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Grey Wolf, Grey Sea

Page 4

by E. B. Gasaway


  It was the U-124.

  1 I.WO (Erster Wachoffizier): First Watch Officer, executive officer.

  2 Bootsmann: Boatswain, petty officer.

  3 Erich Raeder, commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine.

  4 L.I. (Leitende Ingenieur): Chief engineering officer.

  5 Bootsmannsmaat: boatsman's mate.

  6 Maschinistmaat: Machinist's mate.

  Chapter Three

  Soon after the keel of the U-124 was laid at Deschimag Shipyards in Bremen, the first man of her crew arrived. He was Oberleutnant (Ing.) Rolf Brinker, who was to be the chief engineering officer.

  Like the commander, Brinker was well trained and experienced. He had had two years' peacetime training on U-boats, and had made war cruises on board the U-13 and U-9.

  He had gained a certain amount of notoriety in the flotilla when he returned to the base at Kiel as chief engineering officer on U-13. The boat had suffered engine damage on patrol, and though Brinker had managed to make repairs, the diesels were far from being in good order. Instead of limping slowly along, however, they paradoxically would run only at top speed.

  Ships customarily proceed slowly and with extreme caution through the crowded 100-kilometer-long Kiel Canal, which connects the North Sea to the Baltic. Therefore, a signal from the U-13 requesting permission to come through at her top speed was received with little enthusiasm and much skepticism at the 34 base at Kiel. U-boat crews were always in a hurry to go on leave after a war patrol, but this was ridiculous.

  Base signaled an emphatic and indignant. "No." U-13 then politely asked to be towed in, saying her diesels would not run slower than full speed.

  The U-boat was stubbornly insistent during the ensuing signals conversation, and permission was finally granted. She zoomed up to her pier like a speed boat, and skidded to a halt in a flurry of spray and delighted shouts. After docking with a flourish seldom seen in a man-of-war, she was boarded by a grim delegation of engineers from the base. They proceeded to carry out a thorough inspection, and only after they confirmed Brinker's report was he allowed to leave the boat.

  Brinker was fascinated by the construction of U-124. As the only officer on hand who would sail on this boat, he was everywhere during the building. Nothing escaped his bright inquiring mind. He memorized every detail of the construction, so when she was finally finished, there was not a nut or bolt in her that her L.I. did not know.

  As the boat neared completion, Schulz arrived with the former members of his old crew from U-64. Following them, the new men came to Bremen, and the whole crew was now assembled. She was launched on March 9, 1940, and after her dockyard trials in the Weser River, she was turned over to her commander on June 10, ready for duty with the 2nd U-Flotilla.

  The new boat was eagerly inspected by the men who had come from U-64. U-124 was one of the big Atlantic boats, a Type IX B, with the finest weapons and equipment. She had four bow and two stern tubes, and carried 22 torpedoes. There was a 105 mm. cannon on the forecasing, as well as a 37 mm. flak and two 20 mm. twin flak guns placed on the after part of the bridge. She had the most modern type of fire control, and excellent wireless and listening equipment, both a passive sound detector and a type of sonar gear.

  Karl Rode, one of the Obermaschinists, had noted with satisfaction that no expense had been spared in the engine room either to give a correspondingly high horsepower in the two main diesels which could deliver 18 knots and the electric motors which gave her a top speed of 7.3 knots underwater. There was no doubt that they had a superb weapon in their hands.

  Rode soon discovered, however, that the comforts of the crew had occupied a much lower priority than these technical fittings. Although at 1,100 displacement tons she was considerably larger than the U-64's 770 tons, Rode had not expected a luxury liner. But he had seen foreign submarines of a comparable size with far more spacious living quarters for their crews.

  The German Type IX B, like the VII Cs, had bunks for only half the men, so that when a man left his bunk to go on watch, the man coming off crawled in. It was difficult to get about on the boat, for when the watch changed, almost all the 48-man crew would be going from one place to another. There were no hall-like passageways to carry the traffic, so it was channeled through all the main compartments.

  During mealtimes, a leaf was raised along the sides of the tables that ran lengthwise through the messes, and this made it almost impossible for anyone to squeeze past. When action stations was called while the men were eating, the resulting bedlam defied description as some 48 men raced simultaneously to their assigned battle posts, leaving a fearsome wake of trampled toes, terrifying sailors' oaths, and smashed crockery. The number of dishes remaining at the end of a cruise was in inverse proportion to the number of alarms sounded at mealtime.

  Although certain other creature comforts, such as air conditioning, were conspicuously non-existent in the German boats, the crews did not mind too much. They were well aware that these things were sacrificed in the interests of fighting power and maneuverability, and one chase by a destroyer was all that was necessary to convince a sailor that a little added agility on the part of his boat more than compensated for sharing his bunk. Even the commander had the most spartan accommodations in the tiny cabin that served as office and sleeping space, with only a green curtain to give an illusion of privacy.

  But of all the small rooms in a boat not noted for spaciousness anywhere, the most notorious was the toilet. The boat had six torpedo tubes; this room was known as "Tube 7." It was possibly the most complicated piece of equipment on board, and certainly the most temperamental.

  To begin with, the user must decide before entering this tiny sanctuary whether he wished to sit or stand. Once inside, there was no room to turn around. After accomplishing his primary mission, he was set to tackle the secondary and most challenging one, that of flushing the toilet.

  The rules had to be committed to memory and were specific enough about the order in which he must open and close which valves and operate the pump, and he had been shown how by one of the old hands. But few U-boat toilets were so docile as to allow themselves to be mastered by a novice without kicking up their heels a few times. Nor were they so lacking in individuality as to conform exactly to the rules printed on the instruction sheet. Each one had its own idiosyncrasies that had to be catered to.

  It was this characteristic that led to the downfall of any new officer, accustomed to the luxuries of a big ship, who came to a U-boat with a superior or condescending attitude. He was at the mercy of the sailor who gave him his lessons, and who could, at will, omit the special trick or knack that meant the difference between success and failure. The young lieutenant would then emerge from Tube 7 after his first solo attempt, crestfallen and dripping with sweat, to face the knowing smiles of his subordinates.

  The commander was inexorable toward everyone, and back he would go for another course of instruction. It was sometimes rather humbling for a highly trained German officer to find that he must have several lessons to learn how to flush a toilet.

  In addition to the roguish disposition of these contraptions, there was also the drawback of having only two on board. And one of them was, for all practical purposes, inaccessible during the first part of a patrol since it was located just behind the pantry and blocked by stacks of hams and the beloved German sausages. It could only be called into service after these provisions were used up.

  Even this, however, was an improvement over the World War I boats, according to Admiral von Friedeburg, who was a master of story telling. There was only one toilet on board these boats, and it was located just off the galley. To reach it, one had to squeeze past the stove, and the cook had given strict orders that every visitor must give the soup a couple of stirs with the spoon as he went by. The location of the head thus made everyone on board, from the commander on down, an assistant cook.

  One further disadvantage of a U-boat's plumbing system was that it could not be used when the boat was bei
ng pursued by a destroyer. The noise of flushing it would call attention to their exact position, which would then be clearly marked by a trail of sewage.

  But these tribulations lay in the future as the U-124 left her cradle at Bremen bound for Kiel and her shakedown cruise in the Baltic Sea.

  The crew worked up well together and the boat was soon over her teething troubles. Schulz was satisfied with the results. She handled nicely, and it had not taken him long to get used to the differences between her and his old U-64. She was faster and had more sea endurance, and she carried more torpedoes. He wanted a chance to fire them. Losing the U-64 had been a bitter disappointment to him, and to have lost her without sinking a single ship to compensate for it had made her loss doubly hard to swallow.

  Brinker was like a child with a new toy and was constantly finding new ways to play with his treasure. He practiced holding her in trim with every possible combination of the ballast tanks and with the motors and diving planes. He worked out every trick he could dream up to shave a split second or so off their diving time. He invented special adjustments that would give her an extra couple of knots of speed in an emergency, and discovered the exact number of revolutions on each electric motor that would give them the most silent creeping speed possible under water.

  All these details and many more were stored in Brinker's brain for instant use. He knew that when they were needed, there would not be time to look them up in a book or figure them out. He would have only a split second in which to act, and unless he knew instantly and precisely what to do, it would be too late. By the time the shakedown cruise was over, Brinker knew to a hair what the boat was capable of under every conceivable circumstance, short of an actual depth charging.

  This brilliant and unpredictable aristocrat had quickly won the hearts of all the engine room men. He had been the soul of patience and consideration, and he respected and listened to petty officers who were years older than himself. When the young ratings made mistakes, he calmly showed them the right way instead of reprimanding them. He gave his men responsibility and self-confidence, so that both in the control room and the two engine rooms, everything was so well-ordered that the boat seemed to run herself.

  It was a pleasant time for all of them. The days were warm and sunny, and they found many hours of swimming and relaxation in the port cities of the Baltic. One particularly memorable evening was spent in the beautiful city of Danzig.

  Since U-124 had sleeping space for only about half her men, most of them were billeted on the mother ship while in port, and only a skeleton crew remained aboard the boat.

  It was a long, wet, and festive night, despite the fact that the boat was scheduled for her underwater speed trials at seven o'clock the next morning. Around 5 a.m., the crew drifted back to the mother ship, gaily singing, in various stages of sobriety. This gave them a couple of hours to sleep and sober up before stumbling on board the boat.

  The officer who was to conduct the trials was on the bridge shortly before seven. A full captain, he had the reputation throughout the flotilla of being exceptionally strict and severe, and his forbidding manner killed any hopes the U-124's bedraggled crew might have had that the rumors were unfounded. They gave him a wide berth, and sat or stood at their posts nursing their hangovers and wishing they were dead.

  By seven o'clock, most of them were aboard, though somewhat dilapidated. Several were conspicuous by their absence. The commander had not put in an appearance, nor had Lt. Kuhnt, nor Oblt. Brinker. Of the U-124's four officers, only Lt. Hirsacker was present. He stormed about the boat, nervously shouting unnecessary orders at miserable sailors whose heads were already ringing like gongs.

  Seven-thirty came, and someone timidly suggested that perhaps nobody had waked their commander. A messenger was hurriedly dispatched, and a short time later Schulz appeared. He exchanged frigid salutes with the test captain, and went below without saying a word.

  He stalked through the boat, checking her readiness to sail. With her hungover crew and only half her complement of officers, she was obviously nowhere near ready to put to sea, and he wondered furiously if that martinet on the bridge had ever seen such a sloppy, disorganized, and don't-give-a-damn boat.

  The men watched him apprehensively as he looked from one to the other, his face harsh and his dark eyes black with fury. When he spoke, his voice was low and controlled, but with a chilling and unmistakable undercurrent of anger.

  Shortly after eight o'clock, Lt. Kuhnt arrived and reported himself on board, smiling and unsuspecting. His friendly greeting was squelched by an icy stare from his commander, and silence again ruled on the bridge.

  The atmosphere was almost as funereal inside the boat as the men spoke in hushed voices or not at all.

  "Any sign of Herr Brinker?" Rode asked, coming into the control room.

  "No," answered Raudzis, "and it's for sure we can't make a speed trial without the L.I."

  "What's the Old Man doing?"

  "He's on the bridge, waiting for Brinker, and mad as hell," the Bootsmann replied.

  "Probably as hung over as we are," Kesselheim added with a smile of malicious satisfaction.

  Hermann Kaspers looked up. "Willem's got insides of steel. Anybody else would have gone off like a bomb before now."

  "Well, don't start counting your blessings," Rode said. "He can't hold out much longer. I just hope that when he does explode it'll be up there on the bridge and not in the engine room." He turned and started back. "Let us know when and if the L.I. decides to show up. We can at least try to get out of the line of fire!"

  Shortly past 8:30, a figure strolled casually down the dock toward the boat. It was Brinker, in civilian clothes, jaunty and unconcerned.

  The commander stared at him, transfixed for a moment in stupefied disbelief. Then, his icy composure utterly vanished, and growling an extraordinary oath, he spun on his heel and stormed off the boat. He did not offer a word nor a salute to the four-striper he left standing dumbfounded on the bridge, and marched past Brinker without even acknowledging his existence.

  The speed trials were postponed until the following day, and the incident closed with none of the disciplinary disasters the crew expected.

  As soon as war was declared, designating numbers had been ordered painted off the conning towers of U-boats because of their value to the enemy. So each boat chose an emblem of her own, to be worn in place of a number. These were highly individualistic, and many became famous.

  Everyone knew the raging bull which was painted on Günther Prien's U-47 as he returned from his brilliant and historic penetration of the British naval anchorage at Scapa Flow. The bull was the brain child of his young exec, "Bertl" Endrass, who, later in command of the U-46 and U-567, became one of the best U-boat skippers, wearing the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross. He, like Prien, met dazzling success in the Atlantic convoy lanes, and finally death.

  And the U-333's three little fishes were already renowned when her commander Ali Cremer brought her all the way across the Atlantic, desperately damaged and unable to dive or even withstand very rough seas, her whole bow caved in from a collision with a freighter he had torpedoed.

  When the U-124 returned to Bremen to be checked out after her sea trials in the Baltic, she proudly wore an edelweiss emblazoned on her conning tower. Schulz and the old U-64 crew had adopted the insignia of the Alpine troops that had saved them at Narvik. So now the little flower that only grows high in the Alps was to decorate a U-boat that would roam the ocean depths, and the crew wore a matching insignia sewn on their caps.

  The boat proceeded from Bremen to Wilhelmshaven where she was provisioned, and then to her flotilla base at Kiel. From there on August 19, 1940, she passed through the Kiel Canal and, in company with two M-boats (mine sweepers), headed up the North Sea to circle around Scotland and reach her patrol area in the North Atlantic.

  The seas were not high, and the sky was fully covered by heavy clouds as the U-124 pushed through the swells. The clouds were a we
lcome protection from the British aircraft which constantly patrolled the Denmark Straits and the North Sea, and with the exception of the always-alert bridge watch, the crew was relaxed.

  Suddenly without the slightest warning, a British bomber roared down out of the massed clouds and dropped four bombs. None of them hit, and while the stunned Germans were still wondering where on earth it had come from and how it had spotted them, it had disappeared again.

  The attack was so sudden that no one inside the boat knew what was going on. But the sound of the bombs exploding close by proved too much for one of the youngsters in the control room, and he opened the flooding valve without waiting for orders.

  Kuhnt, who had the bridge watch, waited tensely to see if the plane would make another attack. As the angle of the deck suddenly changed beneath his feet, he glanced down to see, to his horror, that the boat was diving, the whole bow already under water.

  "Clear the bridge!" he screamed, and dived through the hatch on top of the lookouts. He managed to slam the hatch cover just as the bridge slid under water.

  The control room was confusion itself, what with the unordered dive, and the helmsman had unaccountably turned loose the wheel, which lay hard starboard. The commander had run into the control room at the first unexpected motion of the boat, but she had already reached 60 meters by the time he could bring her up.

  U-124 surfaced near the two M-boats, none the worse for her adventure. Her U-64 veterans, understandably plane-shy after their ducking at Narvik, stood sheepishly while their commander angrily dressed them down, making it crystal clear that he had no intentions of being drowned by a bunch of addle-headed clowns.

  The next day brought more planes and more bombs, until Schulz decided that the two M-boats served to give his position away. He parted company with them, and took his own boat under water for the remaining daylight hours, to be well away from his escort by the time he surfaced again.

  The pleasant early autumn days they had left turned abruptly into typical stormy North Atlantic weather as they drew level with the British Isles. North-northwest winds had howled themselves into gales, and the boat was able to make little or no headway into the heavy swells.

 

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