CHAPTER 8 – A RARE OPPORTUNITY
14:25 (Falkland Islands Time)
Monday, October 4, 1943
Captain’s suite, U-900
Navigating at schnorchel depth, 155 kilometers east of Cape Horn
Awakened from his nap by the knocks on the door of his suite, Ulrich sat up with a sigh on the edge of his bed before calling out.
‘’COME IN!’’
His signals officer, Leutnant zur See Karl Munchausen, then entered and saluted him.
‘’A top priority message from Lorient, Herr Kapitän. I just finished decoding it.’’
‘’Very well! Please show it to me.’’
Munchausen took a few steps to cross the small office of the suite and entered the adjacent sleeping cabin to hand over a sheet of paper, which Ulrich took. A first quick reading of the message suddenly chased away his remaining fatigue.
‘’Thank you, Karl. Tell the other officers that I will hold a command meeting in the wardroom in half a hour.’’
‘’Understood, Herr Kapitän!’’ replied the young signals officer while saluting. He then left, closing the door behind him. Now alone again, Ulrich reread the message, impregnating his mind with the implications of the new orders from Admiral Dönitz. While he still had to ensure that the BUENAVENTURA and its precious cargo of tungsten arrived safely in France, he was now asked to also effect a potentially risky coastal raid on the Falkland Islands, this in coordination with something that had become a rarity indeed in this war: a German naval surface action.
‘’Well, that will make for a nice change.’’
23:03 (Falkland Islands Time)
Tuesday, October 5, 1943
British submarine H.M.S. TALLY-HO
Patrolling on the surface 83 kilometers southeast of Port Stanley
‘’Five months, five months of patrolling around that freezing shit hole! We couldn’t possibly have drawn a worst assignment than this!’’
Seaman Second Class Harvey Belthram, on topsail watch duty with Seaman First Class William O’Rourke, gave a dubious glance at his whiny comrade. O’Rourke always had to complain about something, which made him a rather annoying watch partner.
‘’Look, Bill: here we at least get full rations, thanks to the Americans’ logistical support for the refueling station in Port Stanley, rather than the near starvation diets our mates in England have to live on. So, quit whining and concentrate instead on watching.’’
‘’Careful, mate: I am senior in rank to you.’’ replied O’Rourke, a bit of threat in his voice. He however only managed to attract a look of near contempt on the face of Belthram, but didn’t see it due to the dark night around them.
‘’Actually, I still wonder why you have not been busted down yet, with all your perpetual whining.’’
‘’Now, wait, you little…’’
‘’CUT THE BULLSHIT, O’ROURKE, AND GET BACK TO WATCHING BEFORE I FIT MY BOOT UP YOUR ARSE!’’
The harsh voice of Chief Petty Officer Second Class Peter Martin, the senior non-commissioned man on the H.M.S. TALLY-HO, made both O’Rourke and Belthram jerk with surprise. The two sailors then promptly concentrated back on scanning the horizon with their binoculars. Martin checked them for a moment, then looked himself around as he stood in the tiny open bridge situated on top of the submarine’s sail. The sea was rough, as usual in this part of the South Atlantic, and the winds were both fierce and icy, making for miserable conditions for the men doing top watch duty. With this kind of sea and with the low height of their radar mast, the detection range of their centimetric wavelength radar was limited to only a dozen miles or so, less in the case of enemy submarines. As for the sonar and hydrophones used by the TALLY-HO, their already limited range was further cut by the noise from the high waves on the surface. It was thus a necessity to also maintain a visual watch while on the surface. Martin mentally reflected with envy at the capacity of the vaunted and feared new German submarines to stay submerged for hours and days and to quietly listen to their hydrophones while avoiding the bumpy, sickening ride of surface navigation. Those new German submarines, starting with the infamous U-800, were in fact the main reason the TALLY-HO was stuck patrolling the seas around the Falkland Islands in the company of another submarine and of five minesweepers and frigates. The raid on Port Stanley a year ago by the U-800, apart from costing more than two dozen ships, had awakened a lot of admirals in Washington and London as to how both truly vital and vulnerable the Falklands were following the destruction of the Pacific-side locks of the Panama Canal. That disaster had forced all the maritime traffic between the Atlantic and the Pacific to go all the way around the Cape Horn, a detour many ships were unable to do without at least one refueling stop on the way. Still, what O’Rourke had said was basically correct: Port Stanley was indeed a freezing shit hole!
Martin was about to call up two replacements for the shivering watchmen when a powerful underwater explosion under the twin propellers of the submarine made its whole aft section jump out of the water. Both Belthram and O’Rourke, who had been standing in open baskets fixed to the base of the search periscope housing, were literally ejected from their baskets, screaming. Belthram, who had secured his safety line to the railing of his basket, ended up swinging at the end of his line, bumping repeatedly against the steel plates of the sail. O’Rourke, who had neglected to secure his own safety line, was thrown clear in the dark, icy waters. Martin, who had one hand gripping the handle of the armored access hatch and was about to shout down the steel tube, barely managed to hold on and avoid O’Rourke’s fate. That was however little consolation for him, as the TALLY-HO had its stern section blown open to the sea by the T5 ZAUNKÖNING acoustic homing torpedo launched from its rear sector by the U-900. With its engine room flooding completely in mere seconds, power went out as men desperately scrambled to get to the apparent safety of the forward compartments. The captain of the submarine then faced a horrible dilemma: to let time to his mechanics to evacuate the engine room, thus risking to flood the whole submarine through the open engine room access hatch, or to close that hatch and condemn those men to death by drowning. He finally decided to try saving his submarine first and ordered the engine room hatch closed. However, that gained him only seconds, as the weight of the water filling the engine room quickly dragged the TALLY-HO under the surface. The captain’s ultimate order to abandon ship came too late to save his crew. Only two men, Martin and Belthram, were able to swim away from their sinking boat, only to die from hypothermia within fifteen minutes.
In the control room of the U-900, Ulrich von Wittgenstein detached his eyes from the attack periscope and slowly lowered his head, realizing full well to what kind of death he had just sent over sixty British sailors. Also, this had felt like a simple execution to him, not a battle. That British submarine had stood next to no chances against his U-900. Simply said, his submarine was overwhelmingly superior to all the Allied submarines presently in service in terms of underwater speed, endurance and sensors. The U-900’s towed array sonar had detected the British submarine from over sixty kilometers away, allowing Ulrich to make a wide hooking maneuver and then place himself in the rear quadrant of the British boat, where its own propeller noise all but masked other noises to the limited performance sonar equipping the T-Class boat. Then, Ulrich had approached at periscope depth, going upstream of the propeller wake of the British submarine, until he had been close enough to launch a single T5 acoustic homing torpedo, whose electric motor made it difficult to hear. The crewmen in the control room of the U-900 were also sober and were not cheering this latest victory. Ulrich took a moment to regain his composure and issue fresh orders around him.
‘’Helm, turn to Heading 320, make speed ten knots. Stay at periscope depth and on batteries. Forward torpedo room, reload Tube Two with a fresh T5. The commando team is to start preparing for a night coastal insertion.’’
02:10 (Falkland Islands Time)
Wednesday, October 6, 1943
Shores of Rookers Bay, south of Port Stanley Airfield
East Falkland Island
The fourteen dark silhouettes wearing German Army camouflaged uniforms and steel helmets, barely visible even from up close in the half-moon night, moved like silent ghosts as they carried their two inflatable rubber boats across the pebble and sand beach and up the rocky slopes of Rookers Bay, situated on the south shore of the peninsula on which Port Stanley Airfield was located. A thick fog had facilitated the approach of the U-900, which had hugged the coast as much as it was safe to do without grounding itself. Leaving the submarine some kilometers short of Rookers Bay and using at first the small outboard motors of their assault boats, Hugo Margraff and his thirteen commandos had sailed up to Rookers Bay while following closely the shoreline, shutting down their engines a few hundred meters short of the beach and using paddles for the last part of the trip. Contrary to their previous land raid on Port Stanley, made over a year ago from the U-800, Hugo and his men were loaded down with backpacks full of ammunition, rations and water, while more supplies were inside their boats: this was going to be an extended raid, not just a short infiltration. Hugo wished that he could have brought all of his men with him, but five of them had to stay on the CHARLES FINLEY, now heading with the BUENAVENTURA towards the distant, mostly uninhabited South Georgia Island, in order to watch over the more than seventy prisoners being held in a storage hold of the tanker ship. However, Hugo had compensated that partly by having his team carry two MG42 medium machine guns, two Japanese-made TYPE 89 50mm light mortars and plenty of ammunition and explosives, including a few land mines. As a result, his men were much more heavily loaded than usual, but Hugo fully counted on getting rid quickly of much of that ammunition and explosives…in a useful way. First, though, he had to hide his two assault boats before starting to approach his first target, the airfield.
Hugo soon decided to use a clump of bushes surrounded by long grass, situated just off the beach, to hide his boats. His men used the camouflage nets that had been carried in the boat along crates of ammunition, explosives and food and quickly covered the two boats, which had been turned bottom up, adding some long blade grass to finish camouflaging them. Once that was done, Hugo assembled his men around him for a quick briefing.
‘’Alright, you all know what our mission and our objectives are. Again, our first priority target is the airfield and its aircraft. We need to take out those planes in order to neutralize the air threat to the U-900 and to our incoming ships. Once close enough to the airfield, we will take some time to observe it, so that we can finalize our attack plan. We will try as much as possible to operate covertly and to sabotage silently those planes but, if discovered, don’t hesitate to use your weapons. Questions?’’
When nobody spoke, Hugo got up and quickly took a compass bearing with the help of his map, then started walking north, his men following in single file, all their senses on alert.
A mere two minutes later, the German raiding group crossed the single road linking the airfield with the town of Stanley. Looking up and down the gravel road, Hugo decided to bury four anti-tank mines in it, a job that took only a few minutes. He then continued on along the treeless, desolate and cold landscape, whose mostly flat features were swept constantly by a frosty wind. After another five minutes of walking at a crouch, the raiding party arrived at the foot of a small hill close to the airfield. Hugo climbed with Feldwebel Franz Stein the gentle slope of the hill, which rose barely ten meters above the surrounding grounds, and approached its crest at a crouch, finally lying down on his belly once he had the airfield in sight. Using his binoculars, he carefully examined the buildings of the airfield and the long row of planes parked alongside the single runway, which seemed to have been surfaced with American-produced ‘Marston Matting’, holed steel plates made to be assembled side by side to form large, solid surfaces on the ground.
‘’I count eight B-24 LIBERATOR heavy bombers, probably maritime patrol variants with radar, plus fourteen Bristol BEAUFIGHTERS fighter-bombers. Such a group of aircraft could indeed give a lot of trouble to the U-900 and to our incoming surface ships, if not destroyed on the ground. I also see a radar antenna atop a lattice mast beside the airfield’s control tower building. As well, there are two large wooden hangars and a double row of Quonset Huts16. I can’t seem to be able to find the fuel and ammunition dumps, though.’’
‘’I think that I found them, Herr Hauptmann.’’ said Stein after a few seconds. ‘’I see multiple piles of barrels near the eastern end of the runway, while there are a number of earthen scrapes that were dug on the opposite side.’’
‘’Ah, yes! I see them now. Thanks! Now, let’s find the defenses of this airfield… Aaah, thank you for smoking on duty at night, Mister Allied soldier: I have a sandbagged position beside the airfield’s entrance, probably an access control point.’’
‘’I count four…no, six Bofors 40mm single antiaircraft guns in sandbagged revetments along the sides of the runway: three on this side and three more on the opposite side.’’ added Stein, making Hugo nod.
‘’A fair amount of antiaircraft protection, but a bit weak on the land defense side.’’ replied Hugo. ‘’However, there should be some coastal defense guns around to defend against surfaced submarines and ships. Where are they?’’
‘’My bet is that they would be close to Cape Pembroke, to the East of the airfield, where they could have wide arcs of fire over the ocean, Herr Hauptmann.’’
‘’A very logical assumption, Feldwebel. They will however be our third priority, after the parked aircraft and the fuel and ammunition dumps. Here is what I propose that we do…’’
05:30 (Falkland Islands Time)
Living quarters lines, Port Stanley Airfield
Flight Lieutenant Philip Robertson, the meteorologist specialist assigned to Port Stanley Airfield had set his alarm clock for 05:15 as per his usual routine: he had to wake earlier than the flight crews, so that he could review the latest meteorological data available before they took off on their patrol missions. He was only half dressed and was brushing his teeth in the Quonset Hut used by the R.A.F. support arm officers living and working at the airfield when a series of loud explosions started reverberating outside his hut, making him jerk in shock and surprise. Quickly rinsing his mouth, Robertson then rushed to the nearest window to look outside as the other seven officers occupying the hut woke up with grumbles and exclamations. What he saw made blood rush to his brain.
‘’Dear God! Our aircraft are exploding one after another!’’
‘’But, how?’’ started saying a younger officer, who acted as assistant aircraft maintenance officer.
‘’How? Sabotage, of course! You think that those planes could just explode like that by themselves, at about the same time?’’ replied Robertson, sarcastic. He then quickly finished putting on his uniform, adding a thick wool greatcoat before rushing outside through the front door. He did only three steps before he put his foot on top of the initiating plunger of a German S-MINEN bounding anti-personnel mine. The warhead canister of the mine, filled with explosives and steel shrapnel, jumped out of the ground and exploded at chest level, killing instantly Robertson and gravely wounding two other officers who were following him outside. More than a dozen other R.A.F. men inside the hut lines were either killed or seriously wounded by other ‘S’ mines before the British understood what was going on and became more cautious. When they manage to come out and look around, they found all the parked planes destroyed, apparently by explosive charges placed inside them. The fuel dump was a raging inferno, while the ammunition dump was now providing a spectacular and very loud fireworks show, projecting high in the air unexploded ordnance items that then landed all around the airfield. The lattice mast that had been supporting the antenna assembly of the airfield’s surveillance radar was also decapitated, with the radar antenna now resting as a deformed mass at the feet of the mast. Group Captain Charles Endicott, who commanded the airfield, swore violently to himself on seeing all that mayhem and ran to the radio hut, intent on sending a warning message out. However, when he pushed the door of the radio hut open, he unknowingly pulled out the pin of a hidden incendiary charge. Endicott was extremely lucky then, as he didn’t receive any burning white phosphorus particle from the bursting charge. He barely had time to see in a flash the dead bodies of the two night shift radio operators, sprawled on the floor of their hut, before he hurriedly closed back the door. What he didn’t see at that time was that the radio transceivers and radio beacon emitter installed inside the hut had already been smashed with steel bars. The ensuing fire that engulfed the radio hut also hid to him the fact that both the Royal Navy and R.A.F. code books that had been kept inside were now missing, along with a stack of classified messages either sent or received during the last month.
Back at the location where they had hidden their assault boats near the coast of Rookers Bay, Hugo and his men grinned while watching the series of explosions and fires ravaging the airfield.
‘’Nice! Really nice!’’ said to himself Hugo before looking at his thirteen soldiers. ‘’Okay, men: time to hide and catch some sleep. We will resume our activities after sunset. Haussmann and Spritzer, you take the first watch duty.’’
The Germans then slipped under their two overturned rubber boats, which had been raised off the ground by putting them on top of rocks before being camouflaged. With these rain-proof shelters over their heads and with cut squares of grass and earth patches laid around the sides to both camouflage the boats and cut out the wind, the Brandenburg men quickly went to sleep, bundled tightly together under their wool blankets to keep warm. They were awakened some twenty minutes later, when two trucks full of British soldiers coming from Port Stanley and rushing towards the airfield along the single road leading to it blew up on the anti-tank mines laid earlier on. However, on seeing that the surviving British then simply withdrew on foot with their wounded men, going back to Port Stanley without initiating any sweep, Hugo ordered his men back to sleep.
07:58 (Falkland Islands Time)
Command center of British Garrison, Falkand Islands
Government House, Port Stanley, East Falkland Island
‘’What do you mean, the TALLY-HO and TANTALUS are not answering our calls?’’
The young Royal Navy lieutenant did his best not to show on his face what he thought about that question. Commodore Arthur Duncastle, who commanded the Falkland Islands garrison, could be described as ‘not the swiftest thinker in the lot’ and probably owed his present rank more to family relations than to simple merit. In fact, that was probably the reason why he had been posted to the Falkland Islands, the reasoning being that he could not do much damage there. Unfortunately, Lieutenant William Meacham was the one now stuck with an obtuse commander.
‘’Just what I said, sir: both of our submarines have failed to answer our latest calls, made half a hour ago. We are presently contacting our five surface ships patrolling in and around Port Stanley and got answers from the HMS SWALE, ROWENA, HOUND and HYDRA. We are however still waiting for an answer from the frigate HMS SPEY. I strongly suspect that one or more German submarines are roaming around and have landed sabotage teams, sir.’’
‘’And I suppose that you deduced that with the help of your vast experience, Lieutenant?’’ replied Duncastle in a sarcastic tone. Meacham then had a strong urge to knock out that pompous ass, but managed to restrain himself.
‘’No, sir! I simply used the facts at hand, sir.’’
‘’Alright, return to your watch, Lieutenant. I will have a priority message for you to send in a few minutes.’’
‘’Yes sir!’’
As Meacham returned to the radio room, Duncastle pivoted to face back his land and air component commanders, Major Sweeney and Group Captain Endicott.
‘’So, resume again for my benefit what you know, gentlemen. You first, Group Captain!’’
‘’Well, sir, I am pained to have to tell you that all our planes were destroyed on the ground by explosive charges connected to timers, which blew up nearly simultaneously at about 05:30. Also blown up were our aviation fuel dump and our aircraft ammunition dump, which contained bombs, aerial depth charges and rockets. The men manning the two Bofors guns nearest to the dumps were found dead, their throats cut and their guns sabotaged. Anti-personnel mines had also been sown near the entrance doors of our barracks and we lost a number of our men because of them. Our radar and radio huts were destroyed as well and I am now blind and deaf. My total casualties at the airfield are 21 dead and eleven wounded. Whoever did all this proved itself to be very dangerous and professional, sir.’’
Major Adam Sweeney then took the relay from Endicott.
‘’Those Germans were indeed pros, sir: they seem to have disappeared completely, despite the lack of natural cover on the island. They thus may have already returned to their submarine, especially since they did such a good job at neutralizing our air component. However, they had time to also plant four anti-tank mines on the airport road, which blew up the two trucks full of troops I had sent to help the airfield’s garrison. I lost nearly half of my available infantrymen to those mines.’’
‘’And what about our coastal defense guns? Have they been attacked too?’’
‘’No, sir!’’
Duncastle took a minute or so to digest all that information and take a decision, nearly making his subaltern officers squirm with impatience.
‘’Alright, I will send a message to advise London that at least one German submarine is roaming the waters around Port Stanley and that it landed a team of saboteurs. We will then have to see if London or the Americans can send us replacement planes and men. You are dismissed, gentlemen.’’
Sweeney and Endicott, who had expected to get some orders or directives from Duncastle about what they would do next, were left dumbfounded when the old commodore pivoted around and went to his private office, leaving them standing next to the map table sitting in the middle of the operations room.
08:16 (Falkland Islands Time)
Open bridge of U-900, 74 nautical miles north of Port Stanley
South Atlantic
Ulrich von Wittgenstein watched closely from atop the sail of the U-900, which was immobile on the surface with his big twin 12.7 centimeter deck gun manned and pointed, as the six meter long boat carrying ten armed sailors was about to reach the big American tanker ship he had just forced to stop. Those ten armed sailors were in fact the last available ones from the group of boarding party men that had come aboard in Lorient. The others were already gone, manning the CHARLES FINLEY and the BUENAVENTURA, which were still on their way to the South Georgia Islands, where they were to hide until the U-900 could rejoin them. After this, Ulrich was going to have to start depleting his own regular crew if he wanted to put more prize crews on captured ships. One other ship captured by him earlier in the morning, after he had sunk the British frigate HMS SPEY, did not need a prize crew, as it was an ammunition ship that Ulrich had no interest in bringing to Lorient. That ship had been abandoned after its sea cocks had been opened wide, starting a gradual flooding that would ultimately sink it. A call on the bridge intercom from the control room then made Ulrich switch his attention away from the S.S. ESSO GALVESTON and grab the intercom’s handset.
‘’Yes?’’
‘’Herr Kapitän, our radar is showing three large ships approaching fast from the Northeast, sailing in close formation. Distance is 55 nautical miles and closing, coming from Heading 040. We are also detecting their radar emissions.’’
Ulrich stiffened on hearing those words: these had to be warships, possibly cruisers or even battleships. The big question now was: who did they belong to?
‘’Can you identify the radar types by their emissions?’’
The tone of his watch officer then changed, nearly becoming exuberant.
‘’Yes, Herr Kapitän! They are German, types FuMO 26 and FuMO 23!’’
Ulrich relaxed at once then.
‘’Thank God! That must be the surface action group announced two days ago by Admiral Dönitz. I am curious to see which of our big combatants have been sent. As soon as our men will have control of that tanker ship, we will send it on its way to the South Georgia Islands, then will wait for those German warships, so that we could then coordinate our future actions together.’’
About three hours later, with the American tanker ESSO GALVESTON on its way to South Georgia Islands with its cargo of 7,800 tons of aviation gasoline, Ulrich was able to see the distant silhouettes of three approaching ships on the Northeast horizon. His heart jumped in his chest and he shouted with joy when he was able to identify them visually.
‘’THE TIRPITZ, SCHARNHORST AND GNEISENAU! THEY SENT OUR THREE MOST POWERFUL WARSHIPS TO THE FALKLAND ISLANDS!’’
He then passed by intercom the good news about the battleship and two battlecruisers to the rest of his boat, causing loud cheers from his crewmen. Up to now, the submarine arm of the Kriegsmarine had felt like it was bearing alone the brunt of the German naval warfare effort, with the big and costly surface warships of the Kriegsmarine too often staying in port for various reasons. Many submariners had even hinted that Kriegsmarine admirals of the surface fleet, starting with Grossadmiral Raeder, were scared of the British Royal Navy and didn’t want to risk their precious big ships at sea.
A few minutes later, Ulrich saw the battleship TIRPITZ launch one of its four reconnaissance floatplanes, which then flew south, towards Port Stanley. Tha