As originally conceived, Type IX boats usually operated as independent contractors, each with its own specific mission and broadly allocated area of operations. Three times during the war, however, U-Boat Command pulled together greater numbers of these larger boats for more concerted action. The first occasion was in the spring of 1940, when Type IX boats participated in Operation Weserübung, the hastily arranged German invasion of Denmark and Norway designed to gain a major geostrategic edge and to forestall an identical Allied countermove. German submarines gained little glory in these operations, largely because Norway’s high geographical latitude and peculiar geomagnetic characteristics played havoc with the detonation mechanisms of their torpedoes. They did, however, help consolidate the German foothold ashore by transporting vital war materiel north, including several hundreds of tons of aviation fuel—a cargo crews were eager to pass on to Luftwaffe personnel ashore.
The second period of closely coordinated activities by Type IX boats is much better known than the frustrating Scandinavian interlude, and justifiably so. While this is not the proper place to recount in detail Operation Paukenschlag (or Drumbeat, as Michael Gannon translated the term in his outstanding book by the same title16), it should be noted the terrific carnage inflicted upon American shipping along the Eastern Seaboard in the first half of 1942 was almost exclusively the work of Type IX boats. Crossing the Atlantic from their bases at Lorient and Bordeaux, the boats picked off hundreds of juicy targets almost at will against token and poorly coordinated resistance. Their success demonstrated the wisdom of keeping a sizeable number of long-distance submarines in the German arsenal. It also highlighted the inexcusable folly and hubris on the part of American authorities, who had apparently learned nothing in terms of anti-submarine preparedness after witnessing daily for more than two years what Dönitz’s U-boats could accomplish if given the opportunity to strike. To America’s credit, the implementation of a regular convoy system and increasingly effective shore-based aerial reconnaissance tamed the menace by mid-1942. This, in turn, forced U-Boat Command to disperse its Type IX boats to waters less traveled—and generally less rewarding when it came to winning the tonnage war.17
The withdrawal of Type IX boats from the East Coast of the United States and Canada led directly to the third instance of concerted activity by these long-range commerce raiders, operations lasting intermittently from the fall of 1942 until the conclusion of the war. The boats were dispatched to the waters around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean, culminating by 1944 and 1945 in Operation Monsoon, when a handful of German U-cruisers began operating out of Penang in Japanese-occupied Malaya against Allied shipping in the region. Strategically, Dönitz found himself in a push-pull situation. The North and Central Atlantic had become increasingly dangerous for submarines of all types, whereas raiding Allied sea lanes around the tip of Africa, in the Indian Ocean, and in the approaches to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf represented virgin territory and the possibility of inflicting considerable damage to the enemy’s seaborne traffic. Type IX boats, and especially U-cruisers of the Type IXD variety, were ideally suited for such an undertaking.18
In retrospect it is not easy to judge the efficacy of Dönitz’s decision to employ these boats in this manner, except perhaps to observe that he had very few alternatives. With the help of U-tankers and against weak Allied defenses, his boats did very well in the waters stretching from Capetown to Madagascar, particularly during the initial phase of these operations. Enemy defenses and convoy protection stiffened quickly, however, and by 1943 every Type XIV supply submarine had been sunk. Their loss limited the effective range of regular Type IX boats. Thereafter, long distance patrols had to cruise all the way into Japanese-controlled territory to refuel and reprovision, or resources had to be shared among incoming and outgoing boats. Many U-boats fell victim to air attacks; others suffered mechanical mishaps and fatigue in the unaccustomed tropical climate. Several commanding officers also succumbed when the challenging months-long assignments overtaxed their physical and mental endurance. While individual boats (like Kapitan zur See Wolfgang Luth’s U-181) could boast of solid and even spectacular successes, the majority of Type IX boats dispatched into the Indian Ocean never reached their destination or once there, hunted with but meager results. By the last year of the conflict several boats in Penang had run out of torpedoes and were reluctantly converted into improvised transport submarines to carry precious raw materials back to Europe from East Asia.
By this late date Grossadmiral Dönitz’s overall strategy had long since shifted from his initial concept of waging a global tonnage war to a rearguard action. While sinking ships was still desirable, finding and sending them to the bottom of the sea had become very difficult and dangerous. During the war’s final year U-boats were dispatched under increasingly lengthening odds against success (and even survival) to both hunt the enemy and attract and tie down as many Allied ships, planes, and resources as possible. The once proud raiders of the deep had become mere decoys in a desperate effort to postpone what loomed evermore as inevitable, namely the invasion of the heartland of Europe and the end of Hitler’s Germany. The tonnage war was effectively lost by late 1942. After that time Allied shipyards consistently produced through new construction more ships than U-boats could sink at sea. The loss of no fewer than forty-one U-boats to a variety of Allied countermeasures in the month of May 1943 signaled the effective and dramatic end of the Battle of the Atlantic as it had been fought since 1939.19
These massive losses were directly related to what was perhaps the greatest handicap then facing German submarine operations: the deadly transit through the Bay of Biscay to and from bases in western France. The growing numerical and technological superiority of the Allied arsenal of weapons only made the journey that much more difficult. The Atlantic bases constituted a significant and obvious geostrategic improvement over having to fight the U-boat campaign from bases in Germany or Scandinavia. That advantage, however, was offset by the absolute predictability of submarine operations. German boats had to pass through the Biscay waters in order to reach their operational areas, and these waters could be easily patrolled by Allied aircraft and surface vessels. The approach to the French bases, therefore, posed a supreme navigational hazard and outright nightmare for the U-boats and their crews. By 1943, the Bay of Biscay—which earlier in the war offered one of the most lucrative hunting grounds for German submarines—rapidly took on the features of a permanent and ever-lurking death trap.
Unfortunately no alternatives, save a complete strategic retreat, presented themselves. After the defeat of France in June 1940, Germany developed a network of submarine bases along the Atlantic coast, with each installation servicing boats either of the Type VII or Type IX designs. Virtually all Type IXA, IXB and IXC boats belonged to the 2nd and 10th U-Boat Flotillas stationed at picturesque Lorient in southwestern Brittany, while the Type IXD boats with their globe-spanning range made Bordeaux their new home (in company with several large Italian submarines temporarily detached from the Mediterranean for service in the Central Atlantic). The ports themselves were well protected against enemy activity. In addition to heavy antiaircraft batteries, massive concrete pens with almost thirty individual berths in Lorient alone protected the boats against aerial bombardment, which allowed for unimpeded repair and maintenance work. Getting into port or out into the open sea through the vulnerable approaches to the bases, however, posed the Achilles heel of German submarine operations in the last three years of the war. Not only could the coastal channels be mined from the air, but the around-the-clock patrolling by Allied planes and warships of a north-south cordon of ocean netted almost daily U-boat sightings and large numbers of sinkings. This simple stratagem was effective because every departing or inbound submarine had to come up for air at regular intervals to vent out the interior of the boat. Just as important was a U-boat’s need to recharge its batteries with the help of generators by running their diesels on the surface. During the s
ix to eight hours it took to fully reenergize their electric plants, the boats were subject to detection even at night, when Allied hunters used shipboard and airborne radar, together with the famous Leigh Light—a powerful searchlight mounted beneath airplane wings—to spot their prey and deliver sudden and often lethal attacks at close range. With almost mathematical precision the Allied patrol pattern yielded scary or frequently deadly results for Dönitz’s submariners, a fact surveys of U-boat war diaries make painfully clear. The entries reflecting this phase of the war are full of reports of daily aircraft sightings, crash dives, near misses by bombs, and lengthy depth charge pursuits.
Foremost on the U-boat men’s minds were not the glorious successes scored during the “Happy Times” so long ago but mere survival, the simple but uncertain hope of returning to their bases and hometowns, which Allied bombers were turning systematically to ash and rubble. The Normandy Invasion of June 1944 forced most surviving submarines, after a brief and abortive effort to hurt the Allied armada in the English Channel, to abandon their bases in western France and retreat to Norway or German waters. Except for more deaths, bloodshed, and foolish but brave sacrifice, ostensibly in the name of binding enemy resources, the U-boat campaign was over.
The story of the Type IX boats is one of solid, even brilliant, performance until the turning point of the war in 1942/43, with a clearly defined mission under the guiding leitmotif of a worldwide tonnage war against Allied merchant shipping. After that time, with their strategic concept defeated or rendered immaterial given Allied superiority everywhere at sea and in the air, the boats’ plight turned inevitably to tragedy. The life and fate of U-505 and its men mirrors this transformation from hope to despair, from winning to losing, with haunting accuracy.
The NCOs and enlisted men constituted the great majority of the men who served aboard U-505. Collectively identified as a single entity, individually they varied greatly in background, experience, age, rank, shipboard function, and even in number. Reflecting the general turnover in U-boat crews, many men departed for additional training and reassignment, their places taken by new men. Still, a core of veterans remained intact aboard throughout the submarine’s history.
Timothy P. Mulligan
A Community Bound by Fate
The Crew of U-505
Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, the head and soul of the German submarine service in World War II, once described a U-boat crew as a Schicksalsgemeinschaft, “a community bound by fate.” 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.1 Applicable to any submarine in any navy, this observation holds even more true for those who manned U-505 in the service of the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy of Hitler’s Reich.
From commissioning in August 1941 through capture by the U.S. Navy in June 1944, U-505’s crew represented both the continuity and evolution of German submariners during the war. From the original all-volunteer, hand-picked elite that still lingers as a propaganda image, German U-boat crews grew less voluntary and more generally representative of the Navy and of their society as a whole. The men of U-505 reflected this process, at the same time enduring a series of unique events that marked their history: sustaining extraordinary damage in an air attack, enduring the suicide of their commanding officer during a depth-charge attack, and finally suffering the capture of their U-boat. These events earned U-505 the reputation as a “Pech-Boot,” an unlucky boat, extending even to her appellation in a recent history as “the sorriest U-boat in the Atlantic force.”2 Over the course of three years, 11 officers and approximately 100 noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and enlisted men experienced the extraordinary history of this unique vessel. This essay examines who these men were, and the community they represented.
Officers
Over U-505’s operational history, 11 officers served regular assignments aboard her: three commanding officers (Kommandanten), who held ranks ranging from Oberleutnant zur See (equivalent to a Lieutenant (j.g.) in the U.S. Navy) to Korvettenkapitän (Lt. Commander); two chief engineers (Leitende Ingenieure, abbreviated L.I), holding ranks of Oberleutnant (Ingenieur) and Kapitänleutnant (Ingenieur), equivalent in the U.S. Navy to Lieutenant (j.g.) and Lieutenant, Engineering); five watch officers (Wachoffiziere), usually with the rank of Leutnant zur See (Ensign); and one naval surgeon. Except for the last, these men occupied key leadership roles during the vessel’s history, and as officers their lives and careers are more extensively documented than other crewmen. Their careers represent a microcosm of the naval officer corps caught in the vise of a world war.
The rapid evolution of the U-boat war can be seen in the collective backgrounds of U-505’s three commanding officers. When war began with Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, all three were on active duty, but none were in the submarine service, nor had any received submarine training. By November 1941, however, as U-505 began her fourth month of training, all three had become U-boot-Fahrer (submariners). This was typical throughout the Navy, as seen in the example of the class of German naval officers who entered service in 1934: as of autumn 1937, only 36 of 318 officers had entered the U-boat force (compared with 51 for the naval air arm), but by 1941, most of the class had become submariners.3
U-505’s original commander, Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant) Axel-Olaf Loewe, represented a direct link to the traditions of the Imperial Navy of World War I. Born January 3, 1909, in Kiel, Loewe belonged to an extended naval family. His father served as a gunnery officer aboard the battlecruiser S.M.S. Seydlitz at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, ending the war as first gunnery officer on battlecruiser S.M.S. Von der Tann. Two of his uncles commanded U-boats in that conflict: one died with his crew in the English Channel, while the other survived to attend his nephew’s commissioning of U-505 into service at the Deutsche Werft shipyard at Hamburg on August 26, 1941. Also attending the ceremonies was a former gunner of the Seydlitz, the chapter president of the ship’s veteran’s association in 1941. By that time Loewe’s younger brother, also a U-boat officer, was already a British prisoner following the sinking in May 1941 of his boat, U-110, commanded by Loewe’s cousin Kaptlt. Fritz-Julius Lemp.4
But Loewe had no need to rely solely on his pedigree during his naval career. He survived a stringent battery of mental and physical examinations to qualify for the highly select naval officer class of 1928 (“Crew 28”). Ranked second among 39 executive officers in his class, he received his officer’s commission in October 1932 and served tours aboard cruisers Emden and Königsberg and Panzerschiff (most commonly translated as “pocket battleship”) Deutschland, seeing his first action during the Spanish Civil War. At war’s outbreak Loewe held a post at the naval academy, but his intellectual abilities soon led to his transfer as a staff officer to Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW), the command headquarters most directly associated with Adolf Hitler. During his year’s stay at headquarters Loewe likely demonstrated considerable staff skills that would later be employed by Dönitz, but the needs of the ever-expanding submarine fleet resulted in his reassignment in October 1940 to the U-Boot-Waffe. After six months’ training and a one-month stint aboard U-74 as a “commander-in-training,” he reported to Hamburg to familiarize himself with his first operational command, U-505.5
An initially unimpressed crewman described his commander as “medium height, with a head of thick, unruly hair…He seemed very casual, in both dress and demeanor.” It soon became apparent, however, that Loewe’s appearance belied a “first-rate professionalism” and the ability of “a natural leader with a keen understanding of how to deal with men…. He led us by his personal example…like a father to us.”6 These traits were essential in any submarine commander, but particularly for those in command of Type IXC U-boats that operated for lengthy periods in distant operational areas. After leading his crew through a five-month period of training and shakedown cruises, Loewe led U-505 on a transit passage from the
Baltic to Lorient, France, then conducted two combat patrols into the waters off Western Africa and the Caribbean lasting 86 and 79 days, respectively. Through the long patrols Loewe maintained high morale through his command style, keeping the crew informed of his intentions, exercising a light touch in place of harshness to remedy crew lapses, and respecting maritime traditions and superstitions, including the traditional elaborate ceremony when the boat first crossed the Equator. Only in his preference for tea over coffee did Loewe part company with his crew.7
Loewe’s operational success also boosted crew morale. Though inexperienced as a submarine commander, Loewe proved a quick learner. During the West African patrol he attacked six targets, sinking four with eight torpedo hits out of 14 fired. In the Caribbean U-505 attacked and sank three vessels, achieving four hits in five torpedo shots and finishing two victims with gunfire; more would likely have followed had not Loewe’s appendicitis curtailed the patrol. The crew proudly recorded their victories in white paint on the bulkhead aft of the electric motor room, and fashioned the traditional pennants hung from the periscope on returning to port. The success inspired one crewman to devise the conning tower insignia of an axe-wielding lion, combining the commander’s name (“Loewe” = lion) with the axe, the symbol of his naval officer class. The seven vessels sunk (totaling 37,800 tons) fell short of Loewe’s expectations, who considered his totals “nothing better than average at the time…I myself was definitely not satisfied with my success in the Freetown (Sierra Leone) area.”8 Yet, he had laid a foundation for the future.
Hunt and Kill Page 5
