As stated in A Word to the Reader , the focus of this narrative has been on the major convoy battles and on Coastal Command’s Bay Offensive, both of which defined the German defeat in May. Still, it must be recognized that Allied operations against U-boats were occurring outside those two contexts throughout the month, and that eleven of those actions led to sinkings. Lest a narrative already heavily saturated with attack detail be further thus burdened, only the essential information about those sinkings is given below.
On 4 May, RAF Coastal Command Liberator bomber “P” of 86 Sqdn., while in 47°10‘N, 22°57’W, on passage out to meet Convoy HX.236 northeast of the Azores, received an S/E (10-centimeter radar) contact, soon afterwards sighted a U-boat on the surface, and attacked it with four D/Cs. An oil patch and wood planking announced the result. Sunk with all hands was U-109 (Oblt.z.S Joachim Schramm).
On the 9nth, U-528 (von Rabenau), last seen as a member of Group Star on 29 April (chapter 4), where she was damaged and forced back to base by the B7 escort of Convoy ONS.5, was proceeding home in 46°55’N, 14°44’W when she was discovered on the surface by Halifax “D” of 58 Sqdn., which was escorting Convoy OS.47 en route to Africa. Five D/Cs badly wounded the boat, which was then finished off by the sloop H.M.S. Fleetwood. and the corvette H.M.S. Mignonette from the convoy’s escort, which picked up fifteen survivors.
On 15 May, a Type IXC boat, U-176 (Korv. Kapt. Reiner Dierksen), was operating in Outer Seas northwest of Havana, Cuba, when she was sighted by a Vought-Sikorsky OS2U-3 Kingfisher observation plane from USN Patrol Squadron VP-62, which was escorting a two-ship convoy. When the U-boat dived, the pilot marked the swirl with a smoke bomb, then flew over the surface escorts, dipping his wings and directing the Cuban subchaser CS—13 to the scene. The Cuban vessel dropped a three-charge pattern that was followed by four explosions. There were no survivors. Similarly, all hands were lost when the flush-deck destroyer U.S.S. MacKenzie (DD-175), escorting Convoy UGS.8 200 miles west northwest of the Madeira Islands, encountered and destroyed U—182 (Kptlt. Nicolai Clausen) a ten depth charge pattern attack. The well-proven boat, a type IXD2, was returning to base from patrols off Cape Town and Madagascar. There were no survivors. The date was 16 May.
The next day, at 0830, in the Outer Seas off southeast Brazil, U-128 (Kptlt. Hermann Steinert) was sighted on the surface by a USN Martin PBM-3C Mariner flying boat (74-P-6) of Patrol Squadron 74 based in Natal and Aratu, Brazil. The U-boat dived, but only 15 seconds had elapsed before the PBM dropped six D/Cs ahead of the swirl. Forced by damage to surface three minutes later, the boat made a run for the Brazilian coast, but another US Navy PBM (74-P—5) flying boat came on the scene and further crippled the surfaced boat with six D/Cs. At about 0930 the U-boat’s bridge lookouts sighted the approach of destroyers USS Moffett (DD-362, Porter class) and USS Jouett (DD-396, Somers class), and Steinert ordered the crew off and the boat scuttled. Seven of the U-128’s crew died during the attacks, fifty-one were rescued by USS Moffett, and four died aboard her.
On the same day, in the North Atlantic between the Shetlands and Iceland, a RAF Coastal Command Hudson bomber “J” of 269 Sqdn. caught U-646 (Oblt.z.S. Heinrich Wulff) on the surface and released four D/Cs while the diving boat’s conning tower was still fully visible. One minute later a 100-foot-high cloud of gray smoke appeared over the D/C scum, followed 30 seconds later by oil and debris. There were no survivors. The Type VIIC U-414 (Oblt.z.S. Walter Huth), on her first patrol, broke through the Strait of Gibraltar and on the 21st was pursuing a convoy in the western Mediterranean when the spanking-new Benson class destroyer USS Nields (DD-616) located , intercepted and destroyed her with D/Cs at 36°OI’N, oo°34’E. None of the crew survived.
Five days later, PBY-5A Catalina Flying Boat “F” of USN Patrol Squadron VP-84 from Fleet Air Base, Iceland, sighted a surfaced U-boat southeast of Iceland and attacked it while still surfaced with three 350-pound D/Cs dropped from 100 feet. The U-boat dived, and pilot Lt. R. C. Millard, USN, making a second run, released a Mk.24 acoustic homing torpedo. Its hydrophones correctly fixed on the U-boat’s cavitation and brought oil and wreckage to the surface—FIDO’s second success of the month. The stern-punctured victim, U-467 (Kptlt. Heinz Kummer), went down with all hands.
PBY Catalina Flying boat
At 1356 on the same day, U-436 (Kptlt. Günther Seibicke) was submerged, returning from her third Atlantic patrol, when she was picked up on asdic by Royal Navy frigate HMS Test, part of the escort of a U.K. to Gibraltar special convoy, KX.10. HMS Test made two D/C attacks, then lost the contact. The nearby Royal NBavy corvette HMS Hyderabad joined HMS Test in a box search and at 1434 acquired a contact, which she attacked with a ten-pattern. Eighteen minutes later, having regained contact, HMS Hyderabad dropped a second ten-pattern, which brought to the surface oil, large quantities of wood, a sou’wester, a glove, cigars, and a piece of human flesh. There were no survivors.
On the afternoon of the 28th, northeast of Valencia, Spain, in the Mediterranean, RAF Coastal Command Hudson bomber “M” of 608 Sqdn. based at Blida (ElBoulaï’da), Algeria, sighted and sank a U-boat with R.P. (rocket projectiles) It was the first successful use of rockets by the RAF. The victim was U-755 (Kptlt. Walter Going), from which thirty-eight crewmen were lost. Nine survivors were picked up by the Spanish Navy and later repatriated to Germany.
At 2036 on the same day, while on passage out from Reykjavik to meet convoy HX.240 in the mid-Atlantic, RAF Coastal Command Liberator bomber “E” of 120 Sqdn. sighted U-304 (Koch), seen earlier in the battle for SC.130, and attacked the partially surfaced boat with four D/Cs. One minute later, an oil patch and wood wreckage appeared. All hands went down on this boat’s only combat patrol.
…
Even before that last date, Grand Admiral Dönitz must have felt like an infantry company commander whose position was being overrun by waves of enemy assault troops; for on the 24th day of the month he came, reluctantly, to the conclusion that the losses in May had “reached an impossible height.” Where “not long ago” one U-boat was lost for every 100,000 GRT sunk, which was an acceptable if not an ideal figure, now a boat was being lost for every 10,000 GRT. In an analysis prepared by Konteradmiral Godt and the BdU staff, the RAF was credited with playing a “decisive” role in bringing about that change in fortunes—attributing to the RAF not only the land-based aircraft that the U-boats were encountering but also the carrier aircraft, which were not in fact RAF but Fleet Air Arm (Naval Aviation). Dönitz concluded that, “The excessive losses and the lack of success in operations against the latest convoys now force us to take decisive measures until the boats are equipped again with better defense and attack weapons.”
The decisive measures were to withdraw U-boats from the northern transatlantic convoy lanes and transfer the main effort to the West African and Brazilian coasts, the Caribbean Basin, and the traffic between the United States and Gibraltar in the Central Atlantic. While reminding his boats in a “To All Commanders” signal that the North Atlantic remained the principal operational area, and that operations “must” be resumed there once new weapons were supplied the boats—he named an effective radar search receiver, the anti-escort acoustic homing torpedo (Zaunkönig), and the quadruple 20mm antiaircraft installations—for now, Dönitz stated, in “a temporary deviation from the former principles for the conduct of U-boat warfare,” the boats must in great part vacate the densest convoy lanes because, simply, he would “not allow the U-boats to be beaten at a time when their weapons are inferior.”
Of course, he added, the North Atlantic could not immediately or completely be denuded of boats, for a number of reasons. Boats already operating there did not have sufficient fuel to make the Outer Seas and return. It would take time to top them up, and it would be dangerous to bunch them at bases where, because of the limited number of bays in the bombproof shelters, many boats would be exposed to air bombardment. In order to camouflage the general retirement, certain boats would be assigned to stay on Atlantic station and transmit dummy signals to simulate regular patrol line traffic. New boats just coming into Atlantic service from home waters would have to remain on station in the North Atlantic “in spite of the difficult conditions.” They would be expected to stand by until the next favorable conditions for attack, that is, the new moon, recurred, the next such period being the end of June. Wellproved, or veteran, boats would be assigned to support the newcomers at that date. In the meantime, Commanders must strive to maintain the good morale of their men in the face of these temporary expedients.
To all officers at sea Donitz sent an Order of the Day under the same 24 May date. Just the day before, he had signaled them that the development of new defenses against Allied radar and weaponry was receiving “maximum application at all our stations,” and that new technology should be ready shortly. The time until then, he told them, “must be passed with cunning and caution,” though “with your old inexorable severity in the battle itself.” Now, on the 24th, he repeated the theme, more poignantly:
“I know that operations for you out there at the moment are some of the hardest and most costly in losses, since the enemy’s defense at the moment is superior in view of new technical methods. Believe me, I have done everything and will continue to do so in order to introduce means to counter this enemy advance. The time will soon come in which you will be superior to the enemy with new and stronger weapons and will be able to triumph over your worst enemies, the aircraft and the destroyer.… We will therefore not allow ourselves to be forced into the defensive … and we will fight on with still more fortitude.… We will then be the victors.… Heil Hitler.”
To the Führer personally, at the Berghof on the Obersalzburg near Berchtesgaden on 31 May, Dönitz made the appropriate explanations, identifying Allied aircraft and radar—“We don’t even know on what wavelength the enemy locates us”—as the determining factors in his ordering of the U-boat dispersion. A stenographer took down his words:
“Our losses have increased during the last month from approximately fourteen U-boats, or thirteen percent of the U-boats at sea, to thirty-six or even thirty-seven, or approximately thirty percent of all U-boats at sea. [In fact, counting U-439 and U-659, which collided during operations on the night of 3/4 May, and the two boats, V-563 and U-440 sunk on the 31st, a total of 41 boats were lost during the month.] These losses are too high. We must conserve our strength, otherwise we will play into the hands of the enemy.”
After naming the new detection gear and weapons that he hoped to have on stream soon, Dönitz proposed to Hitler an entirely new remedy: rapid development of a separate Naval Air Force to counteract Allied air with air of their own, with which both to fight off Allied bombers and to bomb convoy vessels.
“The naval flyers must learn navigation at sea, celestial navigation, drift computation, how to keep contact with a convoy, cooperation with the U-boats by means of direction-finder signals, how to be guided to the convoy by other planes, and the necessary communications.”
The stenographer recorded: “The Führer agrees fully with these views.” Obviously, where the threat of Allied aircraft was concerned, Dönitz had come a long distance from August 1942, when he had stated, “The U-boat has no more to fear from aircraft than a mole from a crow.” (he had eaten these words) But there is an air of unreality about this Berghof conversation. Even with new detection gear and weapons, there was hardly a chance that obsolete U-boats could again contend with enlarged Allied sea and air forces boasting state-of-the-art equipment operated by undiminished numbers of highly experienced personnel. And the likelihood that at that date, with no experience base and limited material and human resources, Germany could revive its 1930s Naval Air Arm—a fleet of over 700 aircraft was envisioned—was extremely remote, and must have been known to be so to both Dönitz and Hitler. “Just a pipedream” is how the historian of German naval air describes it. And the U-Bootwaffe had to continue functioning under the haphazard, shortrange, and generally ineffective umbrella of land-based antishipping warfare aircraft from the Luftwaffe’s Fliegerführer Atlantik (Air Leader Atlantic) in western France—whose Atlantic grid charts did not even match those carried by the U-boats!
Of course, no one liked to recognize defeat when it came, least of all “The Lion” and the Führer: the former because he had invested his life’s energies in the U-Bootwaffe, which he had nourished to maturity from its post-1918 beginnings in 1935 and had expanded to the fleet that took to sea on 1 May 1943; the latter because he was aware that even with the reverses suffered in May, the U-boats were still his best weapon against the Allied buildup for an attempt to cross the Channel onto the Continent.
It took Dönitz fifteen years (a ten-year prison sentence adding to the time) to acknowledge in writing the emptiness of his proposals to Hitler and the disingenuousness of his bellicose pledges of final victory to the U-boats. In the pages of his memoirs that address the end of what his staffers called “Black May,” the old Admiral acknowledged the cold reality of 31 May:
“We had lost the Battle of the Atlantic"