Dönitz: The Last Führer (49 page)

He had been right about the surprise, but the advantage had been thrown away. Now it was his boats which were being surprised from the air; he was urging the rapid fitting of anti-aircraft guns, the development of an acoustic torpedo for use against escorts, and he had set up a Commission of Scientists to find a solution to the new enemy location method, the search for a substance to render U-boats radar-immune high on the programme. But his overall response was precisely as it had been to Fürbringer: the U-boat was the sole means of forcing a decision; his pack tactics were correct:
Also dranbleiben! Weiter so!

His new programme called for an increased building rate of existing types of boats, chiefly the medium Type VII, to 27 a month rising to 30 a month in 1944 and throughout 1945.
²³

Where in 1943 was his Fürbringer? This raises serious questions about his choice of staff at U-boat Command, particularly his chief of operations, Godt. A report by a team of British anti-submarine officers who interrogated Godt and members of the U-boat staff directly after the war brings these questions into focus; the overall impression the British gained was that ‘we gave the U-boats more credit than we should have done for efficiency’; another impression was that ‘in the main the U-boat officer lacks one vital attribute, imagination’.
²⁴
The team was surprised at the very small organization at U-boat headquarters and the fact that there was no research department attached. It is possible to infer from their report that, like the crew of the cruiser
Emden
in 1934, U-boat headquarters staff ‘carried the stamp of his [Dönitz’s] personality’—were indeed an extension of his determination that his goal and his way were right and would prevail.

*     *     *

At the time of Dönitz’s meeting with Hitler his son Peter was in the North Sea, three days out of Kiel on his first war cruise as second watchkeeper of U 954, also on her first mission; by coincidence, or the flotilla chief’s sense of humour, her Commander enjoyed the name by which Dönitz was known in the service,
Loewe
(‘Lion’). Over the next two days U 954 worked northwards, hugging the Norwegian coast, then struck out around the Faeroes into the open Atlantic and joined a group combing westwards. On April 21st she was ordered into action.

At 6 o’clock that morning U 306, patrolling in Group
Meise
off Newfoundland, had sighted an expected eastbound convoy, HX 234; U 954’s group of seven boats was in a waiting position to the east and they were instructed by U-boat Command to proceed towards the position. They ran all day before gale force winds and high seas, through drifts of fog and snow, and that night the convoy, exploiting the conditions, shook off its shadower; contact was not regained for the whole of the next day during which the weather moderated, but U 306 picked it up again at seven in the morning of the 23rd, and reported so consistently that seven more boats were able to join. One of these was U 954; she succeeded in working her way into position for a submerged attack, and at 4 o’clock that afternoon scored a hit on a large steamer. If Dönitz was not at U-boat headquarters monitoring the progress of the battle, no doubt the good news was phoned through to him.

Aircraft appeared shortly afterwards, attacking several boats, forcing others down and so frustrating the looked-for mass attack that night. Aircraft were again patrolling the convoy the next day and although U 306 regained touch and continued reporting, allowing altogether fifteen boats to come up, all were beaten off. Meanwhile the wind rose to Force Nine from ahead, visibility fell to a quarter of a mile, and as intensified air activity was expected from Iceland the next day the operation was called off. Altogether nineteen boats had taken part, fifteen of which had followed the convoy over 700 miles, but the results were meagre: two ships only sunk, and in exchange one U-boat lost and others more or less damaged.

U-boat Command summed up the main reasons for the failure as ‘variable visibility during the night. The Commanders, for the most part inexperienced and fresh from home waters, were unable to cope with these conditions …’
²⁵

The assessment made in the anti-submarine tracking room in London
was more realistic: for some weeks the decrypts of U-boat transmissions had been suggesting ‘incipient decline in morale amongst at least some U-boat crews’.
²⁶
The latest battle was described as a ‘remarkably feeble operation’ by the boats concerned, who had made ‘repeated and bitter complaints about the ubiquity and efficiency of the aircraft which were constantly with the convoy on April 24th …’ The report concluded:

At the end of the month the anti-submarine report from the tracking room predicted that historians would single out April and May ‘as the critical period during which strength began to ebb away from the German U-boat offensive’.
²⁷
The prediction was based not so much on a dramatic fall over the month in the tonnage sunk, nor in the increased U-boat killing rate; it was

Morale at U-boat Command and in the Biscay bases was already low.
²⁸
The increase in surprise attacks by aircraft during the outward and homeward passage through the Bay and the increase in the number of boats lost, the lack of knowledge, in most cases, of how or why they were lost, the event indicated simply by a failure to report or reply to call signs and noted in the war diary as ‘probably lost in …’, all this fed speculation which bred rumours of secret weapons and bizarre ruses. The situation was horrific without imagined terrors: new aerial depth bombs, new devices for lobbing charges ahead of surface escorts, allowing attack while in good Asdic contact, a doctrine of persevering in attack for hours if necessary, which was made possible by extra vessels from the support groups now kept on station in mid-Atlantic to race to the aid of threatened convoys, above all the high standard of training and
the teamwork between the vessels of each escort group and between them and air escorts made life for U-boat crews almost unbearably difficult and dangerous.

We are unlikely ever to know the precise course of the discussions among the staff at U-boat Command, or whether it was proposed that the campaign be called off temporarily or swung to other theatres, and if so who put such views and how strongly. Undoubtedly there was much soul-searching. Undoubtedly Dönitz took part; undoubtedly he knew that his crews, his own son out there in U 954, were exposed to hazards that he and his fellow First War Commanders had never experienced. There is no trace of these internal debates in the war diary though, only a record of doomed attempts to combat the losses by equipping U-boats with AA batteries for instance, and sending them into Biscay as aircraft decoys like the first war ‘Q’ ships which lured U-boats to their death, or by organizing sailings in groups so that the total anti-aircraft battery of the group would protect them; all failed for the simple reason that the allies had command of the air and U-boats were not suitable craft to dispute it. There were small experiments with dispositions, increasing the distances between boats in groups, dividing groups into sub-sections spaced apart to make it more difficult for the enemy to plot their positions, or giving the outer boats instructions to make wireless signals to create an impression of an enormously extended patrol line. These were ineffectual responses to the scale of the threat hanging over the arm. The fundamental tactics remained unchanged for Dönitz’s response was unchanged: more boats! It is ironic perhaps that in this month during which the battle turned decisively against him he had a daily average of 111 boats at sea in the Atlantic, rather over the ‘90 continuously operational boats’ he had picked on in 1939 as necessary for success; such were the distances involved, however, and the difficulties of passage that only a third of these were in the operational area at any time.

By May 1st there were 425 boats in service; of these 118 were on trials and 67 in use for training in the Baltic, leaving a total of 240 available for operations; 207 of these were detailed for the decisive theatre, the North Atlantic, and 45 were actually grouped in the prime operational area south of Greenland.

Peter Dönitz’s boat, U 954, was one of these; after the operations against HX 224 had been broken off she had been incorporated into a group
Star
(‘Starling’) which had been ordered after a westbound
convoy; high steep seas in their face and driving snow squalls had prevented more than five of the group from actually sighting the convoy; U 954 had not been one of them. Two boats had been attacked and the others forced down by aircraft, after which contact had been lost and on April 30th the operation was called off; the summary in U-boat Command war diary for May 1st ended on a defiant note, ‘this operation failed only because of bad weather, not because of the enemy’s defences’.
²⁹

Meanwhile the groups were redisposed in three patrol lines to catch three more expected convoys. Only one of these was sighted, the westbound ONS 5, which was spotted by the northernmost boat of the
Star
line. However the weather was still so appalling that none of the other boats could find it and U-boat Command redirected the group southwesterly, forming them and other boats in the area—a total of 41—into separated sub-groups in the anticipated path of the convoy; the small groups were to mislead the allies whose very accurate U-boat disposition reports, intercepted by
B-Dienst
, were still thought to be compiled by radar sightings and bearings of wireless transmissions. The plan was to close the sub-groups up at high speed at the last possible moment, so foiling evasive routing and bringing the boats into two closely-spaced lines across the enemy’s track.

It worked brilliantly, and this time fortune seemed to be on their side for continuous gales had scattered the convoy and forced three of the escorts to put back to refuel, yet the weather as the boats closed on May 4th was moderating sufficiently to make attack possible. However, the convoy had air cover from Canada and as the boats approached two were destroyed and others forced under. Contact was regained at eight o’clock that night, and as the groups homed in a fierce surface battle developed; the outnumbered escorts counter-attacked as they located the boats on their radar but were unable to devote sufficient time to the pursuit as they had to return to protect their charges; four ships were sunk from the main body and one straggler, and the next day a further seven were sunk in submerged attacks for the loss of a third U-boat. U 954 was not one of the successful boats.

A long range Liberator appeared in the evening, but could not remain long, and fifteen boats were able to gather in the vicinity, ready to strike after dark; in Berlin the staff waited confidently for reports of further sinkings. None came. Fog drifted up over the now calm sea giving the escorts with their radar sets inestimable advantages, and some 24 attacks
were beaten off without loss of another merchantman. In the course of these fierce and sudden actions six boats found themselves under gunfire from vessels they could not see, one was rammed and sunk by a destroyer which came at her out of the fog and the others were depth-charged after being forced under; three were lost in this way, bringing the total destroyed in the two days of the battle to six boats; five more were heavily damaged and twelve reported lesser damage.

This was recognized in the allied camp as the turning point; no force could sustain such a proportion of losses.

It was not regarded as such at U-boat Command; the war diary summary of operations concluded: ‘This loss of six boats is very high and grave considering the short duration of the attack. The blame can be laid mainly on the foggy period …’ and ‘…If fog had held off for six hours many more ships would certainly have been sunk …’
³⁰
The surviving boats were given new patrol lines in the area or sent to replenish from two ‘milch-cow’ U-boats stationed in the unfrequented area further to the south; one of these was U 954.

One change was ordered, however; since it seemed that the larger Type IX boats were proving more vulnerable to bomb and depth charge attack on account of their more complicated structure, it was decided not to send any more into the North Atlantic, but to use them in more remote, less heavily-patrolled areas.
³¹
And on May 14th Type IX boats already operating in the North Atlantic were ordered to transfer their fuel to other boats and return home. It was the first sign of retreat.

Dönitz’s refusal to admit even temporary defeat in the North Atlantic battle as a whole was not due to ignorance of the conditions faced by his Commanders at the front; after the summary of the ONS 5 battle in the war diary of May 6th under ‘General Remarks’, it was stated: ‘Along with air activity, enemy radar location is the worst enemy of our U-boats…’ and ‘… radar location is robbing the U-boat of its most important characteristic, the ability to remain undetected’. Then comes a passage reading very much as if Dönitz was the author: