The Waiting Game
Having shattered the peace of the midnight hour by torpedoing the Stanmore, Karl-Jurgen Wächter broke off his lone attack on KMS 27 and, taking advantage of the poor visibility, slipped away to the north before the convoy’s escorts came looking for him. He then spent four hours submerged while he reloaded his torpedo tubes, surfacing briefly before dawn to recharge batteries. He would have preferred to remain on the surface to put as much distance as possible between himself and the scene of his recent success, but the drone of aircraft engines overhead warned him it was time to go below again. Allied aircraft, now based on both shores of the Mediterranean, were constantly patrolling the skies, sometimes singly, more often in flights of up to ten planes. Their main object was to protect the supply convoys from predators like U-223, and everything seemed to be in their favour. By day, predominantly calm seas and the exceptionally clear water made it easy for an aircraft to spot a U-boat running at periscope depth, and by night a boat on the surface was often betrayed by its phosphorescent wake. Then the powerful searchlights carried by the planes turned night into day, usually with disastrous results for the unwary U-boat commander.
The next two weeks proved to be difficult ones for U-223. Instructed to move further east to the Algiers area, Wächter waited in vain for an expected convoy that failed to appear. Hampered by poor visibility – much of the time below 1,000 metres, and not improved by sheet lightning at night – and unable to stay on the surface long because of patrolling aircraft overhead, he achieved nothing. On the night of the 6th, when twenty-five miles off the coast near Bougie, U-223 fell foul of two destroyers, probably part of a hunter-killer group, and only narrowly escaped unscathed. And still no convoy put in an appearance.
Wächter used his own initiative and moved further east, taking up station off the western entrance to the Galita Channel, which runs between Île de la Galita and its attendant group of rocks and the bulge of Africa nearest to Sicily, a well-used through route for shipping. But the channel seemed deserted, the only sight of the enemy being a large, brilliantly lit hospital ship, seen on two separate occasions on the 7th and 8th. It was a tempting target, but taboo under the international rules of warfare, and Karl Wächter was not a man to indulge in deliberate atrocities. He satisfied himself with watching the big, two-funnel ship as she came and went.
The dearth of convoys continued, and U-223’s incessant patrolling became a wearisome routine. There were constant alarms, for aircraft cruising overhead or destroyers appearing over the horizon, all of whom seemed to be searching for them. U-223, once the hunter, was now the hunted, and it was with some relief that, on the night of the 11th, Wächter received orders to proceed to Toulon, which would be U-223’s base while she was attached to the 29th U-boat Flotilla in the Mediterranean.
It was a straight run north to Toulon, across 360 miles of open water, but the dangers were no less. Allied aircraft seemed to be everywhere, having complete control of the skies. Wächter spent much of the day and a good part of the night at periscope depth, surfacing only when necessary, with the result that the boat was averaging little more than seventy miles in a day. It was the morning of the 16th before they made a rendezvous with a German patrol boat in the Gulf of Lyons and were escorted into Toulon. The port, once the major French naval base in the Mediterranean, had been in the hands of the Italians, but seized by German forces on the collapse of their erstwhile allies in August. The naval dockyard was still intact, but there were no concrete pens in which to hide a U-boat from the attentions of British and American bombers. Wächter hoped their stay in Toulon would be a short one.
U-223’s demands on the Toulon dockyard were not great; a few essential repairs, compasses and other instruments to be recalibrated, and fuel, stores and water to be taken on board. Nevertheless, it was 20 November before she set off on her next patrol. This was to be Wächter’s last voyage in U-223 for, while in Toulon, he had been appointed to take command of the 29th Flotilla, leaving the boat when his replacement arrived.
Under orders to operate against Allied convoys off the North African coast between Algiers and Bougie, Wächter was aware that he would be fighting the battle in increasing isolation, as the Mediterranean flotilla, never great in numbers, was slowly being whittled down. Attempts had been made to bring in reinforcements, of which U-223 was one, but only two other boats, Kurt Böhme’s U-450 and Herbert Brunning’s U-642, had succeeded in breaking through the heavily defended Gibraltar Strait. Others had tried and failed. U-431 (Dietrich Schöneboom) spotted by a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of 179 Squadron on 22 October, put up a stiff fight, but was destroyed by a stick of six depth bombs along with all her crew. She was followed two days later by U-566 (Hans Hornkohl) which had not even reached the Straits, bombed and sunk by the same Wellington off Vigo on the 24th. U-732 (Claus-Peter Carlsen) fell to the depth charges of a Gibraltar sea patrol consisting of the destroyer Douglas, the frigate Loch Osaig and the anti-submarine trawler Imperialist on the 31st. Next day, a combined operation by the destroyers Active and Witherington with the sloop Fleetwood and aircraft of 179 Squadron put an end to U-340 in the Straits. Then, four days after he sailed from Toulon, Wächter received news of a heavy air raid on the base in which five other boats were severely damaged. If losses continued at this rate, the newly-promoted Wächter would have no flotilla to command.
By 23 November, U-223 was to the east of the island of Minorca, and heading south into nasty weather. Contrary to the often repeated myths, the Mediterranean is not always benign, with cloudless blue skies and calm seas. Winter comes here as sure as it does in the open Atlantic, often bringing grey skies, galeforce winds and short, steep seas. Mediterranean depressions are fortunately short-lived, but when they pass through there is no comfort in a small ship, much less in the conning tower of a surfaced U-boat, only a few feet above the sea. Safety harnesses were an essential for the watch in U-223’s conning tower as she ploughed south through heavy seas. The harnesses prevented the men being washed overboard as the waves climbed the fore casing and smashed against the tower, but they could not prevent them enduring a demoralizing and continuous soaking. Nor was there much comfort to be had below the surface. The shallow waters prevented the boat from going deep, and her motion was severe.
The weather relented on the 27th, by which time U-223 was again on station in the western approaches to the Galita Channel, and continuing her vigil on the Allied convoy route. As before, the visibility was mainly poor, but there was also excessive phosphorescence in the water, making it dangerous for Wächter to stay on the surface at night, and enemy sea and air activity had not diminished. Just before noon on the 28th, Wächter was at periscope depth when a destroyer, which he identified as a ‘G’-class, came within 4,000 metres, but failed to detect the U-boat with her Asdic. Wächter was tempted to try a long shot, but as he lined the enemy ship up in his sights, she suddenly made off to the north.
Surfacing at around 02.30 next morning, U-223 came near to meeting her end when an aircraft suddenly appeared out of the night sky, and roared overhead no more than sixty metres above the water, filling the boat with the awesome roar of its engines. It seemed that they had not been seen by the plane until the last minute, for tracers were hitting the water more than 500 metres astern of the boat. Possibly, the pilot, flying low, saw the U-boat’s tell-tale phosphorescent wake only at the last minute, and was as surprised as they were. The aircraft banked sharply, and began another run, but Wächter already had the hatches battened down, and U-223 was sinking out of sight. There were anxious moments as they waited for the depth charges to come hurtling down, for the deafening multiple bangs and the shock waves slamming into the pressure hull. But after several stomach-churning minutes with only the whine of the electric motors to be heard, they slowly realized that they had once again escaped death. Ten more minutes passed in silence before Wächter felt justified in assuming the enemy aircraft must have gone away. Either she had not been carrying depth charges, or she had used them up on some other unfortunate boat. However, there could be no escaping the fact that they had been seen, and their position was even then being broadcast to all enemy ships and aircraft in the vicinity. Wächter decided to quit the area before they came searching for him.
Remaining submerged, he headed north at the best speed his motors would give him, not surfacing until after dark that night. When they did come up, it was onto a glassy calm sea and under a cloak of thick drizzle. The conditions appeared ideal for operating on the surface unseen but, when the diesels kicked in, U-223’s propeller churned up a glaring white froth of phosphorescence that must have been visible from the air despite the drizzle. Wächter disengaged one engine and crept away to the west, his wake still dangerously evident.
By noon on the 30th, U-223 was thirty miles north of Algiers, where Wächter decided to lay in wait for a passing convoy. He waited in vain. No ships of any sort were seen by day or night, although the loom of the lights of Algiers, clearly visible at night, indicated that the port was busy.
Wächter gave up his vigil after twenty-four hours and moved further to the west, and at noon on 2 December was close inshore off Cape Tenez, very near the position where, two months earlier, he had torpedoed the Stanmore. Hopes were raised when a signal from Toulon advised that a large Allied convoy was due to pass Cape Tenez soon, but all that came in sight was a westbound hospital ship, British or American, which was not a legitimate target. During the course of that afternoon Wächter discovered that he had problems on board in the way of a serious leak in the stern gland of the starboard propeller shaft. Tightening the gland only resulted in the shaft overheating, and it was necessary to disengage the starboard engine. On the surface that evening, the sound of heavy gunfire could be heard coming from the direction of Oran, which seemed to be under attack from the air, possibly accounting for the dearth of shipping.
As Karl Wächter listened to the rumble of gunfire coming from Oran, 800 miles to the east, in the Italian Adriatic port of Bari, one of the most bizarre episodes of the war was about to be enacted.
Bari, one of the major discharging ports for the supply convoys Wächter was lying in wait for, was working to full capacity that night, with as many as thirty Allied merchant ships being unloaded under the glare of floodlights. This was a practice fraught with great risks in such a fiercely contested war zone, but was dictated by dire need. The British 8th Army was advancing up the trunk of Italy so fast that it was in danger of running out of supplies. In order to remedy the situation, the military authorities in Bari had thrown caution to the winds, and were about to pay the price for their folly.
At exactly 19.35 that night, a massed formation of 105 Junkers 88 Bombers, led by Oberleutnant Teuber, roared in from seaward flying at 150 feet. The German pilots could hardly believe their eyes at what they saw. Teuber later said:
We had been told at the briefing that the Allies at Bari were not blacking out the harbour at night because of the large number of ships to be unloaded, but I was sceptical of the statement until, as I approached the city from the Adriatic Sea, I saw the lights with my own eyes. I saw the dock cranes moving back and forth between the piers and the ships, a light on top of each crane. There was a beam of light at the lighthouse on the seaward side of one of the jetties, many lights along the dock bordering on the city, scattered lights along Molo Foraneo and Molo Pizzoli. Further north, on Molo San Cataldo, where the main petroleum line was located, there were more lights. Accustomed to wartime blackouts, Bari harbour looked like Berlin’s Unter den Linden on a New Year’s eve as I roared in from the sea at 200 mph …
The port of Bari was taken completely by surprise, and although the merchant ships were quick to man their guns and throw up a heavy barrage into the night sky, the German bombers reaped a rich harvest. The first ship to be hit was the Norwegian-manned, British-flag Laps Kruse. Bracketed by a stick of bombs, she capsized and sank, taking her crew of twenty-three with her. Close by, the US Liberty Samuel Tilden took a bomb straight down her funnel, which then exploded and wrecked her engineroom. Her cargo of drums of gasoline and cases of ammunition caught fire and she began to blow herself apart as her crew jumped overboard.
For the circling Ju88s it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Direct hits were scored on four more American ships, the John L. Motley, Joseph Wheeler, John Bascom and John Harvey, each of which was loaded with ammunition. All four caught fire and blew up, the John Motley and John Harvey simultaneously, the blast from their combined explosion severely damaging another nearby US ship, the Lyman Abbott. The British ship Fort Athabaska was also hit and on fire, the flames eventually reaching the two captured German 1,000lb rocket bombs she had in her holds, which exploded and ripped her apart, killing forty-four of her fifty-six crew as they tried in vain to fight the fires.
The air raid on Bari was short and brutal, lasting only twenty minutes, during which the Ju88s exacted a frightening toll. Oberleutnant Teuber reported it as a sight he would never forget. Flames were reaching upwards as high as a hundred feet in some spots. But it was the blasts that occurred periodically that made the night reminiscent of a giant fireworks display. Red, yellow, green – every colour that he had ever seen – was visible as the ammunition ships exploded and, even at a distance of several miles out over the sea, the Oberleutnant could feel the violence of the blasts as they rocked his Ju88.
Twelve ships were sunk at their moorings, of which the Teesbank, Fort Athabaska, Devon Coast and Laps Kruse were British, the John L. Motley, John Bascom, John Harvey, Joseph Wheeler and Samuel Tilden American, and the Barletta, Cassola and Frasinone uninvolved Italians, who happened to be in port at the wrong time. Six other ships, namely the Brittany Coast (British), Christa (British), Fort Lajoie (British), Lymon Abbott (American), Vest (Norwegian) and Odysseus (Dutch) were so badly damaged that they never sailed again.
It had been a good night for the Ju88s, and a disastrous one for the Allies – how disastrous was yet to be revealed. It was only after the German planes had flown away, and people were still dying, that it became known that the American ship John Harvey was carrying ninety tons of mustard gas. When she blew up, all her crew were killed, so there was no one to warn of the cloud of deadly poisonous gas spreading its silent death over Bari. No exact casualty figures are available for the Bari raid, but it is thought that at least 1,000 Allied servicemen, merchant seamen and Italian civilians died that night, many of them from the effects of mustard gas. Not unexpectedly, for many years after the war, most official reports omitted to mention this, the only use of poison gas by either side in the Second World War.
While Bari burned, Karl Wächter continued to keep his vigil off Cape Tenez. He remained on watch for another forty-eight hours, much of the time below the surface, for there was a great deal of coming and going of aircraft overhead. At night, the guns ashore rumbled constantly, and at times planes were seen caught in the beams of searchlights. The Ju88s were at work here, too.
Wächter’s patience was at last rewarded on the night of 4 December. His War Diary reads:
4.12.43 |
|
2120 CH8513 |
Weak destroyer hydrophone effect bearing 100 degrees. Wandering to 120 degrees and becoming stronger. |
2215 |
Surfaced. Course 120 degrees. Fairly good visibility. |
Horizon astern very light. Nothing seen all round. |
|
2235 |
Smoke cloud sighted with dark shapes beneath. Possibly two vessels. They are too slow for escorts.. |
2241 |
Fire T5 at largest shadow under smoke cloud as she presents the best target. |
Alarm (Boat dived) |
|
CH8513 |
Loud detonation after 12 minutes 45 seconds. Boat rocked by shock wave then all is quiet. No further hydrophone effect heard, only sinking noises lasting one minute. |
Again quiet. Then hydrophone effect bearing 160 degrees. This vessel is fast and propeller has whistling noise. |
|
2253 |
Hydrophone effect between 190 and 200 degrees. Destroyer moving quickly away. |
2340 |
No more hydrophone effect. I am not sure if I scored a hit. Hopefully B-Dienst will have something to say about it. |
Assuming he must have been detected, Wächter moved out to sea, but returned again early on the 5th and resumed patrolling within sight of Cape Tenez. Over the next six days, as the U-boat ploughed her monotonous furrow back and fore in the calm sea, the visibility varied from good to very poor, and was often spoiled at night by brilliant sheet lightning. The phosphorescence on the sea was again heavy, making movement on the surface at night a dangerous game, but Wächter persisted in his quest for a worthwhile target. His diligence was finally rewarded a little before noon on the 11th, when his hydrophones picked up the propeller beat of a steamer close in to the coast. The War Diary reads:
Unable to stem the leak which was in the starboard stern gland again, Wächter set course for Toulon, arriving back at the port on the morning of 17 December. U-223 had been continuously at sea for twenty-six days, in which Karl Wächter claimed to have sunk two destroyers. There is no record of any Allied ship being attacked in the position given on 4 December, when he claimed his first victim, so he must have been mistaken, even though he reported hearing a loud detonation and sinking noises after firing his T5. As to the second claim, this is more realistic. Close to the shore off Algiers on the 11th U-223 had fallen in with the eastbound convoy KMS 34, and her torpedo scored a hit on the British River-class frigate Cuckmere. Contrary to Wächter’s claim, however, Cuckmere did not sink. She was badly damaged and reached port under tow, but was subsequently declared a total loss.
The re-occurrence of U-223’s leak, claimed by Wächter to be a result of poor dockyard work, prevented him from doing further damage to KMS 34, but where he left off, Gerd Kelbling in U-593 took over.
Kelbling and U-593 had travelled a long road together. She was Kelbling’s first and only command, which he took over when she came out of the Blohm & Voss yard at Hamburg in October 1941. Sixteen successful war patrols followed, during which Kelbling sank fourteen Allied ships of 51,243 tons. Now he was about to cross swords again with an old adversary. Their association went back to the morning of 27 March 1942.
U-593 was at periscope depth in the Bay of Biscay and heading in for St Nazaire at the end of her first war patrol. At about 07.00, estimating that he was near the pre-arranged rendezvous position, Kelbling scanned the horizon through his periscope. Right ahead, and some two and a half miles off, he saw the low outline of what appeared to be a small warship. She was heading his way, and he assumed she must be his escort – right on time. Kelbling blew tanks and came to the surface, then firing the recognition signal five white stars. To his great surprise and consternation, instead of acknowledging his signal, the warship charged at him, her bow-wave foaming as she worked up to full speed. Realizing he was about to be rammed, be it by friend or foe, Kelbling crash dived.
By some stroke of bad luck, U-593 had made an involuntary rendezvous with the attack force of Operation Chariot, a British expedition to destroy the gates of St Nazaire’s huge dry dock, the only one in the area capable of accommodating the 41,000-ton German battleship Tirpitz, then believed to be at sea in the Atlantic. The British force consisted of the old ex-US Navy destroyer HMS Campbeltown, her bows packed with explosives, whose task it was to ram and blow open the dry dock gates, escorted by the destroyers Atherstone and Tynedale, who were also carrying the Commando landing party, and a flotilla of small craft comprising sixteen MLs, one MGB and one MTB.
U-593’s attacker was the Hunt-class destroyer Tynedale, 1,087 tons, 27 knots and armed with four 4-inch guns. Tynedale’s commander knew it was essential that the proposed raid remain secret, and he had no hesitation in attacking the U-boat, straddling her with depth charges set to shallow as Kelbling struggled to take her down. The exploding charges blew U-593 back to the surface, but very fortunately for Kelbling and his crew, they surfaced too close to the destroyer for her to train her 4-inch guns. But before she gained the shelter of the depths again, U-593 was heavily strafed by the Tynedale’s 20-mm cannon and machine guns.
Tynedale and Atherstone hunted the U-boat for the next two hours, determined not to allow her to come to the surface to alert St Nazaire of the presence of a large force of British ships. It is probable they would have sunk her had it not been for the fact that Tynedale’s Asdic was not working. By some clever manoeuvring, Kelbling was able to evade his pursuers, and that afternoon, when the coast was clear, he surfaced and radioed St Nazaire, reporting three British destroyers in the area. As he had not seen the eighteen smaller warships, he did not report them, leading the German Naval Staff to conclude that the destroyers were on a minelaying expedition. Operation Chariot was successfully carried out, Campbeltown ramming and blowing up the gates of St Nazaire’s giant dry dock, thereby denying it to the German Navy for the rest of the war.
Twenty-one months on, while U-223 was making good her escape to the north after sinking HMS Cuckmere, U-593 was cruising the convoy route near Djidjelli, twenty-five miles east of Bougie. Gerd Kelbling, now the proud wearer of the coveted Ritterkreuz, had been alerted to the approach of KMS 34 and was prudently spending the night on the surface recharging batteries. At 06.30 on the 12th, he went to periscope depth, and almost immediately his hydrophones picked up the sound of fast-revving propellers. This was the vanguard of KMS 34’s escort, and by sheer coincidence it proved to be the same British destroyer, HMS Tynedale, that had so nearly put paid to U-593 off St Nazaire in the previous March.
Completely unaware that he was about to exact revenge for his earlier humiliation, Kelbling, his No. 2 tube loaded with a T5 acoustic torpedo, spent the next forty minutes stalking the destroyer at periscope depth. It must have been that Tynedale’s Asdic was still not working, for she seemed completely oblivious to the danger she was in.
At precisely 07.10, with the sun just lifting above the horizon, Kelbling fired his No. 2 tube, and the T5, homing in on Tynedale’s propeller, blew the destroyer’s stern off. She sank in a matter of minutes.
Under the cover of the confusion caused by Tynedale’s sinking, Kelbling made good his escape to the west. Leigh-Light equipped Wellingtons of 458 Squadron, flying out of Bone, took off in pursuit of the attacker, and when the Admiralty received news of the second British escort vessel torpedoed off the Algerian coast in twenty-four hours, they called in a hunter-killer group. This was an Anglo/American force consisting of the British Hunt-class destroyers Calpe and Holcombe and the US Navy destroyers Benson, Niblack and Wainwright.
Having put some fifteen miles between himself and the scene of the Tynedale’s sinking, Kelbling lay stopped and submerged to await developments. Around 14.00, propeller noises were again picked up, and half an hour later, HMS Holcombe was looming large in his sights. At 14.45, he fired a T5, and Holcombe followed Tynedale to the bottom.
The uproar caused by the sinking of the second British Huntclass destroyer in less than eight hours was loud enough to be heard all over the Mediterranean. Kelbling would have had the opportunity to celebrate his success, had not his attack on HMS Holcombe been witnessed by a passing British aircraft. The hunt for U-593 now began in earnest. Radar-equipped Wellingtons were called in to fly search patterns overhead, and the remaining destroyers of the hunter-killer group working in pairs combed the surface and beneath. Retribution was the order of the day.
The hunt went on without interruption for ten hours, and was beginning to resemble the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack when, just after midnight on 12–13th, U-593 was sighted on the surface by a Wellington of 36 Squadron. The Wellington was diving to the attack before Kelbling had time to flood his tanks, and he was forced to use his guns to fight off the plane. The U-boat’s formidable anti-aircraft firepower, a total of six 20mm cannon, carried the day, the Wellington being hit twice as it swooped to attack. Partially out of control, the aircraft failed to deliver her depth bombs, but her rear gunner opened fire and knocked U-593’s guns out of action. Kelbling dived and crept away, but his position was now known with some certainty.
Within the hour, two more Wellingtons were overhead and sweeping the seas around with their powerful Leigh Lights. They were soon joined by the hunter-killer group’s destroyers with their Asdics and sonars probing the depths. They had a worthy opponent; Gerd Kelbling was a wily fox who had survived countless such hunts during his two years in command, and this one proved to be no exception. Sinking deep and maintaining silent routine, he deftly evaded his pursuers, and even spent some time on the surface re-charging his batteries during the night.
Gerd Kelbling’s luck finally ran out on the afternoon of 13 December, when USS Wainwright made contact with her sonar. Wainwright and Calpe, working as a team, then carried out a series of brutally accurate depth charge attacks, each destroyer directing the other as she ran in to attack.
It was Calpe’s second 10-charge pattern, set deep, that caused the critical damage. U-593’s inlet valve was smashed, water poured into the boat, and with his compressed air almost exhausted, Kelbling had no alternative but to surface. Scuttling charges were set, the control room instruments smashed, and the main ballast tanks blown for the last time.
The attacking destroyers were taken by surprise when U-593 shot to the surface in a welter of white water. Calpe was too close and unable to depress her main armament sufficiently, but opened fire with her pom-poms, while Wainwright, further away, joined in with her 5-inch, 38 calibre guns. In the confusion, both ships’ opening rounds went wide, and when it was seen that the U-boat’s crew were abandoning ship in a rush, a ceasefire was called.
The commander of USS Wainwright, scenting an opportunity to capture the abandoned U-boat, launched his pinnace with a boarding party. His ambitions were thwarted by Gerd Kelbling, who with his engineer and another man was still inside the submarine. When the American pinnace approached, the Germans opened the torpedo hatch, then jumped over the side and swam clear. Wainright’s boarding party could only lay back on their oars and watch as U-593 went down bow-first, her scuttling charges exploding as she slipped beneath the waves for the last time. Kelbling and his crew of fifty were picked up by boats from the destroyers.
The Mediterranean U-boat flotilla was further depleted some hours after U-593 went down when Horst Deckert’s U-73 launched an attack on Convoy GUS 24 near Oran. Deckert hit and damaged the American Liberty ship John S. Copley, but was then set upon by a hunter-killer group composed of the three American destroyers Edison, Trippe and Woolsey which had raced to the scene from Mers el-Kebir. Woolsey was first to get a sonar contact, and attacked with well-aimed depth charges which cracked U-73’s pressure hull. The boat began to flood and Deckert surfaced, only to meet a hail of fire from the American destroyers which riddled the boat and killed sixteen men. It was all over then. Deckert set the charges and scuttled the boat before the Americans could board. Deckert and the thirty-three surviving members of his crew, two of whom were wounded, were picked up by Woolsey and Edison.
The numbers of the 29th U-boat Flotilla were slowly being whittled away by these losses. Paul Siegmann brought U-230 through the Gibraltar blockade to join them, but it now seemed that the days of Karl-Jurgen Wächter’s flotilla were numbered.