Black May

by Michael Gannon

  Looks’s observations were in the main correct. The larger two steamers were each hit by two torpedoes. But the stern launch at the “4500-tonner” missed, and since no other ship in the convoy was struck within the previous 19 minutes or during the one hour and 17 minutes that followed, there is no accounting for the third explosive scene described by Looks and reported by him to BdU at 0234. The first vessel hit was West Maximus, a 5,561-GRT American Hog Islander general cargo vessel in ballast, with 745 tons of slag, ship No. 22 in column 2 on the port side of the convoy. Twenty-five seconds later, a British freighter, the 4,586-GRT Harperley, No. 13 on the outside port column I, took the first of two torpedoes that would puncture her hull.

  Neither of the two merchant seamen lookouts on the bridge nor any of the nineteen U.S. Navy gunners at their stations, sighted a wake from the first torpedo absorbed by West Maximus The explosion, which caused the entire ship to shudder, blew open the port side in the after peak tank and took away part of the stern section. The second torpedo, entering No. 3 hold on the port side, demolished No. 3 aft bulkhead, flooded the fire room, showered the vessel with fuel oil, and buckled the deck plates so badly, said the Naval Armed Guard commander, Lieutenant (jg) J. C. Dea, U.S.N.R., that “it was virtually impossible to walk on the deck.” The Master, Captain Earl E. Brooks, immediately ordered Abandon Ship. Of the sixty men on board—thirty-nine merchant crew, nineteen gunners, and two U.S. Army passengers—all but four made it safely down the nets and ladders into four lifeboats, from which, eventually, they were delivered by Northern Spray. The freighter went down by the bow at 0135, taking with her the Confidential Books, which Captain Brooks had, for one reason or another, neglected to deep-six. Neither had he gotten off a W/T distress signal nor fired white rockets—though, in Lt. Dea’s opinion, “torpedoed ships should not throw out white flares, as they illuminate the area and create visible targets.”

  On Harperly, a sister ship to Harbury, the Master, Captain J. E. Turgoose, who was seventeen days into his first command, saw the flashes of the torpedoes that struck West Maximus to starboard and slightly ahead in the adjoining column. Moments later, his own vessel was jarred by two torpedoes that exploded through the half-inch-thick hull almost simultaneously, one entering the vicinity of the engine room, the other in the way of the foremast. Turgoose, who was in the wheelhouse at the time, was surprised that the explosions were muffled—more like dull thuds, he said later—and that there were neither detonation flashes nor columns of water that he could see, though survivors from another ship told him afterwards that they saw the flashes. Equally surprising to Turgoose was the fact that at first there was little visible damage—the windows of the wheelhouse were unshattered, for example—but reports came into him thereafter that Harperly was listing heavily to port, and for that reason she was hiding broad sea-sucking holes in the ship’s side.

  Turgoose had the rockets fired—one failed to function—and had an SSS transmitted. The engine room telegraph was jammed, but the engines had already been stopped by the first torpedo, which also took the lives of the Second, Third, and Fourth Engineers. The Second Engineer, W. J. Gilbert, had only moments before volunteered to give up his off-watch time to help with the engines. With the ship’s list increasing, Turgoose ordered Abandon Ship. One of the port lifeboats had been destroyed, but the crew successfully launched three serviceable boats and made clear of the ship within the space of eight minutes, Turgoose having to jump to join one of the boats. Ten to fifteen minutes later, he watched his ship disappear by the head. Two men were heard “moaning and shouting” in the water, and by hard pulling on the oars, Turgoose’s boat managed to rescue one of them. Two other men clinging to the bottom of a small lifeboat that had capsized went under before they could be reached.

  After three and a half hours Northern Spray answered the emergency W/T and lights. Thirty-eight survivors were lifted on board the trawler to join fifty-one from West Maximus, forty-three from Harbury, and two from North Britain. Lt. Downer wondered where he would put them if he had to pick up any more. Every open space on his small 150-foot vessel, including the mess decks, ward room, and cabins, was jammed with damp bodies, panic bags, and (from West Maximus) American luggage. The trawler’s cook, Herbert Arthur Damsell, contrived somehow to serve up meals for everyone, using, among other provisions, the providently salvaged flour and potatoes from Harbury. Damsell refused the help offered by cooks from the other ships, saying, “I don’t want any strangers in my galley.” Northern Spray was ordered by Sherwood to St. John’s, which was reached without incident at 0750 on the 8th.43 Any further survivors would have to be rescued by B7's warships.

  * All times are expressed in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) unless otherwise noted.

  6

  THE FOG OF WAR

  The Battle for ONS.5

  It was the job of the little ships and lonely aircraft, a hard, long and patient job, dreary and unpublicized, against two cunning enemies—the U-boat and the cruel sea.

  CAPTAIN GILBERT ROBERTS,

  C.B.E., R.N.

  A war of groping and drowning, of ambuscade and stratagem, of Science and Seamanship.

  WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

  BOTH BEFORE AND DURING the two and three-quarter hours when five ships of Convoy ONS.5 went to the seabed, Lt.-Cmdr. Sherwood and his escorts were urgently hunting their German adversaries, in line with a principle contained in the Tactical Policy issued by Admiral Horton on 27 April, viz., that U-boats were most successfully detected and destroyed prior to their attacks. Fittingly, it was Tay that was first to take the fight to Fink. At 2247,3 in her night station on the port quarter, Tay obtained an asdic contact at 400 yards. She promptly attacked with a ten-pattern. There was no visible result, and Sherwood judged that his contact was not a submarine, since there were “many Non-Sub echoes” in the vicinity. The NHB/MOD reassessment, however, concluded that there had been a submarine present, and identified it as U-707 (Gretschel), which was not damaged.1

  Second to make an attack that night was Lt. Raymond Hart in Vidette. The thirty-year-old destroyer captain had joined the Royal Naval Reserve in 1931 after two years with the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, and served six months on the battle cruiser H.M.S. Hood. When his merchant navy junior officer’s position fell victim to Depression-era cutbacks in 1934, he moved to Canada, where he took up lumbering. In 1937 he returned to the sea as a probationary sublieutenant in the RN, and when war broke out he was serving on the destroyer H.M.S. Hasty, on which he later took part in the battles of Calabria and Cape Matapan and won the D.S.C. in an action off Tobruk. During Operation Vigorous to revictual Malta in June 1942, Hasty was damaged by a German torpedo boat (S-boat) and had to be sunk by another destroyer. From June to October of that year Hart commanded a demolition team called the Hornblowers whose job it was to destroy stores and disable the port facilities at Alexandria should that base be threatened by German occupation. In December 1942, he was given his first sea command in the elderly Vidette and assigned to B7. Gifted with intelligence, judgment, and sound seamanship, he has been described as “good-looking” and “dashing.”2

  At 0020 on 5 May, Vidette was stationed in position “D,” 6o° and 5,000 yards on the starboard bow of ONS.5, when her Type 271 radar set picked up a pulse echo bearing 205°, 3,600 yards. Increasing speed to 22 knots, Hart sighted the U-boat five minutes later. At 700 yards the U-boat dived, and at 0030½ Vidette’s D/C team fired and dropped a fourteen-charge pattern at shallow, or ramming, settings over its swirl. The attack damaged the Type IXC U-514, whose Commander, Kptlt. Hans-Jürgen Auffermann, reported to BdU that the charges put his fixed periscope out of order and placed the flange of his starboard stern tube beyond repair; not until the early hours of the 7th, when the battle for ONS.5 was over, would he report that he was capable of further operations.3

  After opening range to 2,000 yards, Hart returned at a new angle to the attack position hoping to get asdic response, but there was none, and he commenced an operation “Ob
servant.” During the second leg of that maneuver, at 0050, another radar contact was acquired bearing 285°, 3,600 yards, and Vidette chased up the new bearing, sighting a U-boat known today to have been U-662 (Kptlt. Heinrich Müller), range 1,000 yards. Electing to attempt an attack before the enemy had a chance to dive, Hart ordered full ahead both engines and Stand By to Ram. The 20mm Oerlikons opened fire, but while their tracers illuminated the U-boat’s conning tower, they also temporarily blinded the destroyer’s bridge personnel. Oddly, the U-boat appeared to be “reluctant to dive"; that may well have been because U-662 at that same time was attempting a stern attack on Vidette. Finally, she did flood tanks and dive. Vidette was able to approach to within 80 yards before the conning tower fully submerged, but not in time to ram. The destroyer proceeded through the swirl and, at 0059½, fired a fourteen-charge pattern in what Hart thought was “an accurate attack.”

  Though it was not, it turned out, as accurate as he thought, it had the serendipitous effect of rattling a nearby boat, U-732 (Oblt.z.S. Klaus-Peter Carlsen), which recorded being depth-charged at the same time. Already nursing earlier injuries, U-732 was forced by the Wabos to move off for Rückmarsch (return voyage) to Brest. Following his procedure in the previous attack, Hart opened the range, this time to 1,700 yards, and returned seeking asdic contact; again there was none, and again he commenced “Observant.” At 0125, however, the asdic recorder traced the presence of a U-boat in almost the same position of the last attack, and at 012½= Hart fired twelve charges (two more intended D/Cs not being set in time). No visible signs of success followed, and at 0150 Sherwood ordered Vidette to resume her station (Offa had been covering).4

  Hart’s aggressive spirit was matched by that of Chesterman on Snowflake. When convoy ships Harbury, West Maximus, and Harperley were torpedoed within nineteen minutes of one another (0046–0105), Sherwood ordered operation “Half-Raspberry.” In a full Raspberry maneuver, all close escorts initiated triangular searches employing starshell illumination rockets. The various triangular patterns to be followed as well as the individual escort sweep speeds and time durations were carefully spelled out in the Atlantic Convoy Instructions.5 In a “Half-Raspberry” the Senior Officer could modify the maneuver, for example by holding some escorts in place. We know from Snowflake’s report that at 0055 she participated in the Half-Raspberry by turning hard-a-starboard to course 335° and proceeding to carry out a 12-knot triangular starshell sweep at the port quarter of the convoy.

  At 0104 she fired starshell illuminating an arc 030° to 150°, and at 0108, following the maneuver diagram, she altered course to 210°. One minute later, she received a radar blip bearing 255°, range 3,000 yards, which she pursued at full speed, soon sighting a U-boat on the surface by light of the starshell. At 0111 the corvette’s hydrophone picked up the sound (compressed air release) of a torpedo being launched at close range. Snowflake continued the chase, but there was little chance of catching up since the Flower’s top speed of 16 knots was below that of the U-boats’ top surface speeds of 17 (Type VIIC) and 181/4 (Types IXB and IXC) knots. Accordingly, when Snowflake picked up an asdic bearing of 170°, range 300 yards, indicating a possible submerged U-boat, Chesterman elected to attack that target instead, firing a ten-charge pattern of light D/Cs set to 50 feet and heavy D/Cs set to 140 feet. Fired by stopwatch at 0116, the attack produced no evidence of a hit (it is now concluded by the NHB/MOD reassessment that no submarine was present), and the blast effect of the charges set shallow had the unfortunate effect of fracturing the leads to Snowflake’s asdic motor alternators and blowing the bridge fuses.

  Instead of returning to the swirl position, Chesterman renewed his pursuit of the surfaced U-boat he had sighted earlier, harrying it with starshell and four-inch gunfire. Finally, he was relieved to see it dive and thus place itself for the time being out of the game. Passing over the swirl at 0127½ Chesterman dropped five light charges set to 100 feet. A minute and a half later, his lookouts sighted a torpedo passing 150 yards ahead from port to starboard. Even though he had forced a dive, Chesterman was not pleased with the surface chase sequence. “Consider I was bluffed by the U-boat into wasting charges,” he entered on his report.6 The boat has been identified by the NHB/MOD reassessment as U—264 (Looks), which was not harmed.

  After having resumed station on the port beam, course 260°, Snowflake received a radar return bearing 175°, 3,400 yards, and so informed Tay at 0322. The corvette pursued the bearing and when range closed to 2,000 yards she gained the hydrophone effect of highspeed diesels. Chesterman needed faster horses. “Chasing U-boat, unable to overtake,” he called to Tay by TBS (Talk Between Ships) radio telephone (R/T) at 0339. Sherwood passed the word to Support Group senior officer McCoy, in Offa, which resulted in the following exchanges:

  OFFA TO ORIBI [0341]: If in vicinity assist Snowflake to chase U-boat.

  SNOWFLAKE TO ORIBI [0345]: My position one-two-zero-Z-Z-nine.

  Are you joining me?

  ORIBI TO SNOWFLAKE [0351]: Am proceeding to help you.

  SNOWFLAKE TO Oribi [0351½J: Course one-seven-zero. U-boat half-a-mile ahead of me.

  At this point Snowflake found that she was gaining on the U-boat, which apparently was not proceeding at highest speed, and at 0358 she opened up with starshell, four-inch projectiles, and Oerlikon fire. Oribi came up from astern, also firing starshell. At 0359 Chesterman called: “U-boat dived, dropping charges.” With “firm contact” by asdic, at 0400 Chesterman fired five light charges set to 100 feet. He maintained asdic contact until 0414, when he dropped four heavy charges set to 225 feet, after which, anxious about running short of D/Cs, he asked Oribi’s captain, Lt.-Cmdr. J. P. A. Ingram, to take over the attack. Oribi, which earlier, at 0247, had dropped two single D/Cs on what turned out to be a false radar contact, attacked the asdic position held by Snowflake with two ten-charge patterns, at 0445 and 0508. The two attacks were handicapped by defective gyro compass repeaters, and at 0417 Oribi had had to ask Snowflake to be the directing ship, passing ranges and bearings, which she did until 0520, when Chesterman laid course to rejoin the convoy. Oribi also abandoned the search at 0554 on orders from Offa, without having seen any evidence that would enable him to know that his first ten-pattern had caused heavy damage to the Type VIIC U-270 (Obit. z.S. Paul Otto).

  In his KTB, Otto described how the first barrage sent his boat plunging toward the bottom with a forward list of 20°: “The depth-pressure gauge is maxed out.” By running the E-motors at full emergency reverse (A.K.-zurück) he managed to slow the descent, and by pumping all available trim water to the stern tanks as well as by sending every crewman climbing into the aft torpedo room he got the boat righted, and was able to begin blowing the ballast tanks to reach a safe depth. As the boat rose, it remained bow-heavy from sea water that was pouring through fractures in the hull forward at a rate of one to two tons per hour. Finally, at 1024 GST, Otto was able to surface. After studying the damage reports, he listed seven categories of Ausfälle (breakdowns) in his KTB. There was no alternative but Rückmarsch.7

  Unfortunately for ONS.5, her few defenders could not keep the entire German host submerged and thus for the most part, neutralized. At 0144, Kptlt. Rolf Manke in U—358 could see several steamers from the bridge of his conning tower. They were on course 200°, passing through the position of a sinking, where, Manke noted, “at least ten lifeboats with lights were floating about.” (West Maximus and Harperley had been torpedoed 42 and 39 minutes before.) “The first of the steamers stopped to take on board the occupants of one of the lifeboats.” Manke chose that one for a fan shot from Tubes II and III. The Pi 2 pistols that would detonate the Torpex warheads of the torpedoes were adjusted to accommodate the high swells, and the torpedoes’ depth mechanisms were set to run at four meters.

  The target ship lay hove-to at a range of 1,500 meters. That number, together with the target’s speed, o knots, and bearing, Red [port] 8o°, was fed into the electromechanical deflection calculator (Vorhaltrechner), and the
trigonometric solution of the aiming triangle (a simple calculation, since the target was stationary) was transmitted by it to the torpedo launch receiver (Torpedoschussempfänger) in the forward torpedo room, which in turn fed the heading into the guidance systems of torpedoes II and III. When the Petty Officer (Bootsmaat) at the torpedo station acknowledged completion of the process by the word Following! (Folgen!), Manke’s first watch officer (I.W.O.) gave the launch order at 0222: “Launch fan shot!” (“Fächer los!”)8

  Manke described the result in his KTB:

  Two explosions were heard in the boat after the 113 seconds run, so perhaps both torpedoes hit. A violent explosion could be seen midships. The steamer broke apart in the middle and sank within one minute. Because of the vessel’s length (150 meters) and its 5½ hatches, I judge the steamer to be 8000 GRT. According to Gröner [merchant ship silhouette identification handbook] she belongs to the Port Hardy class (8700 GRT).