by Clay Blair
The Admiralty passed along Winn’s estimate to Freetown, Cape Town, and to other Allied bases on the west and east coasts of Africa, along with his “hunch” that a group of U-boats might attack shipping in Cape Town and the heavily traveled six-hundred-mile-wide Mozambique Channel, separating the island of Madagascar from the African mainland. Freetown and Cape Town increased ASW air patrols, but owing to the requirements for Torch, they were short of surface ships of all categories. In fact, there were scarcely enough warships to provide an adequate escort for Sierra Leone 125, the last convoy to sail north to the British Isles until French Northwest Africa was in Allied hands.
The senior escort for Sierra Leone 125 was to be the hard-working corvette Petunia, commanded by J. M. Rayner. On the night of October 5, when Petunia was inbound to Freetown to assume this responsibility, the Italian submarine Bar-barigo, commanded by Enzo Grossi, who had claimed sinking an American battleship off Brazil the previous May, spotted the corvette. Wittingly or unwittingly identifying Petunia as another American “battleship,” Grossi fired at least five torpedoes at her. Steaming along with both her Type 271 centimetric-wavelength radar and her sonar temporarily out of commission, Petunia was oblivious to the danger until the bridge watch saw the torpedo wakes. Petunia turned to parallel the torpedoes, avoiding a hit, and threw over a depth charge to discourage another attack. Hearing that explosion, Grossi claimed sinking his second American battleship. Rome happily accepted this claim and announced that Grossi had been awarded a German Ritterkreuz as well as appropriate Italian honors.*
That same night, October 5, another corvette based in Freetown was ordered out to help sink or drive away “probably seven” U-boats believed to be patrolling off the coast. She was the British Crocus, commanded by a former New Zealand merchant-marine officer, J. F. Holm. Early on the following morning, Crocus got a weak contact on her Type 271 centimetric-wavelength radar at 2,800 yards. Believing it to be a U-boat, without hesitation Holm rang up full speed and turned to ram.
The U-boat was U-333, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Peter Cremer, who had come in close to Freetown to reconnoiter the harbor. Cremer’s unalert bridge watch saw Crocus too late to dive. The only chance of escape was to outmaneuver or outrun the corvette in darkness, or shoot it out on the surface. Guns blazing, Crocus closed at maximum speed, while Cremer attempted to turn inside, close aboard. The gunfire, Cremer wrote, killed, wounded, or incapacitated every man on U-333’s bridge. The Crocus smashed into U-333 abaft the conning tower, wrecking the superstructure. The U-boat hung up on the bow momentarily, then broke loose and banged and scraped down the port side of Crocus, ripping a large hole in her at the waterline.
The nearly continuous gunfire from Crocus riddled U-333’s conning tower. It killed the first watch officer and two seamen, knocked a bosun’s mate overboard, and badly wounded Cremer. Bleeding and in pain, Cremer remained on the bridge alone, twisting and turning the boat at maximum speed to avoid the gunfire and a second ramming. He failed. Crocus again smashed into U-333 at maximum speed. This time the U-boat banged and scraped down the starboard side. When she broke loose, Holm let fly depth charges.
Barely in possession of his senses, Cremer elected to dive. Smashed and riddled and leaking fore and aft, the boat hit bottom at sixty-six feet. Thereupon Holm unleashed a heavy barrage of depth charges. Many fell close, savaging the boat so badly that Cremer ordered the crew to prepare to abandon ship. He surfaced U-333 to scuttle, but Crocus lost him momentarily and Cremer limped off into the darkness and got away.
Bruised and battered, Cremer had incurred eight shell-splinter wounds. The worst and most painful was a fingerlong splinter in his chest, which impaired his breathing. The splinter had to come out. After Cremer anesthetized himself with two cups of rum, his chief engineer removed the splinter with “a great pair of pincers from a tool box.”
The nearest German doctor was on board the tanker U-459, which was about nine hundred miles south providing support for the Cape Town foray. After confining Cremer to his bunk, the senior surviving line officer, the second watch officer, Wilhelm Pohl, who had been shot in the throat, took command of U-333 and ran at high speed to U-459. En route, Pohl buried the first watch officer and two seamen. When Cremer reached U-459, the doctor found that his blood pressure was dangerously low, that his pulse was irregular and barely perceptible, and that he had lost much blood. However, he was able to save Cremer’s life and that of the wounded second watch officer, Pohl, as well.
The commander of U-459, Georg von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, gave U-333 one of his officers, a qualified U-boat skipper, Lorenz Kasch, age twenty-eight, who assumed command of U-333 and immediately headed for France. One day out, in the Bay of Biscay, on October 21, a British submarine fired four torpedoes at U-333, but the watch was able to evade and avoided a disaster. Long after the war, Cremer ascertained (at least to his satisfaction) that the British submarine that shot at him was the captured U-570, renamed HMS Graph, commanded by Peter B. Marriot, on her first combat patrol for the Royal Navy.
Upon arrival in France, Cremer and Pohl were hospitalized, Cremer for many weeks. After two months of repairs, the U-333 sailed under a new skipper. Upon his discharge from the hospital, Cremer was assigned as second staff officer to Dönitz. Kasch returned to Germany to take command of a new Type IX.
The other boats patrolling off Freetown in October found the hunting poor. In the month of October, they sank only five ships, all sailing alone between Freetown and/or Cape Town and Trinidad. Harald Gelhaus in U-107 got the impressive 15,000-ton British freighter Andalucia Star Guido Saccardo in Archimede got the 20,000-ton British liner/troopship Oronsay, homebound from Suez. Fortunately for the Allies, the loss of life was small. Ulrich Folkers in U-125 sank the 4,400-ton British freighter Glendene. Her crew was rescued by the 7,400-ton British freighter Agapenor, which Joachim Berger in U-87 sank the next day. The busy corvette Petunia rescued the combined crews and took them into Freetown. Bruno Mahn in the ex-Dutch torpedo-supply boat U-D5, which Mahn pronounced unfit for combat operations, got the 7,600-ton British freighter Primrose Hill on the way home. Heinrich Müller-Edzards in the U-590 sank no ships. These boats returned to, France in November.
Unobserved by the numerous U-boats in the area, convoy Sierra Leone 125 sailed from Freetown. It was composed of forty-two ships, many of them transporting military personnel home to the British Isles. Its escort was scandalously inadequate: one sloop, four corvettes, and one ASW trawler. En route, the sloop and trawler peeled off for other assignments, leaving only the four corvettes, commanded by Rayner in the doughty Petunia.
B-dienst intercepted and decoded valuable tactical information on Sierra Leone 125. In response, on October 23 Dönitz deployed a new group, Streitaxt (Battle Axe), composed of ten boats (three IXs, seven VIIs) newly sailed from France, to the west of the Canary Islands to intercept the convoy.
Four of the seven Type VIIs were veterans. One, the U-203, was newly commanded by her onetime first watch officer, Hermann Kottmann, age twenty-six, who had returned to Germany to commission and command a new boat, but who was called back to U-203 upon the accidental death of her skipper, Rolf Mützel-burg. The son of a Wehrmacht officer, Kottmann was serving on the Admiral Graf Spee in 1940 when she was scuttled in Uruguay, but escaped internment and returned to Germany via Vladivostok and the trans-Siberian railway. Another Type VII, U-572, was commanded by Heinz Hirsacker, one of the most experienced skippers in the U-boat force. However, having sunk only three ships for 14,800 tons in a full year of combat, Hirsacker was in the Dönitz doghouse.
Kottmann was first to find Sierra Leone 125. After reporting its location on October 25, he attacked a tanker, but two of the four corvettes drove him off. Their depth-charge attack damaged U-203’s diesel engines, forcing Kottmann to haul away for repairs. Acting on a report from another of the veteran skippers, Rudolf Schendel in U-134, Werner Witte, age twenty-seven, new skipper of the Type IXC U-509, attacked and damaged the 7,700-ton Brit
ish tanker Anglo Maersk. Hans Stock in the Type VII U-659 attempted to attack the convoy, but two corvettes drove him off and depth-charged him.
By the evening of October 27, nine of the ten boats had converged on Sierra Leone 125, but none had yet sunk a ship. That night in bright moonlight, however, the battle shifted in favor of the U-boats. Horst Höltring in the Type VII U-604 sank the damaged tanker Anglo Maersk and Witte sank two big British freighters, the 8,000-ton Pacific Star and the 6,100-ton Stentor. The corvette Woodruff rescued 202 of Stentor’s 246 crew and passengers, while Petunia and the other two corvettes, using to advantage the moonlight, the Type 271 centimetric-wavelength radar, and Huff Duff, prevented any more sinkings.
§ Includes four experienced attack boats commanded by new skippers.
# Not including provisional U-tanker U-116.
Several boats attempted daylight submerged attacks on October 28, but none succeeded. After dark, Kottmann and Witte got by the corvettes and attacked again. Witte claimed sinking four more ships (in all, six for 42,500 tons), but the records confirm only one sinking in this attack, the 5,300-ton British freighter Nagpore, and probable damage to the 5,200-ton British freighter Hopecastle. Kottmann reported sinking Nagpore, but it is more likely that he hit and sank the damaged Hopecastle.
Foul weather crimped operations on the night of October 29-30, but four U-boats overwhelmed the four corvettes and mounted attacks. Witte claimed he sank two more ships for 18,000 tons (bringing his claims in this convoy to eight for 60,500 tons), but the records confirm only one sinking that night, the 4,800-ton British freighter Brittany, plus damage to the 7,100-ton British freighter Corinaldo. Hans-Ferdinand Massmann in U-409 claimed sinking an 8,000-ton freighter, but his victim was actually the 7,500-ton British tanker Bullmouth, which he only damaged. Hans Stock in U-659 came up and put two finishing shots in Corinaldo and two in Bullmouth, but only the latter sank. Kottmann finally put Corinaldo under with his deck gun.
The weather improved dramatically on October 30, and that night five boats attacked the convoy. Höltring in U-604 claimed three ships sunk for 20,000 tons, but only two could be confirmed, the 11,900-ton President Doumer and the 3,600-ton Baron Vernon. Massmann in U-409 and Karl Neitzel in U-510 both claimed sinking 6,000-ton freighters. Massmann’s claim was confirmed as the 6,400-ton Silver-willow, but Neitzel’s victim, the 5,700-ton Norwegian freighter Alaska, was only damaged and reached port. Stock claimed one ship sunk and one ship damaged, but only damage to the 6,400-ton British freighter Tasmania was confirmed. Gustav-Adolf Janssen in U-103 put Tasmania under and claimed another sinking for 9,000 tons, but the latter could not be confirmed.
RAF Coastal Command saturated the air over Sierra Leone 125 with long-range land-based aircraft on the morning of November 1. Mindful of the heavy damage long-range ASW aircraft had inflicted on the U-boats that attacked Sierra Leone 119 in late August,* Dönitz promptly canceled operations, but not without satisfaction. He calculated that seven of the ten U-boats in group Streitaxt had attacked, sinking eighteen ships for 133,131 tons. No boats had been lost. Only one, Stock’s U-659, had incurred battle damage grave enough to force an abort. The confirmed score was twelve ships sunk for 85,686 tons and one ship of 5,681 tons damaged. British naval historian Stephen Roskill wrote that the loss of life in this convoy was “severe,” but did not amplify.
The long, hard chase had carried group Streitaxt to an area west of Gibraltar. From there, three other Type VIIs (U-203, U-409, U-604) that were low on fuel returned to France along with Stock in the battle-damaged U-659. Hirsacker in U-572 was ordered to patrol off Lisbon, joined by the U-620, which had been damaged in a convoy battle on the North Atlantic run. The U-134 and U-510 were ordered to about-face and patrol to Freetown, refueling from the tanker U-462 on the way. The U-103 and the newly sailed U-440 were to refuel from Werner Witte’s Type IXC U-509, which was homebound and almost out of torpedoes, and then proceed to Freetown.
By November 1, some of the Torch naval task forces and convoys from the British Isles were converging on Gibraltar. German aircraft and U-boats spotted some of these forces but Berlin was slow to grasp their significance. When the Germans belatedly realized what was in the wind, they altered the orders to most of the Streitaxt boats. As a result, only one boat sailing in October, the aforementioned veteran VII U-134, went on to the Freetown area. Commanded by Rudolf Schendel, U-134 joined four other veteran boats (three IXs, one VII) that had sailed to the Freetown area in September for extended patrols.
These boats, soon reinforced by Liebe’s Type VII U-332 coming from the waters near Trinidad, also found poor hunting. Cruising mostly off harbors in the Gulf of Guinea, Achilles in U-161 sank two freighters for 11,300 tons, damaged the 5,500-ton British light cruiser Phoebe, and damaged a 5,500-ton British freighter. In that same area, Ritterkreuz holder Ernst Bauer in U-126 sank three freighters for 14,500 tons. Far to the west of Freetown, Ulrich Heyse in U-128 sank three freighters for 15,600 tons and captured three senior ships’ officers, whom he turned over to U-tankers. Klaus Popp, age twenty-five, who had replaced Erich Topp as commander of U-552, sank the 500-ton British ASW trawler Alouette and a 3,200-ton British freighter. Schendel in U-134 sank one 4,800-ton freighter; Liebe in U-332 sank none. Total: eleven ships for about 50,000 tons, plus damage.*
Liebe and Popp soon left for France. Liebe arrived on December 6, completing a patrol of ninety-three days, a new endurance record for a Type VII, But that record stood only nine days. Popp in the Type VII U-552 arrived on December 15, completing a patrol of ninety-seven days. Liebe went to other duty; Popp remained in command of U-552, but as the inside joke went, “Popp was no Topp.”
In early December, Dönitz logged, B-dienst broke a British code and discovered “new routes” for Allied shipping in the South Atlantic. In preparation for an assault on these routes, Dönitz arranged for all boats in the immediate area to re-supply west of Freetown in the mid-Atlantic from Wolf Stiebler’s tanker, U-461, and from the other ex-Dutch torpedo-supply boat, U-D3, commanded by Hermann Rigele, age fifty-one. Remarkably, on December 9, ten U-boats† met at the designated grid square, ER50. Seven attack boats, including the last four of the “Freetown boats,” proceeded to Brazilian waters to exploit the B-dienst intelligence. Achilles in U-161 sank the 5,000-ton British freighter Ripley, but the other “Freetown boats” had no luck.‡ Upon return to France, Heyse and Achilles were awarded the Ritterkreuz* Heyse left U-128 for duty in Training Command. Bauer in U-126 and Schendel in U-134, who tied Popp’s Type VII endurance record of ninety-seven days, also went on to other duties.
THE ATTACK ON CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
Nine big attack U-boats were en route to or approaching Cape Town, South Africa, by October 1. These were the four IXCs of group Eisbär, which had refueled from the tanker U-459 after the canceled diversion to Laconia, the four very-long-range type IXD2 U-cruisers, and the new, 1,700-ton Italian U-cruiser Ammiraglio Cagni, on her maiden voyage in the Atlantic. One Eisbär boat, Karl-Friedrich Merten’s U-68, had encountered and sunk by torpedo and gun two big freighters for 12,200 tons on the way. All others had full loads of armament, about 225 torpedoes,† plus gun ammo. Discounting 10 percent for torpedo misses and malfunctions, and allowing two torpedoes per victim, it was believed the nine boats had enough torpedoes to sink one hundred Allied ships totaling half a million tons.
South Africa was no more prepared to repel a U-boat attack than the United States had been in early 1942. The British naval authorities at Cape Town controlled four destroyers and several corvettes—some on loan from the British Eastern Fleet based in Mombasa—but these were insufficient to establish convoys between the Cape and Freetown and/or the Cape and Suez, and points in between. Likewise, there were only a few aircraft available for ASW patrols.
Owing to heavy commitments to Torch, the British were hard-pressed to reinforce the South African ASW forces. In due course, London and Washington sent thirty British ASW trawlers, twelve from Western Approaches and the
eighteen still left in American waters. In addition, London directed the Eastern Fleet to send ten warships (six destroyers, four corvettes) and the RAF to send Catalinas of Coastal Command Squadron 209 to Cape Town and Durban. But all these forces were slow to arrive: the eighteen ASW trawlers from the United States did not report for duty until the end of the year.
Rodger Winn in the Admiralty’s Submarine Tracking Room monitored the eight oncoming U-boats—and Cagni—with “prescient accuracy,” as the official British naval historian put it. Reacting to his forecasts, the Admiralty directed that shipping at Cape Town be drastically reduced by making the East African city of Durban—rather than Cape Town—the final port of call for vessels homebound from the Suez Canal, Persian Gulf, and India. During Torch operations, upon leaving Durban, ships were to pass well to the south of Cape Town, cross the Atlantic northwestward to Brazil, thence go to Trinidad and United States waters and from those places, in convoy, to the British Isles.
The final attack plan as drawn by the OKM, Dönitz, and the skippers, was as follows. Commencing on or about October 5, Karl-Friedrich Merten in U-68 and Carl Emmermann in U-172 were to reconnoiter the Cape Town anchorage, Table Bay, mindful of the offensive mines planted earlier in the year by the German raider Doggerbank and defensive minefields planted by the British, known to the Germans through Emmermann’s capture of papers from the freighter Santa Rita on his prior patrol to the Caribbean. At thirty minutes past midnight on October 8—a period of new moon—-they were to enter Table Bay and simultaneously commence attacking what was thought likely to be “fifty ships” anchored in the roadstead. While this surprise attack was in progress, Helmut Witte in U-159, Fritz Poske in U-504, and Ernst Sobe in the U-cruiser U-179, which was well ahead of the other U-cruisers, were to lie outside the harbor and pick off ships fleeing the massacre.
