The enemy immediately detected our presence and sent the full force of their air power against us. We had no choice now but to reverse course and made a run for it. We had narrow escapes from five separate air attacks before we finally shook free of the Trinidad hornet’s nest. It was a miracle we made it out of those shallow waters alive. Luckily for us, the weather started getting rough once the sun set, grounding the enemy planes.
Once we were safely out in open sea, we attempted a quick sprint using our diesel. But as luck would have it, the big rolling waves were crashing against our damaged port side. One particularly large wave knocked one of the remaining torpedo storage tubes loose. With every swell, it would swing back and forth, smashing against the diesel exhaust pipe. The storage tube was still loaded with a live torpedo, and if it detonated, we would be finished in an instant. All off-duty personnel were assigned the task of lashing down the loose canister. Unfortunately, the loading rails beneath the torpedo were crushed and we had no tools to properly deal with the situation. Meanwhile, the weather worsened. The waves, now towering, cresting breakers, kept snapping the tie-downs we were using to secure the canister. Every time the ties broke, the canister swung out a bit more, causing even more damage when it swung back inboard.
Everyone was mad as hell at Zschech. We wouldn’t have been caught in that storm if we hadn’t wasted all that time in the harbor. Fortunately for us, the sound of the crashing waves and pounding metal prevented the Exec from hearing our curses. In the end, we had to lift the 3,400-pound torpedo out by hand and drop it overboard. It took us twelve hours to finally get rid of the damned thing. We thanked God that no one was crushed or thrown overboard during the storm.
We stumbled like sleepwalkers toward our bunks. Our voices were hoarse from shouting over the roar of the surf, and our hair was as stiff as straw with wind-blown salt. Most of us also had deep lacerations on our hands from the sharp edges of torn metal. But as every sailor knows, the sea gives in equal measure to what she takes. The salt water acted as a sort of natural first aid, helping to stop the bleeding and close the wounds. The cuts itched like crazy, but they healed quickly.
A bit after midnight, we received a message from Headquarters directing us to rendezvous in Sea Square EH6555 with two other U-boats. Zschech radioed back with a detailed description of our boat’s condition. It was staggering to hear the complete catalog of damage we had sustained.
A few hours later, we got the official order to end our operational patrol and return to base after the rendezvous. We crew members were enormously relieved to hear the news. This for sure, we thought, would put an end to Zschech’s reckless attempts to sink another enemy ship. The consensus of our feelings: get U-505 back to Lorient, put her back into shape, then have another go at the enemy.
As day broke on the 17th, we were told another damaged torpedo had to be thrown overboard. Like zombies, we clambered up the ladder to the upper deck to once again hand-wrestle one of the giant “eels” out of its storage tube. This one’s warhead was heavily damaged, adding an additional worry to the exercise.
“Watch out, boys, that beast is as dangerous as a big shark!” yelled the crew chief over the thunder of the pounding waves.
It took every single ounce of our physical and spiritual strength, but by timing our efforts with the heave of the waves, we were finally able to slide the torpedo off the stern of the boat.
That night we crawled into our bunks thinking that for the first time in three days, the off-watch crew would get some sleep. For a few hours we reposed in the sleep of the dead. Then, suddenly, someone began shouting in our ears to get up. I remember blindly following the sailor in front of me towards the ladder to the bridge, more asleep than awake. Then Neptune gave us a wet welcome, showering us with the water from a giant wave that crested over the top of the conning tower. Fully awake now, we lashed ourselves to the railings and once again began to work on the topside damage. From the corners of our eyes we could see Zschech appearing on the bridge every twenty minutes or so, nervously scanning the horizon. Most of the crew assumed he was on the lookout for enemy aircraft, helping to keep us safe on our return journey. But we control room mates suspected a darker truth: he was looking for a target, still desperate to sink another ship before returning to Lorient.
We worked on the upper deck until it was time for us to start our regular duty in the control room. As we staggered down the ladder to our duty stations below, we were treated to another example of our Executive Officer’s sadistic sense of humor. There before us was Thilo Bode, chasing a young seaman through the main passageway of the boat.
“I’ll teach you to walk faster!” he screamed, as the frightened boy struggled to drag a heavy sea bag behind him.
Earlier, the Exec had told some torpedo room mates to fill a bag with about three hundred pounds of heavy metal items, then ordered the boy to carry it to the control room. When the boy couldn’t lift the bag, Bode began screaming in his ear and chasing him throughout the length of the boat.
Zschech and a couple of his sycophant officers thought this was uproariously funny, but none of us crewmen laughed. Don’t get me wrong, we all thought there was a proper time and place for the playful hazing of new recruits. After all, a little harmless harassment has always been part of the traditional ritual of becoming accepted as a member of an elite unit. That has been true in virtually every army in the world throughout history. But there was no sense in what this officer was doing. It was plain cruelty, made all the more senseless by our exhaustion and precarious situation. Besides, the bag would have blocked the passageway in an emergency. We felt as if our boat had become an insane asylum.
The work and abuse continued unabated as our one good engine slowly propelled us back to Lorient. I don’t know what secret reserve of spiritual energy enabled us to persist day after day without rebelling, but we did. Long after the emergency repairs were completed, Zschech kept running us to the point of collapse, with no regard to our health. It was as if he were exorcizing his own frustrations and disappointments by making us suffer.
Zschech seemed to be equally unconcerned about the wounded men. I don’t recall ever seeing him expressing any interest in their welfare. The injured enlisted man had received some ugly-looking head wounds that bled profusely for several hours after the attack. He went into a deep coma, but when he awoke a few days later, he seemed much better. We reckoned that he had suffered a severe concussion and some bad scalp lacerations, but nothing life threatening. Nevertheless, he was bedridden for weeks to come.
The other two men were in much more serious condition. Both had metal splinters penetrating their skulls and we suspected they also had crushed ribs. Leutnant Stolzenburg’s plight was especially worrisome to us. He was coughing up blood, and when we submerged, his breathing became very labored. Our medic guessed that his lungs had been punctured, but he had no way of properly diagnosing or treating internal injuries. During the Leutnant’s brief periods of consciousness, he hallucinated and often lapsed into violent seizures.
We all pondered the irony of why, of all the officers, it had been Stolzenburg who had been wounded. After all, it was he who had warned Zschech about throwing away the unlucky flowers and about doubling the bridge watch the day of Sillcock’s attack. Superstitious scuttlebutt making its rounds through the boat maintained that Zschech was cursed, and that righteous innocents like poor Stolzenburg were the ones who would pay for the skipper’s sins.
I also felt very bad for the third wounded man, a Petty Officer. He was the one who, after being wounded, had fallen down through the conning tower hatches and landed unconscious at my feet in the control room. He was in very bad shape: deaf, with burns and splinter wounds all over his body.
He was quite old for a U-boat crewman, easily in his late twenties or early thirties. He originally had a comfortable job in the Flotilla Staff, but his insatiable desire to earn a golden U-boat badge led him to volunteer for duty aboard a frontline boat. As luck would have it
, Zschech had already made it impossible for him to achieve his dream. A couple of weeks before Sillcock’s attack, Zschech was storming through the front hatch into the control room when he collided with the Petty Officer, knocking the man off his feet. The fellow instinctively grabbed the only thing in reach that would break his fall: the skipper’s shirt. Zschech angrily pushed him aside, whereupon the poor man fell onto the navigator’s table, breaking an exposed light bulb.
With the hissing sound of a snake, Zschech turned around and summarily gave the petty officer his punishment for clumsiness…five days under close arrest. That stain on his record effectively ended the man’s naval career, not to mention making it impossible for him to earn one of the U-boat badges he coveted so much. And now he had suffered these terrible injuries, also (arguably) because of Zschech.
The fact that Zschech was so unconcerned about the condition of these men made us shake our heads in disbelief. Even the oldest salts in the crew had never seen a skipper such as this! As the days passed, exhaustion, desperation, and hatred began to fuse into a single white-hot flame of indistinguishable emotion that burned at the cores of our souls. We were German sailors and there was never any question of disobedience, much less mutiny. But, my God, how we loathed that man Peter Zschech!
On the morning of the 22nd we rendezvoused with U-68 and the Milk Cow supply submarine U-462. U-332 was also in the vicinity, but she loitered in the distance, providing anti-aircraft protection while waiting her turn to get a drink of diesel fuel.
We got a few spare parts from U-68, but most of our assistance came from the fat-bellied U-462. We took on all sorts of needed parts, tools, food, and fuel from her. While we stowed the equipment and took on diesel fuel, a doctor came aboard and checked the condition of the wounded men. Stolzenburg, who was in the worst condition, was transferred to U-462 for emergency surgery. As a replacement for Stolzenburg, Leutnant Knocke joined our crew as our new Second Watch Officer.
My job was helping to load fresh provisions into the food lockers. We took the opportunity to divert several rings of hard salami and knockwurst into various hiding places in the control room, right under the noses of the officers. Toni the cook, who was supervising the stowage of food, saw what was happening and gave us the go-ahead with a discrete wink of his eye. Toni not only let us get away with the theft, he himself contributed some food to our secret larder. When we checked on what he had squirreled away, we were surprised to find several cans of goose liver paté with whole truffles, expensive delicacies obviously meant for the officers’ mess. Good old Toni! He knew whose hard work had earned those gourmet treats.
Gottfried Stolzenburg, U-505’s II.W.O., was nearly killed standing on the conning tower when Sillcock’s Hudson shot down and dropped its depth-charges. Stolzenburg’s head, rib and lung injuries required a transfer to another U-boat, where he underwent life-saving surgery. He is shown above smiling his thanks to a comrade as he is hauled aboard U-462, a Type XIV under the command of Bruno Vowe. Author’s Collection
From then on, whenever someone from the control room or diesel engine room wanted a snack, we communicated through secret eye gestures to signal when the coast was clear to grab a bite. The officers never suspected a thing. It all went to prove the wisdom of the old folk saying, “Redn ist Silber, Schweigen ist Gold” (Talk is silver, but silence is gold).
I suppose we should have been ashamed for stealing that food, but we weren’t. After all, once we had been re-supplied by U-462, we all had plenty to eat. We weren’t taking anything out of anyone’s mouth, just rewarding ourselves for a job well done. If Zschech had half the common sense and humanity of Kapitänleutnant Löwe, we would have never dreamed of doing such a thing in the first place. As it was, eating the officers’ liver pate became more than just a supplement to our diet; it was a tiny act of rebellion. To sneak up to the fresh open air of the bridge and enjoy one of those forbidden little snacks became an almost spiritual experience. It was, if only for a moment, like we were escaping from a universe ruled by a mad god.
After we finished taking on supplies from the Milk Cow, we sent a FT to Dönitz’s Headquarters advising them that we were on our way home. We all breathed a sigh of relief that in less than three weeks, we would be back, safe and sound in Lorient.
The fates, however, were not content to let us return quietly to base. The very next day, Zschech spotted the mast tops of a freighter off the starboard bow. He immediately ordered that we give chase. Unfortunately, our one working diesel engine couldn’t propel us fast enough to catch the ship hovering so tantalizingly just over the horizon.
Just before midnight, though, a lucky course change by the freighter allowed us to move within firing range. Zschech ordered us down to periscope depth to make an attack, but our leaking diving tanks wouldn’t allow us to maintain a steady depth. Characteristically, Zschech turned beet-red with anger and blamed the Engineering Officer for everything. Almost everyone in the control room shook their heads over the skipper’s pathetic behavior.
We continued to chase the ship underwater until our battery power ran dangerously low. At long last, Zschech ordered us to stand down from battle stations. There was no rest for us, however, and we continued working 18-hour days. Because of my training as a diesel mechanic, I spent most of my time working on the port Jumbo.
The very next night, we stumbled across another freighter of 6,000 tons. We fired two torpedoes at long range, both of which missed. The speed of the target had been triple-checked, so we knew it wasn’t Zschech’s fault this time. It was the opinion of the torpedo mechanics that our torpedoes missed because the delicate steering gyros within the weapons had been damaged by the shock from Sillcock’s depth charges. The mechanics considered any further firing of the torpedoes to be a waste, not to mention very dangerous.
Their opinion didn’t dampen Zschech’s fixation with scoring another kill. He ordered the diesel to be run at its highest speed in order to line-up another shot. The old engine was hissing and pounding, giving every indication of being ready to blow a piston. Now it was the engine room boys’ turn to think Zschech had gone insane. They pleaded with him to reduce RPMs. After all, if our remaining diesel broke-down, we would be stranded in the middle of the Atlantic with zero chance of survival.
Zschech ignored them until we had pulled close enough to fire another torpedo at long range. There was no excitement surrounding the firing of the weapon, for we crewmen had no expectation that it would hit. As anticipated, it was a miss. I’m not sure we could have reacted even if the torpedo hit, since most of us had been working without sleep for more than 72 hours, and some of us were literally sleeping on our feet.
About 45 minutes later, Zschech ordered yet another torpedo to be fired. The distance to the quickly-vanishing target was approximately 4,000 meters—the very limit of the weapon’s theoretical range. When Löwe was our skipper, he seldom fired a torpedo at a target further than 1,000 meters away, and never more than 1,500 meters distant. With each torpedo fired, more and more of us became convinced that Zschech was quite literally insane.
As for me, I was lost in a sleep-deprived reverie about our predicament. With a chill, I remembered the captain in Moby Dick, and how his obsessive pursuit of the whale eventually destroyed himself and his ship. My mind was a million miles away when, suddenly, we heard a loud metallic clang on the side of our hull. The torpedo we had just fired had circled around and struck the side of our boat! A few minutes later, we heard the faint rumbling sound of a torpedo exploding at great depth.
Evidently, the torpedo had a damaged steering or guidance mechanism that caused it to circle instead of running straight and true. After hitting our hull, the eel must have kept circling until its batteries ran dry. Once its motor stopped running, it sank, finally detonating on the ocean floor far below us.
Zschech ordered us deeper in case other torpedoes were circling around us. As our boat slowly submerged, one of the damaged exhaust valves stuck in the open position, causing
water to flood into one of the buoyancy tanks. The sudden increase in weight made our boat plummet downward in a rapid, uncontrolled dive. We sank to a dangerous depth before we were finally able to pull our boat’s bow up and power our way back to the surface with electric motors. Our double brush with death finally shook Zschech out of his blood lust. We gave up the fruitless chase of the freighter and resumed a course for home. Zschech went to sulk in his cabin, the wind completely taken out of his sails.
We surfaced the next morning to examine the spot where our errant torpedo had hit the hull. We couldn’t see any damage, but once we were back in port and in dry dock, we found a gouging dent in our boat’s side. It was apparent from the damage that the torpedo had struck us at a very narrow angle from behind. Evidently, the angle was too small to detonate the contact pistol fuse in the firing mechanism, so the torpedo merely bounced away. If the torpedo had been armed with a magnetic detonator, or if there had been a few more degrees on the angle at which it struck us, we would have all been food for the fishes.
During the war, several submarines were struck by their own malfunctioning torpedoes. U-505 may be the only one to have ever survived the actual experience. Incidents like this make me wonder how anyone in his right mind could call U-505 an unlucky boat, as several writers and commentators had done since the war ended.
We continued to plod eastward back to Lorient. At that point in the war, the Allies still hadn’t plugged the mid-Atlantic “air gap” with their aircraft carriers, so we were able to make fairly good progress on the surface, even with only one good engine. While our morale was soaring with anticipation stepping onto dry land, Zschech isolated himself in his little cabin, wallowing in gloom and self-pity.
On the afternoon of November 30, we rendezvoused with yet another Milk Cow, Stiebler’s U-461. This boat gave us a replacement antenna cross for our Metox radar detector in preparation for our passing through the Biscay “Suicide Stretch.” Stiebler also sent over a sick sailor for us to transport back to base. The unlucky lad had contracted a venereal disease back in Lorient and was in deep trouble for his indiscretion. To make matters worse, the doctor who had transferred over to us from U-462 ordered the infected sailor to be quarantined. The poor guy spent the next eleven days in isolation, confined to the small forward bathroom that in normal times functioned as our spare food locker.
Steel Boat, Iron Hearts Page 12
