Black May (29 page)

Vidette
was stationed in position “B,” off the convoy’s starboard bow, when at 1542 she acquired an asdic contact at very close range, bearing 090°. Lt. Hart altered course to intercept the contact, which quickly was classified a submarine. Reaching the target’s position at 1544, he fired a five-pattern set to 100 feet. After opening range to about 900 yards, he swept back through the attack position, but received no further contact.
Vidette
conducted an Observant until 1633, when she was ordered to rejoin. Hart’s assessment of his action read: “Although there was no evidence of damage to the U-boat, in my opinion the counter attack delivered probably prevented an attack on the Convoy.” The NHB/MOD reassessment doubts that a U-boat was present.
¹⁷

Meanwhile, despite these efforts, another convoy ship was torpedoed. The victim was M.V.
Dolius,
ship No. 21 on the port-hand easterly wing. Professor Jürgen Rohwer conjectures that the assailant was
U-638,
commanded by Kptlt. Oskar Staudinger. A native of Löbau who had earlier (1938–1941) served in the Luftwaffe, Staudinger was one week away from his twenty-sixth birthday. We know nothing of the details of this attack, since the boat’s KTB and
Schussmeldung
, if one existed, did not survive the battle. The “KTB” that one does find in the archives for his second Atlantic patrol out of La Pallice, 20 April to 5 May 1943, is a reconstruction done in Berlin on or about 7 May based on his F.T.s (wireless messages), both incoming and outgoing. There is no direct evidence in the F.T.s to show that U
-638
sank a ship on 5 May, and the KTB-BdU does not acknowledge receipt of such a report.
¹⁸

Whatever U-boat was responsible, the
Dolius,
a 5,507-GRT freighter of the Blue Funnel Line, was torpedoed on her starboard side
at 1240. Since she was the lead ship in column No. 2 on the port-hand easterly wing, the torpedo would have had to come from very slightly ahead or from within the formation. The Master, Captain G. R. Cheetham, judged that the torpedo had been launched from close range between his vessel and the two ships,
Ottinge
and
Baron Graham,
to his starboard. With what Cheetham called a “dull” explosion with no flash, the warhead opened a 30-foot-long hole extending some 15 feet above the waterline. The concussion stopped the engines and the engine room promptly flooded, as did No. 4 hold. The Fourth Engineer and Junior Assistant Engineer were killed at their stations. The ship at first listed slightly, then came upright and began to settle by the stern. Cheetham ordered his crew to stand by the lifeboats. It was an unusually large crew: thirty-nine British and twenty-two Chinese, plus five Navy and four Army gunners.

Some of the Chinese, panicking, began lowering one of the three serviceable boats—No. 3 starboard had been destroyed—but stopped when Cheetham shouted at them. After making a thorough search for any injured, Cheetham disposed of the Confidential Books and gave the command Abandon Ship. Every man behaved with well-ordered discipline, including the Chinese, and the boats were successfully manned and lowered. As the Third Officer’s boat pulled away from the vessel, its occupants sighted a crewman still on board waving his arms for assistance. The boat returned to rescue him and another crewman was found lying unconscious below. Twenty-five minutes after the torpedo’s explosion, all the known survivors were clear of the wreck. Two engineers and one gunner were dead, one gunner died in the lifeboats, and two gunners were injured.
¹⁹

Two minutes after
Dolius
was hit, Sherwood ordered “Artichoke.”
Sunflower
and
Offa
responded, the corvette turning from her port bow station and charging down between columns 2 and 3 at emergency full speed. Slightly astern of the derelict,
Sunflower
picked up an asdic contact in the center of the convoy formation, range 1,200 yards. Lt.-Cmdr. Plomer closed the position and dropped a ten-pattern with 150-feet settings. The blasts did some damage to his own ship, but there was no sign that he had done any to a U-boat. Contact was lost, and
when
Tay
joined she could not regain, either. From circumstantial evidence, however, the NHB/MOD reassessment has concluded that
Sunflower
s attack resulted in the sinking of Staudinger’s U-638, at 54°12'N, 44°o5'W—swift retribution, indeed, for the loss of
Dolius,
and proof again of the effectiveness of Artichoke.
Sunflowers
was the first kill made by the close escort.
Offa,
meanwhile, obtained a doubtful contact at 1301, threw a ten-charge pattern, and rejoined the convoy.
²⁰

Between 1320 and 1400
Sunflower
swept a circle around the sinking
Dolius,
then, on orders from
Tay,
began rescuing survivors while
Snowflake
provided cover. Once on board, the
Dolius
officers, ratings, and apprentices did whatever they could to make themselves useful, serving on lookout watches, performing deck tasks of various kinds, and cleaning quarters. Plomer said later, “The ship was sorry to see them go in spite of the overcrowding involved.” As
Sunflower
set course to rejoin the convoy, the D.E.M.S. rating who died in a lifeboat was buried overside with a short service.
²¹

Since 2244 on the 4th, the corvette H.M.S.
Pink,
rather neglected in this narrative of late, has been trundling along faithfully as lone escort to a separately routed convoy of four stragglers: the American
West Madaket,
the British
Dunsley
and
Director,
and the Norwegian
Gudvor.
At 1150, ”
Pink’s
Party,” as the tiny fleet came to be called, was in position 54°56'N, 43°44'W, some 80 miles astern of the main body, making about 8 knots on the course, 240°, assigned by CinCWA. Twenty-seven-year-old Lt. (now Sir) Robert Atkinson, commanding
Pink,
was zigzagging ahead, his four charges in line abreast about 3,000 yards astern. With only 30 percent of his fuel remaining, with no chance to overtake the main body and refuel, and with a separate route that increased the distance to be steamed, Atkinson was proceeding on only one boiler, the second being banked, and had shut down one dynamo and rationed water. If an attack situation developed, he knew that the higher speeds required by those maneuvers would make greater than usual demands on his fuel reserves. But he did not quail before that prospect: not having seen any action during the voyage to date, he badly wanted a go at the enemy.
²²

Long experienced in the North Atlantic, Atkinson had served in the Merchant Navy since 1932, and since 1937 as an officer, beginning as probationary sublieutenant, in the Royal Navy Reserve. He was called to duty in September 1939 and given command of the yacht
Lorna,
which, operating off Gibraltar, seized an Italian tanker when that country entered the war. He took the tanker, which was filled with seven and a half million gallons of petrol, back to England, where he asked for a “more active state of war.” Accordingly, he was sent for ASW training at H.M.S.
Osprey
in Portland. That completed, he was named First Lieutenant of the corvette H.M.S.
Rhododendron
, which, on 21 November 1940, one month after her commissioning, became the first ship to sink a U-boat (U-104) at night. His next ship, and first corvette command, H.M.S.
Snowdrop
, was detached to the “White Patrol” that ran between the northwest cape of Iceland and the packs and growlers of Greenland. There, well before
Pink’s
Party, he experienced the trials of a lonely vigil.

The corvette’s mission was to travel back and forth across the Denmark Strait in order to detect a breakout of the German heavy battleship
Bismarck
, though, as he said to the writer over a half-century later, there was not anything his “little pea shooter” could have done about it except report. “There was darkness day and night, wind and cold, a lot of frostbite, seasickness all the time, poor food.” The loneliness of
Snowdrop’s
solitary watch was deepened by the fact that “We never went ashore; the Icelanders weren’t very hospitable.” On another occasion he said: “I was always vulnerable to seasickness strangely enough, having been at sea all my life, and I recall on one occasion having so many clothes on and being so weak from seasickness, I could hardly mount the companionway to get on to the bridge, I was so physically weak.”
²³
After one month of shore duty to help him get over his seasickness, Atkinson was given command of the newly commissioned (2 July 1942) corvette
Pink
, named after the fragrant flowers of the genus
Dianthus.
The corvette joined B7 when Peter Gretton assumed command of the Group.

Now, at 1154 on 5 May 1943, toward the end of the starboard leg of a zigzag,
Pink
obtained a first-class asdic contact bearing 310°, range 2,200
yards. The echoes, Atkinson said, were “by far the clearest and sharpest I have ever heard.” The event confronted him with two conundrums: (I) Should he expend perhaps an unacceptable amount of precious fuel in making an attack, which might or might not succeed, or should he husband his oil in a simple defensive mode and thus extend his capacity to provide “scare tactic” cover for the stragglers? (2) Should he seize this opportunity to destroy one U-boat, or would his absence in so doing, whether successful or not, expose his small convoy to the torpedoes of another U-boat? The Atlantic Convoy Instructions permitted him to attack, “provided this duty can be undertaken without undue prejudice to the safety of the convoy.”
²⁴
Atkinson decided to attack.

At her maximum speed available on one boiler, 11 knots,
Pink
held the contact to 150 yards, and at 1159 dropped three D/Cs, two set to 100 feet and one to 250. More were not dropped owing to Atkinson’s concern that at her low speed and with D/Cs set shallow,
Pink
would not get beyond the blast effect. When contact was regained,
Pink
commenced a second run in, during which her hydrophones picked up the sounds of the U-boat’s hydroplanes and/or rudder, indicating a depth change or a turn. At 1207, increasing for safety to 15 knots by getting her second boiler “flashed up,” she fired ten charges set to 150 and 385 feet. No signs of damage appeared on the surface. One minute later, a “moderately high echo” was obtained again. In setting up for a third attack, Atkinson deduced from the movements of the U-boat that it was endeavoring to put its stern and cavitation turbulence to him. As the target moved to starboard,
Pink
followed, and at 1216, with the range at 250 yards, he ordered the firing of twenty-four Hedgehog bombs with 4° of right deflection because of wind. To his extreme disappointment, the Hedgehog mechanism misfired.

It took eleven minutes of following the plot to acquire a new contact, which was “firm and metallic,” at 1227. Two minutes later, the asdic echo was bearing 0°, range 1,400 yards. Good hydrophone effect was also heard on that bearing, and at 1233 Atkinson fired a ten-pattern set to 250 and 385 feet. With no evidence of damage, and not expecting to see any appear right away from that depth, Atkinson’s asdic team kept their sound pulses glued to the U-boat’s hull, and at 1241 contact
was again “sharp and firm.” Hydroplane and/or rudder noises picked up by hydrophone suggested that the U-boat might be diving deeper. At 1244
Pink
made her fourth attack, ten charges set to 350 and 550 feet. This time Atkinson felt confident that he had made an accurate and successful drop. He was confirmed in that confidence during
Pink’s
run out by hydrophone reports of blowing tanks. Then, about 500 yards astern, three huge bubbles followed by numerous smaller ones broke the surface of the water.
Pink
turned back and closed the position to observe the “boiling”:

With asdic showing that the U-boat was quite deep and practically stationary, Atkinson decided on a second Hedgehog salvo, which was fired at 1302. But, again, the Hedgehog disappointed as all twenty-four projectiles exploded on striking the water (!) Giving the hunt one last go, Atkinson set up for another deep ten-pattern drop, commencing his run in at 1307, course 110°, speed 13 knots, eight light D/Cs fused for 350 and 550 feet, and two heavy charges with Mark VII pistols to give extra depth fused for 700 feet. (The depths were all guesses, since the Type 145 asdic then in use on corvettes did not indicate the target’s depth. The first operational depth-determining asdic, Type 147, would not be available until September 1943. It was not known that a U-boat could dive deeper than 700 feet [213 meters] until June 1943.)

Opening the range to 1,500 yards,
Pink
listened for an echo, but there was none. Nor was there any evidence on the surface, which Atkinson returned to inspect. At 1325 he abandoned the hunt and shaped course for 240° at 15 knots to rejoin his convoy 10 miles ahead. Fourteen minutes later,
Pink
was shaken by a powerful underwater explosion, “like a deep grunt,” which left Atkinson “in no doubt as to the fact that the U-boat was destroyed.” He was sorely tempted to turn
back and see what the surface might reveal, but since his convoy had been unprotected for an hour and a half, he decided that to do so was not prudent.

Atkinson’s report on his five-pronged attack was reviewed by the Admiralty’s U-Boat Assessment Committee on 28 June 1943, and the conclusion was drawn that “this attack was probably successful and it is assessed as ‘Probably sunk.’ ”
²⁶
By 20 July 1943 the Admiralty was convinced that it knew the identity of the U-boat sunk: “The sinking of this submarine, which was U.192, has since been confirmed.”
²⁷
In the subsequent literature from Roskill to Syrett, U-/92 (Oblt.z.See Werner Happe) has been identified as the fatal victim of
Pink
on 5 May. We know little about Happe’s boat, which had sortied from Kiel on 13 April, because she was lost at some point in the battle and her documents went down with her. A KTB based on messages sent to her was reconstructed in Berlin, but it is not revealing; no response was heard by BdU since 3 May, from qu AJ 3757, and on 6 May (again on 9 May) she was declared a total loss. It is now clear that U-/92 succumbed on 6 May (see below), in a sad finish to her first and only patrol.