Black May

by Michael Gannon

  ROSENKRANZ: I don’t know how many the Tenth had, about sixty, I think.

  GRATZ: Now?

  ROSENKRANZ: I believe so. Wait a moment—a fellow who did the officers’ pay had sixty-two boats [on his roll].

  GRÄTZ: Perhaps he had another flotilla as well.

  ROSENKRANZ: No, only the Tenth. The Second Flotilla had its own administration as well. The name of the Commander is supposed to be a secret, but they [Interrogation Officers] know it as well as we do. They are better informed about it all than many U-boat men.…

  Recorded 9 May 1943 54

  W. RAHN: The Commander hit the First Officer of the Watch over the head with a bottle. They were very drunk, and the First Officer of the Watch retaliated by taking a broom and beating up the Commander.

  Radioman from the GERMANIA: How are things with the Italians?

  W. RAHN: They hate us like poison. When seamen get drunk they open the portholes and throw bottles at the Italians walking by on the street.

  Recorded 3 May 194355

  GRÄTZ: I believe that all the old Commanders will sail again if the present rate of [Allied ship] sinkings decreases again.

  ELEBE: Yes, but the trouble is this: the majority of them haven’t been to sea for two years, so that they don’t know anything about the very latest methods of defense, and they aren’t in a position to voice an opinion.

  Recorded 1 June 194356

  OPOLKA: We simply must win the war. If things go wrong, presumably the Russians will overrun our country; and even if the Russians don’t come right in but confine themselves within certain limits, for the simple reason that they, too, have lost a lot, then all these head-hunters will come in, the Poles and the Czechs. I come from the frontier district, from that actual part; I hate the Poles, they’re a vile race. I’m anxious about my parents. Recorded 10 June 194357

  The Admiralty’s Naval Intelligence Division issued a report on 2 April in which it evaluated morale among U-boat POWs as of mid-March. It had an “on the one hand … yet on the other” quality. It reported “no marked deterioration in fighting spirit” among those POWs recently captured. Given the leadership of confident, able, and imaginative Commanders, “even young and raw recruits are resolute in face of the enemy.” In captivity, however, the crews recently captured, including officers, had shown a previously unseen tendency to divulge information that they must have known was contrary to their country’s interests. The Intelligence people theorized that that talkativeness resulted mainly from Germany’s recent reverses on the Eastern Front—the German Sixth Army had fallen at Stalingrad on 2 February—and from the Afrika-Korps’ impending collapse in Tunisia, which would occur on 7 May. Other reasons advanced were distaste of Roman Catholic POWs for Nazi treatment of their church, general war weariness, and a mounting feeling that Germany would lose the war. Withal, Intelligence noted, recent POWs continued to believe that they were loyal Germans, and it cautioned that nothing heard from the POWs suggested a decline in the fighting efficiency of U-boat crews still at sea, or that their combative ability would fall “in the near future.”58

  Given the 2 April assessment of talkativeness, it is striking that the secretly recorded POW conversations after March and throughout May and June reveal a studied intention on the part of many recently captured men to stonewall or mislead their Interrogation Officers. Furthermore, among the mass of recorded conversations during that same period, there are relatively few expressions of despondency or of what the British obsessed on, “collapse of morale.” There were, of course, a few such fears of inevitable defeat, strongly put, as seen in the epigraphs heading this chapter (which are repeated below together with their serial numbers). As indicated earlier in this narrative, there is little ground for assuming that the U-boat crews ever lost their fighting spirit up to and including the last months of the war. One may argue that morale is a different attribute from courage, and that it, at least, diminishes in the face of inevitable defeat. Perhaps. If ever a distinction could be drawn between morale and courage, perhaps this was the moment. But the morale collapse so long and devoutly sought by the British, and cited so frequently in their documents as a goal, if it ever was achieved in fact, seems not to have had any appreciable effect on the resolute willingness of the German crewman to come back swinging, like one man fighting three. One thinks of Napoleon’s army on its way to Waterloo, of whom it was said, they marched without fear and without hope.

  MARCH: I don’t want to sail in any more U-boats, I’ve had enough of them.

  Radioman from the SLLVAPLANA: I can well believe that! march: The anti-U-boat devices are getting too good. They had instruments with which they DFed us exactly. Three destroyers came along, and got us right in the middle. We should never have gotten away again however deep we’d gone. It was hopeless. I believe they sank three U-boats that day. radioman: Three U-boats in one day—that’s the limit! Recorded 25 April 194359

  OPOLKA: I was with the BdU a whole year at Lorient as Adjutant to the Commander in Chief. [Pause] … My father is a Kapitänleutnant on a Sperrbrecher [auxiliary minesweeper]. But he’d rather sell vacuum cleaners. My brother is a soldier, my brother-in-law is a soldier.… I didn’t want the war. I’m not a pacifist and I was sorry that I had to remain on the Staff for so long. I kept applying for a transfer. But to say that I enjoy the war—the decisive factor for me is that my parents have to go through the whole damn business a second time. They lost everything and with great labor have struggled to their feet again.

  Recorded 9 June 1943 60

  OPOLKA: So you are convinced that we shall win the war?

  SCHAUFFEL: Yes, we’ve both said: “We shall not lose.”

  OPOLKA: I’ll tell you something, no one wins in war.

  SCHAUFFEL: When I’m on board, I’m the type of person who likes to start an argument, because the others always said: “We shall win the war.” It’s nonsense; one must allow logic to play a part. My one fear is that my father’s vessel [Pott] will go down under him.

  Recorded 9 June 1943 61

  LINK: Don’t you believe that we will use gas if worst comes to worst?

  MARCH: I don’t think so. But I think we shall lose the war. Time is no longer our ally. These attacks on Germany now—our losses in the field!

  LINK: Two million were killed in the last war; only two hundred thousand have been killed so far in this war!

  MARCH: But the English and Americans will hold out longer, and the use of gas would only hasten our downfall.

  Recorded 23 May 1943 62

  KOHLER: I have the impression that the English will also keep us on as prisoners, even more than we have the French. If Germany loses the war they will treat us as slaves; if it suits them they will send us to the colonies as slave labor. As outcasts! Who is to stop them? They have certainly no conscience. If there is any justice in the world, we ought to win, especially against England. I hate the English. One is easily inclined here to allow oneself to be influenced by their propaganda. Superficially, the Englishman appears sporting and kind, but really he is as hard as stone; he has no feelings. If a German gives anything, he gives it from his heart. [Pause] … Are you also Catholic, or religious [gottgläubig]?

  GRÄTZ: [I believe] there must be something.

  KOHLER: There must be something. If my mother knew! In that second I even confessed. I have never told anyone this, but I believe in God and in the resurrection of the soul. The Church has had a good influence on me. Without the Church I should have become a bad man. I told my wife I would try and remain in the Catholic Church. I said my prayers till I was seventeen years old, and even later, and during this last patrol I prayed three times, in the evening. I prayed that my wife and child should live and that I should come through this patrol. I prayed when I was rescued too. I believe in life after death.

  Recorded 29 April 1943 63

  KLOTZSCH: It’s a tragedy. The whole business of U-boat sailing has simply become a job for convicts.

  ARENDT: Well, that�
��s just about how you’re treated; if you do anything at all, you’re locked up.

  Recorded 13 May 1943 64

  ARENDT: I don’t want to go to sea anymore. I’m fed up with it. I had intended to get married now.

  Recorded 14 May 1943 65

  KLOTZSCH: Well, I’m not sorry that the damn business is finished.

  Recorded 13 May 1943 66

  KLOTZSCH: It gets worse and worse, all the U-boat men are grousing.

  MARCH: Now it practically amounts to this: as soon as one boat is put into commission, another one is lost at the same moment.

  Recorded 26 May 1943 67

  KLOTZSCH: Things look very bad for us. The boats are being sunk one after the other.

  Recorded 13 May 1943 68

  RAHN: To tell you the truth, I haven’t much hope. They’ll crush us in time.

  Recorded3 May 1943 69

  10

  IN PERIL ON THE SEA

  Tenebrae

  The ships destroy us above

  And ensnare us beneath.

  We arise, we lie down, and we move

  In the belly of Death.

  RUDYARD KIPLING

  Whoever is of the opinion that offensive action against convoys is no longer possible is a weakling and not a true U-boat commander. The battle in the Atlantic is becoming harder, but it is the decisive factor in this war. Be conscious of your great responsibility and be quite certain that you will have to answer for your deeds. KARL DONITZ 21 MAY

  There can be no talk of a let-up in the U-boat war. The Atlantic is my first line of defense in the West. And even if I have to fight a defensive battle there, that is preferable to waiting to defend myself on the coast of Europe. The enemy forces tied down by our U-boats are tremendous, even though the losses inflicted by us are no longer great. I cannot afford to release these forces by discontinuing the U-boat war.

  ADOLF HITLER 31 MAY

  FOLLOWING THE EPIC BATTLE for ONS.5, nearly 600> Allied merchant ships in fourteen convoys crossed the Atlantic during the remaining three weeks of May. Of that number only six ships were sunk by U-boats. Where the U-Bootwaffe crews were concerned, the startlingly low number did not result from their lack of trying; at Dönitz’s urging, they fought desperately to get back into the game. But it was too late. Both the initiative and the numbers had passed to the Allies. There were now too many experienced close escort and Support Group vessels in the convoy lanes. And overhead there were too many shore-based bombers, not to mention at this date carrier-borne British Fairey Swordfish bombers and Martlet (Grumman F4F4 Wildcat) fighters and American Grumman TBF—1 Avenger bombers: it was during these weeks that such aircraft from American-built escort carriers achieved the first singlehanded destruction of a U-boat. These weeks also saw the first successful employments of the American airborne homing torpedo code-named Mark XXIV Mine and of the British “R.P.” solid-head rocket projectile. It was all too much for the U-boats, once the aggressors, now left panting heavily in the wake of events. And many went down to sodden deaths. In this chapter our narrative will examine briefly those particular convoys that defined transatlantic traffic during the last three weeks of May, the major aircraft actions outside the Bay of Biscay, and, finally, U-boat losses elsewhere in the Atlantic and Outer Seas.

  The surviving U-boats that had operated against ONS.5 moved off to the east and south. Approximately fifteen boats were still capable of operations; ten would shortly be operational after reprovisioning from two milch cows; and nine were on their way back to base. Western Approaches had no information about these movements, since decryptions of German radio traffic were still trying to catch up to events following the cryptographic intelligence blackout from 26 April to the afternoon of 5 May. Suspecting, however, that packs were still operating in the general area of the ONS.5 battle, the next westbound convoy in the eight-day cycle, ONS.6, departing 30 April, was routed to the west of those possible concentrations. Surface protection was provided the convoy by Escort Group B6, consisting of one destroyer, H.M.S. Viscount (S.O.), five corvettes, and two trawlers; and air cover flew out of Iceland beginning on 3 May. Despite its evasive route, the convoy did not escape enemy detection. Two U-boats, U—418 and U—952, from a new Gruppe Isar [after the river] forming between Greenland and Iceland, sighted the convoy on the morning of 6 May, when the convoy was at 60°15‘N, 24°20‘W. Their reporting signals to Berlin were DFed by Viscount and shore stations, leading CinCWA to increase the air cover by noon. By 2100,1 aircraft had made ten U-boat sightings, two 55 and 73 nautical miles ahead of the convoy columns, seven between 18 and 32 miles abaft the starboard beam, and one 58 miles astern. Several attacks resulted.

  Meanwhile, on the surface, one of the corvettes had made a visual sighting on the starboard quarter at 1946. The abundance of air threat, excellent intercommunication between surface and air units, and an evasive alteration of course at 2300 had the desired effect of shaking off the shadowing boats. A second alteration at noon on the 7th avoided boats known to be to the north. The 8th was quiet until dusk, when HF/DF intercepts suggested that the U-boats were closing the convoy again, and Viscount sighted a conning tower breaking the surface at a range of 7,000 yards. She pursued, the U-boat dived, and she dropped a ten-charge pattern over the swirl without result. The U-boats backed off, apparently made wary, if not unnerved, by the forces arrayed against them, and the night that followed was uneventful.

  At 0700 on the 9th, the convoy’s protective screen was enlarged by the arrival of the “cavalry,” a Support Group (Fourth Escort Group) made up of destroyer H.M.S. Faulknor (SO), two other destroyers, and one of Britain’s new escort carriers, H.M.S. Archer. But by that time the danger was past and, after 48 hours, the Support Group disengaged to join Convoy ON.182. The ships of ONS'.6 then proceeded to their destinations without further incident. The convoy’s safe passage through the now-closing Air Gap where Gruppe Fink had gathered its predecessor convoy in a deadly embrace was a clear signal of the new dispensation that prevailed.1

  In Berlin, BdU was aware from sailing cycles that a pair of east-bound convoys were due to depart on or about the same date in early May, one a slow-moving SC convoy from Halifax, the other a faster HX convoy from New York. In anticipation of their crossing longitude 42°W at some time on 8 May, Dönitz/Godt formed two patrol lines stretching 550 miles across their probable courses: Group Rhein [the river], formerly Amsel III and IV, consisting of ten boats spaced at twenty-mile intervals from 47°33'N, 40°55'W to 43°57'N, 4o°o5'W; and Group Elbe [after the river], consisting of seventeen boats, mostly ex-ONS.5 operation, stationed at the same spacing from 52°45'N, 43°55'W to 47°51'N, 41°05'W.2 Early in the game, the German B-Dienst radio monitoring and cryptanalysis service that so troubled Francis Harry Hinsley in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park learned from decryptions of Allied Naval Cipher No. 3 that on 3 May, eastbound convoy HX.237 was positioned at about 40°50'N, 67° (31–49'?) W, steaming on a course of 056°, speed 9.5 knots; and that on 5 May, eastbound convoy SC.129 was at position 44°50’N, 47°01‘W, course and speed unknown.3 It was likely that the faster convoy HX.237, even if its departure was the later of the two, would be the first to cross the line that Dönitz/Godt had drawn in the sea.

  In the evening of 6 May, B-Dienst informed BdU that as of 2130, HX.237 was in BC 7684 (43°56'N, 48°27'W). That information was quickly relayed to the Rhein and Elbe patrol lines.4 Further data learned by B-Dienst on the 7th revealed that HX.237 had turned toward the south on a course of 128°, and that SC.129 was on a base course toward the east.5 This intelligence that the two convoys were taking a more southerly route than expected, which would cause HX.237 to elude the patrol lines altogether and SC.129 merely to brush the southern tip of Rhein, had three immediate effects: (1) BdU ordered the Rhein boats to move at best speed on a course of 120° so as to position that group’s southernmost boat at 39°45'N, 35°02'W; and at the same time, the Elbe boats were directed to take the same course of 120° at ten knots in order to intercept SC.129; though BdU
conceded that, “No clue to the [present] position of this convoy is in hand.”6 (2) The six boats of Group Drossel (Thrush), which had been operating on the coastwise West Africa-Gibraltar-U.K. lanes, were ordered west to reinforce Rhein and Elbe. And (3) Donitz/Godt demanded to know “how the enemy was able to intercept our patrol strip” and to divert the two convoys around it.

  BdU considered every possible explanation, from detection of the patrol lines by aircraft, to DFing of U-boat radio traffic during the Battle for ONS.5, to the possibility “considered unlikely, that the enemy has cracked our ciphers”—still, BdU ordered an immediate change in Enigma settings. Whatever the reason, BdU stated, “this almost circular detour remains critical.”7 It is ironic that this is one of the few occasions in 1943 when, in fact, decryption of Enigma played no role in the diversion of convoys around wolfpacks. It appears that prior to the movements of the two convoys on the 6th and 7th the Allies had no knowledge of the formation or positions of Rhein and Elbe. The first British decrypt of German traffic pertaining to the formation of Rhein in the existing records is a message intercepted at 1015 on the 7th but not decrypted until 1304 on the 9th; and the first mention of Elbe was intercepted at 1320 on the 12th and not decrypted until 1016 on the 14th.8 Very probably, the two convoys were given southerly routes to evade U-boat concentrations thought to be east of Newfoundland and building up between Greenland and Iceland as well as to provide better flying weather for the aircraft aboard escort carrier H.M.S. Biter, which, in the course of events, would offer cover to both HX.237 and SC.129.

  Two ocean escort groups were assigned to HX.237: C2, consisting of the destroyer H.M.S. Broadway (Lt.-Cmdr. E. H. Chavasse, R.N., SO), a frigate, four corvettes (three of them Canadian), a trawler, and a tug; and Escort Group 5, acting as a Support Group, consisting of Biter (Capt. E. M. C. Abel-Smith, R.N., SO) and three destroyers. Owing to heavy fog, C.2 relieved the local escort a day later than planned, at 1400 on 7 May. Biter and her escorts were even further delayed, not joining until the 9th, in thick weather unsuitable for flying, but on the 7th and 8th, in better weather, her aircraft had flown out to the convoy to make close patrols ahead and astern and thus “hearten the Masters and their crews.” The merchant argosy itself was made up of thirty-eight ships in company and nine stragglers. Two stragglers put back to St. John’s, four rejoined the convoy, and three, Fort Concord, Brand, and Sandanger, continued independently; these three would be sunk on the 12th, the only casualties among the vessels actually or nominally part of HX.237: once again it was proved how vital it was for merchant vessels to keep their stations in a convoy.