19:41 (Halifax Time)
Wednesday, October 15, 1941
Control room of the U-800
In ambush position 200 kilometers east of the port of Halifax
Canadian coastal waters, Atlantic Ocean
All the crewmembers aboard the U-800 were tense as the watch officer, Leutnant zur see Hermann Spielberger, called the depth while their submarine slowly approached the bottom of the sea, 200 kilometers east of the port of Halifax. The U-800 finally touched the silt of the bottom, first with its bow undersurface, then with its stern, doing it less roughly than feared by many.
‘’We have bottomed out, Herr Kapitän. Our depth under the keel is 110 meters.’’
‘’Very well!’’ Said Otto before activating his intercom box. ‘’To all the crew, this is the Captain! We are now resting on the bottom at our chosen listening and ambush location east of the port of Halifax. I intend us to lay silent on the bottom, using battery power, to listen for worthy targets for our torpedoes. Such targets should abound in this area, so I urge you to take the maximum of rest until further notice. We will stay at minimum stations, except for the hydrophones and sonar section, which will run on four hour full rotations. Keep all noises to the minimum and save power as much as you can. That is all for the moment. Captain out!’’
Otto then looked at Spielberger, who had been standing behind the man controlling the ballasts.
‘’Herr Spielberger, I am going to my cabin to rest. You now have the watch. Wake me up if any significant target is detected in the next hours.’’
‘’Understood, Herr Kapitän!’’
Otto then left for his cabin, hoping mentally that his choice of ambush position, astride the usual transit route out of Halifax for the convoys regularly sailing to Great Britain via Iceland, would soon provide him with some juicy targets. He couldn’t know that he had missed by only a few days a very lucrative target indeed, Convoy TC 14, a large troopships convoy loaded down with soldiers from a Canadian Army division being sent to England. Another large target, Convoy HX 154, had sailed over this exact point a mere three days ago, on its way to England with hundreds of thousands of tons of war supplies. However, as Otto already knew, the convoys providing the lifeblood to Great Britain in this war ran every few days with regularity. With his chosen ambush position so close to Halifax, the next convoys to pass by would not have had time to alter their routes, as they often did to avoid the German submarines detected in mid ocean by patrol ships and aircraft. A convoy to England, counting dozens of cargo ships and tankers escorted by a handful of warships, was thus bound to come by in the next few days.
08:45 (Halifax Time)
Thursday, October 16, 1941
Bridge of the M.S. MANCHESTER EXPORTER
Sailing out of Halifax Harbor, Nova Scotia
Canada
Rear-Admiral Francis Watson, standing on the open bridge wing of the 5,227 gross tons cargo ship MANCHESTER EXPORTER, watched the other 55 ships of his convoy as they started slowly forming into their assigned positions after emerging from the mouth of Halifax Harbor. Within one hour, the convoy should be truly on its way, first towards the American naval station in Argentia, Newfoundland, where the convoy would meet with the American destroyer flotilla tasked to escort it across the high seas. Then, the convoy would steam to Iceland, where the escort duty would be taken over by British warships for the last leg to Liverpool. However, Watson had right now a grand total of two Royal Canadian Navy corvettes and one convoy rescue ship to escort one passenger ship, 29 cargo ships and 23 tanker ships up to Argentia. That was quite meager indeed in terms of initial escort force, but Watson knew that dozens of bombers and reconnaissance aircraft based around Halifax constantly patrolled the surrounding waters, looking for German submarines. He thus believed that his convoy would be quite safe until it actually started the Newfoundland-Iceland leg of its fifteen day trip to England. Right now, his main concern was to put some order in his ships and to keep that order despite the typically poor weather and bad visibility of this season.
15:08 (Halifax Time)
U-800, in bottom ambush position
‘’Oberleutnant, I believe that I have something big coming our way.’’
Ulrich Von Wittgenstein, attracted by the call from the hydrophones listening section, went in quick steps to Günter Grote’s station.
‘’What do you have, Herr Grote?’’
‘’What sounds like a convoy, Herr Oberleutnant. It is still quite a distance away, but the noise I get in my hydrophones must be a convoy freshly out of Halifax: I can hear dozens of different ships, all going at slow screw revolutions. If indeed it is a British convoy and is going at their typical nine to ten knots of speed, then it should pass over us in a few hours.’’
‘’Anything else around us?’’
In response, Grote showed to Von Wittgenstein a dozen other spikes on his panoramic passive hydrophone array’s display, all much smaller in noise intensity than the one he just had reported.
‘’This area is quite busy in terms of ship traffic, something expected from the Halifax region, Herr Oberleutnant. This spike, to compass heading 105, actually sounds like a small ship, possibly a corvette, patrolling around while pinging periodically his ASDIC set. We are however far out of his detection zone.’’
‘’Very well, I am calling the captain in on this.’’
Von Wittgenstein then keyed the intercom box fixed to a partition of the sonar room.
‘’The Captain is requested in the sonar room. I say again, the Captain is requested in the sonar room.’’
It took only three minutes for Otto Kretschmer to show up in the cramped compartment.
‘’What do you have, Herr Grote?’’
‘’A possible convoy heading our way, Herr Kapitän.’’ Said the hydrophones specialist before telling Otto in detail what he was hearing. At the end, with his eyes on the passive hydrophone array’s display, he nodded and gave a few orders.
‘’I go with the possible convoy coming at us. It should arrive near us just after sunset, so we will have the cover of darkness for us. In two hours, we will quietly come up to periscope depth and will then cautiously raise our electronic warfare mast, to see if there are any active radars near us, then will go back down to a depth of thirty meters to wait for that convoy. Have the crew go quietly to battle stations in two hours, just before we get off the bottom.’’
‘’Understood, Herr Kapitän!’’
Two hours later, as ordered by Otto, the U-800 slowly rose from the seafloor, its crew ready for action, and went up to periscope depth. Otto was again in the sonar section, adjacent to the electronic warfare section, for the occasion. He let his specialists listen to their instruments first and report on their own time. The head of the radio/EW department, Josef Knocke, reported first to his captain, some excitement in his voice.
‘’I am detecting two sets of metric wavelength radar to the East, Herr Kapitän, probably escort ship sets. Their signals are still weak and are way below detection level to see us.’’
‘’The initial noise signature coming from Halifax has both grown bigger and wider, Herr Kapitän.’’ Added Günther Grote. ‘’I can now confirm it as a convoy heading west. It should be here in two to three hours.’’
‘’Good! Herr Von Wittgenstein, retract our EW mast and make our depth thirty meters. The crew will then have a last hot meal in rotation, before the cooks shut down their stoves and secure their kit for battle. I want the battle stations fully manned in ninety minutes.’’
Then letting his subaltern distribute his orders, Otto went to the navigation plot table in the control room to refresh his mind about this part of the ocean, thinking about his attack plan and about the possible ways the enemy could react to it.
20:52 (Halifax Time)
Bridge of M.S. MANCHESTER EXPORTER
Convoy HX 155, 130 kilometers south of Cape Breton Island
Rear-Admiral Watson chose to stay inside the bridge of his convoy’s flagship because of the cold rain driven hard by the winds. Due to the bad weather and obscurity, he had the ships of the convoy tighten up a bit together, but his convoy was still measuring a good eight kilometer wide by three kilometer long, plodding along at ten knots in the night. His two armed escort ships respectively led the two outer flank columns of merchant ships, while Watson led the center column in the MANCHESTER EXPORTER. This was not the first convoy he was leading, by far, but the weight of responsibility of his job was heavy indeed, with close to 2,000 lives and hundreds of thousands of tons of precious war supplies and fuel depending on him. Watson was reflecting mentally on that when a sudden flash of light coming from port made him twist his neck and grab his binoculars. The giant fireball now rising in the night air made it at once painfully obvious what had happened, even before the noise of a powerful explosion reached his ears: one of his tanker ships had been hit! From the position of the fireball, it had to be the M.S. REGENT LION, a 9,551 gross registered tons tanker loaded up with high octane aviation gasoline. Watson, who knew perfectly well that there were no friendly minefields in this area, shouted at the bridge signaler as a series of fireballs consumed the unfortunate tanker.
‘’SIGNAL TO HMCS DRUMHELLER AND HMCS SUMMERSIDE THAT WE HAVE A PROBABLE GERMAN SUBMARINE WITHIN THE CONVOY AND THAT THE REGENT LION HAS JUST BEEN HIT. TELL THE HMCS DRUMHELLER TO CHASE FOR THAT SUBMARINE.’’
‘’AYE, SIR!’’
Just as the signaler had just answered Watson, a second explosion reverberated in the night, followed closely by a third one. This time there were no fireballs, as the second ship to be hit had to be the M.S. EMPIRE EVE, a 5,979 gross registered tons cargo ship loaded with grain. Watson’s hair nearly rose on his head: could there be a whole pack of German submarines within his convoy? Submarine attacks this close to Halifax were unheard of up to now. Now this? Two minutes later, the bridge signaler approached the rear-admiral with a short message.
‘’Sir, the EMPIRE EVE signals that it was hit by two torpedoes and that it is now sinking. They are abandoning ship.’’
‘’Christ! Direct the COPELAND to stand by to retrieve the crew of the EMPIRE EVE.’’
‘’Right away, sir!’’
Watson then walked to the plot table at the back of the bridge, intent on writing an urgent message to Halifax to signal this attack on his convoy. He barely had time to write half of his draft message before an explosion lit the night again. This time, the fireballs that went up meant that another tanker had been hit and was burning. Watson swore when he saw that it had to be the SAN CIRILO, a 8,012 ton tanker loaded with gasoline. Adding a couple of lines to his draft message, Watson then handed it to the bridge signaler for transmission and went out on the open bridge, braving the cold rain to better see what was happening to his convoy. Just as he was raising his binoculars to his eyes, another explosion was heard, this time coming from the second convoy column to starboard. Running to that side of the open bridge, Watson saw huge flames come out of a ship’s silhouette two kilometers away: it had to be the Norwegian tanker SLEMDAL, a 7,373 tons ship loaded with gasoline. Now convinced that he was dealing with a whole pack of German submarines, Watson ran to his tactical short range radio and grabbed its microphone.
‘’SUMMERSIDE, this is MANCHESTER EXPORTER. We have multiple submarines hitting the convoy. Go down our starboard flank and find those subs!’’
Waiting just long enough to get an acknowledgment from the Canadian corvette, Watson then returned on the open bridge to anxiously examine the dark sea around his ship. Three minutes later, it was the turn of the G.S. WALDEN, a 10,627 ton British tanker loaded with gasoline and paraffin, to go up in a fireball. Now becoming nearly desperate, Watson went to the tactical radio again to see how his two corvettes were doing. He was in radio conversation with the HMCS DRUMHELLER, with the captain of the corvette giving him a verbal report, when the man’s voice was cut out in mid transmission. A few seconds later, two closely linked explosions were heard from the port flank of the convoy. Watson lowered slowly the microphone in his hand, struck hard by that latest blow.
‘’Christ Almighty!’’ Could he only say in a weak voice.
21:37 (Halifax Time)
U-800, at periscope depth amidst Convoy HX 155
‘’ALL TUBES ARE NOW RELOADED, HERR KAPITÄN!’’
‘’Excellent!’’ Said Otto, standing besides the tactical plot table in the control room. ‘’We can now resume our attacks on this convoy.’’
‘’Which side do you want to strike this time, Herr Kapitän?’’ Asked Ulrich Von Wittgenstein. Otto pointed at the starboard columns of the convoy plotted on the tactical trace.
‘’First, we hunt down and sink that second corvette. With the enemy armed escorts all gone, we will then be free to methodically destroy the rest of the convoy at our leisure during the night. I know that this sounds cruel and ruthless, but that is what war is about. Every ton of ammunition or fuel that this convoy can bring to England could cause German deaths in the future. It is either them or us.’’
Ulrich could only nod his head at that: he knew that Kretschmer was no heartless fanatic and that he had in fact a big heart. However, he was right about the reality of war. One could show humanity and mercy when appropriate in war, but not weakness.
23:50 (Halifax Time)
Captain’s cabin of U.S.S. ROE (DD-418)
At quayside in U.S. Naval Station Argentia
Newfoundland
‘’Sir, Sir, wake up! There is an urgent message for you.’’
Lieutenant Commander Scruggs woke up groggily from his barely started sleep to see his signals officer bending over his bunk in the dark cabin. Chasing his fatigue as best he could, he pulled away his blanket and swung his legs out to sit on the side of his bed.
‘’Please switch the light on, so that I can read this message.’’
‘’Right away, sir!’’
The sudden light from the overhead lamp made Scruggs blink as he took the message offered by his subaltern. However, the content of the message was enough to fully wake him up in a big hurry.
‘’WHAT? Convoy HX 155 is under attack by german submarines south of Cape Breton Island and has already lost twenty merchants ships and its two escort ships? Jesus Christ! Sound general quarters for the whole flotilla, Mister Burnett. I will be on the bridge in five minutes.’’
As the young sub-lieutenant left his cabin at a near run, Scruggs got up from bed and went to his locker to take his uniform out of it and get dressed. He still had trouble believing that message: German submarines had never operated this close to Halifax before. To have a whole pack of them here was truly shocking news. What actually shocked him the most however was the fact that the convoy his flotilla of five destroyers and one stores ship was supposed to escort between Argentia and Iceland was being butchered right under his nose. Four minutes later, he was running inside his destroyer’s bridge and shouting orders to get the flotilla to sail out of port as soon as possible.
00:24 (Halifax Time)
Convoy rescue ship M.F.A. COPELAND
Convoy HX 155, south of Cape Breton Island
Captain William Milner, master of the Merchant Fleet Auxiliary COPELAND, had tears in his eyes as a pitiful few survivors from the cargo ship CORTONA were being hoisted aboard from one of the motor boats launched by the COPELAND to pluck the men swimming in the frigid waters. In the preceding three and a half hours, his ship had been overwhelmed by the number of men to be saved from sunk or sinking ships all over the convoy and his onboard facilities were already overloaded, with more than 200 shivering survivors, many wounded or burned, clogging his internal decks. A distant detonation, quickly followed by an explosion, made him jerk his head towards the East while anger and hatred replaced his sadness. Those bloody German submarines, knowing that they didn’t have to fear armed escort ships anymore, had apparently been operating on the surface for more than two hours now, using their deck guns to administer the ‘coup de grâce’ to torpedoed ships that refused to sink. That was in fact a standard German submarine tactic, as they had a limited number of torpedoes stored aboard and thus used their deck guns to save on their main armament. German submarines also typically liked to attack on the surface at night, where they could outrun merchant ships and conduct more precise attack. Judging from the carnage Milner had seen up to now, there must be at least four or five German submarines at work around the decimated convoy.
Taking the German submarines off his mind, Milner then went down to the specially equipped personnel accommodations built in his modified cargo ship, to see if he could find more space for the still growing number of survivors picked up by his ship. He was talking with the exhausted surgeon who had been treating the wounded when an intercom announcement froze his blood.
‘’CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE! CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE! A SUBMARINE IS APPROACHING US!’’
Swearing at his young bridge officer for announcing out loud like this such a terrifying news that could easily start a panic, Milner ran out of the infirmary and climbed his way to the bridge, where he was greeted by a near hysterical Sub-Lieutenant George Wells.
‘’SIR, WE HAVE A SUBMARINE APPROACHING ON THE SURFACE TO OUR FORWARD PORT SIDE. ITS DECK GUN IS MANNED.’’
‘’First off, Lieutenant, you will stop shouting and you will calm down. Now, have you sent a radio message yet to signal that surfaced submarine to Halifax?’’
‘’Er, no sir!’’
‘’Then, do it! Don’t forget to include our present position at the same time.’’
‘’Yes sir! Right away, sir!’’
As his young subaltern disappeared inside the radio room aft of the bridge, Milner grabbed an intercom microphone and spoke in it.
‘’Captain to gunners! Captain to gunners! Hold your fire until I give permission to open fire on that approaching submarine. It may yet pass us without attacking when it will see that we are engaged in rescue work. Right now, the safety of the survivors we picked up is more important than trying to seek revenge on that submarine. Captain out!’’
The experienced Mate First Class at the helm gave him a cautious look on hearing the announcement.
‘’You think that this German would spare us, Captain?’’
‘’As much as you and I may be hating the Germans right now, Mister Simpsons, the truth is that not all Germans are heartless bastards. I in fact knew quite a few German merchant marine officers before the war who proved to be quite decent fellows. Let’s hope that the captain of this submarine proves to be a decent one as well. I will however go make sure that there is no misunderstanding between us.’’
Walking out on the port open bridge wing of his ship after grabbing a megaphone, Milner eyed for a moment the dark mass floating low on the surface as it slowly approached on a parallel reverse course. It was barely visible in the half moonlight but the shape of its kiosk immediately attracted Milner’s curiosity: it was unlike any picture of German submarines he had seen in intelligence recognition books or photographs. Instead of being very low and sprinkled with rails and anti-aircraft gun platforms, the kiosk of that submarine was nearly twice the normal height of a German submarine kiosk and was well rounded, with no rails or other protuberances to break its smooth shape. There was however the familiar shape of a deck gun on the forward deck of the submarine, with sailors manning it, while a smaller gun mount was visible on the aft deck. Taking a sudden decision, Milner went to a nearby signal lamp mounted on a swivel mount hooked to the bridge’s bulwark and started sending a visual message, using the universal maritime alphabetical code.
‘TO APPROACHING GERMAN SUBMARINE, WE ARE A RESCUE SHIP ENGAGED IN RESCUE WORK. WE WILL NOT FIRE IF YOU RETURN THE FAVOR.’
Milner then waited anxiously for the German’s response, fervently hoping that the answer would not be an explosive shell. If that happened, his two 20mm automatic cannons would fare badly against such an opponent. To his relief, the return message came via signal lamp.
‘TO RESCUE SHIP. WE WILL NOT ATTACK YOU IF YOU DON’T FIRE ON US. SINCERELY WISH YOU GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR WORK.’
Milner, pleased by that answer, however hurried to send another message.
‘PLEASE PASS THE WORD TO THE OTHER SUBMARINES NOT TO ATTACK US.’
There was a slight delay this time before the signal lamp atop the submarine’s kiosk blinked again.
‘WHAT OTHER SUBMARINES?’
That answer left Milner open-mouthed with shock and disbelief as the German submarine sailed away in the darkness.
‘’Bloody hell! This must truly be the Devil’s boat!’’
17:44 (Halifax Time)
Convoy rescue ship M.F.A. COPELAND
On approach to Sydney Harbor, Cape Breton Island
As his ship was coming into sight of the port of Sydney, on the northeast coast of Cape Breton Island, William Milner eyed dubiously the Royal Canadian Navy corvette escorting the COPELAND to port. Two such warships had proved no match for the formidable predator that had decimated Convoy HX 155, so it was doubtful that one corvette would do him much good if that German submarine attacked again. Milner fervently wished that this would not be the case, as his internal decks and compartments were crammed with over 300 survivors, one third of them wounded. His ship had spent the whole night and most of the morning fishing out men from the water or linking up with lifeboats full of shivering sailors and passengers around the site of the convoy’s attack. Unfortunately, Milner’s sailors had mostly found dead men, frozen stiff in the frigid water. With Rear-Admiral Wilson having died in the sinking of his convoy flagship, the MANCHESTER EXPORTER, and with their two escorting warships also sunk, the surviving ships of the convoy had quickly started to panic and break rank under the relentless enemy attacks. Some had continued on towards Argentia, while others had fled towards Sydney or had even turned tail and headed back to Halifax, something never seen before and that was sure to rattle quite a few admirals at the Admiralty.
Milner was studying the chart showing the approaches to Sydney Harbor when his radioman came to him with a printed message. The shaken look on the man’s face told Milner at once that it had to be bad news. Taking the sheet of paper offered by the radioman, he read it quickly and immediately felt his blood freeze in his veins: Halifax was announcing to all ships that it was now temporarily closed to maritime traffic due to sea mines blocking its entrance channel. That had been found out the hard way in the morning, with two ships hitting mines and sinking in the middle of the channel before the Halifax authorities had understood what was happening. Minesweepers were now claimed to be working on clearing those mines, which had no doubt been laid by a German submarine, but the closure of Halifax Harbor, even for only a day or two, was bound to impact significantly on the convoy activity between Canada and England. Ironically, Milner learned later on that one of the two ships that had been sunk by mines was one of the cargo ships that had panicked and turned tail to seek refuge back in Halifax.
16:08 (London Time)
Saturday, October 18, 1941
Royal Navy Admiralty, London
United Kingdom
The faces around the large conference table already reflected a mix of discouragement, incredulity and worry even before Sir Percy Noble arrived and took his designated place at the table. The admiral at the head of the Western Approaches Command, which was charged with the safety of British shipping between Canada and Great Britain, suspected that the news about the disaster that had struck Convoy HX 155 had already started to percolate through the Admiralty. Unfortunately, what he had with him was not going to cheer them up. Sir Dudley Pound acknowledged his arrival with a nod of the head, then looked around the table at his senior commanders and staff officers.
‘’Now that Admiral Noble has arrived from Liverpool, we may start this emergency meeting, gentlemen. As you may already know, a disaster has befallen Convoy HX 155 two nights ago, soon after it had left Halifax and as it was on its way to Argentia, where its American destroyer escort force was waiting. Admiral Noble will now brief us on the latest information about that calamitous event. Admiral Noble…’’
‘’Thank you, Sir Dudley!’’ Said Noble before getting up and going to the big map of the Atlantic pinned to one wall. Grabbing a wooden pointer, he then started to speak from memory, leaving his info file near him on a chair.
‘’Gentlemen, Convoy HX 155 left Halifax Harbor in the early morning of the sixteenth, last Thursday, with 53 merchant ships, two escorting Canadian corvettes and one convoy rescue ship, and headed for Argentia in Newfoundland. At about 21:00 hours, local time, the first ship to be attacked, a tanker, was torpedoed and blew up in flames. Then, more ships were sunk at a rapid pace, implying that a whole group of German submarines was at work. Both corvettes were sunk one after the other prior to 22:00 hours, basically leaving the convoy defenseless. From then on, ships were torpedoed one after the other during the following hours, with some reportedly finished by gunfire from the surface. The convoy rescue ship COPELAND, while engaged in rescue work in the dark, saw a German submarine approach on the surface at around 00:25 hours. That submarine however did not fire on the COPELAND after the master of our ship signaled that he was a rescue ship. The submarine then left. This part is where things become murky, gentlemen. When the skipper of the COPELAND asked that submarine to advise the other German submarines around not to attack his ship, the response was that there were no other submarines around. Furthermore, the captain of the COPELAND, when debriefed in detail in Sydney, stated that the submarine he saw was like none he had seen before, even in picture or in silhouette recognition booklets. I will cover that matter more in detail in a moment, so please reserve your questions about this. After the commodore of the convoy was killed in the sinking of his ship, the convoy started to panic and break up, but not before a total of 34 merchant ships were lost from either torpedoes of gunfire.’’
A wave of exclamations and remarks greeted his last sentence, forcing Sir Dudley to call for silence.
‘’Please, gentlemen, let Admiral Noble finish his presentation: there is quite a lot more yet.’’
‘’Thank you, Sir Dudley. The bad news don’t stop there, gentlemen. The next day, on the seventeenth, two ships that were either entering or exiting Halifax Harbor blew up on mines in the entrance channel and sank. The Harbor Master then had no choice but to close the port to traffic until minesweepers could clear the entrance channel. That work, which has cost us one minesweeper to date, is still ongoing and is expected to be completed by tomorrow, at which time Halifax will be declared open again to maritime traffic. You will understand that such a temporary closure, however short, will impact considerably on our convoy schedule and constitutes a severe blow to our war effort. Just the loss of those 34 merchant ships, 23 of which were tanker ships transporting fuel, is a painful blow to us, as we just lost about a quarter million tons of fuel, supplies and equipment.’’
This time the admirals and senior officers sitting around the table managed to stay quiet, but the looks on their faces told Noble that they didn’t like one bit the news he was giving.
‘’Now, on the business of that lone submarine that approached the COPELAND, the opinion of my staff is that no single German submarine could cause so much mayhem by itself. For one, over forty torpedoes were fired at the convoy, and I am talking only about the ones that hit. This represents the torpedo stowage capacity of at least three German submarines. Furthermore, at least twenty sea mines were sown at the entrance of Halifax Harbor, something that represents the load of one more submarine. Finally, the speed at which our ships were sunk militates in favor of an attack by multiple submarines. What the German submarine commander signaled to the COPELAND may have been simply an attempt at playing mind tricks on us. I will now take your questions, gen