15:38 (New York Time)
Monday, January 5, 1942
Headquarters, United States Navy Atlantic Fleet
Norfolk, Virginia, U.S.A.
‘’Show me again that report on this U-800.’’
‘’Yes, Admiral!’’ Replied the assistant operations officer of the fleet before going quickly through his pile of messages. Finding the one asked for, he then passed it to a depressed-looking Vice Admiral Royal Ingersoll, Commander of the Atlantic Fleet, who was standing with other senior naval commanders around the big chart table of the operations center. However, re-reading the report sent from Curacao didn’t seem to help his mood, on the contrary. Ingersoll soon looked up from the message and eyed the men around the chart table before speaking.
‘’Some will probably be tempted to say that, since this damned U-800 is now in the Caribbean Sea, it is no longer our concern. However, that German submarine did pass through our East Coast operational zone recently and we failed to stop it. It is thus still partly our responsibility to find and destroy it before it causes yet more damage to our war effort and to ourselves. Furthermore, we have orders from our new CNO{10} to help hunt down and sink that submarine, so any discussion about this is moot. We now know for certain that there are elite commando soldiers aboard the U-800, meaning that we can expect coastal sabotage raids along the eastern and southern seaboards anywhere and anytime, on top of having a German submarine on the prowl and hitting our shipping lanes. We will thus have to reinforce significantly the level of security of our port installations and aboard our ships at anchor.’’
‘’But, Admiral, aren’t we grossly overestimating the threat represented by this lone German submarine?’’ Asked Rear Admiral Adolphus Andrews, the commander of the Easterm Sea Frontier area. Ingersoll gave him a distinctly less than friendly look as he answered his question. Andrews had basically done nothing during the enemy rampage of the last months and had ignored the suggestions from the British to form coastal convoys in order to lower the losses in merchant ships. In a way, Ingersoll himself was also guilty of negligence in that matter for not having pushed Andrews harder, but he now was about out of patience with him.
‘’We are grossly overestimating the threat from that submarine? Haven’t our recent losses, mostly incurred in your sector, been enough to convince you that it was time to get off your ass, Rear Admiral Andrews?’’
Ingersoll then looked around the table at his assembled subordinates, his expression severe.
‘’The times of half measures and peacetime habits are over, gentlemen! Since what little we have in the Caribbean and in the Gulf of Mexico area is probably insufficient to find and destroy quickly that U-800, I have decided to temporarily transfer three full destroyer squadrons and four maritime patrol aircraft squadrons south, in order to reinforce our defenses there. I will also direct the Marine Corps to assign sub-units from Camp Lejeune to various ports and installations along our Southern Coast, in order to protect them from commando raids. I want a detailed plan for an extensive anti-submarine sweep of the Caribbean Basin and Gulf of Mexico prepared and ready for my review in three days. We will then meet again. You are dismissed, gentlemen!’’
As his admirals left, Ingersoll went to a young lieutenant who had obviously been waiting for a while already with a message in his hands.
‘’You have something for me, Lieutenant?’’
‘’Yes sir!’’ Replied the young officer, coming to rigid attention and presenting the message he was holding. ‘’We received this report twenty minutes ago, sir.’’
Taking the message and reading it quickly, Ingersoll had to stop himself from cursing out loud: five tanker ships had been torpedoed and sunk off the Venezuelan coast, while three more tanker ships had been shelled and destroyed while docked at the oil transfer terminal of the Cardon Refinery, in Punta Cardon, Venezuela. The terminal itself, while not directly targeted, had been significantly damaged by the burning of the docked tankers. The worst part was that all this had happened over ten hours ago, with this the first information he was getting about it. Keeping the message, he started walking briskly towards the office of his intelligence officer, intent on telling him what he thought of such delays in the passage of vital information. What he couldn’t possibly know then was that his troubles with German submarines were only starting: the first group of Type IX oceanic attack submarines sent by Admiral Karl Dönitz to attack merchant shipping along the American East Coast was going to arrive soon, just after the planned departure of three American destroyer squadrons for the Caribbean Basin to hunt down the U-800.
13:06 (New York Time)
Tuesday, January 6, 1942
Officers’ mess of the U-800
Off the coast of Colombia, Caribbean Sea
Hugo Margraff was the last one to arrive at the officers’ mess of the submarine and found all seven other officers aboard assembled at the dining table, with a chart of the Caribbean Basin and of the Gulf of Mexico spread on the table. Otto Kretschmer, apparently in quite a good mood, smiled on seeing him enter the mess and motioned to him to join the group at the table.
‘’Ahh, Leutnant Margraff! Please sit down with us: we have strategy to discuss.’’
Taking place beside Leutnant zur See Franz Streib on one of the pivoting seats, Margraff kept silent then, expecting the discussion to be mostly about naval matters. In that he was proven wrong rather quickly. Pointing at a spot on the chart spread on the table, Otto Kretschmer spoke in a sober tone to his assembled subordinates.
‘’Here is our last position, calculated an hour ago from a fresh sextant measurement. We are now about 265 nautical miles from our next objective, the Colombian port of Cartagena and its maritime traffic. Apart from being a very active port, Cartagena also happens to have a large refinery and oil tanker terminal, which I consider as primary targets for us. I know that most submarine commanders would say that the business of submarines is to sink ships, but if we could destroy the refineries that fill the tankers we normally concentrate on, then why not do it? Refineries, as we amply showed in Curacao, are large, easy to spot and very vulnerable to any sort of damage. Another reason for my interest in refineries is that we only have a finite number of torpedoes aboard. In fact, we already have expended 42 of our 72 torpedoes and I intend to save what’s left for truly worthy targets at sea. On the other hand, we still have over 170 rounds for our 10.5 centimeter deck gun and I intend to use those in the most efficient manner to help save on torpedoes. Another way I have in mind to save torpedoes is to keep using you and your men, Leutnant Margraff, since you have proved to be quite good at boarding ships and blowing shit up.’’
Hugo smiled on hearing that: the actions at Cape Lookout and in Miami had given him the taste for more of the same.
‘’What do you have in mind for me and my men, Herr Kapitän?’’
‘’Well, that’s one of the points of this discussion: I don’t know yet for sure. What I intend to do is to present you all a list of our potential targets around the Caribbean Basin and the Gulf of Mexico and to then discuss which ones we should strike in priority and with what kind of weapons, meaning either torpedoes, guns or saboteurs. Keep as well in mind the psychological factor while discussing: we want our enemies to be confused and to wonder where we will strike next. Even if you think that a particular target is way too risky to attack, don’t dismiss it offhand: the Americans have proven so far to be surprisingly amateurish and ill prepared in terms of defensive measures. If they think that a port or facility is unlikely to be attacked by us, then it may just give us a chance to strike at it by slipping around the American defenses, thanks to their negligence. So, gentlemen, the floor is now open to everyone and everything, including crazy ideas!’’
17:29 (New York Time)
Coastal lookout post, Bocachica
Southern entrance to the Bay of Cartagena
Colombia
The Colombian Coast Guard officer focused as best he could his eyes while examining with his binoculars the large tanker ship entering the Bay of Cartagena an hour after Sunset. He then briefly looked at his NCO, who was sitting nearby in front of the radio set of their lookout post.
‘’I see an American flag flying from the stern of that tanker. The name on the bow is ‘TEXACO UNITED’. Is it on the ship’s manifest for today, Petty Officer Guzman?’’
‘’One second, Teniente!... Yes, the TEXACO UNITED was expected today to arrive from Boston to fill up with gasoline at the oil terminal of the Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos Refinery. It was supposed to arrive in the afternoon, but it could have been delayed by a storm.’’
‘’We have the right name and flag: that’s good enough for me. Record its entry in the bay at this hour.’’
‘’Yes, Teniente!’’
The Colombian officer then all but forgot about the American tanker, looking more for a rumored German submarine supposedly prowling the Caribbean Basin and making the Americans paranoid.
On the bridge of the TEXACO UNITED, Hugo Margraff smiled while scanning the bay around the tanker ship with his binoculars.
‘’No sign of a reaction by the Colombians. I think that our little stratagem worked.’’
Matrosen Obergefreiter Peter Schültz, at the wheel of the captured American tanker ship, grinned in response.
‘’To be fair to these Colombians, who would think that we could pull such a stunt as this? I just hope that these American merchant sailors will quickly enough be rescued from their lifeboat floating off the coast. I have the refinery and oil terminal in sight, four nautical miles ahead. There are two tankers presently docked at the oil terminal.’’
‘’Excellent! Do as a normal visiting tanker would do, but head directly for the biggest of those two tankers. Uh, what kind of impact can we expect in a collision at ten knots between tanker ships?’’
Peter Schültz wiggled his left hand at that question.
‘’With a 12,000 ton tanker doing the ramming? We will probably cut that other tanker in half, on top of crushing part of the loading jetty. Believe me, Herr Leutnant: you don’t want to be still aboard when that will happen.’’
‘’Oh, I certainly don’t intend to stay longer than what is needed to ensure that we do hit that tanker and terminal, especially with that white phosphorus incendiary round rigged to explode on deck.’’
Hugo then resumed his watching, concentrating on the two tankers and the wide expanse of the refinery beyond the oil terminal.
‘’That refinery complex is certainly big by any standards: it easily covers over one square kilometer of surface. I can see plenty of juicy oil storage tanks all over the place. Once we lit a fire at the oil terminal, the illumination should make it easy for our gunners on the U-800 to target those storage tanks.’’
As he said that, Hugo couldn’t resist throwing a glance towards the starboard side of the tanker, where the surfaced U-800 was navigating on a parallel course very close to the tanker, using the dark mass of the American ship’s hull to hide itself from coastal observers. Only the most observant lookout would be able to make out in the obscurity the low, dark silhouette of the submarine against the background made by the tanker’s black hull. The whole scheme was actually an idea from himself and Hugo was quite proud of it, while Otto Kretschmer had certified his idea as crazy enough to just work. Normally, Otto would normally have avoided to directly attack the coastal installations of an officially neutral country, but the directives he had received on that subject from Admiral Dönitz had been clear: if a supposedly neutral country actually supported openly the war efforts of the United States and of Great Britain, then Germany was going to ignore, at least unofficially, that so-called neutrality. Beside, Colombia had already cut all diplomatic relations with Japan, Germany and Italy, so there was in truth little left to talk about in that matter.
At the oil terminal loading jetty, the lonely sailor on night bridge watch aboard the Canadian tanker ship JOHN IRVING got on his feet, becoming nervous as a big tanker ship was approaching the jetty and was showing no sign of slowing down. That tanker seemingly accelerated further when it got within 800 meters from the jetty, heading straight towards the JOHN IRVING. That convinced the sailor to pick up the telephone receiver on the bridge and call his captain’s cabin. He got a sleepy answer after four rings.
‘’Captain Kinnock speaking! What is it?’’
‘’Captain, a ship is heading for us at full speed. It is now less than half a mile away and is still not slowing down.’’
‘’WHAT? I’M COMING UP!’’
Captain Kinnock never had time to get to the bridge before the TEXACO UNITED slammed at twelve knots, its maximum speed, right into the unlucky JOHN IRVING. The bow of the American tanker, which was much bigger than the Canadian tanker, sliced the JOHN IRVING in two, with enough residual energy left to continue on and hit directly the oil loading jetty behind it, badly warping it and breaking in multiple places the pipelines connecting the jetty with the oil tank farms. Refined gasoline and diesel fuel then gushed out in massive quantities from both the broken pipelines and from the ripped tanks of the JOHN IRVING, spreading on the surface of the water around the jetty. The panicked sailors of the JOHN IRVING who had survived the collision then scrambled to evacuate their doomed ship, while the few Colombian workers present around the jetty ran away as fast as they could. Two minutes after the collision, the white phosphorus incendiary shell on the bow of the TEXACO UNITED burst, sending burning white phosphorus particles all around in a radius of fifty meters and igniting the puddles of gasoline. A huge fireball then rose in the evening sky, illuminating everything within two kilometers. A few seconds later, the servants of the 10.5 cm deck gun of the U-800 opened fire, aiming at the oil storage tanks of the refinery. The 15.1 kilo explosive shells easily pierced the thin steel walls of the giant storage tanks, exploding inside them and literally bursting them open like balloons filled with water, raining either gasoline, diesel fuel or raw oil around. Because they needed to mix first with some oxygen from the surrounding air, that fuel did not ignite immediately but flowed out of the ripped open tanks, flooding the grounds of the refinery. After a dozen 10.5 cm shells were fired, the deck quad 20mm anti-aircraft gun of the U-800 then opened fire, sending explosive incendiary rounds in thick streams around the refinery and igniting the spilled fuel. A titanic detonation resulted, thanks to fuel-air explosive mixture effect, creating a shockwave that nearly blew the gunners of the U-800 off the deck of their submarine, and this at a distance of over three kilometers. Hugo Margraff’s team, which had evacuated the TEXACO UNITED after setting it on its final collision course, was also nearly thrown into the water as their commandeered motor boat from the American tanker nearly capsized due to the blast. The Germans then stared with awe at the gigantic fireball that rose above the now destroyed refinery.
‘’Mein Gott!’’ Uttered Hugo Margraff, transfixed by that vision. ‘’What a sight!’’
Taking back hold of himself, he then pointed at the U-800, now less than fifty meters away.
‘’Come on! Let’s hurry and get back to our submarine!’’
Peter Schültz, at the commands of the motor boat, didn’t need more encouragement and pushed his outboard motor to the maximum. Soon, they were bumping against the hull of the U-800, with sailors on the deck of the submarine throwing ropes at them. Two minutes later, all the Germans were inside, with the access hatches firmly closed and locked and with the two deck mounts retracted under the upper deck plating. Staying on the surface for the moment because of the shallowness of the Bay of Cartagena, which wasn’t deep enough to allow the U-800 to dive to periscope depth, the submarine turned around and made its way at top speed towards the bay’s southern entrance. The Colombian Coast Guard men at the Bocachica lookout post, not having an artillery gun at their disposal, could only watch as the German submarine sped out of the bay and disappeared into the night.
10:42 (New York Time)
Thursday, January 8, 1942
Headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet
Norfolk, Virginia
Vice Admiral Ingersoll looked up from the report just brought in by his chief of staff, Captain Olaf Hustvedt, and threw a discouraged look at the ethnic Norwegian.
‘’If not for all the damage they caused in Cartagena, I would be tempted to clap my hands to congratulate those Germans: they have balls and imagination aplenty.’’
‘’They certainly showed some very unorthodox thinking last night, Admiral.’’
‘’Then, how about thinking ourselves in an unorthodox manner in order to guess where they will attack next, Olaf?’’
‘’I already did a bit of that, Admiral. If we look at the trail of destruction left behind by this U-800, we can actually see some continuity in it. It probably started here in Norfolk, when it sowed a minefield to block our harbor entrance, then went up along the coast towards New York before turning around and sprinting to Miami, probably to throw us off. From Miami, it went down along the Cuban and Dominican coast, where those Germans picked up the Kaiser family, then went straight to Curacao, ignoring the dense ship traffic around Bermuda. From Curacao, the U-800 apparently followed the South American coast westward, hitting Punta Cardon on its way before finally hitting Cartagena. One pattern that I believe I see in this is the priority given by this Captain Kretschmer to targets connected to oil, be they tanker ships, oil terminals or refineries, which he probably consider key strategic targets. My bet is that the U-800 will continue westward and then northward towards the next biggest target of strategic importance: the Panama Canal Zone. Once in that area, Kretschmer would find himself in what I would call a ‘target-rich environment’, with dozens of ships waiting daily in line to pass through the Panama Canal locks and waterways. Apart from our main coastal ports, the Panama Canal is probably the most vital maritime installation we have and is the doorway between the Atlantic and the Pacific.’’
Ingersoll thought over those words for a moment before nodding his head slowly.
‘’What you just said certainly makes much sense, Olaf. Very well: tell two of the three destroyer squadrons we just dispatched south to head at best speed towards the Panama Canal Zone, with the mission to hunt the U-800 once there. Alert also the Panama Zone Commander about this submarine and ask him to double up his anti-submarine air patrols. With luck, we will be able to catch that fox before he can again enter the hen house.’’
‘’I’m on it, Admiral!’’
16:25 (New York Time)
Monday, January 12, 1942
Headquarters, U.S. Atlantic Fleet
Norfolk, Virginia
‘’I have both a good news and a bad news, Admiral.’’
Ingersoll passed a hand on his face before replying to his chief of staff: the last two weeks had been truly exhausting and stressful ones for him and for everybody at Fleet Headquarters.
‘’Alright, Olaf: give me the bad news first!’’
‘’We now have a group of German submarines that is confirmed as operating along our East Coast, Admiral: four ships have been torpedoed and sunk in the last five hours between New York and Atlantic City, two of them nearly simultaneously and over a hundred miles apart. It is thus not the U-800 at play, especially in view of the distance to Cartagena: the U-800 simply could not get from Cartagena to New York this fast.’’
‘’And the good news?’’
‘’We have not heard from nor seen the U-800 since its attack against Cartagena, five days ago. Maybe it ran out of torpedoes and is now on its way back to Europe.’’
‘’Thank God if that’s truly the case! That Kretschmer was becoming worst than the Black Plague! On the other hand, he still could be hiding somewhere, waiting for us to lower our guard before striking again. Keep those destroyers searching for the U-800 around the entrance of the Panama Canal waterway, just in case it reappears there, but tell them to stay in passive sonar mode and to wait in quiet, ambush positions. With luck, we could just attract Kretschmer into our nets.’’
‘’And the other German submarines now operating along our East Coast, Admiral?’’
Ingersoll’s shoulders sagged a bit at that question.
‘’Deploy the destroyers we have left the best you can, Olaf. Our heavy units will stay in port for the moment, so that they don’t eat up our limited destroyer availability with escort duties. As for me, I will be contacting the governors of our coastal states to implore them again to enforce a night curfew along the coast. Hopefully, they will prove more reasonable and realistic this time.’’
Unfortunately for Ingersoll and for hundreds of American and Allied merchant sailors, his pious hope proved unfounded. The pack of German Type IX submarines now sailing up and down the American East Coast had just started what would be called later on ‘The Happy Time’, thanks to the stubborn refusal by American politicians and many military leaders to look at reality in the face. It was going to take another three months before common sense prevailed over inertia and old habits.
09:06 (Texas Time)
Wednesday, January 14, 1942
Control Room, U-800
Coast of Texas
‘’I’m sorry, Herr Kapitän: this area of the Texas coast is too shallow for us to operate safely. The continental plateau along the whole coast this side of the Gulf of Mexico is unusually wide and shallow, with barely enough water depth to operate at periscope depth, and this with only a few meters to spare under our keel. Our high definition sonar readings are formal: with the tiny gradient of the sea bottom in this region, we would have to cover a good eighty to a hundred nautical miles from the coast just to get to waters deep enough to dive past thirty meters. We would be an easy prey for any maritime patrol aircraft flying overhead while we sailed over this shallow continental plateau.’’
Otto made a bitter smirk on hearing the judgment of his navigator, Franz Streib. Since his charts of this region were old and incomplete, he had decided to conduct first a reconnaissance sweep before attacking his intended target. Now, it seemed that the port of Galveston was out of reach for him, short of taking suicidal risks to get there.
‘’Very well! We will thus forget about Galveston and the other Texan ports on our target list.’’
‘’So, where will we go next, Herr Kapitän? Do we return to Lorient now?’’
‘’I will be damned if I would return to port with thirty eels still aboard, Franz. I want to expend those torpedoes on worthy targets before we go back home.’’
Grabbing the list of potential targets he had made with his officers eight days ago, Otto scratched off his intended targets along the Texas and Louisiana coasts, then looked at what was left for a long moment, with his navigator waiting silently for his decision. Otto finally put his finger on one entry in his target list and spoke in a firm tone.
‘’This one holds the most promises for us, even though it is supposed to be strongly defended. Turn the boat around and head south-southeast.’’
‘’Yavoll, Herr Kapitän!’’
14:52 (Central America Time)
Monday, January 19, 1942
Control room, U-800
On silent submerged cruise off the port of Colon
Caribbean coast of Panama
Otto was sharing the forward underwater observation dome with three of his sailors as the U-800 glided quietly in a parallel course to the ledge of the continental shelf off the coast of Panama. One of them was a watchman on duty but the two others were playing underwater tourists, like Otto. With the U-800 navigating at a depth of eighty meters and with the local waters being quite clear, some sunlight reached all the way down to the ledge and made it visible to the men of the U-800 as a dark gray slope that suddenly dived into blackness. It was a sight both fearsome and majestic: fearsome, for reminding mere men of the crushing depths of the ocean; majestic for showing how vast the ocean was. Even for a seasoned seaman like Otto, the spectacle of the continental shelf’s slopes plunging into the darkness of the abyss was truly a sight to remember. For that reason, and in order to help maintain the morale of his crew during this long war patrol, he had been encouraging his sailors and officers to come periodically to the two underwater observation domes in order to enjoy viewing the sea from under its surface.
Otto was about to go down the hatch of the observation station to return to the control room when one of the sailors sharing the dome with him suddenly pushed a shout of alarm while pointing at something outside.
‘’OVER THERE!’’
Snapping his head around and fearing that his sailor had just seen a sea mine close to his submarine, Otto suddenly felt his heart stop for an instant: four giant, nightmarish tentacles had appeared from under the submarine and had slapped themselves against the forward upper deck. His eyes bulging from the surprise and emotion, he soon saw to what the tentacles were attached to: a giant squid of the kind you saw only in some marine museum or horror movie. Going quickly over his surprise, Otto activated the intercom of the observation dome, shouting in it.
‘’SOMEONE GET UP IN THE FORWARD DOME WITH A CAMERA AND FLASH UNIT, QUICKLY!’’
To his credit, Maschinen Obergefreiter Norbert Straube clambered up to the observation dome within a minute, a still camera with flash unit slung from his neck. Looking up at his captain as he set foot in the observation tower, he asked a question to Otto in an excited voice.
‘’What is it, Herr Kapitän? Are we passing by a wreck?’’
‘’Better than that! A Kraken is attacking us! Take a few photos of it quickly before it disappears! It is glued around our forward hull.’’
‘’MEIN GOTT!’’ Could only say Straube when he saw the giant squid, whose head and body was now visible less than twenty meters away. He however didn’t lose time and took in quick succession three pictures with flash of the sea monster. In the meantime, Otto made the two other men that were off duty go down, so that more men could have a chance to see the squid. He himself went down as well, giving his place to the young Hermann Spielberger. Werner Nielinger, who had just come down from the dome with his captain, looked and grinned at Otto.
‘’This reminds me of the part in Jules Verne’s book ’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’, when a giant squid attacked Captain Nemo’s submarine, the NAUTILUS, Herr Kapitän. Why would it attack us like this?’’
‘’Well, we are the right shape for looking like a sperm whale, which giant squids are reputed to attack and eat, even though we are much bigger than a whale. We are also presently moving slowly and quietly, thus making that poor squid trying to eat steel plates right now.’’
‘’Poor squid? It is scary enough for anyone, Herr Kapitän.’’
‘’True! Well, that is one more sight you will be able to tell your family about once back home, Nielinger.’’
‘’And…when could we expect to return home, Herr Kapitän? I have a baby girl that I am missing very much lately.’’
Otto smiled and patted the young sailor’s shoulder.
‘’Don’t worry: we should be able to expend a last batch of torpedoes soon. Then we will go home.’’
Less than an hour later, and with the squid having left in disgust after a few futile minutes, Otto was called to the sonar room adjacent to the control room. There, the senior operator on watch, Michel Hartmann, showed him three closely connected spikes on his passive hydrophone array’s display.
‘’We have three warships coming on a path perpendicular to our own bearing, Herr Kapitän. They are traveling as a group and are going at a minimum speed of fifteen knots. One of the ships is continuously pinging on active but is actually going too fast to hear much on its sonar. My bet is that two destroyers are escorting a heavy unit, with one destroyer pinging actively in order to chase away pesky nuisances like us.’’
Otto smiled in amusement at the term used by his sonar operator.