Interviewed in 1997, Gelhaus said that he received a letter from Captain Higgs in 1948, asking how U-107 had been able to hit him since his ship was traveling at high speed and zigzagging. Higgs also wrote that the first coup de grace torpedo had hit on the port side just as a lifeboat on that side holding women and civilians was being lowered. Gelhaus expressed regret at learning that, and explained simply, in his interview for this book, ”Aber da hätte ich nichts dafür gekonnt, denn es war ja dunkel”—“I could not have done anything about it because it was dark.” He said that in 1955, during a business trip to England, he intended to visit Higgs, who had invited him to do so, but found there that he had died, and that his wife had moved to an unknown address.43
On the same 1 May, U-659, commanded by Kptlt. Hans Stock, was patrolling 380 nautical miles west-northwest of Cape Finisterre (“land’s end”), the rocky promontory at the most westerly point of Spain. A Type VIIC, U-659 was one of eleven boats that had been formed by BdU into Gruppe Drossel (Group Thrush).44 Stock’s orders called for him eventually to break through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, but his first duty since the boat slipped her moorings at Brest on Easter Sunday, 25 April, was to form part of the Drossel disposition in a controlled operation against Allied coastwise traffic on the U.K.-Gibraltar-West Africa run. At night on 1/2 May the Drossel boats were advised by BdU that a British cruiser-minelayer, H.M.S. Adventure, was somewhere in their neighborhood. Stock decided against pursuing the faster vessel.
No smoke plumes appeared on the second day, but early on 3 May, following her regular forenoon exercise dive to correct trim, U-659 received an F.T. (Funktelegraphie, wireless message) that a reconnaissance Focke-Wulf 200 Kondor aircraft of Fliegerführer Atlantik based in western France had sighted a southbound convoy of eleven cargo ships and six escorts in position approximately 44°N, 14°W. Stock moved eastward at full (flank) speed (äußerste Kraft) to the attack. About 1400 GST, he learned from BdU of the presence of a second southbound formation, consisting of twenty-seven vessels, in nearly the same position as the first. Stock decided to go after the second set of targets instead. Before midnight, as the sea state was deteriorating, he ordered another dive to adjust trim.45
“Clear the bridge!” The dive order sent the bridge watch scrambling down the conning tower hatch. The Watch Officer, last man through, pulled the hatch closed and wheeled the spindle home in its bed. Meanwhile, in the Zentrale (control room) below, the Chief Engineering Officer (L.I.) had ordered, “Vent main ballast!” and slammed the ball of his hand against the dive bell, which shrilled throughout the boat. At once, two dozen pairs of hands in the control room and aft in the engine and maneuvering rooms whirred among banks of red and black valve wheels, overhead vent levers, and panel switches to open the external ballast tanks to water, cut off the outside air intakes and exhaust valves for the diesel engines, and engage the E-motors for underwater running.
Stock probably instructed the L.I. to level off at periscope depth, while he himself checked a stopwatch against both the column of mercury in the periscope elevation indicator and the needle on the Tiefenmesser, or depth manometer, expecting to see thirteen meters of water put above the hull inside thirty seconds. Facing the hull on the starboard side, two planesmen operated brass buttons, up and down, that controlled protruding bow and stern hydroplanes, which, like an aircraft’s horizontal stabilizers, caused the submerging U-boat to pitch at a certain angle. Soon, with the diesels’ roar and vibrations stilled, only a faint hum heard from the E-motors aft, and every crew member silent at his diving station, the sea closed over U—659.
The senior planesman reported when the mercury column showed 13.5 meters, periscope depth, and the L.I. ordered the planes brought to neutral and jockeyed to maintain as much as possible a constant level attitude while he went about the critical business of adjusting the boat’s weight and tilting movement. This he did by pumping water by the hundreds of kilograms fore or aft between trim tanks at the extreme bow and stern. Maintaining trim was crucial, lest in an emergency dive the boat either plunge to the seabed or broach the surface, bow-or stern-first. Meanwhile, the Helmsman (Rudergänger), stationed on the forward starboard side bulkhead, steered the boat by compass, using brass rudder buttons for “port” and “starboard,” and the Navigator (Obersteuermann) at his high table plotted the boat’s position.
Just forward of the amidships control room, and reached through a watertight circular hatch offset to port, were the Commander’s felt-curtained bunk and desk space on the port side of a narrow fore-and-aft gangway, and, on the starboard side opposite, the wireless (Funkraum) and hydrophone (Horchraum) rooms. Continuing forward, one came upon the bunk-long accommodation of the I.W.O., II.W.O., and L.I. (Offizierraum), where a mess and worktable along the port side enabled this compartment to serve as a wardroom. Beyond, through another hatch, was bunk space for four men of Chief Petty Officer rank (Oberfeldwebel), though U-659 carried only three, and, farther still, past a portside head, one reached the forward torpedo room (Bugtorpedoraum), home not only to the four bow torpedo tubes but also to the majority of the ratings, popularly called “Lords” (Pairs).
Here the hull narrowed markedly, accentuating the cramped interior of the smaller Type VIIC boat, made all the more confined by the conditions attendant to a just-commenced Feindfahrt: two of the room’s spare torpedoes, hung by hoist rings suspended from an I-beam, displaced sleeping bunks; food crates, sacks, and cans occupied every nook and cranny of floor space; while overhead hammocks bulged low with hams, sausages, fruits, and Kommissbrot, the hard navy black bread. The only way to get about was by hands and knees. Every man yearned for early attack successes, so that the two spare “eels” in the bunk areas could be placed inside the white-painted tubes, and the lashed-up bunks, with their blue-and-white-checked gingham sheets and pillowcases, could be brought down for sleeping and sitting.
None of the Lords would be nearly as anxious, however, about getting rid of the brow-bruising fresh food hammocks. They knew that once the perishable fresh food was consumed they would have only tinned food to eat, and that by the time that exchange came to pass, every bucket of food hauled down the passageway from the galley would take on a taste compounded of the boat’s accumulated vapors of stale, humid air, diesel oil, battery gas, bilges, oven fumes, soiled trousers, unbrushed teeth, urine, vomit, semen, smegma, and Colibri cologne. By then, too, the gingham sheets and pillowcases of the “hot bunks”—so-called because they would be constantly occupied day and night by seamen and technicians coming off their various watches— would be making their own gamy contributions to the putrescent atmosphere.
Returning to the control room through the constricted steel cylinder (though not a perfect cylinder for its whole length) that was the VIIC’s pressure hull, one walked over a storage area almost as large as the working and living space above. Beneath the floor plates were lead-acid storage battery arrays whose dead weight counterbalanced the diesel engines and a second battery compartment in the after section of the boat. Here, too, was stored ammunition for the deck and anti-aircraft (flak) guns.
The rolled galvanized sheet steel skin that formed the pressure hull itself thickened as one approached the control room, from 1.6 cm at the bow and stern to 1.85 cm amidships, and to 2.2 cm where the conning tower joined the hull. Passing through the control room, which was 6.2 meters (20⅓ feet) across the beam, one came to a circular hatch that led into the Petty Officers’ accommodation (Unteroffizierraum) and, after that, the galley (Küche) with its little Vosswerke stove, short refrigerator, sink, and pantry that served the single cook (Smutje). From there the boat’s one central, single-level gangway opened to the oily and smelly, but now silent, engine room (Dieselmotorenraum), where twin MAN 6-cylinder, 4-cycle engines of 1,160 horsepower each provided surface propulsion.
The humming dynamotors were in the next compartment aft, the E-Maschinenraum, or maneuvering room. Here, by contrast to the appearance of the engine room, two cle
an E-Motors that sparkled beneath equally gleaming control panels drove the boat’s two propeller drive shafts underwater. There was other equipment in this room as well, including an electricity-driven air compressor on the port side and a Junkers diesel-driven compressor on the opposite side, which were used for filling containers of the compressed air that the control room required for blowing water from the ballast tanks when the boat surfaced and for launching torpedoes. Here, too, was an auxiliary steering wheel for use in moving the double rudders in the event the electrical steering buttons in the control room were disabled. From the maneuvering room it was then just a few steps into the aft torpedo room with its lone white-faced launch tube. Every three days the Eto that occupied that tube, or the one spare stowed beneath the E-motors, would be opened up and inspected by the torpedo mates, called “mixers.” Under wire-shielded lights the mixers would unscrew inspection plates and test the eel’s battery level, electric motor, guidance system, and depth-keeping mechanism.46
The mixers and other crew members who occupied the interior space of U-659 were, like the crewmen of all U-boats, a selective, highly trained group. The four officers were all graduates of the Naval Academy (Marineschule) in Flensburg-Mürwik, a cadet training establishment through which the future officer passed after a year of practical experience that included three months at sea. Following the Academy curriculum, they would have spent eight to twelve weeks at U-boot-Schule in Neustadt in Schleswig-Holstein or Pillau (after 1940). Twenty-seven-year-old Stock, the Commander, had been a member of the 1935 entering class (Crew 35). After receiving his commission and completing several operational training courses, he had served as I.W.O. with Kptlt. Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock on U-96. (It was on the cruise of U-96 in late 1941 to the North Atlantic and Mediterranean that Lothar-Günther Buchheim, a twenty-three-year-old war correspondent who accompanied the crew, based his much later novel [1973] followed by a motion picture, both named Das Boot [“The Boat”].) After Commander’s Course with the 26th Flotilla at Pillau, Stock was given the new boat U-659, which he commissioned on 9 December 1941 and took on four patrols prior to this one.
By 1943, with most of the surface Navy frozen in port, the majority of young officers, such as Stock’s I.W.O., II.W.O., and L.I., were assigned to U-boats. By contrast, most of the boat’s petty officers and lower ratings were volunteers. Twenty to twenty-four years in age, they had entered the Kriegsmarine from hometowns situated largely in northern and central Germany: Hamburg would be an example of the former, the Ruhr and Saxony districts examples of the latter. Their formal schooling prior to trade schools did not exceed the requisite eight primary grades, and their religious affiliations were roughly three-quarters Protestant, one-quarter Roman Catholic. Some crewmen had volunteered directly from civilian life for the U-Bootwaffe; others had served previously on light surface vessels.
Generally speaking, the crewmen fell into two categories: seamen (Seemänner), which included helmsmen, planesmen, lookouts, gunners, the deck force, cook, and stewards; and the engineering/technical personnel (Techniker), who operated the boat’s seagoing and torpedo attack equipment, such as the diesels, E-motors, torpedo mechanisms, radio, hydrophone, and the diving and surfacing systems. The second category had a high representation of nonspecialized entry-level metalworkers from the industrial regions of central Germany—young men who might be expected to feel comfortable in an all-metal environment, who had a common vocational experience to bind them together as comrades, and who possessed the canny skills to contrive emergency repairs when the boat was far from base. All hands would have received three months of basic naval training, followed by three to six months of intensive course work at U-Boat School, either at Neustadt prior to May 1940, or at Pillau from May to November 1940, or at Gdynia after the latter date.47
Whatever their backgrounds, categories, or ratings, the crewmen of U-659, like all U-boat men, shared certain communalities. Everyone ate the same food, used the same head (a second head aft was usually employed as a pantry for canned foods), and breathed the same foul air. Nor was there any dress code to distinguish ranks from ratings, petty officers from mates. Except for the tropical white cover worn on the Commander’s Schirmmütze, or peaked cap (for visual identification at night), every man’s attire had a dull sameness. Most wore standard blue-gray fatigues, perhaps with a Schiffchen, or forage cap, made from blue wool with black lining. In cold weather one saw sweaters knitted by grandmother and other unconventional mufti.
On the bridge in cold weather the watch officer and lookouts wore gray-green leathers, and, in heavy weather, sou’westers. When in warm waters, on the other hand, short pants of varying hues were the dress of the day. In one other particular, too, the crewmen were aware of their societal cohesion: at sea every man depended absolutely on the performance of every other. In no other war machine was the integral participation of every team member so vital. Any one man of them could sink the boat. One hatch uncovered, one valve unturned, one battery array unchecked for gas, one enemy aircraft unspotted, one vessel on collision course unsighted, and the mission, boat, and crew were doomed.
The trim secured, Stock took a careful look around the horizon and sky with the wide-angle sky periscope, whose shaft dominated the forward center space of the control room, and, seeing no enemy ship or aircraft, he ordered: “Surface!” The L.I. accordingly instructed his ballast tank operators, “Blow main ballast!,” listened approvingly as the hissing compressed air expelled water from the ballast tanks (diesel exhaust would finish the task on the surface), and called out the upward cant angles on the fore and aft planes. When the E-motors had driven the boat dynamically forward to the water’s surface and the conning tower bridge hatch had broken clear (”Turmluk ist frei, Boot ist raus!”), the diesels were lit, and Stock pounded up the aluminum ladder that ran up through a hull hatch into the tear-shaped conning tower (Turm) that housed the fixed attack periscope eyepiece, the torpedo deflection calculator, and a compass repeater with rudder buttons.
After opening the upper tower hatch, Stock stepped up onto the dripping open bridge, where he was followed by the I.W.O., commanding the midwatch, a seaman Petty Officer, and two seamen. Since the seas were heavy, with waves breaking against the tower, the boat was now pitching and rolling sharply in the riled-up water, and the men at once attached their safety harnesses to brackets extending out from the bridge’s wood-slatted enclosure. From the bridge, Stock and the lookouts could see, fore and aft, the full length of the boat’s deck casing, 67.1 meters (221⅓ feet), with its hardwood planking, and along the waterline to either side the long, bulging “saddle tanks,” which contained, among their various bunkers, the main fuel oil and ballast tanks. Under diesel propulsion the boat threw up frothy bow and stern wakes, all the more pronounced because of the shuddering dark rollers.
Movement on the bridge was constrained by the periscope shafts, the sky scope forward, the attack scope aft, and the UZO post with its bracket for the surface attack optics set above a ring marked off in compass degrees. Other equipment on the bridge included a gyrocompass, magnetic compass, engine telegraph dial, extendable radio antenna, and voice pipe. The space was enclosed front and two sides by doubleplate steel cladding that rose to a height of 1.5 meters above the bridge deck, as a protection against hard seas and small-to medium-arms fire. Aft of the bridge was a circular, railed-in flak platform for the 20mm anti-aircraft gun—and for cigarettes and pipes in calmer weather, when crewmen thought of it as a Wintergarten.
With the bridge set only seventeen feet above the water, Stock and his lookouts had limited vision of the horizon, acquiring through their 7 x 50s about twelve kilometers range in ideal visibility conditions on a clear day, and much less on a night like this night, when visibility was poor. An additional one or two kilometers might be gained by shinnying up the extended sky periscope standard. As a result of the VIIC’s low silhouette, its visual search rate was never more than 2,350 square nautical miles per day, in good conditions, as comp
ared with the larger and faster U.S. Navy fleet submarine’s 7,000 to 10,000 square nautical miles per day: the U.S. sub had brackets built on the periscope shears (supports) that enabled it to place eyes thirty-five feet above water. But for Stock and the midwatch later this night, 3/4 May, at 0325 GST to be exact, distance vision proved not to be a factor. In the event that now unfolded it would have been better had they all been nearsighted, as—
CRUUUNCH!!
The boat careened hard to port from a ramming amidships on the starboard side. The lookouts were startled by what they now saw: the crushed bows of another U-boat! Below, water and fuel oil poured into the control room and other compartments. The L.I. called up the voice pipe to inform Stock that the inrush was so great it could not be stanched, and the boat could not long be kept afloat. Stock and the I.W.O. went below, where Stock, finding the L.I. up to his chest in oil, ordered the crew to don life jackets and abandon the boat: “Alle Männer aus dem Boot!’
Men scrambled up the tower ladder, then down the tower sides, and mustered on the tossing upper deck—though not all of them, since it appears that some of the engine room personnel and radiomen remained on duty too long to make their escape, and that both Stock and the I.W.O. similarly got trapped below. Among the officers, in fact, only the L.I. made it out. Survivors stated that the radio operators got off a short signal reporting both the boat’s loss by ramming and her position, 43°32'N, 13°3o’W. Five minutes after the collision, a towering wave broke over the mortally wounded frame of U-659. The men on deck went flying into the water, and the boat, heeling over to starboard, sank from view.48
The other boat was U-439, a Type VIIC commanded by Oblt.z.S. Helmut von Tippelskirch (Crew 37). A native of Cuxhaven, the twenty-five-year-old Kommandant had earlier served as I.W.O. on U—160. The U-439, his first command, had departed Brest on 27 April, and on the night of 3/4 May occupied a station adjoining U-639 in the Drossel line, from which she was proceeding this night at the highest speed that the sea state permitted, to intercept the first of the two reported southbound convoys. By 0100 GST she sighted the convoy and by 0325 she was positioned ahead of it, making seven knots. At that instant, survivors from his boat said, Tippelskirch altered course slightly to port and his bows rammed the starboard side of U-639, which no one had seen. Tippelskirch immediately ordered both engines full astern, but the maneuver in rough seas caused the diesel exhausts to drown and the interior of the boat to fill with blue fumes. Because the collision had caused heavy leakage through the two port bow torpedo tubes, the bow compartment had to be closed off.
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