, their exhausted skipper was still busy at the second periscope assisting our skipper scan the sea for survivors. Lange finally convinced him to go down and get some rest. Before he laid down, however, von Gartzen inspected the condition of every one of his men. We could tell he was a good, caring skipper of a well-trained and disciplined crew.

  Just before sunset, we surfaced to take one last look around. As the skies started to darken, we spotted an emergency signal light off our port bow. The seas had decreased a bit, so we were able to make good speed toward the light. Our prow cut big, white, splashing wedges through the rollers as we raced ahead.

  Lange shouted down from the bridge, “Rettungskommando auf die Brücke!” (“Rescue crew to the bridge!”).

  The men scampered up the conning tower ladder like monkeys, salvage equipment in hand. One of our lookouts h
ad spotted two small rafts. As we approached them, we could see they contained five men, obviously delirious and on the verge of death. The men didn’t have the strength to catch a line, so we grappled the rafts with hooks and lifted the men on board. They were all stiff as boards from the cold and we weren’t sure all of them were still alive. We brought them down below and placed them between the diesels to warm up. After a while, they began to recover. That brought our total number of rescued to 34.

  During the night, we turned on our searchlight to help spot survivors. This was an extremely dangerous decision given the large numbers of enemy aircraft and ships operating in the area, but Lange was willing to risk it. Later, we received a radio message reporting more emergency signals scattered throughout three different Sea Squares. A follow-up message reported that a neutral Irish steamer was conducting rescue operations in those areas. We spotted the Irish merchantman at around 2000. She seemed to be doing a conscientious job of searching, so we slipped away, eager not to be noticed.

  We continued running to and fro, using the periscopes to look for any sign of survivors. After a few more hours of fruitless searching, our skipper decided to head back to port with the ones we had found. Lange reported to Headquarters by FT, took one last look around, and then pointed our nose back toward the French coast.

  Chapter 13

  Brest

  In the early morning hours of December 30, we heard two loud aircraft bombs explode at a moderate distance from our boat. The hollow booms reverberating through the boat frightened our guests from the T-25, but they calmed down when they saw our practiced nonchalance.