Battle of Atlantic , August 1941 , Atlantic Charter , August Patrols , Capture of U-570

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Hitler’s U-Boat War , Clay Blair Jr.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union introduced vast new complexities for the Allies. Joseph Stalin appealed to both Britain and the United States for massive military supplies (aircraft, tanks, machine guns, rifles, etc.) and demanded that Britain relieve pressure on Russia by opening a “second front”—an invasion of Occupied France. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt relished the idea of helping the odious and untrustworthy Stalin, but as Churchill put it colorfully, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil. …” A “second front” in Occupied France was out of the question, but both Churchill and Roosevelt pledged to supply Stalin with arms; Churchill without charge, Roosevelt through the Lend-Lease program.

Further complications arose in the Far East. A month after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, on July 24, Japan occupied Vichy French Indochina (Vietnam). This brazen thrust destabilized the Far East, posing a grave new threat to China, to the Philippines, and to British and Dutch possessions or dominions in Southeast Asia and in Australasia. In hawkish reaction, Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States, placed an embargo on oil exports to Japan, retained the bulk of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, and directed that the Philippines be heavily reinforced with aircraft, submarines, and other weaponry. The British and Dutch joined in the oil embargo, reducing Japan’s oil imports by 90 percent. As related, Churchill directed the Admiralty to send a Royal Navy task force (HMS Prince of Wales, HMS Repulse, HMS Indomitable, etc.) to the Far East.

Given these disputes and the shifting character of the war, Churchill and Roosevelt were persuaded that the time had arrived for a meeting between them and their senior military advisers. It was decided that the meeting was to take place secretly “at sea.” Churchill and party departed Scapa Flow on the battleship Prince of Wales; Roosevelt and party departed the United States on Admiral King’s Atlantic Fleet flagship, the heavy cruiser USS Augusta. The ships met on August 9 in the mutually convenient, well-defended, and smooth anchorage Placentia Bay, at the newly established American naval base in Argentia, Newfoundland.
Churchill and his party came more or less believing the Americans were on the verge of declaring full-scale war, or could be persuaded to do so. Accordingly, the British had prepared elaborate—and specific—joint military plans for the defeat of Germany and Italy. Churchill eloquently outlined these plans, which contained four principal elements in this chronological sequence:

• MASTERY OF THE SEA-LANES. With American naval assistance the Royal Navy was to vanquish the U-boats, the super-battleship Tirpitz, and any and all other Axis vessels that posed a threat to Allied control of the ocean commerce lanes.

• MASTERY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN. With American assistance—perhaps three divisions of ground troops—Britain was to gain complete and absolute control of the Mediterranean Sea, North Africa, and the Middle East, and knock Italy out of the war by relentless and heavy air bombardment.

• STRATEGIC AIR ATTACKS ON GERMANY. With American assistance—about 6,000 heavy, four-engine B-17 and B-24 bombers to start—Britain was to mount a relentless and punishing air bombardment of German cities and war plants from bases in the British Isles and Italy, with the aim of creating “internal convulsion or collapse” and the overthrow of Hitler and the Nazi regime.

• INVASION. If necessary, some time in 1943, Britain and the United States were to land “armored spearheads” in “several” occupied nations (e.g., France), which were to link up with secretly armed resistance groups to overthrow the Germans. About 15,000 tanks and about 200 oceangoing tank-landing ships (landing ship tank or LST) were to be required. Allied manpower—particularly American manpower—was to be held to a minimum; hence no large-scale American Army was necessary.

Still under pressure from strong isolationist elements in the United States, Roosevelt came to Argentia in no mood to intervene overtly in the war or to make any commitments beyond those already made in ABC-1. The American military advisers were therefore forbidden to engage in detailed discussions, and had prepared no position papers. Although they disagreed with or had grave reservations about all of Churchill’s points except the first (mastery of the sea-lanes), they confined their discussions to commitments already made to the British, such as convoy escort between Canada and Iceland.

The British were deeply disappointed at the warily aloof attitude of the Americans and the outcome of the conference. However, Churchill achieved an extremely important concession, perhaps not fully grasped at the time. He persuaded Roosevelt that the British Mediterranean strategy was valid in principle, setting Roosevelt apart from his military advisers and putting an end—at least temporarily—to American criticism of British operations in that area. This concession was to have a very great impact on the course of Allied military operations for the remainder of the war.

For political and propaganda reasons, both Churchill and Roosevelt were desirous of marking the conference with a high-minded joint declaration. This emerged in the form of an unsigned press release entitled “The Atlantic Charter,” given out several days after the meeting. It firmly linked the United States and Great Britain in a moral partnership to defeat the Axis and to seek disarmament and political freedom for all nations and people in the postwar world. Perhaps anxious to salvage something positive from what had been essentially a profitless conference, Churchill attached great importance to the document. “The fact alone of the United States, still technically neutral,” he wrote, “joining with a belligerent Power in making such a declaration was astonishing.”

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August 1941 Patrols

The attack on convoy Outbound Gibraltar OG 69 in late July was the only noteworthy success of the U-boat force since its extended battle in late June with Halifax 133, a drought of one full month. Even so, Dönitz continued drawing the boats ever eastward and southeastward into the waters of the Southwest Approaches, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Canaries.

By August 1 the twenty-odd boats on patrol were deployed in three groups: a main group of twelve boats in areas several hundred miles west of Ireland and the English Channel, replicating the U-boat dispositions during the early days of the war; a group of four boats in areas due west of Gibraltar Strait; another group of four boats skippered by Ritterkreuz holders—the canceled Freetown special task force—in areas west of the Canaries. The eight boats in the Gibraltar-Canaries area were authorized to secretly put into Spanish ports (Cadiz, El Ferrol) in event of an emergency. Hans-Dietrich von Tiesenhausen, age twenty-eight, in the new U-331, who had burned up much fuel futilely chasing Outbound Gibraltar OG69, replenished in Cadiz.

On August 2 a boat of the northernmost main group, the U-204, commanded by Walter Kell, reported an inbound convoy about 500 miles due west of Brest in dense fog. Kell had detected the convoy on his hydrophones, but had not made visual contact. Upon receipt of his report, Dönitz ordered Kell to shadow while he launched Focke-Wulf Condor aircraft and brought up the other eleven boats of the main group. These included Ritterkreuz holder Engelbert Endrass, who was taking U-46—the last of the original VIIBs of the Wegener Flotilla—home to the Training Command.

The convoy Kell had found was inbound Sierra Leone 81, composed of seventeen big ships. The escort, joined by a contingent from Gibraltar, was very strong: twelve warships, including the ex-American four-stack destroyers HMS Campbeltown (with Type 286 meter-wavelength radar) and HMCS St. Albans, and the destroyer HMS Wanderer; a catapult ship, HMS Malpin, equipped with a Hurricane; and nine corvettes. The Condors and U-boats closed on the convoy on August 3. HMS Malpin launched its Hurricane, piloted by R.H.W. Everett, a noted English jockey. He got close on the tail of a Condor-200 approaching convoy and emptied his guns. The Condor came apart and crashed into the sea—the first to fall to a ship-launched fighter. Everett ditched alongside the destroyer HMS Wanderer, which put over a whaler and pulled him from the sea. Honored with a DSO, Everett was killed five months later while conducting a routine aircraft-ferry mission in the British Isles.

One of the first U-Boats to join Kell was the U-401, a new VIIC commanded by Gero Zimmermann, age thirty-one. Commissioned on April 10, U-401 had completed her workup in Oslo Fjord in ninety days. She sailed from Trondheim July 9 on her first Atlantic patrol and had been at sea for twenty-six days. This, her first contact with the enemy, was brief and fatal. The destroyers HMS Wanderer (which had helped sink the duck U-147 in June) and HMCS St. Albans and the corvette HMS Hydrangea detected U-401 on sonar and delivered a punishing depth-charge attack. U-Boat disappeared with the loss of all hands.

By the evening of August 3, about ten U-boats—most of them new boats on maiden or second patrols—had converged on Sierra Leone 81. Unaware of the loss of U-401 or of the heavy escort with this convoy, Dönitz radioed: “This night is decisive. Go in and attack! You are more numerous and stronger than the enemy.” But there was a full moon and the escorts were too numerous, and none of the boats got in to shoot. Another new VIIC from Germany, U-565, commanded by Johann Jebsen, age twenty-five, barely escaped disaster. Crippled by a diesel-engine breakdown, Jebsen was forced to abort.

During the daylight hours of August 4, the boats and the Condors continued to track the convoy. It drew ever closer (200 miles) to the west coast of Ireland where it was well within reach of Coastal Command aircraft. During the pursuit, yet another new VIIC from Germany, U-431, commanded by Wilhelm Dommes, age thirty-four, lost both diesels. Dommes repaired one but could do nothing about the other, and he, too, was forced to abort.

After dark on that day, the remaining U-Boats, including Engelbert Endrass’s U-46, closed to attack in bright moonlight. The escorts beat off Endrass and five other boats, and only four managed to shoot that night. The first was the VIIC U-372, commanded by Heinz-Joachim Neumann, age thirty-two, on its maiden patrol from Germany. He claimed sinking two ships for 12,000 tons and a probable hit on another 7,000-ton vessel. In reality, his salvo sank two medium British freighters for a total of 8,300 tons. He missed the British freighter Volturo, which retaliated and forced Neumann under with close fire from her 4″ gun and smaller weapons, and drew in the corvette Zinnia. Attempting to ram, Zinnia chased, firing her 4″ gun, but Neumann dived and escaped.

Next to shoot was the dogged shadower, Walter Kell in U-204. He chose what he claimed was a 14,000-ton freighter, but which was probably the convoy flagship Abosso, a steamer of 11,300 tons, with 274 passengers embarked. If he hit Abosso (or another ship), it did not sink. He then sank the 5,000-ton British freighter Kumasian. Next to shoot was Helmuth Ringelmann in U-75. He claimed sinking two British freighters for 12,000 tons, but his confirmed score was one, the British Cape Rodney, for 4,512 tons. Last to shoot was Eitel-Friedrich Kentrat in U-74, who claimed sinking one ship of 8,000 tons and damage to three others of 8,000 tons. His torpedoes actually sank the 5,400-ton British freighter Harlingen.
RAF Coastal Command aircraft appeared at dawn over the convoy and encountered a blast of “friendly” antiaircraft fire from tired and itchy-fingered British gunners. One aircraft sighted a U-boat and dropped two 500-pound ASW bombs, but these inflicted no known damage. Having been drawn very close to the Irish coast, the U-boats were compelled to break off. The four boats that shot torpedoes claimed sinking six ships for 46,500 tons, but in reality they had sunk five for 23,200 tons. Based on unusually thorough information from B-dienst, Dönitz concluded that the boats had positively sunk four ships for 24,500 tons and probably damaged six others. Considering that most of the boats were “quite inexperienced” and the convoy escort (as it turned out) was strong, and the moonlight unfavorable, Dönitz logged that he was well satisfied with the outcome.

Despite the risks, after the battle with Sierra Leone 81, on August 5 Dönitz resumed U-boat warfare in the waters off Iceland and the Northwest Approaches. This decision was prompted in part by B-dienst codebreakers who made a tentative but useful break in the North Atlantic convoy codes; in part by the belief that since no U-boats had operated in those waters for weeks, he might catch the Allies napping; in part because fourteen more new U-boats were Atlantic-bound in August, raising the total Atlantic operational force to over sixty oceangoing boats, enough to send an unprecedented thirty-eight boats out in August and to cover several widely spaced hunting grounds simultaneously.

Accordingly, the boats at sea or sailing afresh were deployed into three loose groups: a North Group, near Iceland; a Center Group west of Scotland and Ireland; and a South Group off Gibraltar Strait. British codebreakers promptly detected this redeployment, noting especially the newly created North Group, which posed a possible threat to the HMS Prince of Wales, en route to Argentia, Newfoundland, with Churchill and his party.

The North Group was established, initially, by holding two new Atlantic-bound boats near Iceland. One of these was the U-501, commanded by thirty-six-year-old Hugo Förster, the most senior skipper in the Atlantic, but new to submarines. Commissioned on April 30, the U-501 was the first of a new type, designated IXC. Four days out of Trondheim, on August 11, Förster intercepted a slow outbound convoy about seventy miles due south of Iceland. Heavily escorted by surface vessels and aircraft, the convoy was designated Outbound North ON 5. Förster’s contact report was intercepted by British Y Service and decrypted by Bletchley Park codebreakers confirmation to the British Admiralty’s U-boat Tracking Room in Liverpool that U-boats were back in Icelandic waters. Donitz did not catch British napping after all.

Another new boat picked up Förster’s report. She was the VIIC U-568, commanded by Joachim Preuss, age twenty-seven, from the duck U-10. Förster was driven off by air escorts that dropped close depth charges or bombs, but in the early hours of August 12, Preuss got in and shot at an escort (in violation of Hitler’s order) and a ship he reported as a 7,000-ton freighter. He hit an escort, the corvette HMS Picotee, which blew up and sank, but he apparently missed the freighter. Other escorts counterattacked U-568 and drove the boat under and held it down while the convoy escaped. HMS Picotee was the first British warship to be sunk by a U-boat in almost a year.

Later that same day, two other new boats of the North Group reported separate outbound convoys passing south of Iceland. The boats were the VIIC U-206, commanded by Herbert Opitz, age twenty-six, and the IXC U-129, commanded by the veteran Nikolaus Clausen, who had returned the famous old U-37 to the Training Command. Escorts drove Opitz off his convoy, but Clausen stuck with his, which he described as “large.” Dönitz directed Opitz, Förster, Preuss, and two other new boats to home on Clausen’s beacon signals and to pursue the convoy westward—and to attack it to destruction.

The possibilities offered by convoy Outbound North ON 5 persuaded Dönitz to make a large northwestward shift of the Center Group. On his orders, the entire Center Group (twelve boats) joined the chase on August 13, speeding toward Greenland. Thus eighteen U-boats were unknowingly heading directly toward the track of the Prince of Wales, en route home from Argentia, Newfoundland, to Iceland, screened by two American destroyers, on one of which Ensign Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., was embarked. Aware from Ultra of the shift of U-boats and the danger posed to the Prince of Wales and her distinguished party, Admiralty officials—and perhaps those on board the battleship and destroyers—doubtless spent a sleepless night devising evasive courses. But Churchill casually passed off the moment in his memoris, writing that the voyage to Iceland was “uneventful, although at one point it became necessary to alter course owing to the reported presence of U-boats near-by.”

The long chase of convoy Outbound North ON 5 to westward by these eighteen boats produced nothing. Clausen in U-129 lost contact with the convoy and no other boat could find it. None saw the Prince of Wales, which arrived safely in Iceland as scheduled on August 16, and departed for Scapa Flow with a British destroyer screen the following day. Outfoxed by the U-boat Tracking Room, during the next eighteen days only one of the U-boats at sea sank an Allied ship, and it was an insignificant 1,700-ton Panamanian freighter. That U-boat was the aging Type IX U-38, commanded by a new skipper, Heinrich Schuch, age thirty-five. HMS Prince of Wales reached Scapa Flow undetected.

During these futile chases in the northern area, Kerneval received word from a “spy” that a big convoy had left Gibraltar for the British Isles. Dönitz alerted the South Group, sent out Condors and pulled in the four-boat group patrolling west of the Canaries. A boat of the South Group, Wolfgang Kaufmann’s U-79, found the convoy, Homebound Gibraltar HG 70, on the afternoon of August 10. Dönitz ordered Kaufmann to shadow and to send beacon signals for the benefit of the other boats and the Condors, but the convoy was heavily escorted by aircraft and surface vessels, and “destroyers” drove Kaufmann under.

The group from west of the Canaries, composed of the four Ritterkreuz holders who had aborted the special mission to Freetown, raced in at maximum speed. On the morning of August 11 one of these skippers, Claus Korth in U-93, found the convoy, reporting that it had made a sharp turn north and was tightly hugging the Portuguese coast. An air escort drove Korth off and bombed him, causing so much damage that he was forced to abort to France. But Korth’s report enabled Kaufmann in U-79 to reestablish contact and another Ritterkreuz holder, Herbert Kuppisch in U-94, to find the convoy. The escorts drove off Kaufmann and Kuppisch, delivering a “heavy” depth-charge attack on Kaufmann in U-79. Acting on these reports, another boat of the South Group, von Tiesenhausen’s U-331, also found the convoy. He was driven off “three times,” he reported, and was finally forced to abort with a mechanical breakdown.

At that time Reinhard Hardegen in the IXB U-123, returning to Lorient from his long and frustrating patrol off Freetown, was passing close to the Iberian Peninsula. Dönitz ordered Hardegen to reinforce the attack on Homebound Gibraltar 70. Acting on a Condor position report, which proved to be accurate, Hardegen found the convoy late in the day on August 12. But he, too, was driven off and heavily depth-charged—126 explosions, thirty-six of them very close, he reported. The impact of the blasts temporarily disabled both diesels and caused a serious lube-oil leak, which compelled Hardegen to resume his return to Lorient, concluding a sixty-eight-day patrol.

Next to find the convoy were two Ritterkreuz holders in IXBs, Heinrich Bleichrodt in U-109 and Georg-Wilhelm Schulz in U-124. Both were also driven off by aircraft or surface escorts. Bleichrodt in U-109 reported “oil and bubble leaks” which forced him to abort to Lorient, returning to base for the first time with all torpedoes. Frustrated by the escorts, Schulz was unable to gain shooting position and after five sleepless days and nights, he broke off the chase. He, too, returned to Lorient with all torpedoes.

Receiving a steady stream of failure reports from the boats, most of them manned by experienced skippers, Dönitz was puzzled and disconcerted. Recounting in his log the “difficulties” the boats were experiencing in attacking this convoy, he surmised that the escorts were employing some kind of “surface location apparatus.” He therefore issued a radical new order: All boats were to attack the escorts first, firing “fan shots” (two or more torpedoes). If possible, they were to coordinate these attacks and shoot simultaneously, sparing no torpedoes. However, no boat was able to mount an attack on any escort of Homebound Gibraltar 70.

Finally, on August 15, Dönitz called off the chase. It had been a disastrous failure for U-Boat arm. Not one of the ten U-Boats making contact with the convoy, including the promising skipper Reinhard Hardegen in U-123 and the four Ritterkreuz holders Bleichrodt, Korth, Kuppisch, and Schulz, had been able to get in and launch torpedoes. Four boats had been compelled to abort with battle damage or mechanical breakdown. Only by a miracle, it seemed, did all boats survive this brutal engagement.

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Mere hours after the luckless chase of Homebound Gibraltar 70 had been terminated, on August 17, a Focke-Wulf Condor aircraft reported an outbound convoy about 250 miles west of Ireland. This was Outbound Gibraltar OG 71, guarded by British Escort Group 5. To August 13 this area had been occupied by the Center Group, but Dönitz had sent that group northwest toward Greenland in fruitless pursuit of convoy Outbound North ON 5, leaving the center area thinly covered. However, Captain Adalbert Schnee in U-201, three days out from Brest, made contact with the convoy and sent beacon signals. The escorts drove Schnee off, but on the following day, August 18, other Condor aircraft, homing on Schnee’s beacon signals, relocated the convoy and brought up the few available boats.

The latest orders from Dönitz for dealing with inbound or outbound Gibraltar convoys specified that the boats were to attack the escorts first. In the early hours of August 19, three boats closed on Outbound Gibraltar OG 71. Walter Kell in U-204, literally following the order, fired first at the Norwegian-manned, ex-American, four-stack destroyer HMS Bath and blew it to smithereens. He also claimed sinking two big freighters for 16,000 tons, but these could not be verified in postwar records. Critically low on fuel, Kell was forced to put into France. The U-559, commanded by Hans Heidtmann, age twenty-seven, attacked next. Heidtmann claimed sinking two big freighters for 22,000 tons and damage to another of 8,000 tons, but post-war records credited only one ship sunk, a 1,600-ton British freighter. Schnee in U-201 attacked third, claiming a tanker and two freighters for 20,000 tons, but in reality he sank two British freighters for 5,000 tons. In sum: the destroyer Bath and three freighters sunk, totaling 6,650 tons.

Royal Navy Western Approaches Command took emergency action to protect Outbound Gibraltar 71. The destroyers HMS Gurkha II (ex-Larne) and HMS Lance left military convoy WS 10X and joined the surface escort, adding strength plus the new radio-detecting locating device, HF/DF or Huff Duff. Gibraltar-based RAF Coastal Command Catalina and Sunderland flying boats arrived to provide additional protection. Condor aircraft continued to distantly shadow and report the convoy, but none of the boats could penetrate the large escort screen on the night of August 19–20. Gurkha II and Lance reported a qualified success in DFing (direction finding location) the U-boats with Huff Duff. Owing to a shortage of fuel, Heidtmann in U-559 had to put into France.

Two boats commanded by exceptionally able and aggressive skippers hung on: Adalbert Schnee’s U-201 and Reinhard Suhren’s U-564. They closed on the night of August 22–23. Making his second attack on Outbound Gibraltar OG 71, Schnee claimed sinking two freighters for 9,000 tons and damage to two others for 12,000 tons (raising his total claims on this convoy to six ships sunk for 37,000 tons plus damage). Schnee did in fact sink two freighters, but they were small: one of 800 tons, the other of 2,000 tons. Making his first attack on the convoy, Suhren fired eleven torpedoes over about five hours. He sank the corvette HMS Zinnia (which went down in fifteen seconds) and claimed sinking four freighters for 20,000 tons and damage to four other freighters for 20,000 tons. Postwar records credited Suhren with no sinkings other than HMS Zinnia, but damage to two freighters: the 1,200-ton Clantara, abandoned and sunk by a seagoing tug, and the 2,100-ton Spind, which was also abandoned.

Dönitz directed four other boats, including Erich Topp’s U-552, to join the attack on Outbound Gibraltar OG 71. Fresh from Lorient, Ritterkreuz holder Topp found the hulk of Spind and put it under with his deck gun, but he subsequently incurred an engine breakdown and was forced to abort, returning to St. Nazaire with a full load of torpedoes. The other three boats chased the convoy, which appeared to head for Lisbon, but the strong surface and air escort drove them off.

Based on flash reports from the five boats, Dönitz believed another great convoy battle had occurred. He credited Kell, Heidtmann, Suhren, Schnee, and Topp with sinking fifteen ships for 90,000 tons, damage to five others for 29,000 tons, plus the sinking of a “destroyer” each by Kell and Suhren. In fact, the five boats had sunk the destroyer HMS Bath, the corvette HMS Zinnia, and eight small vessels for about 14,000 tons.

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CAPTURE OF U-570

Dönitz reconstituted the Center Group near Rockall Bank on August 23. Two ducks, U-141 and U-143, reconnoitered close to North Channel to alert the group to outbound convoys; seven oceangoing boats lay in wait offshore. The weather was foul; a gale had whipped up huge seas. Even so, RAF Coastal Command aircraft were out hunting, forcing every boat to dive several times a day.

A U-Boat of this group was U-557, commanded by Ottokar Paulshen, making his second patrol. On the evening of August 26, in heavy weather, Paulshen discovered—and reported—convoy Outbound South OS4, en route to Sierra Leone. It was escorted by three destroyers, a sloop, two ex-Coast Guard cutters, and two trawlers. Upon receiving Paulshen’s report, Kerneval set in train a complicated movement of the U-boats. Seven boats were to join U-557 for the attack on Outbound South OS4. Seven others, patrolling in Greenland or Iceland waters, were to speed southeast and south to form a new Center Group in case another Outbound South convoy was coming behind OS 4.

All eight boats in pursuit of Outbound South OS4 were experienced. The U-95, commanded by Gerd Schreiber, was on its fifth Atlantic patrol. The other seven were on second patrols. But the gale-whipped seas made convoy tracking difficult to impossible. In view of the weather conditions, Dönitz authorized Paulshen in U-557 and all other boats to attack when or if they could. In the early hours of August 27, Paulshen closed and sank four big freighters for 20,400 tons.

During this chase, B-dienst reported an inbound convoy passing close to the southern coast of Iceland. By then, Iceland was teeming with British and American air and naval forces. Coastal Command aircraft were mounting thirty to fifty missions a day. Moreover, Hitler’s order prohibiting attacks in that area on warships smaller than a cruiser and American warships of any kind was still in force. Although Dönitz still regarded Icelandic waters as dangerous, he decided to mount an all-out effort to intercept this convoy. Yet another complicated shift of the U-boats ensued. The seven boats that were headed southeast and south to reconstitute the Center Group were turned around and sent to Icelandic waters. Nine boats of the large Greenland group were detached and directed to search eastward and northeastward. These redispositions put sixteen U-boats, about half on maiden patrols, in pursuit of the convoy.

Unknown to the Germans, there were then three eastbound convoys comprising over 100 ships passing south of Iceland, all closely bunched. Leading the line was Halifax HX 144. Next came Slow Convoy SC 40, about 150 miles astern. Last came Halifax HX 145, about 150 miles behind Slow Convoy SC 40. Reading the decrypted Enigma signals to the U-boats, Commander Rodger Winn in the U-boat Tracking Room in Royal Navy Western Approaches Command advised Derby House to divert and reroute all three convoys. According to the official naval historian, Stephen Roskill, all three convoys “passed well to the south of the U-boat patrol lines.” Thanks to intelligence use and brilliant rerouting by Western Approaches Command , not a single vessel was lost from these convoys.

On top of that RAF Coastal Command mounted an all-out air escort. On August 25, a Catalina flying boat of 209 Squadron, based on Iceland, caught the new U-452, commanded by Jürgen March, age twenty-seven, on the surface. Commissioned on May 29, U-452 had rushed through workup in about eighty days and had only just reached the Atlantic. Attacking “low on the deck,” the Catalina accurately dropped a stick of four 450-pound depth charges set to detonate shallow, per Professor Blackett’s recommendation. Two charges closely straddled U-452’s bow, blowing her out of the water stern first. Responding to the alarm, the armed trawler HMS Vascama came up to find the Catalina flying boat strafing an exposed conning tower.HMS Vascama attacked, dropping twenty depth charges, which brought up “pieces of wood.” Nothing more was ever heard from U-452. The Admiralty gave the Catalina and Vascama equal credit for the kill, but doubtless the Catalina, piloted by Edward A. Jewiss, deserved the lion’s share. Four months later Jewiss died in an airplane crash.

Ninety miles to the northwest another new boat, the VIIC U-570, hunted for the convoy. She was commanded by thirty-two-year-old Hans Rahmlow, crew of 1928, a recent recruit to the U-boat arm who had commanded the school duck U-58 for five months before going to U-570. Commissioned on May 15, this boat also had been rushed through workup, completing Agru Front in Norway, where the boat bottomed and incurred some damage while diving to escape a British aircraft. Only four of the forty-three-man crew—the engineer, Erick Mensel, two petty officers, and one seaman—had previously made war patrols. The first watch officer, Bernhard Berndt, crew of 1935, had served in the Navy six years, but he also was new to U-boats. The second watch officer, Walter Christiansen, a former midshipman, had been commissioned in the spring.

After a rousing farewell party in Trondheim, where much beer and wine had been consumed,U-570 sailed at 0800 hours on August 24. She was not shipshape: The diesels were not properly tuned, the air compressor was on the blink, some batteries were not properly strapped down, the four spare torpedoes in the bow compartment were not securely stowed, one bow torpedo tube leaked. The hydrophones, knocked out when the boat bottomed, had not been repaired because no one in Norway knew how.

When the boat reached open seas, a large proportion of the crew became desperately seasick. Since only one or two sick men could be accommodated on the bridge at a time, and not for long, most men had to vomit in buckets belowdecks. The retching and the revolting odors inside the confined pressure hull touched off an epidemic of seasickness. Many men were not capable of standing watches; many of those who did were disoriented, unalert, and unwilling or unable to correct even the simplest deficiencies. Some of the improperly stowed bow torpedoes worked loose and rammed against the torpedo-tube inner doors; the untuned diesels labored inefficiently.

Directed to intercept the inbound convoy, on the morning of August 27, seventy-two hours out of Trondheim, U-570 took up a waiting position about eighty miles off the south coast of Iceland. Because the hydrophones were out of commission, Rahmlow had to conduct a visual search for the convoy, remaining on the surface in mounting seas in an area patrolled by RAF Coastal Command, which that day mounted thirty-six missions from Iceland.

In order to give the seasick men a brief respite, at 0800 hours Rahmlow dived to ninety feet and remained there, virtually motionless, for about two and a half hours. At 10:50, he brought the boat to periscope depth and looked around for surface traffic, but neglected to search the skies for hostile aircraft. He surfaced, threw open the hatch, and climbed to the dripping bridge. Before the diesels lit off, Rahmlow heard the engines of an aircraft and immediately crash-dived.

The plane was a twin-engine Lockheed Hudson of RAF Coastal Command’s 269 Squadron, based at Kaldadarnes, Iceland. Piloted by thirty-one-year-old Lt. James H. Thompson, it had only just embarked on a search-and-destroy mission. When U-570 surfaced, the Hudson crew picked her up on ASV radar. Reflexively throttling back into a shallow dive, Thompson reached U-570 before she got under and dropped a stick of four 250-pound depth charges set to detonate at fifty feet, per the new procedure. The copilot and navigator, John O. Coleman, saw two charges straddle the bow.

The impact of the explosions inside U-570 was terrific. The boat heaved violently and rolled almost completely over. The lights went out. Dials and depth gauges in the control room shattered. Mindless panic swept through the green, seasick crew. A rumor spread that saltwater flooding aft had entered the battery, creating chlorine gas. All men aft rushed wildly forward to the control room. Others slammed shut the control-room hatch and closed down the ventilation system, isolating the aft half of the boat. In an attempt to dive, Rahmlow called for full speed on the electric motors and hard down-angle on the bow planes, but nothing happened. The impact of the explosion had disengaged or broken the electric busses and fuses and there was no one in the aft room to reset or fix them, a simple task.

There was now only small danger to U-570 from above. The Hudson had dropped its full load of depth charges; it had nothing left to shoot except machine guns. An experienced, well-trained U-boat crew could have coped and escaped, but Rahmlow lost control. Assuming the rumors of chlorine gas to be true, he ordered the crew to don escape apparatus and go to the conning tower and bridge, prepared to scuttle and abandon ship.

It was one matter to abandon ship and scuttle in rough seas with a ship—even a hostile ship—nearby to offer rescue, quite another to leap into the water with nothing in sight except a circling twin-engine, land-based aircraft. As required, Rahmlow and his crew threw the Enigma and other secret papers over the side, but balked at leaping into the hostile and empty seas. Believing the crowd of Germans on the bridge had come up to man the deck gun and machine guns, Thompson made several strafing runs. On the fourth pass, to his utter astonishment, Thompson saw one of the Germans holding aloft a white shirt and another a white-painted board, obvious gestures of surrender. “Hold fire!” he shouted.

Puzzling over this unprecedented development, Thompson pulled up and circled warily. While the gunners, Fredrick J. Drake and Douglas Strode, kept their machine guns trained on U-570’s bridge, Thompson radioed an alarm and requested help. Another Hudson of 269 Squadron, piloted by Lt. Hugh Eccles, en route from Scotland to Iceland, heard the call and homed on Thompson, as did a Catalina of Coastal Command’s 209 Squadron, piloted by Edward Jewiss, who had sunk U-452 two days earlier. Eccles took photographs and served as a radio-relay station; Jewiss, fully armed with depth charges, circled, prepared to attack U-570 at the slightest sign that she was diving.

Believing chlorine gas made diving impossible, clueless U-Boat skipper Rahmlow had only one means of salvation: rescue by another U-boat after the aircraft ran low on fuel and had to leave, or after dark when they were blind. He therefore rushed off a plain-language radio message to Dönitz: “Am not able to dive. Being attacked by aircraft.” He gave his position and said he was unable to receive radio transmissions. In response, Dönitz ordered any and all boats in the vicinity to render assistance. The closest was another new VIIC, U-82, commanded by Siegfried Rollmann, age twenty-six. He attempted to close U-570 to rescue the crew, but was unable to do so, he told Dönitz, because of the heavy enemy air patrols.

When Royal Navy Western Approaches Command in Derby House Liverpool watch-standers received the radio reports from Coastal Command—and the interception of Rahmlow’s plain-language message to Dönitz—they were electrified. Here was another opportunity to capture a U-boat intact and perhaps its Enigma and other secret gear and papers as well. Assuming personal command of the operation, Western Approaches Commander in Chief Admiral Percy Noble ordered a small armada of surface vessels to race to U-570: two four-stack ex-American destroyers; the British HMS Burwell and the Canadian HMCS Niagara; and four British trawlers, HMS Kingston Agathe, HMS Northern Chief, HMS Wastwater, and HMS Windermere. The nearest vessel was the trawler HMS Northern Chief, about sixty miles to the southeast, an eight- or nine-hour run in the heavy seas. Derby House’s orders to HMS Northern Northern Chief: “Prevent the U-boat from scuttling by any means.” Thompson circled over U-570 in his Hudson as long as his fuel permitted, then returned to the 269 Squadron base at Kaldadarnes. Later, at Buckingham Palace, King George awarded Thompson and his copilot-navigator, Coleman, the Distinguished Flying Cross.

The trawler HMS Northern Chief, commanded by N. L. Knight, arrived at the scene about 10:00 P.M. It was raining; darkness was falling; visibility was poor. Jewiss’ Catalina flying boat and several Hudsons were circling the U-boat and firing flares to guide the trawler. In compliance with the orders from Derby House to prevent scuttling “by any means,” when Knight found U-570 he signaled the Germans by lamp, in English, to show a “small white light” and said: “If you make any attempt to scuttle, I will not save anyone and will fire on your rafts and floats.” Rahmlow replied: “I cannot scuttle or abandon. Save us tomorrow please.”

During the night the weather worsened; strong winds, rough seas, and heavy swells. The seasick Germans spent an unspeakably miserable night on the U-570, rolling and plunging. By radio signals and searchlight, HMS Northern Chief homed the trawlers HMS Kingston Agathe, HMS Wastwater, and HMS Windermere and the four-stack destroyers HMS Burwell and HMS Niagara to the scene. Having been airborne about sixteen hours (about thirteen of them circling U-570,) Jewiss’s Catalina departed for Iceland.

The senior naval officer, S.R.J. Woods, skipper of the British destroyer HMS Burwell, assumed command of all forces, weighed the situation, and formulated a plan. For reasons unknown, the U-570 obviously could not dive or operate her diesel engines; otherwise she could have escaped from the aircraft and the trawler HMS Northern Chief. Obviously, too, these Germans were not the fearless warriors of fable. They had not attempted to fight either the aircraft or HMS Northern Chief. They had surrendered and they wished, above all, to be rescued. But they could not be trusted. If Woods took them off the boat they were certain to scuttle. His plan—endorsed by Derby House—was to hold the Germans hostage on U-570 while he towed the boat to Iceland, denying them rescue and threatening harsher measures if they scuttled.

Woods put his plan into action after daybreak. While the other vessels circled, maintaining a sonar watch for other U-boats, Woods opened a dialogue with Rahmlow by signal lamp. Insisting that the boat was sinking, Rahmlow requested immediate rescue. Although U-570 was low in the water and down by the bow, Woods disbelieved Rahmlow and said: “Send half the crew below and blow ballast tanks. Do not destroy or throw overboard any papers or books. Do not scuttle or you will not be picked up.” Woods then attempted to pass a towline to the U-boat, but the seas were too rough and he got no cooperation from the Germans.

However when a Norweigian manned Northop aircraft suddenly appeared and unknowingly began to drop bombs (all missed to hir any ship) , hapless German crew suddenly changed their minds. Although Rahmlow continued to insist the boat was sinking and repeatedly requested immediate rescue, he suddenly appeared to be more cooperative and agreed to assist in attaching a towline. Woods successfully passed a hemp messenger line to the Germans, but when they attempted to pull a steel cable across, the hemp line parted. Suspecting that the Germans had possibly sabotaged the line, Woods concluded that another application of force was in order and directed a machine gunner to fire a burst over the heads of the Germans. “Unfortunately,” as a British after-action report put it, “owing to the laboring of the two vessels, some of the bullets hit the conning tower, wounding five of the [U-boat] crew. It did, however, have the desired effect.” The Germans began to cooperate in earnest. Most of the crew went belowdecks. Rahmlow blew ballast and fuel tanks, raising the boat to maximum surface buoyancy. The fuel dumping helped diminish the fury of the seas.

Rahmlow then signaled Woods: “Would you take off my wounded?” Woods replied “Yes.” He attempted to do so by twice floating a tethered raft to U-570, but owing to the heavy seas, both attempts failed, notwithstanding the oil from U-570 and additional oil released by the trawlers HMS Wastwater and HMS Windermere. Since a trawler had superior maneuverability in heavy seas, Woods directed HMS Kingston Agathe, commanded by H. O. L’Estrange, to make another attempt. A boarding party went to U-Boat and took off entire German crew to newly arrived Canadian destroyer HMCS Niagara The Canadians stripped the prisoners of clothing and papers, gave them dry clothing, coffee, and rum, and later a full meal, then placed them under heavy guard in a stokehold. By that time the men of the boarding party from HMS Kingston Agathe had attached the towline to U-570, closed the conning-tower hatches, and returned to their ship. Royal Navy after almost two yeears of warfare captured a fully intact U-Boat. After several hours of towing by destroyers and trawlers covered by RAF Coastal Command aircraft , captured U-570 was brought to Reykjavik , Iceland on 29th August 1941. Thanks to some impressive seamanship under difficult and trying conditions, the job got done. Since hundreds of men, including scores of Americans in Iceland, knew about the capture, and the British doubted that the Americans could keep the capture secret, and since the capture put the German submarine force in a very poor light, London not only released the news of her surrender but also made every effort to exploit the feat with newspaper stories and radio broadcasts.

Over the next several days, British salvage, intelligence, and submarine officers boarded U-570. They found the interior awash in a revolting mixture of vomit, excrement, fruit, bread, flour, diesel oil, and salt water. The Germans had smashed the torpedo-data computer, the gyro compass, and the hydrophone console; about one-third of the sixty-two batteries were cracked. However, except for a few minor hull and tank defects, the boat was structurally sound. The experts concluded there had never been any danger of the boat flooding and sinking and strongly doubted that chlorine gas had developed in the aft section. Following the initial attack by Thompson’s Hudson, a well-trained crew could have safely dived the boat, repaired the damage, and escaped.

A British submarine captain, George R. Colvin, and a small crew went out to Iceland and assumed “command” of U-570. After some minor repairs had been made, Colvin took her under heavy escort to Barrow-in-Furness, on the northwest coast of England. Subsequently the British put her through a rigorous testing regime which enabled engineers to chart her performance characteristics (crash-diving time, turning circle, submerged speed, depth limits, etc.) down to the finest detail. Although there were few surprises, this exact information was quite useful to Allied ASW forces.

The British and Americans were much impressed with some features of the Type VII. The most striking one, they proclaimed, was the rotating “bicycle”-type seat on the attack periscope in the conning tower, “a submarine captain’s dream.”* Other laudable features: the bridge fire-control system (UZO), the hydrophones (six times more efficient than British hydrophones), the pressure-hull thickness (7/8″ amidships, 11/16″ at bow and stern), and the expertness of the welding. The only real faults found were the appalling neglect of crew habitability or comfort (overcrowding, and shortage of bunks, fresh water, food storage, and eating areas, etc.) and the inadequate provisions for storing distilled water for the batteries.

Churchill sought every possible avenue for exploiting the U-570 politically. His first thought was to send it to the United States for repairs. It would be a “peculiarly provocative thing” for the Americans to do, he wrote. The Americans were quite willing—even eager—to get their hands on U-570, but the Brirtish Admiralty objected. (Royal Navy gave one of G7 air torpedoes , magnetic fuses and several other technical information of U-570 to US Navy though) U-570 was commissioned in the Royal Navy as HMS Graph, a playful allusion to the reams of charts her tests had generated. Commanded by Peter B. Marriot, she was overhauled and made ready for ASW patrols.

The capture of U-570 provided one other highly classified ASW tool. For the purpose of instructing boarding parties in techniques for capturing other U-boats and Enigma materials, the British built three full-scale mockups of the Type VIIC control room and the wardroom and radio-room areas just forward where the Enigma and its keying materials were usually stored.

British intelligence officers interrogated the disgruntled and dishonored crew of U-570 in London Cage, Kensington. Royal Navy interrogators were struck by the youth, the lack of experience and training, and the general “incompetence” of the men. Many prisoners had abandoned the boat carrying diaries, letters, and other personal papers, which provided additional valuable insights into the German submarine force.

None of the sixteen boats deployed near Iceland found the three inbound convoys. Two boats had been lost, due principally to Coastal Command aircraft: U-452 and U-570. On the day after the capture of U-570, August 28, another Iceland-based aircraft severely depth-charged two other boats, the new IXC U-501 (for the second time) and the veteran U-73, commanded by Helmut Rosenbaum. The latter was so badly damaged that Rosenbaum was compelled to abort.

The return of U-boats to Icelandic waters was thus a costly failure: one boat lost, one captured, one knocked out and another nearly so, for no enemy tonnage sunk whatsoever. Moreover, many boats had exhausted fuel in fruitless chases and had to break off patrolling and return to France. The experience of August served to reconfirm the earlier belief that Icelandic waters were simply too dangerous for U-boat operations, especially for new boats with green crews. Dönitz accordingly withdrew the boats and sent those with adequate fuel, as well as the boats sailing fresh from Germany and France, back to distant Greenland waters, beyond reach of Coastal Command aircraft based in the British Isles and Iceland.

The U-boat war in the North Atlantic was further confused and diluted on August 22. In a meeting with Admiral Raeder, Hitler expressed gravest concern over the naval situation in the Mediterranean. British aircraft and naval forces (including submarines) had inflicted substantial losses on Axis ships attempt-ing to supply Rommel’s Afrika Korps from Italy, imperiling the German and Italian forces in North Africa. In stark contrast, the British and Free French forces which were establishing or consolidating footholds in the Middle East were being freely resupplied by Allied shipping in the eastern Mediterranean. It had been expected that the Italian submarine force would ensure the safety of Axis ship-ping to North Africa and interdict Allied shipping in the eastern Mediterranean but, Hitler declared, “The Italians have achieved nothing with their submarines.” It was therefore “highly desirable,” Hitler stated, “to relieve [i.e., support] the Afrika Korps with a few German submarines.” A minimum of six U-boats (three groups of two boats), Hitler directed, should be sent to the Mediterranean as soon as possible.

Admiral Erich Raeder protested. The decisive naval battleground was the North Atlantic. Except in cases of “great emergency,” he insisted, no U-boats should be diverted to the Mediterranean—or to the Arctic or to other tasks—until Dönitz had at least forty boats on patrol in the Atlantic at all times, which would require a total operational force of 120 or more oceangoing boats. But Hitler overruled Raeder. Everything possible must be done to assist Rommel as soon as possible. “The surrender of North Africa,” he declared, “would mean a great loss both to us and to the Italians.”

These orders caused consternation and anger at Kerneval. Berlin did not appear to understand the fundamentals of the naval war. Already Hitler had diverted U-boats to the Arctic and the OKM had assigned too many U-boats to special missions, such as escorting blockade runners in and out of France. These diversions depleted the Atlantic U-boat force, which had to fight the decisive naval battle. Six U-boats could not rescue Rommel, and it was not likely to end there. Further diversions to the Mediterranean could be expected.

There were other complications. The passage through the heavily defended Strait of Gibraltar was considered to be perilous, as were operations in the confined, heavily phosphorescent, and often clear waters of the Mediterranean. Only the medium Type VII boats, manned by the most experienced and dependable skippers and crews, could be detailed to the Mediterranean, robbing the Atlantic force of considerable cream. The Mediterranean boats would require bases—and a pipeline of supplies and spare parts—manned by scarce German submarine technicians. Logically, too, the Mediterranean boats should be commanded not by Kerneval but by a subordinate submarine headquarters in that theater of war.

Hitler’s decision to send U-boats to the Mediterranean in support of the Afrika Korps was a grave error, ranking alongside his failure to fully support mass production of U-boats at an earlier date. The hard-learned lesson of Norway—that U-boats were not appropriate weapons for supporting land forces—appeared to have been forgotten. As feared at Kerneval, the commitment of U-boats to the Mediterranean was to increase, diverting large numbers from the North Atlantic convoy routes during a critical period of the naval war.

As in July 1941, upwards of one thousand Allied merchant ships of about 5 million gross tons crossed the North Atlantic in east and west convoys unharmed by the enemy in August. Of these, 568 were loaded ships sailing from Canada to the British Isles in the Halifax and Sydney (or Slow) convoys.* In addition, 414 empty ships sailed in Outbound North convoys. The only ship to be sunk by the U-boats on the North Atlantic run in August was the corvette Picotee, escorting the Iceland-bound section of convoy Outbound North 5.

The U-boats fared better during August in the attacks on Gibraltar and Sierra Leone convoys. They sank eight ships and two escorts (destroyer Bath, corvette Zinnia) from convoy Outbound Gibraltar 71; five ships from convoy Outbound South 4; and five ships from convoy Sierra Leone 81, inbound to the British Isles. Total: twenty ships out of the 200 in these convoys.