Black May (22 page)

The steel shell went down with all her relics of human habitation, including eight decks of playing cards and other games: cribbage, dominoes, checkers, and acey deucy, as well as sports equipment: darts, deck tennis, two pairs of boxing gloves, and one medicine ball; and divertissements: one portable radio, one Victrola, and twelve records. The Master had no complaint about his escorts. The sinking was, he said, “just one of those things.”
Tay
then pursued a U-boat contact 49 miles astern and did not rejoin B7 until 0600 the next day, the 30th. At 1100 that morning the convoy half-masted colors for the burial at sea of
McKeesport’
s lone fatality, John A. Anderson, a Swedish national, who had died on board
Northern Gem,
³⁹

No attack on ONS.5 developed during the night of the 29th/3oth, although HF/DF and asdic contacts led
Duncan
and
Snowflake
to drop “scare tactic” charges. The destroyer
Oribi
, homed from astern by HF/DF, arrived during the night, at 0100, from EG3. In the southwesterly wind and sea she had only been able to make II knots.
⁴⁰
Her HF/DF equipment (Type FH3) lent additional detection ability to the screen. Coastal Command, alerted to ONS.5’s peril on the 28th but delayed by weather conditions at 120 Squadron’s air base at Reykjavik, finally was able to reestablish air contact when a VLR Liberator arrived overhead the convoy at 0645 on the morning of the 30th. Soon afterward,
however, owing to a drop in visibility, the aircraft returned to base in Iceland.

The U-boats would remain at bay all that morning, and at 1045, the short-legged
Oribi
took advantage of the respite to oil from
British Lady.
Unfortunately, the destroyer, which was unaccustomed to refueling at sea, fouled the oiler’s gear. That fact, plus a new deterioration in the weather that had already been, in Gretton’s words, “astonishing even in the North Atlantic,” made it impossible for other escorts to top up—with ultimately grave consequences for
Duncan
.
⁴¹
By 2100 another gale was blowing from ahead, the wave heights were rising steeply, and the escorts were rolling gunwales under.

At 0105, in the first highly visible sign that some of the U-boats had maintained contact during the past forty-one hours,
Snowflake
acquired a U-boat’s radar signature at 3,300 yards, ran down the bearing, fired a starshell at about 10 o’clock three miles from convoy, sighted the boat at 3,000 yards, fired “near misses” at her with both the four-inch deck gun and 20mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft (AA) guns at maximum depression, and forced it to dive. To discourage it further,
Snowflake
dropped a D/C on the swirl—which was a hazardous thing to do given the rough sea, which prevented an attacking ship from getting much beyond the blast effect—as
Duncan
discovered himself when he dropped two on another contact at 2345: with maximum speed up sea only 8 to 9 knots, the D/C pressure waves lifted his stern clean out of the water, opened leaks, and, what was worse, smashed all the gin glasses in the wardroom.
⁴²
There were two other “scare tactic” D/C drops that night, and no general attack on the convoy developed.

The morning weather on 1 May was atrocious. By afternoon a Force 10 gale was dead in the convoy’s teeth, preventing all but the most modest progress forward. Convoy speed was 2.7 knots and dropping. In the tempest, columns as well as ships within columns separated from each other. Commodore Brook’s log noted: “Half convoy not under command, hove to and very scattered.”
⁴³
Gretton, whose
Duncan
was hove to with winds pushing alternately against one bow and then the other, marveled that an entire convoy could be brought to virtually stationary condition. On
Pink,
Lt. Atkinson placed a chair on the raised
platform at the fore part of his open bridge and went into half-sleep, rocking with the motion of the corvette. Nearby were a gyro compass and voice pipes to helmsman and navigator. Compass repeaters were on both wings port and starboard. Ahead and several feet below was the asdic hut (or office). Aft and a deck lower was the helmsman. On the port quarter of the bridge was the tall radar hut (office, house). Aft of the bridge were the ship’s mast and funnel. For protection against the cold gale Atkinson wore a heavy sweater, a cloth, not very warm, duffel coat with hood, a Balaclava helmet (knitted wool head sock), naval cap, seaboot stockings, and mitts. Like the rest of the crew, he was the recipient of wool clothing articles knitted by women volunteers in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, with whom correspondence was exchanged and lifelong friendships forged.
⁴⁴

Aircraft flew over the dispersed merchantmen during the day, including two RAF VLR Liberators from 120 Squadron in Iceland who gave valuable assistance by identifying the positions of stragglers, and by warning of icebergs, growlers, and pack ice starting thirty miles ahead. Less helpful were two U.S. Army B-25 Mitchell bombers from Ivigtut, Greenland, which made no contact whatever with the convoy either by wireless (W/T), voice radio (R/T), or light signals (V/S), although one of them, as Gretton learned later, made an unsuccessful attack on a U-boat some 60 miles to the south; and one of them further helped to confuse BdU by forgetting to switch off its navigation lights: The flashing beacons, which, of course, announced the bomber’s position and course to any U-boat that might be watching, caught the attention of U
-381
(Kptlt. Graff Pückler), which at once signaled BdU about an apparent secret weapon. In Berlin, where Grossadmiral Dönitz and Konteradmiral Godt were at this time unusually accommodating of the notion of secret devices, the BdU war diary for 1 May noted: “The [U-351] observed what was probably a new type of location gear. The Commander repeatedly noticed planes approaching at great height and carrying a light like a planet that went on and off.”

What is more interesting to learn from the 1 May diary entries concerning convoy “No. 33” is that BdU decided that with only six of sixteen
Star
boats reporting contact with the convoy, the rest having failed
to gain purchase, with three survivors of those six now submerged to avoid both the weather and the aircraft, and with so little to show for four days’ effort, further pursuit of ONS.5 was not worth the candle. At dusk the longwave antenna array at Calbe, 43 kilometers south of Magdeburg, sent the order, which could be heard by the submerged boats to a depth of 25 meters: break off the operation. BdU’s rationalization of the failure read: “This attack failed only because of the bad weather, not because of the enemy’s defenses.”
⁴⁵
No doubt a different appreciation of the battle was entertained on the bridge of
Duncan.

By dawn the next day, the weather had moderated somewhat, and the speed of the convoy was back up to 5 knots. During the previous twenty-four hours only 20 miles had been made. Gretton and his escorts took advantage of the settling seas to round up stragglers, of whom there were many, some at a distance of 30 miles from the Commodore. In this B7 and
Oribi
were helped by a VLR Liberator from the Reykjavik squadron that flew over 1,000 miles to assist in locating ships. Eventually, most of the flock was gathered, except for two parties taken under charge by
Pink
and
Tay
some miles astern, and two laggards that peeled off to sail independently. In the forenoon of 2 May, Gretton and Brook began negotiating the first ice pack on their route. Small growlers and floes now became the hazard rather than high seas.
Duncan
thought this a good time to top up from
British Lady
, but the oiler’s constant alteration of course to avoid the ice made the maneuver impossible; and by the time ONS.5 was clear of ice the wind and sea were making up again from the west-southwest, frustrating Gretton once more.

In the evening B7's transmitters vectored in the EG3 Support Group destroyers of Home Fleet, H.M.S.
Offa, Penn, Panther
, and
Impulsive,
which joined at 2040. Unfortunately, like
Oribi,
these were all short-legged ships that had expended a good amount of their fuel making rendezvous. Gretton’s
Vidette
was the only destroyer in the enlarged screen that had been designed for or, as was the case, modified for long-range escort duty. There was a brief awkward moment when Gretton, who was junior in rank to the Support Group senior officer, Captain J. A. McCoy, R.N., in
Offa,
“made requests of” (gave orders to) his senior in grade; but Gretton found McCoy more than willing to accept the subservient role, and very friendly in his cooperation.

That night McCoy’s ships took up extended screen stations assigned to them by Gretton, which changed from first dark to midnight, from midnight to dawn, and from daybreak to sunset.
⁴⁶
There was no sign of the enemy during the night, and the morning of 3 May was similarly quiet, except that gale-force winds from the southwest continued to howl around the main body of the convoy, which now numbered thirty-two ships together. The close escort and support ships spent the forenoon searching for stragglers.

Gretton exempted himself from that labor and crawled ahead at convoy speed, anxious about his fuel remaining, and deciding what to do about it. Because of the still heavy seas, topping up from
British Lady
was out of the question; and the weather forecast did not allow for any calmer surface ahead. What oil he had left in his bunkers was sufficient to make Newfoundland only at economical speed. If he stayed with the convoy, the likelihood was that he would go dry and have to be towed. If the enemy was still in touch, his powerless ship would invite easy attack. As for transferring his command of B7 to another ship and sending
Duncan
and her crew to St. John’s, that, too, was not an option: the appalling weather made transfer by boat or jackstay impossible. So
Duncan
would have to go, and Gretton with her—at a time, he grieved, when ONS.5 was still in jeopardy, and just at the beginning of a story that Gretton later would describe as “probably the most stirring of convoy history.”
⁴⁷

At 1600, by R/T, he handed over command as Senior Officer Escort to Lt.-Cmdr. Robert Evan Sherwood in
Tay,
changed course, and proceeded at best economical speed, which was 8 knots, toward St. John’s.
⁴⁸
Though emotionally depressed—“thoroughly ashamed of ourselves,” he would say—Gretton understood rationally that the reason for his withdrawal lay not with any inadequacy of himself or his crew, but with the Royal Navy strategists and engineers who decided in the 1920s what ought to be the fuel endurance of a destroyer. In fact, that night and the next morning three destroyers of the Support Group similarly left the convoy because of fuel depletion, first
Impulsive
to Iceland, then
Panther
and
Penn
to Newfoundland. Also, on the 4th, Sherwood detached
Northern Gem
with her
McKeesport
survivors to Newfoundland. And at the same time, he signaled CinCWA that unless the
weather cleared enough to make oiling from U.S.S.
Argon
practicable, he would have to detach destroyers
Offa
and
Oribi
no later than Wednesday morning the 5th.
⁴⁹

Helped by unexpectedly fine weather and a boost from the Labrador Current, a disappointed
Duncan
made St. John’s with four percent of fuel remaining. Left behind in the sea lanes was a severely diminished convoy escort with four of its once seven-strong destroyer force already removed from the screen, facing now the threat that it would lose two more destroyers on the morrow. That would leave ONS.5’s escort a predominantly corvette force. And at just this juncture
Tay’s
asdic went out and was pronounced irreparable.

But the new commander Sherwood had at least three reasons for optimism: for one thing, CinCWA ordered First Escort (Support) Group at St. John’s, consisting of the Egret class sloop H.M.S.
Pelican;
Commander Godfrey N. Brewer, R.N., Senior Officer; the River Class frigates H.M.S.
Wear, Jed,
and
Spey;
and the ex-U.S. Coast Guard Lake class cutter H.M.S.
Sennen,
to “Proceed at best speed through position 47 North 47 West and thence to reinforce ONS.5”; for another, the winds subsided to Force 6 and the seas abated somewhat, with the result that convoy speed advanced during a twenty-four-hour period from 3 to 6 knots; and, for still another, ONS.5 incredibly had passed through most of the dreaded Greenland Air Gap without sustaining a single attack.
⁵⁰

Yet 4 May was a day when lifted spirits also had their troughs: HF/DF receptions, which had been for a while still, became active again and gradually increased in number, indicating to Sherwood that U-boats, whether from the last group or from a new one, were reacquiring contact from port bow and beam. Convoy ONS.5 was not yet beyond jeopardy.

Sherwood’s credentials for leadership were longstanding and well-tested. At sea since 1922, when he served with the Merchant Navy, he joined the Royal Naval Reserve in 1929, became a sublieutenant in minesweepers, and served nine months on the battleship H.M.S.
War-spite.
While continuing a member of the reserves, he resumed Merchant Navy duties with Holyhead-Dublin steamers until the outbreak
of war, when he took an asdic course, spent a short stint with the Dover Patrol, and transferred to corvettes, assuming command in 1940 of H.M.S.
Bluebell
, among whose fifty-two-man crew he found only three or four who were “capable of any real action of any kind at all.” In time he trained them to a high degree of seamanship and technical proficiency, and of himself he said that it was good training to have held command early of a vessel as difficult to handle as a “Flower” class corvette, a ship type that struggled against every wave and swell. The
Bluebell
, he said, “would do everything except turn over.”
⁵¹
Advanced to command of
Tay
in 1942, he was assigned to Gretton’s escort group, with which he captained the first ship on which B7's Senior Officer Escort embarked.