Steel Boat, Iron Hearts

by Hans Goebeler

  The month of May welcomed us with a heavy thunderstorm. Spectacular lightning displays flashed around us all day long. Some of us were worried a nearby lightning strike might set-off the T-5 torpedo still stuck in our flooded Tube #2. When the storm finally cleared, nothing but yawning openness greeted the searching eyes of our bridge watch. Lange used some pretty salty language from his old days as a merchant sailor to describe his frustration at the lack of targets.

  Two days later, our Naxos device failed, as did the cable mechanism used for raising our front periscope. I was assigned to work on the periscope. When we finally got it working, I was allowed to take a peek through the device. I was surprised to discover how close we were to the coast. I was also surprised to see the bright trail of lime green phosphorescence we were leaving in our wake.

  The phosphorescence convinced Lange we had to do something right away to solve our torpedo hatch problem. Some of the boys donned artificial lungs and dove down three meters to manually work on the hatch. After more than 20 hours of labor, they finally freed the hatch mechanism and we were able to pull the T-5 out of the tube.

  For the next several days, we prowled back and forth like a hunting dog sniffing for the scent of its prey. Still, no enemy targets. We were all very nervous and frustrated. I was filled with so much anxiety that I stopped practicing my English lessons.

  Finally, on the afternoon of May 10, we spotted a very large British freighter off our stern. For the first time in a long time we felt the hunter’s blood rise in our veins. The ship was well over 10,000 tons and would put our total tonnage sunk over the magic 50,000 mark. We had traveled more than 4,300 miles so far on this patrol, and we were absolutely mad to sink this enemy vessel. Lange wheeled us around and we gave chase. The freighter, however, was a very fast one. Even at top speed, our diesels could only give us a 2-knot speed advantage over her.

  Our diesels seemed to be running fine, but the starboard engine must have been burning some oil because it was blowing a cloud of blue smoke out the exhaust. Well, someone else must have noticed the smoke the same time we did, because our skipper spotted a destroyer coming up over the horizon toward us at great speed. A quick check with the silhouette recognition book showed her to be an Atherstone-class escort, one of the Royal Navy’s most modern and dangerous types. There was no time to maneuver out of the way, so Lange ordered us down to periscope depth and prepared one of the T-5 “Destroyer Killer” torpedoes for firing.

  The escort’s skipper was clever, too. Instead of barreling in straight for us, the destroyer began employing the “sprint and coast” method of submarine hunting. This tactic consisted of short, high-speed runs followed by minute-long coasts with the engines switched off. This allowed the escort’s sound detection gear to better locate a submerged sub. At the same time, he would get no closer to us than five miles, so we had no opportunity to fire our torpedo. After a couple of hours of pinning us down underwater, the escort suddenly moved off at rapid speed to rejoin the freighter, now at a safe distance from us. It was a fine display of seamanship by that escort’s commander.

  After all the excitement of the chase, the disappointment of another missed opportunity hit us very hard. Even Lange missed some sleep that night, fretting about our miserable luck. For the next several days we sailed up and down the African coast between Cape Palmas and Cape Three Points, but with no luck. We even poked our noses into the harbor mouths of some ports on the Ivory and Gold Coasts—still no enemy ships. At one point, the officers even discussed hitting some targets on shore with our anti-aircraft guns, but we couldn’t even find any worthy targets ashore. We eventually turned tail and returned to deeper water. Neptune marked our departure by granting us another hair-raising encounter with “St. Elmo’s Fire.”

  We sailed back up the coast towards Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. We had several close shaves with bombers and flying boats before we realized both our new FuMO radar device and our Naxos radar detector were totally out of order. We had a couple of other mechanical breakdowns, too. We weren’t sure whether it was more sabotage or just the declining quality of war materiel that was causing our difficulties. Luckily, the technical boys partially repaired our Naxos radar detector, so we still had some measure of warning of approaching enemy aircraft, at least on some wavelengths.

  The next couple of weeks passed monotonously with no sightings of enemy shipping. Finally, near the end of May, the Old Man decided he had had enough. Hanging around in this African backwater with no targets to attack was a waste of a valuable U-boat. He turned us north, intending to dog-leg our way across the Allied shipping lanes back to Lorient. We were pretty disappointed, but still held out hope that we would stumble across targets on the way back. How could it be that, in an ocean full of thousands of ships, we had not had the chance to fire one torpedo?

  On May 30, after several quiet days, we were inundated with almost non-stop radar warnings. A hornet’s nest of enemy aircraft had suddenly descended upon our heads. That night, we heard several depth charges exploding in the distance to the west. This many aircraft so far away from any major Allied airbases convinced our skipper that an anti-submarine search group, one of the so-called “Hunter-Killer” task forces built around an aircraft carrier, was operating in the area—or on our tail. Lange was absolutely right. A carrier task force, one that had sunk our sister boats U-68 and U-515 just a few weeks earlier, was hunting for us.

  We knew we were in a very tight spot. For three days, we couldn’t surface for more than a few minutes before our radar warning gear let out its scream of alarm. The air inside the boat grew so stale we were forced to don the hated personal re-breathing devices to stay alive. Even worse, our battery charge was reaching a critically low level. We had to get out of the area, but how? It was one thing to avoid destruction at the hands of destroyers escorting a convoy, because eventually they must move on with the rest of the ships. But the diabolical aircraft carrier groups almost always meant the destruction of any U-boat unlucky enough to be cornered by them, because our subs simply didn’t have the underwater range to escape the carrier’s airplanes. We knew if we were caught in the web of one of these “Hunter-Killer” task forces, all hope would be lost.

  The situation called for something clever, and our crafty old skipper came up with just the right plan. He knew the enemy was well acquainted with our need to regularly surface, as well of our habit of doing so under the cover of night. As a result, we noticed that enemy radar vigilance sometimes relaxed a bit once the sun rose. After all, what U-boat would be crazy enough to run surfaced in broad daylight?

  Well, that’s exactly what Lange ordered us to do: make a high-speed run back toward the African coast during daylight hours. We made our move on the afternoon of June 3. Blowing our tanks, we surfaced to find the sky empty of clouds and planes. The Jumbos roared to life and we began our dash away from the bright setting sun. We saw a few Allied aircraft passing high overhead during the next couple of hours, but none of them took any notice of us.

  We submerged after we had traveled what we considered a sufficient distance. We were a very happy crew that night! The next day, we resumed our usual routine, cruising underwater during daylight and surfacing under cover of night. For the first time in a long time, we were able to surface without immediately being sent to the basement by a Naxos alarm.

  Heavens, how proud we were of our foxy old skipper! Our mood was almost giddy. Talk began to center on our return voyage to Lorient, and what we would do when we got there. With the carrier group off our backs, we boasted, we might even put a couple of freighters in the bag before we got back.

  Unbeknownst to either side, we and the American “Hunter-Killer” group, composed of an aircraft carrier and five destroyer-escorts, were unwittingly headed on intercept courses. Fate decreed that we would meet the next day.

  Chapter 15

  Captured!

  June 4, 1944, began like any other day. Indeed, there was nothing that set it apart in my mind at
the time except that it was a Sunday. We were low on oxygen, so everyone not on duty was confined to their bunks to conserve air. I laid there in that stinking bunk, whispering prayers from the little black Bible my mother had given me when I joined the Kriegsmarine. In her dedication to me on the inside cover of the Bible, she had noted the passage from Romans 13:10:

  Love worketh no ill to his neighbor;

  Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

  The tender message she held so close to her heart seemed bitterly ironic given the life or death struggle we faced here at sea.

  By noon, I was back on duty in the control room. The smell of hot coffee wafted through the boat and I remember wondering, rather absentmindedly, what was for lunch. It was a this moment our hydrophone sound man reported faint propeller noises coming from several distant points off our stern. The skipper thought a convoy might have blundered across our path. It never occurred to any of us that the damned carrier task force might have accidentally intercepted us. After a quick word with the Exec, Lange ordered us up to periscope depth to investigate the noise.

  We rose toward the surface very slowly, anxious not to cause too much turbulence in the water with our periscope mast. As we neared periscope depth, the order went out for torpedo battle stations. After weeks of frustrated waiting, we were all very excited at the prospect of finally drawing blood. Lange climbed up to the conning tower to take a peek through the scope at our targets.

  No sooner had the periscope breached the surface than we heard the Old Man’s booming voice shout out, “Destroyer!” In fact, as he scanned back and forth, he counted three enemy destroyers, all virtually on top of us and roaring in for the attack. He yelled out that there were also planes overhead and a vessel that was probably a small aircraft carrier in the distance. Our underwater sound equipment was obviously faulty, which allowed the “Hunter-Killer” task force we thought we had escaped to creep right up on top of us. Our most dreaded fear had come true.

  We blindly fired one torpedo in the general direction of the carrier, more to create a distraction than in any hope of actually hitting the target. Then the skipper ordered us to dive for the basement. Our only chance of survival was to get down to our maximum depth and hope we could once again ride out another prolonged beating from depth charges.

  As we began to leave the surface, we heard the unmistakable sound of a destroyer’s high-speed propellers approach, louder than we’ve ever heard them before. A few seconds later, and at point-blank range, the destroyer fired a full salvo of “Hedgehogs,” the Allies’ deadly antisubmarine mortars. Somehow the shotgun pattern of Hedgehogs missed us as we started a series of violent evasive maneuvers to throw off our attackers.

  We were beginning to think we might have a chance to escape when we suddenly heard a loud metallic “clinking” noise coming from above our heads. Everyone in the compartment looked at each other in puzzlement, trying to guess the meaning of such a sound. We were quite familiar with every underwater noise a wartime submarine was ever likely to encounter, but this one was completely new. The majority opinion thought it sounded like the links of a heavy chain being dragged across our hull. When I heard that suggestion, a cold chill ran through my blood and I instinctively grabbed for something to hold on to. Surely the noise meant we had snagged the mooring chain of a mine and that a fatal wall of water would come crashing through the hull any second.

  After a few seconds, however, the sound ceased. In my blissful ignorance, I thought the danger was over and I allowed myself to relax a bit. What we didn’t realize at the time was that the sound was actually caused by heavy .50 caliber machine gun bullets hitting the hull of our boat as we descended into the depths! The bullets were being fired by a couple of fighter planes launched by the American aircraft carrier lying just a few miles off our stern. Freakishly clear water conditions had allowed the enemy pilots to spot our boat, despite our depth.

  A short time later, while we were still only about 60 meters deep, the depth charges began to explode. The first few charges were close, and the next few even closer. Then, two ear-shattering detonations sent us flying off our feet. The boat almost keeled over from the force of one of the blasts. We had experienced many close depth charge explosions before, but the impact of those devils was the biggest by far. We found out later that the Americans were using giant 600-pound depth charges on us.

  All the lights went out, but we didn’t need our eyes to tell us we were taking on water in the control room. The leak was small, but the water coming in was at such high pressure that, if you accidentally blundered into the stream, it felt like being burned by a hot iron. Perhaps it was just fear, but I began to feel the air pressure squeezing against my chest and ears as I imagined seawater filling the control room bilge. Luckily, the leak was manageable and was probably coming from a sprung valve or pipe because the pressure hull seemed to be holding up. Nevertheless, I prayed our pumps could catch up with the intake of water; otherwise, it was only a matter of time before our boat sank like a stone to the ocean floor.

  When the emergency lighting came on, we tried to operate our equipment, only to discover that all electrical devices were dead. Despite the gravity of the situation, everyone stayed relatively calm, awaiting our skipper’s orders. After all, we had survived Sillcock’s attack, and we were still confident we could handle just about anything.

  A moment later, however, more bad news came in. Reports from the rear compartments told of severe flooding in the aft torpedo room. Lange ordered the compartment to be evacuated and its watertight hatch clamped shut.

  No sooner was that done than we heard the worst news of all: the helmsman reported our main rudder was jammed. Our boat was stuck turning in a tight starboard circle, totally out of control. There was an emergency method for steering the boat manually, but the auxiliary rudder control hand wheel could only be operated from the evacuated aft torpedo room.

  When word got around that we had lost steering control, we knew for sure that our beloved U-505 was doomed. Lange ordered us to surface. The Old Man didn’t have to tell us that, one way or another, the war would be over for us in just a few more minutes.

  The only question on our mind was when the skipper would order us to abandon ship. But to abandon ship, we first needed to get back to the surface. No one except those of us in the control room knew our sub was still plummeting toward the bottom in an uncontrolled dive. We frantically worked the controls to pull us up, but we discovered the diving planes were jammed in a downward position and that some of the ballast tank valves were not responding. We desperately tried every trick in the book to pump enough air into the tanks before we passed our crush depth. Something must have worked because our boat’s descent finally stopped, and we began to rise to the surface. I am unsure how deep we had sunk.

  Everyone assumed we would get the “abandon ship” order as soon as we got to the surface, but there was always the chance our skipper would order “battle stations surface” instead. Of course, we had heard several stories about damaged U-boats that had been forced to fight it out on the surface with single escorts, but not many of those stories had happy endings for the U-boat crews.

  In our situation, we were facing a half-dozen enemy warships supported by war planes. Those were impossible odds—even for a U-boat in perfect condition. The piece de resistance, of course, was that we were in far from perfect condition. We had no steering or diving control, no rear torpedo tubes, and already had a breach in the hull to boot. Even the greenest midshipman could tell we had zero chance of victory. Only a madman or a butcher of a skipper would have even considered ordering his crew to fight it out under these conditions. Still, it was Lange’s decision to make, and we control room mates considered it a matter of honor not to move to abandon ship until the skipper gave the word.

  Our electric motors were working fine, but because of the jammed diving planes, the old U-505 seemed sluggish in returning us to the surface. It probably only took a minute or two or so f
or us to get back up, but it seemed like forever.

  No sooner had the top of our bridge poked itself above the waves than we began to hear the bell-like clang of enemy bullets slamming into our conning tower. A moment later, the heavy stuff started arriving. Our whole boat shook with the concussion of cannon shells and depth charges straddling our hull. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was scared. I felt like a trapped rat—terrified to face the hail of fire hitting us on the outside, but knowing that in another minute our boat and anyone in it would be heading on a one-way trip to the bottom.

  In a dire crisis like this, there is only one man who can break the inertia of fear and indecision that can grip a crew: the skipper. Lange was never one to ask anybody to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself, so he didn’t hesitate one second. Pushing the watch crew aside, Lange made sure that he was the first one up the ladder to the bridge to assess the situation, despite the danger.

  It seemed like certain death for anyone to step out into the firestorm of bullets out there, but the Old Man knew it was his duty to check the situation for himself and decide whether we should fight or immediately abandon ship. He popped open the hatch and bravely climbed out onto the bridge, followed closely by our Exec Paul Meyer and the members of the bridge watch crew.

  Within the blink of an eye, our skipper was cut down by shrapnel from a shell that hit our upper deck. A moment later, a swarm of fighters swooped down and sprayed the conning tower with heavy machine gun fire. Most of the bridge watch were wounded, but some boys still managed to make it to the anti-aircraft guns and fire back at the planes. Paul Meyer had tried to man one of the guns, but he too was hit and fell to the deck, blood streaming over his face.

  Despite frightening leg wounds, Lange crawled back to the conning tower hatch and shouted down to us the order to scuttle and abandon ship. That was all the Raccoon, our Chief Engineering Officer, needed to hear. He was standing right next to me when he started screaming, “Out, out! We’re sinking!”