The decision to divert a large number of Type IXs to convoy battles in the North and Middle Atlantic sharply reduced the number of this type available for patrols to the Americas.
In the first four months of 1943, U-boat Control sailed only thirteen Type IXs to the Americas: four in January, three in February, four in March, and two in early April. They confronted plentiful and well-organized ASW forces and convoying. Returns were thin and four of the thirteen were lost.
The first to sail in January was the U-518, commanded by Friedrich-Wilhelm Wissmann, making his second patrol. His maiden outing to Canadian waters had been outstanding: an agent landed safely, four ships for about 30,000 tons sunk, two tankers for about 15,000 tons damaged.
After a temporary diversion to the groups patrolling west of Gibraltar, Wissmann proceeded to Brazil. By that time few merchant ships sailed alone in Brazilian waters. Most were assigned to coastal convoys running between Trinidad and Bahia (Salvador) designated TB, or the reverse BT, with a stop at Recife. Brazilian naval forces provided escorts from Recife to Bahia and the reverse. American naval vessels and aircraft provided escort between Recife and Trinidad and the reverse. The U.S. Navy’s Fleet Air Wing 16, comprised of three patrol squadrons, VP 74, VP 83, and VP 94, equipped with Catalinas and the troublesome, lethal (to their aircrews) Mariners, covered the convoy route from Recife to Trinidad and the reverse.
Owing to the convoying, Wissmann found the seas nearly empty of loners. Finally on February 18, he sank the 6,000-ton Brazilian Brasiloide, which was sailing alone. Another ten long days passed with no sightings. Then on March 1 he found a submariner’s dream: convoy BT 6, northbound from Bahia (Salvador) to Recife en route to Trinidad. It was composed of twenty-nine merchant ships thinly escorted by three Brazilian warships.
Wissmann tracked and planned his attack with utmost care. Choosing several American Liberty ships for his first targets, he closed the convoy at night on the surface. In repeated attacks throughout the night, Wissmann fired fourteen electrics with Pi2 magnetic pistols. The result was a German fiasco. He sank one 7,200-ton American Liberty ship, the Fitz-John Porter, but, he reported, at least eight torpedoes ran too deep. Several others simply missed. As a consequence, this golden opportunity to decimate a convoy was lost.
Karl Neitzel in the U-510, who had sailed for Brazil five days after Wissmann, picked up the latter’s convoy report. He maneuvered his boat into a likely position to intercept convoy BT 6 farther north off the coast of French Guiana. Having sunk only two confirmed ships in two prior patrols, Neitzel was under the gun to produce. On the night of March 9, he found the convoy and, like Wissmann, he gazed in awe at this submariner’s dream.
Neitzel reported the convoy to U-boat Control, which authorized him to attack immediately. After a series of wild night-surface shots, Neitzel reported that he sank six ships for 70,000 tons, left another ship of 5,000 tons sinking, and hit yet another of 6,000 tons (81,000 tons sunk or damaged). This electrifying report drew high praise from U-boat Control and, on March 27, a Ritterkreuz for Neitzel. But Neitzel’s claims were much too rosy. His confirmed score was three ships for 18,300 tons sunk: two 7,200-ton American Liberty ships, James K. Polk and Thomas Ruffin, and one British freighter of 3,900 tons. In addition, he hit five other American Liberty ships for 36,000 tons, but all of these made port.*
Wissmann and Neitzel continued to patrol Brazilian waters but Neitzel soon headed home with an oil leak. Upon arrival in France, he left the boat to command Flotilla 25 in the Training Command. Wissmann sank two more ships in Brazilian waters, a 7,700-ton Dutchman and a 1,700-ton Swede, then returned to France via the Canary Islands where, as related, he picked up a part of the crew of the scuttled U-167 and refueled from the XB minelayer U-117.
The other two boats that sailed to the Americas in January were the U-156, commanded by the Ritterkreuz holder Werner Hartenstein (who sank Laconia and initiated the famous rescue), and the U-183, commanded by Heinrich Schüfer, making his second patrol. Hartenstein was sent to Trinidad; Schüfer was to enter the Caribbean Sea via the Windward Passage.
By the time Hartenstein in U-156 reached Trinidad it was, like Iceland, an ASW stronghold. Army and Navy aircraft equipped with centimetric-wavelength radar patrolled the area nearly continuously, escorting convoys converging on the island from numerous points and leaving for Guantánamo, Cuba, and other destinations. Harassed by these aircraft, Hartenstein informed U-boat Control that the Allies were employing a “new radar” that Metox could not detect. The proof of that important assertion was that he had been subjected to “precise” night attacks by aircraft without searchlights.
U-boat Control notified Hartenstein of the oncoming convoy BT 6, which Wissmann and Neitzel had attacked. Accordingly, Hartenstein proceeded to an area southeast of Trinidad to attempt to intercept. Doubtless Allied Huff Duff stations picked up Hartenstein’s transmissions and fixed his position. On March 8, a Catalina of Navy Squadron VP 53, a part of Fleet Air Wing 11, based on Trinidad, found U-156 on ASV radar about 270 miles east of Barbados. Ghosting silently out of the clouds, the Catalina descended to one hundred feet and caught U-156 completely unawares. The pilot, J. E. Dryden, dropped four 350-pound Torpex depth charges. Two straddled the conning tower and broke the boat into three pieces that sank quickly, one by one. The airmen counted eleven survivors in the water clinging to wreckage. They dropped a raft and emergency supplies, but notwithstanding a prolonged search over the ensuing days, not one of the survivors of U-156 was ever found.
The three IXs that sailed in February joined Schäfer in U-183 to enter the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico for a loosely coordinated and timed four-boat “surprise attack.” These were the famous U-68, commanded by a new skipper, Albert Lauzemis, age twenty-five, the Ritterkreuz holder Adolf-Cornelius Piening in the veteran U-155, and August Maus in U-185, making his second patrol.
The four boats reached their assigned areas in the first week of March. On March 10, Maus in U-185 opened the campaign by attacking in the Windward Passage a convoy, KG 123, southbound from Key West to Güantanamo. He sank two American ships, the 6,200-ton tanker Virginia Sinclair and the 7,200-ton Liberty ship James Sprunt. Tenacious escorts diverted from a nearby convoy northbound to Key West thwarted a second attack and heavily depth-charged Maus, forcing him to withdraw. In the Yucatan Channel on March 11, Schäfer in U-183 sank what he claimed to be a 7,000-ton freighter but what in reality was the 2,500-ton Honduran banana boat Olancho. South of the Windward Passage on March 13, Lauzemis in U-68 found a Güantanamo-Aruba-Trinidad convoy, GAT 49, and sank two ships from it, a 2,700-ton Dutch freighter and the 7,500-ton American tanker Cities Service Missouri. Entering the Gulf of Mexico via the Straits of Florida, Piening in U-155 found no targets to kick off this “surprise attack.”
Detected and tracked by Enigma decrypts, Huff Duff, and radar, none of these four boats achieved much more. Lauzemis in U-68 shot at a fast freighter but missed. He was then forced to withdraw to the Atlantic because, as he said, his “Metox failed.” He sank no more ships and returned to France after refueling from the provisional tanker, XB minelayer U-117.
Braving strong aircraft and blimp patrols in the Florida Straits on April 1 and 3, Ritterkreuz holder Piening in U-155, who had found no targets in the Gulf of Mexico, sank a 1,000-ton Norwegian freighter and atomized the 6,900-ton American tanker Gulfstate, which was loaded with gasoline. On his return to France he was bombed in the Bay of Biscay by an unidentified Allied aircraft on the night of April 27, but he remained on the surface and repelled the aircraft with his flak guns and reached Lorient.
Although Maus in U-185 was also harassed—and bombed—by aircraft and blimps, he sank another American Liberty ship, the 7,200-ton John Sevier, in the Windward Passage, bringing his bag to three ships for 20, 000 tons. He then returned to France.
Schäfer in U-183 sank no ships other than the 2,500-ton Honduran.
In all, this four-boat “surprise attack” and subsequent actions netted eight ships for 41,200 tons, a disappointing average of two ships per boat per patrol.
The IXs operating in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and South American waters in March 1943 sank eleven ships for 60,800 tons. The Italian submarine Bar-barigo, commanded by Roberto Rigoli, sank two other freighters for 12,131 tons off the Brazilian coast. The total sinkings, thirteen ships for 72,900 tons, also contributed to the general impression that in March 1943, U-boats nearly cut the vital lifeline between the Americas and the British Isles.
Six IXs sailed to American waters in March and early April. One, the U-129, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Hans Witt, was to enter the Caribbean and patrol off Panama, but owing to excessively high battery temperatures, he had to cancel that plan. He joined three other boats, U-161, U-174, and U-176, to attack shipping in Canadian and United States coastal waters, which had not been patrolled for six months. The other two IXs, U-128 and U-154, were to patrol off Brazil.
After the voyage to Panama was canceled, Witt in U-129 was directed to reconnoiter Bermuda, then Cape Hatteras. En route to Bermuda he found and sank the impressive 129800-ton British vessel Melbourne Star. Off Bermuda he saw no targets and was harassed by intense air and surface ASW patrols. Finding thin traffic off Cape Hatteras, Witt went farther south. On April 24 he sank the 6,500-ton American freighter Santa Catalina. On April 26 he missed a large American submarine with three torpedoes, misidentified as a “Narwhal-class.” Off North Carolina on May 5, he sank the 7,300-ton Panamanian tanker Panarn. He then returned to France, having bagged three ships for 26,590 tons, the best patrol by tonnage sunk of any boat in American waters in the first half of 1943.
The next two boats to sail were Ritterkreuz holder Albrecht Achilles in U-161 and a new skipper, Wolfgang Grandefeld, age twenty-six, in U-174. Both had to first carry out special missions. Substituting for the lost U-163, Achilles in U-161 was directed to meet the inbound blockade-runner Regensburg, to give her special instructions. Grandefeld in U-174 was directed to meet the inbound blockade-runner Karin (ex-Kota Nopan) for the same task. Unknown to the Germans, on March 10 the American cruiser Savannah and destroyer Eberle had intercepted Karin in the Middle Atlantic and forced her to scuttle.
Not without difficulties, Achilles and Grandefeld attempted to carry out these special tasks. On March 23, Achilles found Regensburg and passed to her documents and verbal instructions. Achilles was then directed to meet the inbound Italian blockade-runner Pietro Orseolo, and give her instructions. He performed this task on March 27, then went west to patrol the area between Nova Scotia and New York. A submarine torpedo hit the Pietro Orseolo, but she limped into Bordeaux on April 1. Unable to find the lost Karin, Grandefeld in U-174 was directed to rendezvous with another inbound blockade-runner, Irene (ex-Silvaplana). Grandefeld met Irene on April 6 and carried out his task.
The British tracked Regensburg closely, benefitting from the many Enigma decrypts concerning her routing and U-boat protection and rescue assignments. The Regensburg was to transit the Denmark Strait^ then proceed to Norway, then to the Baltic. Berlin ordered U-boat Control to deploy three new Atlantic boats along her projected path: the IXC40 U-191, commanded by Helmut Fiehn, age twenty-seven, and the VIIs U-469 and U-635, commanded respectively by Emil Claussen, age twenty-five, and Heinz Eckelmann, age twenty-six. On March 25, an Ireland-based B-17 of British Squadron 206, piloted by Willis Roxburg, sank the U-469 with depth charges. On March 30, a British task force, including the heavy cruiser Glasgow, intercepted and sank Regensburg. There were no survivors of these German losses.
The British also closely tracked the next blockade-runner, Irene, inbound to Bordeaux. Owing to the embarrassing loss of Regensburg, when Dönitz learned that U-174 had met Irene, he issued a “personal order” to U-boat Control to sail at once four U-boats (two IXs, two VIIs) specifically to escort Irene across the Bay of Biscay. Control selected four boats that had been detailed to make patrols to the Americas. The two IXs, U-128 and U-176, sailed from Lorient on April 6; the two VIIs, JJ-262 and U-376, sailed from La Pallice the same day. Subsequently Dönitz ordered these U-boats to escort Irene into Vigo, Spain, for temporary refuge.
The British, meanwhile, rushed aircraft and a naval task force of light vessels to the scene. On April 10, the minelayer Adventure, en route from the Mediterranean to the British Isles, came upon Irene and opened fire, forcing the Germans to scuttle and take to the lifeboats. The British captured the Irene crew and cast off the empty lifeboats.
When Dönitz got word of this latest Kriegsmarine fiasco, he directed that German aircraft and the four U-boats sent to escort Irene were to search thoroughly for German survivors. Meanwhile, he recalled one of four outbound blockade-runners, the Italian-manned Himalaya, escorted by four German destroyers, which had sailed from Bordeaux on March 29. The other three proceeded to the Far East, but one, Portland, was intercepted on April 13 and sunk by the Free French cruiser Georges Leygues.*
German aircraft found eight lifeboats from Irene but no sign of life. The four U-boats searched until April 12, but they too could find nothing of Irene or her crew. Control thereafter ordered the two IXs, U-128 and U-176, and the two VIIs, U-262 and U-376, to proceed to the Americas. However, one VII did not respond: the ex-Arctic U-376, commanded by Friedrich Marks. The Admiralty initially credited a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of British Squadron 172, piloted by G. H. White-ley, with the kill of U-376, but subsequently declared her lost to unknown causes.
Achilles in U-161 had a miserable patrol to the Americas. Hunted relentlessly by strong surface and air ASW forces in Canadian waters, he was forced under time and again. Finally, on April 26, he found a fast convoy southeast of Nova Scotia. He got off a contact report and shadowed but a diesel engine failed and he lost the convoy. On May 19 he found the 255-ton Canadian sailing ship Angelus. After the crew had abandoned ship, Achilles sank her by gun and returned to France, ending an unsuccessful patrol, his first. Owing to the intense ASW measures, he declared, U-boat patrols to the Canadian and United States coasts were “hopeless.”*
Grandefeld in U-174 literally followed in the wake of U-161 by about ten days. Patrolling southeast of Nova Scotia, on April 17 he found what he believed to be a subsection of a Halifax convoy. He shadowed and attempted to attack, he reported, but he was thwarted by foul weather and escorts. Nine days later, on April 26, he probably picked up the convoy report of Achilles in U-161. He was in a good position to intercept it southeast of Nova Scotia, but on the next day, April 27, a Ventura of Navy Squadron VP 125, newly based in Newfoundland to provide convoy support, found U-174 running on the surface. The pilot, Thomas Kinaszczuk, commenced an attack, but Grandefeld remained on the surface, shooting at the Ventura with all topside weapons. Braving the flak smashing into his wings and fuselage, Kinaszczuk came in very low and dropped four shallow-set depth charges. Three exploded in a close straddle, hurtling U-174 bow up. She sank stern first, straight up, with the loss of all hands. Kinaszczuk earned a Navy Cross.
Reiner Dierksen in U-176, who had diverted to escort the doomed blockade-runner Irene, was ordered to patrol the Gulf of Mexico. In the Middle Atlantic on April 20, he rendezvoused with Piening, homebound in U-155, to team firsthand about conditions in the gulf.
The first watch officer on U-155’s first two patrols, Alfred Eick, who had left to replace Neitzel as commander of U-510, worried that Dierksen was too headstrong and incautious, that he would soon come to grief. Eick’s premonition proved to be correct. On the night of May 13, Dierksen sank two small tankers in the Old Bahama Channel off the north coast of Cuba, the 2,200-ton American Nickeliner, and the 2,000-ton Cuban Mambu. The sinkings prompted the Caribbean Sea Frontier to mount a vigorous U-boat hunt. As a result, on the morning of May 15, an American OS2U Kingfisher floatplane of Navy Scouting Squadron VS 62 spotted U-176 in the Old Bahama Channel about one hundred miles east of Havana. Seeing a small convoy approaching, the scout plane dropped a smoke bomb where U-176 had crash-dived, then coaxed one of the three convoy escorts to the scene, the Cuban Sub Chaser (SQ 13, one of a dozen ex-American eighty-three-foot Coast Guard cutters given to Cuba.
The SC 13 reported an excellent sonar contact at four hundred yards and she ran in and dropped three depth charges, set for 100, 150, and 200 feet. After the third explosion, the SC 13 heard a “loud” secondary explosion. When the noise abated and the roiling water settled, SC 13 regained sonar contact at five hundred yards and dropped two more depth charges set for 200 and 250 feet. These explosions brought up “brown” or “muddy” water and slight traces of oil. The escort puttered around some more, then rejoined the convoy after an absence of merely one hour. Incensed by the lack of tenacity shown by the Cuban escort, American naval authorities recommended that the skipper be censured. No credit for a kill was granted, but, remarkably, this eighty-three-foot Cuban cutter had sunk U-176 with the loss of all hands with merely five depth charges.
Had the U-176 survived, she might have encountered a special American troop convoy. This was BT 203, which sailed from New York to the Pacific—the first troopship convoy in over a year to leave from an Atlantic port for the Pacific. The convoy, comprised of four big liners escorted by four American destroyers (Buck, Nicholson, Swanson, and Wilkes), arrived in Panama unmolested by U-boats and proceeded onward to the Pacific.
The two IXs bound for Brazil were veterans, both commanded by new skippers: Hermann Steinert, age twenty-six, in U-128 and Oskar Heinz Kusch, age twenty-five, in U-154.
Steinert in U-128, who also had diverted to escort the Irene, was first to find a target. On May 8 he encountered a loner and attacked her at night, firing three salvos of two torpedoes each. To Steinert’s chagrin, all six torpedoes missed and the ship got away. After this puzzling failure, the crew downloaded four (of eight) air torpedoes from the topside canisters.
A week later, on May 16, while patrolling off Bahia (Salvador) in support of convoy TB 13, southbound from Trinidad to Bahia, a Mariner flying boat of the Navy’s Squadron VP 74 found U-128 and attacked. Steinert crash-dived; the depth charges fell wide, causing no damage. That night a Catalina flew out to reestablish contact—and hold the U-boat down—but the plane had no radar and could not find U-128. Charging batteries, Steinert cruised northward on the surface toward Recife during the night. Near dawn he submerged and promptly picked up the convoy on sonar at about ten miles. After he had established its course and speed by sonar, Steinert surfaced in order to run to a better shooting position.
That morning—May 17—two other Mariners of Squadron VP 74, equipped with centimetric-wavelength radar, were assigned to provide air escort for the convoy. Both aircraft detected U-128 on radar, one at eighteen miles, the other at twenty-eight miles. The closest Mariner, flown by Howland S. Davis, attacked first, dropping six shallow-set depth charges from an altitude of sixty feet. Steinert saw the plane coming and attempted to crash-dive, but the hydraulic system malfunctioned and the ballast-tank vents had to be opened by hand, a slow process. While she was still struggling to get under, the depth charges exploded around U-128. The other Mariner, flown by Harold C. Carey, arrived and dropped six more shallow-set depth charges from an altitude of one hundred feet. The twelve depth charges wrecked U-128. The aircrews added four thousand rounds of 50-caliber machine-gun fire.
In response to requests from the airmen for assistance, two modern American destroyers, Moffett (1936) and Jouett (1939), came charging up at flank speed. Both destroyers opened up with 5” guns, firing an astonishing 247 rounds. This fire and/or scuttling sank the wrecked U-128. Moffett fished out fifty-one of U-128’s fifty-four-man crew, including Steinert. Four of the survivors, including U-128’s chief engineer, died on board Moffett. The remaining forty-seven POWs were delivered to naval authorities at Recife. Steinert, his first watch officer, Siegfried Sterzing, and eleven others were flown immediately to the United States for interrogation. The POWs wondered why neither Moffett nor Jouett had made an effort to board U-128 to gather intelligence documents. The reason was that those destroyers had no parties trained for boarding sinking U-boats.
Left alone in these distant waters, Oskar-Heinz Kusch, new skipper of U-154, conducted an aggressive patrol. In late May he intercepted convoy BT 14, northbound from Bahia to Trinidad and attacked it on the surface at night. He claimed sinking three freighters for 21,500 tons, plus possibly a 6,000-ton tanker and damage to an 8,000-ton tanker. His confirmed score was one 8,200-ton American tanker, John Worthington, sunk and two American ships (one tanker, one freighter) for 15,800 tons damaged.
When Kusch reported that his Metox was “permanently out,” U-boat Control authorized him to slowly withdraw from American waters on a homebound course. In the meantime, Control directed Siegfried Kietz in U-126, which was severely damaged by an air attack off Freetown on June 15, to meet Kusch in U-154 and return to France in company. These two veteran boats with green skippers met near the Azores on June 29, where Kusch missed a fast freighter with two torpedoes.
A Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of British Squadron 172, piloted by the Rhodesian Alex Coumbis, got U-126 or U-154 on radar in the Bay of Biscay in the early hours of July 3. Coumbis lined up and attacked a U-boat that proved to be Kietz in U-126. Nothing more was ever heard from U-126. Kusch in U-154 witnessed the attack from close quarters. Incorrectly surmising that U-126 had dived to safety, Kusch reported the attack to be “unsuccessful.” The U-154 then proceeded to Lorient alone, arriving safely three days later.
The commander of Combat Flotilla 2, Ritterkreuz holder Ernst Kals, wrote that Kusch, who had served as a watch officer on U-103 under Ritterkreuz holder Werner Winter and Gustav-Adolf Janssen for eighteen months, had made a good first patrol and was well qualified to be a U-boat commander. However, Kusch’s first watch officer, the reservist Ulrich Abel, a doctor of laws and fanatical Nazi, was of the opposite opinion and because of that, very big trouble lay ahead for Kusch.
The thirteen Type IXs that sailed to the Americas from January through early April sank twenty-two confirmed ships for 121,200 tons. This was an average of about 1.7 ships for 9,300 tons sunk per boat per patrol, a drastic decline from the same period the year before, when the IXs ranged freely in American waters. Four of the thirteen boats were lost: Ritterkreuz holder Werner Hartenstein’s U-156, Wolfgang Grandefeld’s U-174, Reiner Dierksen’s U-176, and Hermann Steinert’s U-128. Since the drastic decline in returns was obscured by gross overclaims, such as those of Neitzel in U-510, U-boat Control planned to continue—and perhaps even increase—patrols to American waters despite the heavy losses.
The Italians sent five large Bordeaux-based submarines to patrol Brazilian waters from February to April 1943. As related, only one of these boats, Barbarigo, commanded by Roberto Rigoli, had any success. She sank three confirmed freighters for 15,600 tons: a Spaniard, a Brazilian, and the American Stag Hound, 8,600 tons.
One of the Italian boats was lost: Archimede, commanded by Guido Saccardo. On April 15, a Catalina of U.S. Navy Squadron VP 83, based in Natal, Brazil, spotted Archimede running on the surface. The pilot, T. E. Robertson, attacked with bombs and depth charges in the face of flak from Archimede, which dived, then resurfaced, circling uncontrollably. A second Catalina of VP 83, piloted by G. Bradford, Jr., arrived and attacked with four depth charges from fifty feet. Thereafter, both aircraft strafed Archimede until she sank, leaving nineteen survivors in the water. Each Catalina dropped a raft, then departed. Twenty-nine days later, one raft containing a lone survivor, coxswain Giuseppe Lococo, washed ashore near the mouth of the Amazon River. Subsequently, Brazilian authorities turned him over to the Americans at Belem. All other Italians perished.
During this period U-boat Control mounted one special mission to Canada. It was supervised by the second staff officer, Ritterkreuz holder Peter Cremer, recovering from the severe injuries he incurred on his boat, U-333.
Most U-boat POWs captured by British or Commonwealth forces were eventually transferred to camps in Canada. Some of them continued to communicate with Admiral Dönitz or U-boat Control by encoded messages in letters to their families. Fully alive to these “secret” communications, Allied intelligence officers continued to break the simple code (Irland) and monitor the messages, taking care not to reveal that they were doing so because the information gained from them was sometimes of military value. Copies of the decrypted letters were exchanged between Washington, London, and Ottawa. Some letters were stopped, but most were allowed to go forward to Germany through Red Cross channels.
For a long period of time, some German U-boat POWs incarcerated at Camp 70, near the city of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, had been planning an intricate escape. The plan was to break out and make their way to the East Coast (110 air miles), thence by stolen small boat across Northumberland Strait (fifteen miles) to thinly populated Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where a U-boat could pick them up.
By means of encoded messages in the return mail of the families, Dönitz encouraged this scheme, code-named Elster (Magpie). He promised by encoded mail that a U-boat would appear off North Point, Prince Edward Island, in the first week of May 1943, when, it was presumed, the ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence had melted. Whether or not Allied authorities became aware of this scheme from decrypting POW mail is unclear. In the event, the escape attempt became known to the Allies by some means and it failed. So far as is known, no POW ever reached Prince Edward Island.
At U-boat Control, Peter Cremer selected two VIIs to carry out Elster: a lead boat, U-376, and a backup, U-262. As related, both had been diverted to escort Irene and, as also related, the U-376 was lost to unknown causes while she was searching for Irene survivors. Responsibility for the mission therefore went to the backup, U-262, commanded by Heinz Franke. On April 15, he came upon convoy Halifax 233 and shadowed, but escorts drove him off and down with guns and depth charges. When other boats responded to Franke’s report, a fierce battle ensued, as will be described later. However, U-boat Control directed Franke to break off and proceed to Prince Edward Island and carry out “special task” Elster, per the secret orders he had been provided before he sailed.
Franke reached Cabot Strait on April 25 in fair weather.* He continued north into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where the ice became progressively worse. At one point the U-262 was trapped beneath a heavy layer of ice and Franke was forced to crash through it by blowing all ballast tanks simultaneously. The upward thrust of the boat broke the ice and the boat “surfaced,” but the effort knocked out three of U-262’s bow tubes, her deck gun, and other topside gear. Per plan, on May 2 Franke took up station off North Point, Prince Edward Island, awaiting some kind of signal from the POW escapees. He lingered there for five days, finally departing on May 6, logging that the failure of Elster was “a shame “ but not through any fault of U-262.
After withdrawing from the gulf through Cabot Strait, on May 10 Franke signalled U-boat Control, giving his position and fuel supply and reporting that Elster had failed and that three of his bow tubes were unusable because of ice damage. In reply, U-boat Control directed Franke to return to France, refueling on the way from the XIV tanker U-459. Allied codebreakers, who had puzzled mightily over Franke’s often-mentioned but unidentified “special task” belatedly figured it out during his homeward voyage and logged: “He is thought to have been involved in a proposed escape of German P/Ws from Canada and may have been in Gulf of Maine or even Gulf of St. Lawrence.”
Elster failed but the most famous U-boat POW, Otto Kretschmer, incarcerated in Camp 30 at Bowmanville, Ontario (forty miles east of Toronto), had set in motion a similar escape plan, which the Allies learned of in advance. Also encouraged by Admiral Dönitz and U-boat Control, it was to be attempted later in the summer.
After it was reconstituted at sea in January 1943, group Seehund (Seal), the second foray to Cape Town and the Indian Ocean, resumed its long voyage. The XIV tanker U-459 accompanied the boats to the South Atlantic, where it refueled the four IXs,† then returned to France on March 8. Although designated a group, the five boats of Seehund were to patrol independently, like those of its predecessor, Eisbär.
The first of the IXs of Seehund to sink a ship in the South Atlantic was the last to join the group, Ritterkreuz holder Georg Lassen’s U-160. It was not an easy kill. In the first attack on February 7, Lassen fired two torpedoes; one missed, one hit. The Armed Guard gun crew of the vessel, the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Roger B. Taney, shot back, forcing Lassen to dive. In his second attack, Lassen again fired two torpedoes. Again he missed with one and hit with the other. This second hit put Taney under. Most of the ship’s crew perished in the sinking or thereafter, but a few were rescued from lifeboats about a month later.
Lassen proceeded to an area southeast of Cape Town. On the night of March 2 he found the poorly organized, thinly escorted convoy DN 21, en route from Durban north to the Suez Canal. It was comprised of ten or eleven big, heavily laden merchant ships and four escorts, the British corvette Nigella and three ASW trawlers.
Favored with a dark, moonless night and good weather, Lassen launched his attack after midnight on March 3. In all, he shot eight torpedoes, an initial salvo of six, plus two reloads. He claimed he sank six ships for 37,000 tons and possibly sank one of 5,000 tons; altogether seven ships for 42,000 tons put out of action, a telling blow of direct benefit to Axis forces in Tunisia. In reality, he sank four ships (the American Harvey W. Scott and the British Nipura, Empire Mahseer, and Marietta) for 25,900 tons and damaged two ships (the Dutch tanker Tibia, the British freighter Sheaf Crown) for 15,200 tons—altogether, hits on six ships of about 41,000 tons.
Lassen’s flash report electrified U-boat Control. This kind of single-handed convoy devastation was what Dönitz and the U-boat staff prized, but it was all too rare. Dönitz immediately initiated steps leading to the award of Oak Leaves to Lassen’s Ritterkreuz. The award—and the usual message of congratulations from Hitler—arrived on March 7.*
In the week following, Lassen remained off Durban. In the four-day period from March 8 to 11, he sank the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship James B. Stephens and the 5,000-ton British freighter Aelybryn. Having sunk seven confirmed ships for 45,200 tons and damaged two others, Lassen advised U-boat Control that he was down to three torpedoes and coming home. En route he found a fast lone freighter near Freetown and shot two of his three torpedoes at her, but they missed. He arrived in France on May 10 after 125 days at sea. U-boat Control credited him with ten ships sunk for 66,800 tons and characterized his patrol as “brilliantly executed.” His confirmed bag on this patrol was six ships sunk for about 38,000 tons, plus damage to two others. He left the boat for a job in the Training Command.†
East of Cape Town on March 7, Würdemann in the IXC U-506 sank the 5,200-ton British freighter Sabor, firing five torpedoes. While edging up submerged to the sinking ship to look her over, Würdemann hit an “unidentified object.” The collision damaged a periscope and fouled a propeller, forcing him to withdraw far to the south of Cape Town to make repairs. While so engaged on March 9, the 4,800-ton Norwegian freighter Tabor happened by and Würdemann sank her with three torpedoes and gunfire. When added to the sinkings—and overclaims—on prior patrols to the Gulf of Mexico and to the Caribbean, Würdemann qualified for a Ritterkreuz, awarded by radio on March 14.*
After making repairs, Würdemann returned to the area east of Cape Town to interdict coastal convoys. Inasmuch as his presence was known through Enigma decrypts and DFing, the Allies rerouted convoys to avoid him. On March 19, he notified U-boat Control that the area was unpromising and that he was returning. After refueling from the XB (minelayer) U-117 near the Azores, he reached France on May 8, completing a patrol of 146 days. Crediting Würdemann with two ships sunk for about 10,000 tons, U-boat Control characterized Würdemann as a “proven captain” but the patrol as “somewhat disappointing.”
Werner Witte in the IXC U-509, embarked on his third patrol, sank his first ship off Cape Town on February 11. She was the 5,000-ton British Queen Anne, which Witte hit with a single torpedo from four hundred yards. The British ASW trawler St. Zeno-f counterattacked U-509 with gunfire and seven depth charges, but Witte slipped away undamaged. Remaining off the Cape Town area through March 13, he shot at several ships but had no further success. Acting on a suggestion from U-boat Control, Witte doubled back to Saldanha Bay, northwest of Cape Town.
Witte patrolled near Saldanha Bay for two more weeks without sinking a ship. Running short of food, he commenced his return voyage on March 28, holding close to the west coast of Africa. On April 2, he found a small convoy south of Walvis Bay. Approaching the ships submerged, Witte fired four torpedoes by sonar bearings at extreme range. Astonishingly, two of the four hit the 7,200-ton British freighter City of Baroda, which limped into Lüderitz Bay, Southwest Africa, and beached, a complete loss. After refueling from the provisional tanker XB (minelayer) U-117, U-509 reached France on May 11, completing a frustrating 140-day patrol Witte was credited with two ships for about 12,000 tons.
The other IXC, U-516, commanded by Gerhard Wiebe, making his second patrol, sank three ships south and southeast of Cape Town from February 11 to February 27. They were the British and American freighters Helmsprey and Deer Lodge, respectively, and the valuable 11,000-ton Dutch submarine tender Colombia. The latter ship, returning from refit in East London and escorted by the corvette Genista, sank in thirteen minutes, taking down several Dutch submarine crews. Genista’s cursory counterattack did no damage to U-516.
Wiebe reported on March 5 that he had accidentally rammed wreckage and was withdrawing to the south to make repairs and to fix an oil trace. Then, five days later, U-516 reported that she had withdrawn because Wiebe had “stomach pains” so severe that it was necessary to abort the patrol. Temporarily commanded by the first watch officer, U-516 sailed northward, like U-509, close to the west coast of Africa. On March 20, U-516 sank the 3,700-ton Panamanian freighter Nortun. Subsequently, Wiebe’s engineering gang discovered “severe corrosion” in the pressure hull, adjacent to a battery compartment. Since the sea pressure of a deep dive might crack the hull and flood the battery compartment with salt water, causing deadly chlorine gas to form, the boat sped home at the highest practical speed. She arrived in France on May 3, completing a 132-day patrol. Although Wiebe had sunk six ships on his first patrol to the Caribbean and four for 25,600 tons on this patrol, the illness and other factors led to his transfer from U-516 to other duty.
The new IXD2 U-cruiser U-182, loosely attached to Seehund, was commanded by the old hand Nikolaus Clausen, who had sunk eighteen confirmed ships on the VII U-37 and the IX U-129, and had won a Ritterhreuz. He sailed U-182 from Norway on December 9, intending to patrol to Madagascar to attack shipping directly supporting the British Eighth Army in North Africa. Southbound in the area west of Freetown, Clausen sank the 7,200-ton British Liberty ship Ocean Courage. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope on February 17, he sank the 4,800-ton British freighter Llanashe.
Clausen cruised Mozambique Channel to Durban, Lourenço Marques, and the west coast of Madagascar. The outcome was a great disappointment. In a full month of operations—all of March—Clausen sank only one ship, the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Richard D. Spaight. On the return voyage Clausen got two more freighters: the 5,000-ton British Aloe and the 5,800-ton Greek Adelfotis and captured both captains. These sinkings raised Clausen’s score on this patrol to five ships for 30,000 tons.
By the night of May 16-17, the 160th day of U-182’s voyage, Clausen had reached a point about 250 miles west of the island of Madeira. Apparently by chance he met a subsection of convoy UGS 8, en route from the United States to Gibraltar. Two warships of the escort, the new (1942) American destroyers Laub and MacKenzie, were guarding fourteen LSTs. MacKenzie got U-182 on radar at 7,200 yards. Reacting promptly and efficiently, MacKenzie notified Laub and raced down the bearing, but for reasons unrevealed, she did not open fire with her main batteries as required by operational doctrine. At 2,700 yards, the radar contact disappeared, indicating that the target had dived. MacKenzie soon got a good sonar contact and carried out several attacks, dropping fifteen depth charges.
Laub, which had not had a radar or sonar contact, joined the hunt skeptically. From that point onward, neither destroyer could get a sonar contact. Then, mysteriously, at forty-five minutes and fifty-four minutes after MacKenzie’s depth-charge attack, the ships heard and felt “heavy explosions.” The destroyers remained in the area nearly three hours, searching in vain for evidence of a U-boat kill or an explanation for the explosions. Impatiently, the senior vessel, Laub, canceled the search at dawn, and the two ships rejoined the convoy and went on to Casablanca.
Allied AS W authorities were irate when they received reports of this encounter. “A sad pair of attacks,” one assessor wrote. MacKenzie should have opened fire with her main batteries at four thousand yards. Laub should have reacted more quickly and joined the attack. Moreover, the destroyers should have remained at the scene for at least twelve hours, hunting the U-boat to exhaustion. This episode, wrote another assessor, “brings up forcibly the need for better [ASW] training.” The conclusion of the highest assessor was: “No evidence of damage.”
However, in the postwar analysis, Allied naval authorities concluded that MacKenzie had in fact sunk U-182 with the two Allied POWs on board. How MacKenzie sank U-182 is not known. Nor is there a satisfactory explanation of the two “heavy explosions” that occurred nearly an hour after MacKenzie’s attack. Possibly the depth charges weakened some of U-182’s twelve topside torpedo canisters, causing them to belatedly implode at great depth and flood, sinking the boat. Or perhaps Clausen fired two torpedoes at the-MacKenzie that malfunctioned and circled back to hit and sink U-182. Whatever the case, nothing further was ever heard from U-182*
On the whole, Seehund, the second foray to; the Indian Ocean, was judged to be only a modest success. The five boats sank twenty confirmed ships for about 123,000 tons, about half the bag of Seehund? s predecessor, Eisbär. Lassen in U-160 sank seven; Clausen in the IXD2 U-cruiser U-182, five; the ailing Wiebe in U-516, four; and Wiedemann in U-506 and Witte in U-509, two apiece. That was an average of about four ships per boat per patrol, but the patrols of these IXs averaged 136 days, nearly four and a half months,†
Like the boats patrolling to American waters, those of group Seehund were frustrated by intensified ASW measures, by convoying, and by information derived from Enigma decrypts that enabled naval authorities in the Cape Town and Durban areas to hold up shipping or to divert it around known U-boat positions. However, no U-boats had been lost in South Atlantic waters: U-182 went down in the dangerous Madeira-Azores area in the Middle Atlantic.
Altogether, these IXs had sunk twelve ships for 71,000 tons in the month of March. A Japanese submarine, 1-27, operating off India in March, sank one 7,100-ton British ship, Fort Mumford. That brought the Allied losses in March in this area to thirteen ships for 78,000 tons, contributing to the misimpression that U-boats nearly cut the lifeline between the Americas and the British Isles.
U-boat Control mounted a special mission in the Indian Ocean at this time. The task was to meet a Japanese submarine at sea for the purpose of exchanging personnel and cargo, including weaponry.
The German boat chosen for this mission was a U-cruiser, the new IXD1 U-180, commanded by Werner Musenberg, age thirty-eight. The boat was a failed design. Powered by six Mercedes-Benz 1,500 horsepower water-cooled diesels, adapted from the engines in German PT boats, the 1,600-ton U-180 had a top speed of 20.8 knots, making her the fastest diesel U-boat built by the Germans in World War II. But the engines were not suitable for submarines. They smoked “like an old coal-burning tramp,” as Musenberg put it, and generated nearly unbearable heat throughout the boat, particularly in tropical waters. Like the other U-cruisers, U-180 had four bow and two stern torpedo tubes, could carry twenty-seven torpedoes (including twelve in topside canisters), and mounted a 4.1” gun on the forward deck. She had a crew of sixty-three men, including a physician.
On the eve of his departure from Kiel, Musenberg embarked a VIP and his aide, who were to be transferred to the Japanese submarine. The VIP was the leftist Indian political activist Subhas Chandra Bose, son of a knighted Indian scientist and president of the Indian National Congress party and, as such, a protégé of Mohandas Gandhi, who was then “interned” in India. Jailed in Britain in 1940 for his pro-Axis (i.e., outspoken anti-British) views, Bose had escaped and fled to Germany. His ambition was to create and lead an “army of liberation,” cadred by Indian soldiers captured by the Japanese in Southeast Asia. Although Tokyo doubtless viewed this grandiose scheme with skepticism, some Japanese believed Bose might be useful for fomenting anti-British sentiment in India and had arranged to transfer him and his aide, Abid Hasan, from U-180 and carry them onward to Singapore or to Japan.
Allied codebreakers who were decrypting Japanese diplomatic codes picked up Japanese messages from Berlin to Tokyo reporting the departure of Bose by U-boat from Kiel on February 9. This and other information from diplomatic traffic was passed to Kenneth Knowles and Rodger Winn in the American and British Submarine Tracking Rooms. They were able to identify the departing boat as “U-Musenberg” and tracked it as it made its way to meet the Japanese submarine in the Indian Ocean.
The Japanese submarine was the 1-29, commanded by Juichi Izu. Like the 1-30 (code-named “Cherry Blossom”), which had briefly called at Lorient in August 1942,* the 1-29 was a large U-cruiser, 354 feet long, displacing 2,500 tons. It had a floatplane stored in a hangar on the deck immediately forward of the conning tower as well as a catapult. It was armed with six torpedo tubes with eleven reloads in the bow compartment and a 5.5” gun on the deck aft of the conning tower. A veteran of several Indian Ocean patrols, 1-29 had sunk six Allied ships.
Musenberg in U-l 80 entered the Atlantic and sailed southward toward Cape Town. Inasmuch as the six engines consumed large amounts of fuel, it was necessary to replenish U-180 from a U-tanker. Accordingly, Musenberg met the XIV U-462 in the Middle Atlantic on March 3. Allied codebreakers saw that on March 20, Musenberg was to meet an Italian U-cruiser (probably Da Vinci) near the equator and provide unspecified medical assistance, but Musenberg could not find the Italian and the rendezvous was canceled. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope and sailing onward to the southeast, on April 18 Musenberg found and sank a loner, the 8,200-ton British tanker Corbis. Two days later, during a submerged attack on another loner, U-180 broached and her victim escaped.
As planned, the U-180 and 1-29 met on April 23 at a point in the Indian Ocean about 450 miles southeast of Madagascar. The weather that day was too rough to carry out the exchanges of men and materiel, Musenberg reported, so the two boats traveled in company for several days until the waters were calm. The transfers finally took place on April 27.
Apart from the two passengers, Bose and Hasan, the Germans passed cargo to 1-29. It included a torpedo tube containing a gun barrel (of unspecified type) and ammunition; cases of documents and construction drawings for military weapons, aircraft, and submarines; and three cases containing 432 Bolde noisemakers.
The 1-29 in turn passed two men to U-1$0, plus an astounding quantity of cargo. The men were submarine commander Tetsusiro Emi and a submarine designer/engineer, Hideo Tomogaga. The cargo consisted of three 21” aerial torpedoes (Model No. 2); several cases of quinine; 1.3 tons of Japanese weaponry and drawings; over half a ton of mail, documents, and drawings from the German embassy in Tokyo; and two tons of gold ingots in 146 large cases. In all, the Japanese cargo transferred to U-180 weighed eleven tons, and it took up every inch of spare space in the boat. With it, Musenberg logged testily, came cockroaches, beetles, and all kinds of “very small mites.”
Authorized to attack loners only, Musenberg closed the coast of South Africa near East London. Two British aircraft approached U-180. The first was an unarmed twin-engine Avro Anson on a training flight, attracted by the smoke of U-750’s engines. Musenberg drove it off with flak. The second was a twin-engine Handley Page Hampden bomber, loaded for combat. It attacked U-180, Musenberg logged, but the Germans shot it down. Handicapped by smoking engines and defective engine-cooling systems, Musenberg soon gave up his antiship patrol and headed home. On the way he found and sank a second loner, the 5,200-ton Greek Boris on June 3. After refueling a second time (from the IXC 40 U-530, serving as a provisional U-tanker) west of the Canaries on June 19, Musenberg reached Bordeaux on July 3.
The meeting of U-180 and 1-29 in the Indian Ocean was an Axis submarine “first” and therefore notable. The 1-29 delivered Bose and his aide to Singapore and returned to Japan. Of course, Bose was never able to raise a nationalist army.
He became a nuisance to the Japanese until he was killed in an airplane crash in 1945. Declared unfit for combat after this one patrol, the IXD1 U-180 was decommissioned on September 30, 1943, for conversion to a cargo submarine powered by two conventional (i.e., 1,400 horsepower) diesels and capable of transporting 252 tons of goods. Musenberg went to other duty. Contrary to postwar rumors that U-180 had sunk with the two tons of gold on board near Bordeaux, all the gold reached the Japanese Embassy in Berlin safely. It was used to pay for Japanese expenses in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.