Steel Boat, Iron Hearts

by Hans Goebeler

  A great mob of men from the aft end of the boat suddenly stampeded through the control room to scale the ladders to the bridge. I could clearly hear the cries of men being wounded by gunfire as the crew poured out on to the deck.

  Most of us control room mates stayed at our posts to make sure the scuttling order was carried out. We kept looking around for Hauser, our Chief Engineering Officer, because we needed to know if he had set the demolition charges. He was nowhere to be found. We quickly learned the Raccoon had already jumped overboard. Wonderful, we thought, he was busy saving his own worthless neck instead of carrying out his final and most important duty aboard our boat. (NOTE: After the war, Hauser’s son told me his father claimed to have single-handedly saved U-505 on three separate occasions, and that he deserved a great medal for his bravery. In my opinion, he deserved a medal from the Allies, because that guy did a lot more harm to us than good.)

  Unfortunately, for security reasons, only the skipper, the Executive Officer and the Chief Engineering Officer knew how to set the timer for the demolition charges. Since all three of them were already wounded or had evacuated the boat, it was obvious it was going to be up to us enlisted men to devise another plan for scuttling U-505. In the absence of any officers, Engineering Petty Officer Holdenried assumed control of the situation. He ordered us to open up the diving tanks once the rest of the crew was safely overboard. That would give us about 30 seconds to get out of the boat before she slipped under the waves.

  We waited for the last of the men to evacuate the compartment, which seemed like an eternity. The very second they were clear, we tried to open the valves to let water into the tanks. All went well except for forward main diving tanks #6 and #7. Something was preventing the relief valves on those big tanks from opening. We tried again and again to open those damned valves, but with no luck. We even tried to push the controls by hand, but the operating shafts had been bent by the force of the depth charges and wouldn’t budge. We knew the air bubbles hanging in #6 and #7 might prevent the boat from going down, but no one could think of an alternative. We finally gave up and made a dash for the conning tower ladder, hopeful that the holes in the hull would flood the boat with enough water to send her down.

  I had already started climbing the ladder to the conning tower when I suddenly remembered the sea strainer located on the deck close to my duty station. The sea strainer is a filter mechanism for the main pump, with a bucket-shaped removable sieve set inside a 12-inch steel housing. Acting on impulse, I ran back and unlocked the four clamps and removed the heavy steel cover of the sea strainer. A dinner plate-sized stream of water started gurgling out of the main pump line into the boat. As the water flowed back toward the stern, I felt sure this would be enough to sink our beloved U-505.

  Then, in a move that I would regret for the rest of my life, I tossed the sea strainer cover down onto the deck plates in the corner of the control room. If I had thrown the strainer cover down into the bilge where no one could reach it, U-505 would have had a very different ending.

  Having done my duty (or more precisely, the Chief Engineering Officer’s duty), I decided it was high time to get the hell out of our sinking boat! I was small but very strong back in those days. My crewmates said I could move through the confines of the submarine with the agility of a weasel. But on this occasion, I broke all my previous speed records getting back up that ladder.

  The bulkheads of the conning tower were resonating with the metallic clang of bullets and shrapnel when the rush began to abandon ship. From the inside of the sub, the hits on our boat sounded like a group of boys throwing rocks at a trash can. I was terrified by the thought of what was happening to my crewmates out there, but not as terrified as I was to be the only man left inside that sinking boat! By the time I began climbing to the conning tower, however, the bursts of fire had subsided. The shouts of men outside on the deck began to get louder than the blood pounding in my ears from my racing heart. My head swam from adrenaline and the fresh, oxygen-rich air pouring into the boat.

  When I got to the top hatch on the bridge, I stuck my head up to survey the situation. It took a moment or two for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the sunlight. When they did, the first thing I saw was poor Gottfried Fischer, one of the radio room crewmen. His body was torn and twisted, and he was obviously dead. The whole bridge deck was slippery with pools of foamy brine tinted red from the blood of wounded men. I made my way over to the leeward side of the conning tower, the one area of the boat shielded from enemy fire. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.

  I took a quick glance around at the long, gray hulls of the enemy destroyers. They were circling in for the kill like a pack of jackals. I could also see my crewmates floating in the sea, clusters of them strung out in a long line behind the boat. I climbed over as quickly as I could to the lee side of the conning tower. There were a few other men huddled there, trying to deploy a large inflatable life raft. I lent a hand for a moment, then joined them in the raft.

  We were afraid the destroyers might be preparing to ram, so we paddled frantically away from the boat. When I glanced back at her, however, I realized U-505 was still fully under way with her electric motors. Before we knew it, she was hundreds of meters away, barely visible above the waves. I remember to this day how hard I tried hard to get one last glimpse of our battered old boat before she joined her many sisters at the bottom of the Atlantic.

  Our attention quickly shifted to staying afloat in the water until, hopefully, we were picked up by the Americans. Some of the boys thought the airplanes were strafing survivors in the water. I thought the planes were shooting the water between our boat and us to prevent anyone from re-boarding her. If they were, they could have saved their ammo, for none of us was crazy enough to want to get back aboard U-505 because she was slowly but surely going down.

  We were scattered along a fairly extensive arc of ocean. The water was warm, but choppy. We tried to gather ourselves into groups and get the more heavily wounded men out of the water to stop their bleeding. Word spread that our skipper was badly wounded in the legs and we were particularly concerned about him. The big raft in which I was sitting was soon filled to overflowing with men. With all the blood in the water, we were very fearful of sharks. Even those of us who were not wounded were very reluctant to leave that raft.

  At this point, my story intersects that of my friend Wolfgang Schiller, one of the forward torpedo room crewmen. What follows is his recollection of the capture, as told in an excerpt from a letter he wrote to me last year:

  In an atmosphere of intense anxiety, I was standing in the forward torpedo room at the communication tube and heard the voice of our commander as he looked up and down with the periscope. Each direction he looked, he called out what he saw, ‘destroyer! Destroyer!’

  Looking all around, he saw the hopelessness of our situation and gave the order to dive deeper. After a short time, the first water-bombs exploded. The glass covers of the manometers burst. After it was reported to the Old Man that water was breaking-in and that the rudder was damaged, he ordered us back to the surface and to abandon ship.

  I forwarded his order to all the comrades in the torpedo room. In a short time, I was all alone. I did not want to leave my wristwatch, which was hanging on one of the pipelines, so I was a little late in getting to the control room. On my way through the officers’ rooms, I saw a lamb’s wool sweater laying there, so I put it on, thinking that the water might get cold after a while. I was only wearing a pair of navy shorts and a civilian shirt. I had sailcloth shoes without socks, one of which I lost in the water. I put on my emergency breather gear over the sweater.

  After a little while, I got to the escape hatch. Wilmar, who was from Berlin, held me back. He was timing our escape in between the rhythms of the aircraft strafing passes to prevent casualties. As I came out into the dazzling sunlight, I became blinded. Then I saw a plane coming up from starboard, and I tried to take shelter behind the shield of the anti-aircraf
t gun. But because I could not make it in time under the hail of bullets, I just jumped onto the starboard side of the deck. It was at that point that I was probably grazed by some bullets, because later when I opened the oxygen bottles on my breathing gear, I found two burned bullet holes on the left shoulder and left wrist of the thick wool sweater.

  I drifted quickly away from the boat. A destroyer came toward my direction, yielded a little, and a sailor threw a rope to me. I was lucky I didn’t catch the rope because it would have pulled me into the propeller. I then swam to a big life raft that was loaded with so many comrades that it was almost under water. One of them was scooping water out of the raft with an empty food can. Someone, I think it was Fricke, asked me if I was still strong enough to swim over to Becker. Becker was a great distance away from us and was calling for help. I answered, ‘Yes, if someone will come with me.’ Hans Göbeler volunteered to come with me to rescue Becker.

  I kept feeling something brush against my naked leg as I swam, so I asked Hans if he saw a shark following me. He said ‘Yes, swim faster, there’s a shark right behind you!’ There were reflections of the sun on the waves, so I couldn’t see for myself. Later, I found out that in my hurry, I had forgotten to fasten the belt of the breathing gear. It was the belt that I felt rubbing against my leg, not a shark. When we got to Becker, we found that he was not wounded, so we didn’t need to carry him. He swam under his own power with us back to the raft.

  (NOTE: Schiller was a slow swimmer, so I told him there was a shark behind him to make him swim faster.)

  While we bobbed in the surf, we watched with amusement as the Americans chased our still-circling boat with motorized whaleboats. Eventually they managed to board her, but we were still confident it was only a matter of time before she slipped beneath the waves. After all, only a sliver of her bow and conning tower was still above water. We joked to each other that old U-505 might take more Americans down with her all alone than when she was crewed.

  Our amusement slowly turned to concern, however, as more time passed. The boat, while still barely above water, stubbornly refused to sink. I told a few of my mates that I had uncovered the sea strainer. Was it possible that one of the Americans had found the cover and replaced it? It seemed impossible.

  Of course, as we now know, that’s precisely what happened. Captain Daniel V. Gallery, the commander of the “Hunter-Killer” task force that forced us to the surface, had specifically trained a prize crew to board and capture a U-boat in just such circumstances. The Americans managed to enter our boat just before she sank and replace the sea strainer cover. The cover had lost its gasket and was therefore still leaking a little, but not dangerously. A little later, they used a sailor’s tee shirt to seal the gap completely. Over the course of the next couple of days, they took U-505 in tow, recharged her batteries, and blew her ballast tanks to equalize her surface trim. In doing so, our boat became the first enemy vessel seized on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812.

  Climbing down through that hatch into the dark conning tower of a sinking enemy submarine is the most heroic act I’ve ever heard of. The courageous American sailor who found his way into the control room and replaced the sea strainer cover was Zenon “Luke” Lukosius. Luke and I became good friends during U-505 reunions I later organized in Chicago, and we even appeared together in a television special about the capture.

  Under American control, two salvage parties work on the afternoon of June 4, 1944, to keep captured U-505 afloat. Gasoline bilge pumps were put into operation inside the boat. The stern was completely submerged, and only some of the bow and the top of the conning tower was dry. As a result, equipment was brought aboard there and transferred by pulley up the antenna cable to the tower. Author’s Collection

  What he and those other American sailors did to salvage U-505 is the very definition of bravery. Once the shock and shame of having our sub captured wore off, we were compelled to congratulate Gallery and his gallant men on their audacity and courage. Some of this, of course, we did not know until much later.

  At any rate, after an hour or so of anxious waiting, we finally got fished out of the drink by one of the enemy ships, the destroyer escort Chatelain. U.S. Navy photographers with motion picture cameras recorded much of our rescue. Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry’s film on the capture of U-505 shows several crewmen, including me, being herded onto the deck of the destroyer. All of us are wearing the same wide grins. We were happy-happy-happy to be alive!

  Salvage and boarding crews set up gasoline-powered pumps to remove water from U-505. The first tow line broke that night and left U-505 on its own until a stronger tow line was hooked up. Author’s Collection

  We believed we had done our duty and put down our share of enemy shipping, and now were one of the few U-boat crews to survive the sinking of their own boat. Besides, even then in the summer of 1944, we still had confidence Germany would eventually win the war. We knew about the fabulous new U-boats being built and were confident that the smug grins worn by our American guards would someday be on our faces.

  Our treatment at the hands of the Americans was fairly good. Several of our crew had been wounded during our evacuation of the boat, and they were given immediate medical treatment. The more seriously wounded were taken to the sickbay, including our skipper Harald Lange who had to have his leg amputated. (NOTE: To this day, I can’t believe poor Fischer was the only fatality on either side during the engagement. Our low casualties were all the more remarkable when one considers the weight of firepower thrown against us. For instance, according to U.S. Navy records, the Chatelain alone fired one torpedo, 14 depth charges, 24 Hedgehogs, 48 rounds of 3-inch cannon, 328 rounds of 40mm cannon, and 955 rounds of 20mm heavy machine gun ammo at us. There were too many rounds fired by .50 caliber machine guns to count. And that barrage was just from one ship!)

  Once the wounded were attended to, the rest of us were searched, stripped, and herded together under close guard by sailors armed with enormous looking Thompson sub-machine guns.

  Every once in a while, we got a glimpse of U-505. There were still several whaleboats moored to her, and American sailors were crawling all over her decks. At one point, the destroyer Pillsbury pulled right along side her. To our immense satisfaction, we learned that our boat’s bow diving plane cut a long slash into the hull of the American ship, almost sinking her. That gave us something to cheer about, at least momentarily. I felt especially jolly about the incident, because the control shaft to that diving fin was the one I had picked up in Bordeaux.

  At the time, however, a sick feeling was growing deep in our stomachs because of the failure of our boat to sink. The presence of several highly classified documents left aboard was a particular concern. I was obsessed with trying to remember whether the sea strainer cover I removed had fallen into the bilge where it couldn’t be recovered. Of course, the Americans really didn’t need the cover, because all it took was a wrench to shut off the valve and stop the inflow of water. Nevertheless, my spirit sank into a private kind of hell as I mentally relived my last moments aboard our boat, over and over again.

  We were eventually moved to the aircraft carrier Guadalcanal for detention. Once there, we were showered with seawater to wash off the diesel oil that had leaked from our boat’s ruptured fuel lockers. Our crew was then split into two halves. My group was thrown into a big cage-like compartment located right below the flight deck. The compartment was adjacent to the carrier’s engine exhausts and the heat radiating on us was truly frightful. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we each lost 20 or 30 pounds from sweating. One American sailor eventually took pity on us and moved a fan so that it blew cool air toward us. An officer came by and angrily ordered it to be pointed away from us. Once the officer left, though, that good seaman turned the fan back toward us. It just goes to show that there are always some people who remembered that one’s enemy is still a human being.

  Grinning, gum-chewing American sailors kept tel
ling us that they had captured our boat with all of our secrets intact. We did not want to believe them, and suspected the story was just a ruse to elicit information from us. But every time we glimpsed U-505 with a big American flag flying from her bridge, we knew our brave old boat had indeed been captured intact—including our code books. As if that wasn’t enough, a little while later, our captors told us the Allies had landed in France and that the long-awaited invasion of Europe had begun.

  The story about the invasion didn’t worry me much. Even if true, I was confident our comrades in the Wehrmacht could handle any invasion, just as they had at Dieppe. But the idea that we had allowed our boat to be captured was a devastating blow. My role in the attempted scuttling of the boat made me feel particularly bad, especially when I learned they had indeed replaced the sea strainer cover that I had removed. It’s not an exaggeration to say these were the worst few days in my life. Our depression over U-505’s capture was probably what gave the American commander, Captain Dan Gallery, the mistaken impression that our morale had been broken by our experiences under Zschech.

  Over the next few days, we found several Morse Code messages scratched into the metal bars of our prison cage. The messages had been left by crewmen from our sister boat U-515. They said their boat had been forced to the surface by depth charges, then sunk by gunfire. Forty-five men had survived, including their skipper Kapitänleutnant Werner Henke. The messages also said Henke was being held separate from them, and that they suspected he was being tortured for secrets.

  As it turned out, Henke was not physically tortured, though Captain Gallery did employ every manner of psychological pressure and trick in order to extract information from his prisoners. For Henke, this took the form of a false accusation of war crimes. Using forged documents, Gallery convinced U-515’s skipper the British had accused him of ordering the machine-gunning of helpless survivors from the passenger liner Ceramic.