Hunt and Kill
Page 1
Also by Theodore P. Savas
Silent Hunters: German U-boat Commanders of World War II, editor
Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold, with Kenneth D. Alford
A Guide to the Battles of the American Revolution, with J. David Dameron
The Red River Campaign: Union and Confederate Leadership and the War in Louisiana, editor, with David W. Woodbury and Gary D. Joiner
The Campaign for Atlanta & Sherman’s March to the Sea, 2 vols., editor, with David A. Woodbury
© 2004 by Theodore P. Savas
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First Savas Beatie edition 2004
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Contents
Editor’s Preface
Theodore P. Savas
Foreword
Erich Topp
Introduction
Eric C. Rust
No Target Too Far: The Genesis, Concept, and Operations of Type IX U-Boats in World War II
Eric C. Rust
A Community Bound by Fate: The Crew of U-505
Timothy Mulligan
From the Lion’s Roar to Blunted Axe: The Combat Patrols of U-505
Lawrence Paterson
Deciphering the U-boat War: The Role of Intelligence in the Capture of U-505
Mark E. Wise and Jak P. Mallmann Showell
Collision Course: Task Group 22.3 and the Hunt for U-505
Lawrence Paterson
Desperate Decisions: The German Loss of U-505
Jordan Vause
Project 356: U-505 and the Journey to Chicago
Keith Gill
Appendix A: Type IXC U-boats: Technical Data
Appendix B: U-505 Combat Chronology
Appendix C: Statement of Harald Lange Regarding the Capture of U-505
Notes
Contributors
Maps and Photographs
Map 1: Collision Course: U-505
and TG 22.3 frontis
Map 2: U-505’s Second Patrol to the
Central Atlantic
Map 3: U-505’s Third Patrol
to the Caribbean
Photograph galleries
U-505’s remarkable history, including its astonishing transformation from frontline U-boat to Chicago landmark, is only cursorily understood by most readers—even those with a deep interest in World War II naval history. This incomplete appreciation is understandable because most published accounts highlight only narrow slices of the boat’s complex three-year wartime history…
Theodore P. Savas
Editor’s Preface
In the mid-1990s I organized and had the pleasure of serving as editor of a collection of essays written by leading U-boat scholars and published under the title Silent Hunters: German U-boat Commanders of World War II (Campbell, CA: Savas, 1997; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003). The criteria set forth for the selection of the biographical portraits were simple: “choose a U-boat commander who has not received the scholarly treatment he deserves, one who either accomplished his record incrementally over several patrols or someone whose experiences were somehow unique and worthy of study.” The result was a well-received compilation. Hopefully, others think it added something significant to the genre’s literature. At that time I believed other aspects of the U-boat war needed similar treatment, but my transformation from active lawyer to the publishing world, coupled with two cross-country moves in two years, delayed the book you now hold in your hands.
U-505’s remarkable history, including its astonishing transformation from frontline U-boat to Chicago landmark, is only cursorily understood by most readers—even those with a deep interest in World War II naval history. This incomplete appreciation is understandable because most published accounts highlight only narrow slices of the boat’s complex three-year wartime history: Axel-Olaf Loewe’s appendicitis while on patrol, Peter Zschech’s gunshot-to-the-head suicide in the control room, and Harald Lange’s fateful June 4, 1944, encounter with the audacious Daniel V. Gallery and his Task Group 22.3. The boat’s postwar fate is similarly planed smooth, usually with little more than a sentence or two explaining that U-505 was transported to Illinois and can be toured at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
The historical record of U-505 and its crew is much more interesting than these paltry few points and, until now, has never been fully told. After a long and thought-provoking tour of the boat in the late 1990s, I decided it was time to reassemble the team members and challenge them to tell it. The individual chapters they have prepared provide what we all hope is a broad and deep portrait of the history of U-505, its crew, the naval intelligence behind its discovery and seizure in 1944, and its final journey to Chicago and significance to future generations as a historical artifact and war memorial. Captain Gallery’s capture of the boat off the African coast has been told and retold from his perspective, and so a conscious decision was made to weave the various threads of that event within several different chapters, which also made it easier to avoid having to present readers with what would otherwise have been an irksome overlap of coverage.
I remember clearly the first time I met Erich Topp. He was visiting family in Texas and was on his way to southern California before returning to Germany. Baylor University’s Eric Rust provided me with his phone number. At Topp’s invitation I flew down to the desert on January 27, 1996. He walked outside to greet me and flashed a broad smile. He was 82 years old but looked 55—tall, erect and handsome, with piercing ice-blue eyes, a firm handshake, and a hearty laugh. We struck it off immediately and I ended up staying many hours longer than originally planned. The honesty and forthrightness of his responses impressed me. Admiral Topp contributed to Silent Hunters with a moving essay about his deep friendship with fellow ace Engelbert Endrass, written while on patrol in the North Atlantic. Topp believed a book on U-505 was long overdue and kindly agreed to pen the Foreword for it. I have enjoyed our friendship over the years, and wish him continued good health.
Type IX U-boats played a unique role in the war. Their bulky size and slow diving capabilities rendered them less suited for convoy work than the more agile Type VII, though this was only fully realized after many good crews met their end raking North Atlantic lanes in search of clustered prey. The same girth and weight that made Type IXs clumsy convoy participants, however, furnished them with their potency as solo warriors. Their extra tanks held substantially more fuel, allowing them to operate as lone hunters for long periods of time in distant waters. First engineered in the mid-1930s, the Type IX series evolved over the years to become one of the most effective submarines in history. All of this and much more is carefully presented in our opening contribution, “No Target Too Far: The Genesis, Concept, and Operations of Type IX U-Boats in World War II,” by Eric C
. Rust of Baylor University. Dr. Rust meticulously explains the evolution of the German navy and naval doctrine from the First World War through the tumultuous years preceding World War II, the development and technical aspects of this U-boat series, how the Type IX was employed during the war, and its place in German naval history. He also willingly compiled the technical data related to Type IXC boats that appears as Appendix A. As he did so ably with Silent Hunters, Eric graciously agreed to review and help edit each of the essays that appear in this book as well as pen its insightful Introduction. Eric’s keen observations, always graciously delivered, made this study stronger and more cohesive than it otherwise would have been. Over the years our friendship has grown, and for that I am both thankful and fortunate.
Timothy P. Mulligan, another veteran from the Silent Hunters project, switches gears from a solo biography of Karl-Friedrich Merten to something closer to a collective biography entitled “A Community Bound by Fate: The Crew of U-505.” The title originates with Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, “the head and soul of the German submarine service in World War II” who used the phrase to describe a U-boat crew. As an archivist working with captured German naval records and the author of a recent in-depth book about U-boat sailors, Tim is uniquely situated to write about the men who served aboard U-505. Although the officers are more fully developed as individuals, the common crewmen receive the lion’s share of his attention. Utilizing a vast array of source material, he explores the rich diversity of these men, and in many cases is able to trace how particular individuals ended up aboard U-505. It is indeed a pioneering contribution. The helpful combat chronology for U-505 that appears as Appendix B is also his work. “Success or failure for the submarine, and life or death for all on board, ultimately depended on each man performing his job, from the lowest rating to the captain,” explains Mulligan. A U-boat was indeed a community bound by fate.
Surprisingly little has been published about U-505’s history before its last voyage from Brest to its fateful rendezvous off Africa’s sultry west coast. Lawrence Paterson’s “From Lion’s Roar to Blunted Axe: The Combat Patrols of U-505,” explores this little-known and often misunderstood chapter of U-boat history. As those who read the essay will discover, its title is particularly apt. Some will be surprised to learn that U-505 made several successful and difficult patrols in the southern Atlantic and Caribbean. As the pressures of service mounted, acts of sabotage while refitting in port repeatedly forced the boat to return to Lorient, casting a pall over those who served aboard it. It is impossible to fully appreciate and evaluate U-505’s role in the Battle of the Atlantic without an understanding of what transpired on its first eleven war patrols. The boat’s twelfth and final patrol, also related by Paterson in “Collision Course: Task Group 22.3 and the Hunt for U-505,” caps his contribution to this compendium. Paterson is a native New Zealander, accomplished musician, experienced scuba diver, and the author of two outstanding U-boat Flotilla studies. Over the past two years he has provided both good advice and friendly cheer.
Most readers of U-boat history have a general grasp of the role played by Enigma in the Battle of the Atlantic, but are unaware of how Enigma and other advances in technology led to the capture of U-505. A thorough and thoughtful examination of this story, based almost wholly upon archival sources, is presented in “Deciphering the U-boat War: The Role of Intelligence in the Capture U-505.” This chapter is the product of a marvelous collaboration between Mark E. Wise and Jak P. Mallmann Showell. Together, they describe more fully and forcefully than any other published account how Allied intelligence efforts melded with Daniel Gallery’s perseverance and German mistakes to bring about “an event unparalleled in the history of modern naval warfare.” Both know well of what they write. Wise is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and an intelligence specialist in the U.S. Naval Reserve. His Master’s thesis is on the same subject as his chapter. This contribution is Mark’s first foray into the ranks of the published in the U-boat field. Co-author Jak Showell is well-known to students of the U-boat war. Teacher, scientist, and computing expert, Jak is the author of some two dozen titles and like Wise, enjoys a deep interest in Enigma and intelligence-related issues. Jak also helped provide me with coordinates to map U-505’s patrol routes.
Most accounts of the capture of U-505 are written from the Allied perspective as related through the words and eyes of Daniel V. Gallery. Jordan Vause’s “Desperate Decisions: The German Loss of U-505” examines the issue from the German perspective. He reconstructs (as far as such a thing is possible) what took place inside the boat from the moment the depth charges began to explode through its ascent to the surface and the terrifying minutes that followed. It is a thoughtful essay based upon eyewitness accounts, a keen appreciation of the chain of command, and the observations of other U-boat commanders and personnel. It is also the closest we shall probably ever come to understanding the German decision-making process that fateful day. Jordan, who has authored two well-received U-boat books, was present when the seeds that eventually sprouted the earlier Silent Hunters study were planted in the summer of 1995. Nine years have passed since that evening in his living room. Since that time he and his charming family have moved to the wrong coast. We manage to keep in relatively close contact, though I miss our face-to-face banter.
Anyone with even a cursory interest in the U-boat war learns sooner or later that a real German submarine sits outside Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. It is by far the institution’s most popular exhibit, and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. How it ended up in the American heartland is set forth in meticulous fashion by the boat’s curator, Keith R. Gill, in “Project 356: U-505 and the Journey to Chicago.” The boat’s meandering path to the Windy City was paved with politics, money, and egos—which together conspired to nearly derail the effort and doom the submarine to a humiliating end as a target for American artillery practice. Displaying and preserving U-505 has been both costly and difficult, but the museum has finally solved its preservation dilemma by moving the boat indoors, where it will continue to serve as a memorial and historical curiosity to generations yet unborn. The vast majority of the photos in this study would not have been available without Keith’s assistance. On more than one occasion our late-night conversations wandered far a field from the Battle of the Atlantic. I have enjoyed each of them.
Except for its editor, every contributor to Hunt and Kill is a U-boat scholar. Quite honestly, my forte is a long and deep interest in the subject, coupled with reasonably good organizational skills. If this body of work adds substance and understanding to the growing literature on U-boats, it is solely because of their expertise and the strength of their work product. It has been a pleasure working with such an outstanding team. Every editor should be so fortunate.
The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, courtesy of U-505’s always helpful curator and contributor Keith Gill, worked overtime to help locate and prepare many of the photographs that appear in this book. The visual record makes this study much richer and easier to comprehend and appreciate. Fellow contributors Timothy Mulligan and Jak Mallmann Showell supplied map details and boat coordinates.
I would also like to thank Lee Merideth of Historical Indexes for preparing the index, and Ian Hughes of Mousemat Design in the UK for crafting such a fine cover.
Lastly, I would be remiss if I closed without thanking my wife Carol and children, Alexandra Maria and Demetrious Theodore. Somehow I always manage to stretch myself in too many directions simultaneously, and despite Carol’s best efforts to tamp me back into form, she is rarely (if ever) successful. She suffers because of my frenetic existence, bearing as a result more than her fair share of the home front’s daily burdens. I can only ask for my best friend’s continued understanding. Alex and Demetri know what it means when papa slinks toward his library after supper: “Momma’s putting us down tonight!”
Someday I will try to make it up to you both.
U-505 is best
remembered, from my point of view, as a monument to all seamen from every country who never returned from patrol.
Erich Topp
Foreword
Many U-boats and their commanders and crews are celebrated or remembered for their activities and accomplishments made during their war patrols. U-47 for entering Scapa Flow and sinking HMS Royal Oak, for example, or the dramatic successes of the Paukenschlag boats off the eastern coast of America in 1942, the desperate convoy actions and successes of the “Happy Times,” and even my own accidental sinking of the American destroyer USS Reuben James on October 31, 1941. These events and naturally many more, stand out as accomplishments. The U-505 story, as told in this book, is remembered for other reasons.
U-505 was found by what was called a Hunter-Killer group. If aircraft or escorts from one found you, there was almost no chance of escape. Under the influence of depth charges, U-505 was heavily damaged and forced to surface. The commanding officer, Oberleutnant zur See Harald Lange, tried to defend his boat with available machine guns against overwhelming odds, bravely I might add, but was hurt severely when struck by a bullet in the knee. His brain was still working, but as I understand the case to be, he did not give orders to sink the boat by activating the prepared explosives, as has been the tradition among submariners. It was his duty no matter the circumstances, and in this he failed. The crew, of course, did what they could to survive. They left the boat probably thinking it was set to sink but somehow no one eliminated the coding and enciphering machines and enigma. The result was the Americans captured U-505 and learned valuable information but it did not, I must say, at that late date in the war change fundamentally their war effort. From our perspective it would have been considered a shocking thing, but of course at the time we knew nothing about this activity and Allied success.