When Baker-Cresswell took the Bulldog off the screen to start the hunt for U.110 a few minutes after noon, Lieutenant-Commander Roper of the Amazon took charge of the escort. He stationed his own ship and the Hollyhock ahead of the convoy, and ordered the Nigella to move across to cover the starboard beam. The trawler Daneman was already on the port beam, but the St. Apollo was still picking up the Bengore Head’s survivors, while the third trawler, the Angle, which had been with the convoy since it set out from Britain, had just been detached to Iceland because she was running short of fuel.1 Roper thus had only four ships with him—a very tenuous screen for a large convoy; and a signal from Lieutenant T. W. Coyne, R.N.R., of the Nigella reporting that his Asdic set was out of action made matters even worse; for Roper realised that the whole starboard side of the convoy was thus virtually unprotected. Without a moment’s hesitation he increased speed, swung round his Amazon and swept down the exposed flank.
Meanwhile Commodore Mackenzie had made another emergency turn to port, bringing the convoy on to course South 40° East (true); and at about the same moment the A.M.C. Ranpura reported sighting a periscope I½ miles to the west of her. It was a sharp-eyed Able Seaman named Cyril Edward Madden who first saw it, and he was later “ mentioned in dispatches ” for his alertness. A few minutes after the Ranpura, the Chaucer (No. 82) also reported sighting the periscope; but these glimpses of a new enemy did not save the convoy from further attack. At 12.28 p.m. the Empire Cloud (No. 92) and the Gregalia (No. 72), which had both been placed virtually at the rear of the convoy by the two recently executed emergency turns, were torpedoed almost simultaneously on their starboard sides. The Amazon was only about 6 cables (1,200 yards) from the Empire Cloud when she was struck, and Roper promptly dropped a depth charge and altered towards the convoy. At 12.29 his Asdic produced a contact only 500 yards ahead which he immediately classified as “ submarine.” There is no doubt that this was Schnee’s U.201, which had followed Lemp’s U.110 after precisely half an hour’s interval—as the two U-boat commanders had agreed.
Schnee’s report states that he started to move in to attack just before 11 a.m., but was forced to dive by “ two destroyers,” and dared not risk surfacing again. He therefore remained submerged, and used his periscope only very occasionally. He passed between two of the escorts on the screen ahead of the convoy (presumably the Amazon and Hollyhock), and dived under what he described as an “ auxiliary vessel ” at the head of Column 8.1
At 12.26 he fired two torpedoes from his bow tubes at a “ 12,000-ton transport ” (actually the Empire Cloud of 5,968 tons), and claimed that both hit. Two minutes later he fired a stern torpedo tube at a “ 6,000-ton freighter ”, and heard another explosion. This must have been the hit on the Gregalia. A “ zig-zag by the convoy ”—probably the emergency turn ordered by the Commodore—then forced him to dive, and “ almost at once a well-placed pattern of depth charges ” made him go deeper. This marked the beginning of a prolonged counter-attack by the Amazon, Nigella and St. Apollo.
With two merchantmen apparently sinking, a U-boat very close to the convoy, one of his four ships without Asdic, and his own Amazon very short of depth charges, Roper had to face a difficult situation. The first and plainest need was to keep the U-boat down, and he himself therefore made an immediate “ pounce ” attack. Five depth charges were dropped (settings 150–385 feet), after which he lost contact, but soon regained it at 1,000 yards range. He now had only seven depth charges left, and for his second attack at 12.34 did not dare expend more than three of them. After the plumes had subsided he once more regained firm contact, but the Amazon could now do little more than direct the attacks of other ships. Lieutenant Davies of the Hollyhock had meanwhile been told to take charge of the convoy, and Lieutenant Coyne’s Nigella was coming across to join in the hunt.
At 12.45 Roper released a single depth charge on his contact, and ordered Coyne to add a full pattern by eye. This was unlikely to produce results, but it was the best that could be done. Then, seeing the Empire Cloud’s and Gregalia’s boats pulling their way and “ likely to foul the course ” he told Coyne to pick up the survivors. Captain C. Brown of the Empire Cloud described later how, after his ship was struck he “ looked around ” and found that the engine room and stokehold were flooded, the starboard boats smashed, and water was pouring into No. 4 hold. The port boats were lowered, and in them and on some rafts all except five of his crew of 50 got away safely. The ship meanwhile remained afloat, and on an even keel; but was wholly without motive power. The hole in her starboard side was so large that the men on the Amazon’s bridge could see that her main engines had been blown right across the ship and out of the port side. After the Nigella had rescued the men from the Empire Cloud’s boats Roper signalled for volunteers to reboard the ship, since prospects of salvaging her appeared good. We will return to the subsequent adventures of the damaged ship shortly.
While the Nigella was picking up the Empire Cloud’s men, the Aelybryn (No. 93) had left her position in the convoy and closed the Gregalia’s boats, from which she and another merchantman rescued the entire crew of 52; and Lieutenant Marchington’s St. Apollo was steering to join the Amazon in the hunt for the assailant. It was the little trawler who next reported a contact, quite close to the Empire Cloud; and she quickly made two attacks, each with six depth charges. A few minutes later, just after 1 p.m., the Amazon dropped her last three. Oil and air bubbles came to the surface; but Roper was too old a hand at the game to think such portents proved that he had damaged the enemy. He considered it more likely that the U-boat was merely altering her trim. Next the Nigella dropped a pattern on top of the Amazon’s, after which the contact faded. Roper now ordered a sweep to the north, and the Amazon, Nigella and St. Apollo were steaming slowly in that direction when, just after 3 p.m. the trawler regained contact. Lieutenant Marchington, evidently no respecter of persons, boldly “ signalled to the Amazon to keep clear,” and attacked. The detonation of his pattern was followed by “ a further marked, rather dull explosion and an upheaval of blackish coloured water.” His look-outs hopefully, but too optimistically, shouted “ submarine surfacing ”; but the waters subsided without revealing a black shape, and all that Marchington could do was to mark the position with an oil drum. Next the Nigella attacked with the St. Apollo directing her, after which Roper’s Asdic operator reported hearing 5 or 6 faint underwater explosions; but they may have come from the depth charges which the Bulldog and her consorts were dropping around U.110 a few miles away to the north.1 Between 4 and 4.30 p.m. Marchington made two more attacks. There was now an area of about a square mile covered with oil. As the Esmond, Bengore Head, Empire Cloud and Gregalia were all coal-burning ships, they could not have been the origin of it; the captured U.110 was 3 or 4 miles away, and although the oil might have come from her, or from the Broadway’s damaged fuel tanks, it did seem likely that this third assailant (which we now know to have been U.201) had suffered damage. When, however, 6 p.m. came and none of the ships had regained contact, Roper reported the situation by voice radio to Baker-Cresswell, who was now out of sight to the north. The senior officer decided that the Nigella and St. Apollo should stay on patrol near the position of the last contact, while Roper went to look for the Empire Cloud, which had meanwhile drifted out of sight to the east. He found her still afloat, though down by the stern, and the prospects of salvage still appeared good. By 6.30 p.m. he had rejoined the Nigella and St. Apollo, and transferred some of the Empire Cloud’s crew from them to his own Amazon. Half an hour later the Aubrietia hove in sight, and from her Roper collected a further 27 Merchant Navy survivors, and all the German prisoners. Two of the latter had died on board Smith’s corvette, leaving 32 to be transferred to the Amazon. They had evidently recovered by this time from the shock of the disaster to their own ship, and the loss of so many of their comrades; for Roper’s chief recollection is that their behaviour was so arrogant that his First Lieutenant had difficulty in restraining some of his own ship�
��s company from dealing with them drastically. The simultaneous presence in a small destroyer of a large body of prisoners, who had been captured in such unusual circumstances, and a considerable number of Merchant Navy survivors provided some very tricky problems. Plainly the need for security regarding the manner of the capture of the Germans was paramount, and Roper took steps to emphasise to the Merchant Navy men that on no account must they reveal what they might have seen or heard. Apart from the compartment in which the Germans were confined, the British survivors were allowed the free run of the entire Amazon, whose officers gave up their own cabins and did their utmost to make them comfortable. Great therefore was Roper’s astonishment to learn later that some of the Empire Cloud’s and Bengore Head’s men had complained, on their return to England, that he had “ arrested ” them, and that they had been “ treated as prisoners ” while on board his ship. The complaints reached the Admiralty, who asked Admiral Noble to investigate the matter. A mass of statements was collected, and from them it became obvious that the complaints were utterly without foundation. It was all very strange and unusual; for the Merchant Navy men more commonly expressed their heartfelt appreciation for all that their rescuers did for them. Indeed, as Roper pointed out, he had actually received a letter from the Ulster Steamship Company, owners of the Bengore Head, thanking him for his care for the survivors from their ship; and the Master of the Empire Cloud had actually slept in his own First Lieutenant’s cabin while on board. The probability is that the emphasis placed on security was genuinely misunderstood by a lew of the survivors, and that one or two disgruntled “ sea lawyers ” then fabricated the rest of the story. But the quick action taken by the Admiralty and Admiral Noble to investigate the matter at least showed how deeply the Royal Navy cared for its reputation for wholehearted hospitality towards our merchant seamen in distress.
The transfer of prisoners and survivors from the Aubrietia to the Amazon had to be made in boats which had belonged to the torpedoed merchantmen; for the wind and sea were now rising rapidly, and it was too rough to use warships’ boats. By 9 p.m. the exchange was completed. Roper then sent the Aubrietia and Nigella to the rendezvous with the next east-bound convoy (HX.124), told the St. Apollo to look after the helpless Empire Cloud, round which he himself made a final sweep; and then, just before midnight, he turned the Amazon’s head towards Reykjavik. When he was fifty miles clear he signalled to the Flag Officer in Charge, Iceland, giving the damaged merchantman’s position, and asking for a tug to be sent. That same evening, when all was quiet, Smith of the Aubrietia was discussing the day’s events with his Coxswain, and said he thought they had attacked three different U-boats. He received the confident and cheering reply, “ Sir, we sank three; but we attacked five! ”
So ended the long hunt for Schnee’s U.201. On the British side there appeared to be good grounds for believing that she had been seriously damaged, if not sunk. Captain D. K. Bain, who was the 3rd Escort Group’s administrative authority at Greenock, was confident that the target attacked by the Amazon, Nigella and St. Apollo had been a U-boat, and considered that, although firm evidence was lacking, “ the enemy was probably damaged.” Admiral Noble was rather more optimistic, and in forwarding the report stated it as his opinion that the enemy “ was obviously damaged, and it is considered probable that contact was lost because the U-boat sank outside Asdic range. He sent his congratulations to the three ships concerned.
We are now able to gain a clear view of what actually happened to U.201 from Schnee’s own report. He stated that the counter-attack lasted from 12.30 to 5.05 p.m., during which time he counted 99 depth charges. He took evasive action each time he heard his adversaries moving into attack, but when he discovered that all the charges were exploding above him he varied his depth only slightly. He described our ships as attacking alternately from port and starboard, and laying accurate patterns of four or five depth charges. Throughout the hunt he “ heard the well-known ‘pings’ of our Asdics ”—for which he coined the pleasantly onomatopoeic word “ Ziepsenden ” (which does not appear in the author’s German dictionary)—and also noises “ like gravel being hurled against his hull ”; and he considered that we were dropping small explosive charges to produce echoes from the U-boat. It is difficult to account for the “ gravel,” and we certainly were not using small charges in the manner suggested. By 7 p.m. he was still hearing Asdic “ pings,” but no propeller noises; so he came quietly up to periscope depth, only to sight two anti-submarine vessels. They, however, did not see his periscope, and he was able to creep away in safety “ at quietest speed.” We cannot be quite sure which of the 3rd Escort Group Schnee sighted when he took his cautious look around; but the balance of probability seems to lie with the Amazon and Aubrietia which, as we have seen, were stopped and engaged in the transfer of the prisoners and Merchant Navy survivors at exactly that time. It is, however, possible that the U-boat commander glimpsed the Bulldog and Broadway, and failed to notice that the former had an object in tow. Whichever is correct it was lucky for the British ships that Schnee was thinking only of making his getaway, and was anxious not to invite further attacks.
At 9.15 Schnee came to the surface, withdrew to the southeast and licked his wounds. His tale of damage was a long one, and included a leaky external fuel tank—which he considered had given away his presence during the hunt—besides damage to battery casings and air bottles. He had many gauges and instruments broken, and his steering gear and gyro compass had failed temporarily during the attacks, but had been repaired. Most of the damage was made good during the next few days, and on 10th he reported to Lorient that he would be ready to resume operations in two days’ time. Dönitz ordered him only to return to port if he was unable to stop the oil leak, and as he had seven torpedoes left he finally decided to stay on patrol in the area assigned to him. One must certainly class Schnee among the more successful and resolute U-boat commanders. Post-war analysis made in Germany credits him with sinking a total of 24 ships (122,987 tons), and places him 22nd in the order of achievements.1 It is indeed interesting to find that three out of the four U-boat commanders who attacked OB.318 (Kuppisch, Lemp and Schnee) figure in the German list which names the twenty-four most successful exponents of that type of warfare. There remains the tantalising problem of identifying the target so confidently attacked by the Bulldog, Aubrietia and Broadway near to the position in which U.110 had been captured between 2.35 and 3.36 p.m., and again, though less confidently, between 4.37 and 5.06. All three ships were at the time convinced that another U-boat was present, and that their contacts were genuine; and in analysing the attacks on OB.318 on 9th May the Admiralty accepted their view. At first sight the most likely candidate for the role of additional target is U.556; but a glance at her reports proves that on the afternoon of 9th she was still pursuing the convoy, and her log shows that she underwent no attacks on that day. A very careful check on the movements of all other U-boats which were in the North Atlantic at the time makes it certain that, except for U.94 on 7th May, none of them ever became involved with the escorts of OB.318; and the conclusion that, on the afternoon of 9th, only U.110 and U.201 were on the scene thus becomes inescapable. There is a possibility, though not a very likely one, that the contact attacked by the Bulldog’s group was wreckage from a recently sunk merchantman; but three experienced Asdic operators in three different ships would surely not have been simultaneously misled on such a matter. To this writer the balance of probability seems to lie with the suggestion that both groups of ships (Bulldog, Broadway, Aubrietia near to the captured U.110 and Amazon, Nigella and St. Apollo near to the damaged Empire Cloud) were involved with Schnee’s U.201. Throughout the afternoon the distance between the two groups was only 3 or 4 miles, and a submerged U-boat of her class could travel that distance in well under an hour. Schnee said in his report that the counter-attacks lasted from 12.30 to 5.05 p.m., and that he counted 99 depth charges; but we know that the Amazon, Nigella and St. Apollo between them only fired or
released 64 to which the Bulldog, Broadway and Aubrietia added another 30 after U.110 had been blown to the surface at 12.35 p.m. Thus the total of depth charges released by the two groups of British ships tallies surprisingly accurately with the number counted by Schnee. On the other hand it is true that ships of both groups, though separated by several miles, attacked at too closely spaced intervals for us to state with assurance that U.201 was the target in all of them. Thus the problem cannot be conclusively solved. All that can be said with reasonable certainty is, firstly, that the Amazon’s group definitely attacked U.201; secondly that the Bulldog’s group could have done so; and lastly that if the latter’s target was not that U-boat they were attacking false echoes of some kind or other.
The Secret Capture Page 13
