Hunt and Kill

by Theodore P. Savas

  Merten’s successes scored along the way to the Nigerian coast, however, prompted Dönitz to order Loewe to trail U-68 to this fresh hunting ground. Loewe complied but fortune did not smile on U-505. Instead of finding tankers and freighters, the boat sailed into stiff opposition from escort ships and aircraft. Several attempted attacks near Cape Palmas were foiled. Frustration mounted when U-505 briefly tangled with a suspected Q-ship operating in tandem with two aircraft. After hurriedly diving away from the trap U-505 was rocked by the explosion of nearby depth charges, which rattled the crew’s nerves but caused no lasting damage or panic. If nothing else, they had finally passed their baptism of fire as a target instead of a hunter. Loewe expressed his satisfaction at their performance as the boat quietly crept away to safety. The near miss did little to ease frustration aboard the boat. Loewe pulled away from the coast, stretching his operational instructions slightly by crossing the equator (with all due ritual humiliation for those “lowly pollywogs” who had never crossed the line) and heading southeast. The spell of bad luck was soon to be broken.

  Late on the afternoon of April 3 lookouts sighted a single steamer. The arrival a few minutes later of a small escort ship, the armed trawler HMS Copinsay, convinced Loewe to hold back until the blanketing camouflage of nightfall would allow him to make a surface attack. Amidst intermittent heavy tropical squalls U-505 raced ahead of the ship’s projected path. Loewe decided to submerge and wait for the unsuspecting ship. The steamer was the 5,775-ton SS West Irmo, an American vessel carrying 4,000 tons of general cargo to West Africa. In a daring attack Loewe closed to within about 400 meters from the steamer’s starboard side and released a pair of torpedoes. Even though the range was very close the first “eel” either ran wide of the mark or too deep. The second, however, impacted with a terrifying roar slightly forward of the bridge. Within seconds the West Irmo began sinking by the head, and within a few minutes it was gone. Ten African stevedores, unable to make it to the deck with enough haste or killed in the explosion, rode it to the bottom. The balance of the crew—36 merchant seamen, an 8-man armed guard, and 55 longshoremen—was rescued by the escort HMS Copinsay while Loewe wisely turned tail and skimmed away at high speed.

  Playing a hunch he would intercept more traffic in the area, Loewe lingered in the general vicinity. He was rewarded the next afternoon when he chanced upon SS Alphacca, a 5,760-ton Dutch cargo ship en route from South Africa to Freetown with a cargo of wool. Trailing the steamer Loewe once more waited until nightfall before hitting the Dutch merchant with a single torpedo shot. The fourteen-year-old Rotterdambuilt ship shuddered as the impact tore into its stern. It, too, went down quickly. Fourteen of the ship’s 72 crew and passengers did not make it into the bobbing lifeboats that were all too quickly the only evidence Alphacca had ever existed. Loewe nosed U-505 gently among them to question the survivors and render whatever aid he could. After providing the shipwrecked unfortunates with a course for the nearby Ivory Coast he sped away from the site.13

  Despite long stretches of empty water and occasional failures, the patrol thus far had been a successful one. The sinking of the Dutch ship, however, ended U-505’s triumphs even though Loewe had been given complete freedom of action by Dönitz. Two days later the U-boat was nearly destroyed when a British Sunderland flying boat hurtled out of the sun before a startled watch could bellow for the boat to crash dive. During the hurried blowing of the tanks several valves jammed, which resulted in only partially flooded diving cells. As Kaptlt. (I) Fritz Förster, the boat’s chief engineer, struggled to free the obstructed hand wheels, the imbalance of weight within the submarine’s diving tanks caused the bow to dip under while the stern rose into the air, leaving the boat fully exposed to destruction while its propellers spun without effect. Loewe ordered his crew to stampede aft in an attempt to drop the screws back into the water. The crew, meanwhile, waited in terror for the explosions they knew must follow. Miraculously, there were none. The stern slowly slid beneath the surface, the screws bit into the dense seawater, and U-505 pushed deeper with painful sluggishness—and escaped. “All sorts of gallows humour enlivened our work as we repaired the relief valve,” recalled crewman Hans Goebeler. “The best joke was that the English pilot failed to attack because he thought U-505 was an ostrich, with its head buried in the water and its tail in the air.”14

  It was not the last time U-505 would brush with enemy aircraft as it continued to scour the now empty seas for merchant traffic. During the return voyage to France two planes attacked out of the sun on May 5, forcing the boat under on both occasions. This time, however, depth charges rocked the boat with several near misses. U-505 finally arrived home on May 7, guided into Lorient by minesweepers after a round trip of 12,937 miles—less than three percent of which had been spent submerged. The mission was deemed a complete success because of the ships sunk and the considerable disarray that once more reigned off West Africa. Statistically, U-505 had expended fourteen torpedoes for eight hits, sunk four ships, dived on twenty-four occasions to avoid aircraft, and was only bombed twice. The mission, noted Dönitz inside the boat’s War Diary, had been “well and thoughtfully carried out.…Despite a long time in the area of operations, [a] lack of traffic did not permit greater success.”15

  Extensive overhaul work on the boat’s diesel engines was required before U-505 was once again ready for war. This time her destination was the distant hunting grounds of the Caribbean, which had been under assault by German U-boats since February 1942. The first torpedoes launched in that heavily travelled Allied tanker arena took the enemy completely by surprise. Hundreds of thousands of tons were dispatched to the seabed in what remains the single most successful surprise attack operation undertaken by Dönitz’s U-boats.16 The Allies were working to toughen their defenses there and the easy pickings were becoming harder to find. Still, effective anti-submarine countermeasures were slow to come on line. Not a single U-boat was lost until June 13, when Wolf Henne’s U-157 was caught and depth-charged to destruction by USS Thetis off the Cuban coast. An oil slick, a few pairs of pants, large deck splinters, and an empty tube stamped “Made in Düsseldorf” were all that remained.17

  U-505’s crew knew few of these facts when they sailed on June 7 from Lorient amid the customary fanfare accorded Germany’s undersea warriors. Loewe conned his boat out of the harbor for the “Golden West” alongside Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Schuch’s veteran U-105, which was also heading for the Caribbean. By 2000 hours they had cleared the French coast and were skirting the southern fringes of the Bay of Biscay, hoping to evade the Allied aircraft that were making transits across that body of water more difficult by the day. The air threat was more than amply illustrated four days later when a sudden burst of radio messages from U-105 (which was west of Loewe’s position) reported that boat under heavy aircraft attack and unable to dive. Loewe immediately changed course to render whatever assistance he could. With flak weapons manned he charged towards his crippled flotilla-mate. All too quickly the appeals abruptly halted, followed shortly thereafter by instructions from BdU to close on U-105’s last reported position and hunt for survivors. Less than an hour later the order was cancelled. An unspoken understanding of depressing significance coursed through U-505’ s crew. As they thankfully discovered, they were mistaken. Radio problems had interfered with Schuch’s transmissions. An Australian Sunderland had badly damaged the U-boat, but the plane was low on fuel and out of ammunition and forced to leave the scene. Schuch’s crippled submarine limped into the neutral port of El Ferrol, Spain, where emergency repairs were performed so it could return to France. The boat would be out of commission for five months.18

  U-505, meanwhile, made good time crossing the Atlantic by travelling surfaced virtually the entire way. A smattering of neutral merchant ships crossed the boat’s path before Loewe was at last able on June 28 to order action stations north of the Leeward Islands. An armed American freighter had been sighted running fast and straight southeast. Loewe gave chase. Afte
r seven hours at high speed he submerged during the early evening, closed to within 800 meters, and delivered a two-torpedo attack. Both ran straight and true, exploding on either side of the 5,447-ton SS Sea Thrush’s bridge. The freighter went down slowly by the bow, which was jammed with heavy aircraft parts. Because the merchant’s brave and tenacious gun crew continued to man their weapon Loewe remained submerged to watch the drama unfold. At the last moment the gunners abandoned their piece and took to the lifeboats. Once the boats had pulled clear Loewe decided to hasten the inevitable. A third torpedo was fired and the wreck slipped quickly beneath the water. Loewe, of course, could have fired the torpedo much earlier. By not doing so, he allowed the entire crew to climb aboard the lifeboats for a chance of survival. This act of humanity eventually saved everyone aboard.19

  Loewe sailed on. The crew’s confidence and spirits soared when a second American steamer, this one the 7,191-ton Liberty ship SS Thomas McKean, was spotted the next day. The ship had left New York for Trinidad, a port it would never reach. U-505’s captain once again demonstrated substantial skill by running the freighter down, submerging his boat, and attacking with another two-torpedo spread. The explosions triggered a fire and five men perished in the flames of the dying steamer, four of them members of the Naval armed guard that had manned the ineffectual stern artillery piece. When it appeared safe to do so Loewe surfaced among the drifting lifeboats near the slowly settling merchant ship to provide medical aid and inquire about his latest triumph. “A lot of people think German U-boat men sank ships without mercy, but if we had a chance, we always tried to help their crews,” Hans Goebeler wrote after the war. “After all, they are humans, too. It was only later in the war, when the airplanes were attacking, that we couldn’t wait around after firing torpedoes.…We never hated the Americans; we were just doing our duty, just like the boys on the ships hunting us.”

  This time the coup-de-grace was delivered by artillery when Loewe ordered U-505’s 10.5 cm. deck gun to pound the hulk into oblivion. It took 80 high-explosive shells before the stationary and burning steamer finally turned turtle and sank. Floating wreckage included bomber fuselages and other airplane parts from the ship’s deck cargo (ultimately bound for Russia). These, too, were destroyed—this time by Loewe himself on the 2 cm. flak weapon.

  In a repeat of the previous patrol, the boat’s success appeared to empty the sea of targets. U-505 cruised north of Puerto Rico for a full week before traversing the Canal de la Mona (Mona Passage) into the Caribbean. There, the humidity and high sea temperature transformed the boat’s interior into a dripping fetid hell, even while submerged. Matters only worsened when the sea, too, began rising, leaving U-505 to buck and plough its way westward when Loewe opted to head toward the Panama Canal in search of targets. Two muggy, unfruitful weeks of patrolling followed as U-505 cruised toward Colombia in the face of thunderous tropical storms. Newly deployed Liberator bombers carrying centimetric radar hounded the boat day and night, and served as a reminder the Allies were rapidly improving their once porous defenses. The constant aircraft alerts depressed the boat’s fractious crew.20

  Finally, on July 21, a large three-masted schooner was spotted near Isla de San Andrés. The sailing ship was zigzagging in a manner more akin to anti-submarine maneuvers than tacking into the wind. Loewe ordered his men to battle stations and the main deck gun manned. “Fire a shot over her bow, so we can find out who she is,” said Loewe to Lt.z.S. Gottfried Stolzenburg, the boat’s II.W.O. (Second Watch Officer). Unfortunately, the shell took down the schooner’s main mast. In a panic, the ship attempted to flee while a Colombian flag was run up the yard: a neutral ship! Loewe guided his boat around the wildly zigzagging schooner, perplexed by its reluctance to halt and present papers to prove its nationality and status. Frustrated and thinking he had little alternative other than to finish the work the single shell had begun, Loewe ordered Stolzenburg to open fire: “Sink that thing—but quick!” Two shots later the 110-ton Roamar from Cartagena was nothing but splintered debris. Goebeler put it more succinctly: “We couldn’t leave the evidence floating around, so we sank her with the deck gun.” U-505 departed the area hastily. The boat’s fortunes were about to dip even lower.

  It was about this time the experienced and respected Loewe was seized by a sudden depression and nervousness, the cause of which seemed to the crew related to the sinking of Roamar. Some of the more superstitious aboard related his condition to the sailor’s persuasion that destroying a sailing ship would bring bad luck. Oblt.z.S. Herbert Nollau, the boat’s I.W.O. (First Watch Officer) assumed more of the mantle of command. Whatever the cause of Loewe’s condition, U-505 dieseled back and forth along the South American coast while the weather continued deteriorating. No other targets were spotted. The commander’s irritability and melancholy infectiously spread through the entire crew. It soon became clear to everyone that Loewe was indeed physically ill. On August 1 he requested and was granted permission to return to Lorient.

  En route to France U-505 gladly accepted 12 tons of fuel from the Milchkuh U-463, a large Type XIV boat, and transferred surplus supplies to the outbound U-214 (including its excess supply of tea, a love of which Loewe had been unable to instill in his crew). U-505 made the return trip without mishap and made landfall in France on August 25 to an enthusiastic reception from Lorient’s sailors, soldiers, nurses, and prostitutes. Once safely ashore Loewe was hospitalized and diagnosed with appendicitis; the infected organ was safely removed. Loewe, however, could not shake the despondency he felt over the way he handled the schooner. He deeply regretted sinking Roamar, which he later learned had been the property of a Colombian diplomat. The attack triggered outrage in the small South American country and may have hastened Columbia’s decision to declare war on Germany. The declaration opened additional airfields to the Allies and helped ring the Caribbean with enemy planes. Dönitz, who noted in the War Diary the sinking “had better been left undone,” respected Loewe and recognized his excellent leadership abilities and keen intellect. Loewe was relieved of his command and assigned to the staff of Korvettenkapitän Hans-Rudolf Rösing (FdU West) as Referent W (attached as Rösing’s representative to BdU Ops to deal with armament logistics for the western U-boats).21

  U-505’s deployment to the Caribbean was the third consecutive poor return for the expensive and time-consuming commitment of a Type IX boat to the far western Atlantic. Although there had been periods of tremendous frustration during his brief tenure, Loewe had proven himself a capable captain. His crewmen were distraught at the loss of their commander, with whom they had developed a close and trusting bond. Their mood lifted somewhat when news reached them that their new captain, Oblt.z.S. Peter Zschech, had served as I.W.O. aboard Johann “Jochen” Mohr’s fabled U-124. Better known as the “Edelweiss boat,” U-124 had carved out a formidable reputation within the U-boat service and in newspapers across Germany. At age 26, Mohr was as renowned for his ability in combat as his irrepressible sense of humor. Zschech had served at Mohr’s side for nearly a year, during which time Mohr had earned a coveted Knight’s Cross.22

  Peter Zschech, a native of Constantinople, was nine years younger than Loewe and the youngest member of the Class of 1936. After service with destroyers (he saw combat aboard the Hermann Schoemann and Friedrich Ihn during the war’s early months) Zschech transferred to the U-boat service in the fall of 1940. Superiors and comrades alike found him intelligent, thoughtful, friendly, and a natural leader. His four patrols aboard U-124— during which the boat sent nearly 100,000 tons of shipping (including a light cruiser and corvette) to the bottom—served to confirm these estimations of his abilities. Zschech was more than ready for his own boat, and everyone aboard U-505 hoped his impressive credentials would bring them renewed success. “We all felt we were in good hands,” wrote Hans Decker after the war.23

  But the crew developed serious misgivings about their new captain even before leaving on their next patrol. Zschech’s style of command was radically diff
erent from Loewe’s. Gone was the unruffled and often informal atmosphere of authority the latter had utilized. Unlike Loewe, Zschech remained aloof from his crew and aristocratic in his mannerisms and attitude toward them. As the men quickly discovered, his detachment masked a mercurial temper that flared with the slightest provocation. His first order to them did nothing to endear him to his men: they would undertake training in infantry combat while U-505 was being refitted (a lengthy procedure that also included the installation of a new Metox radar detection system).24

  While his men grumbled about the pointlessness of their repetitive drilling, marching, and shooting, the officer structure aboard U-505 also changed. Herbert Nollau, the boat’s I.W.O., left to begin his own commander training. He was replaced by Oblt.z.S. Thilo Bode, a member of Zschech’s 1936 officer’s crew.25 Bode did not endear himself to U-505’s men, either. A former Flak artillery battery commander and division chief aboard the destroyer Theodor Riedel, Bode was a harsh disciplinarian who rode those beneath him without pause while maintaining a strong and rather secretive friendship with his crewmate Zschech. Goebeler, in his compelling autobiography of his time as a Maschinenobergefreiter aboard U-505, makes clear his own strong dislike of both Zschech and Bode, and believed their friendly relationship and inability to relate well to the men made it difficult on the crew and hurt morale.26 In time, Bode matured as an officer and later commanded his own boat (U-858) during the war’s final year. It is entirely possible his early attitude aboard U-505 would have been markedly different if he had served under the direction of a more effective captain.