Black May (31 page)

Stone made a quick inspection of the ship to make sure no one had been left behind, then joined one of the boats. A short time later, he entertained the notion of returning to his ship to see if she could be saved, even though the propeller and rudder were out of the water. The notion, however, was doused by
Tay,
which arrived on the scene and began “hauling up” the survivors; Stone related tersely that he had been “hauled up by the scruff of my neck.” Sherwood told Stone that he could not indulge him in his desire to return, because he had to go after the survivors of
Bonde
, which also had been torpedoed. Bereft because of the loss of his ship, Stone could have drawn comfort from the fact, had he known it, that his was one of only two ships torpedoed in ONS.5 that did not lose a single man. If First Officer Head was disappointed with the performance of his Indian crewmen off
Selvistan,
Stone was favorably impressed by his own sixty-eight Indians, of whom he said:

The thirteenth and final ONS.5 merchantman to die at sea was bantam
Bonde
in column 8. Chief Officer M. MacLellan of S.S.
Baron Graham
remembered:

To Captain Stone of
Gharinda
we owe our knowledge of what happened to
Bonde.
Just after his own ship was torpedoed, Stone was on the bridge about to throw his Confidential Books overboard when he saw the Oerlikon gunners on
Bonde
open 20mm fire against a periscope sighted close on her starboard beam. It was the first time in ONS.5’s voyage that D.E.M.S. gunners engaged a U-boat. Stone ordered his own Oerlikons to fire in the direction where
Bonde
s shots were splashing. A few seconds later, he saw and tracked a torpedo wake approaching
Bonde
s starboard side. The nearby
Vidette
also reported seeing torpedo tracks on the steamer’s starboard beam. “Then,” said Captain John Gates of
Baron Graham
, who was also watching, “there was an explosion and
[Bonde]
seemed to jump up in the water. When the smoke and spray of the explosion had cleared away, the
Bonde
was already standing on her end with her bow and foredeck vertically out of the water. I looked away for a few seconds and in that time the ship sank.”
³⁸
There had been no time to lower boats or rafts. When
Tay
came around to pick up survivors she found only twelve men from the crew of thirty-eight.

Alarmed by the sudden loss of three ships, Commodore Brook ordered an emergency turn of 90° to port, which was executed successfully beginning at 1950. He would resume base course at 2045, at which hour Sherwood ordered the escorts to resume station, excepting
Offa
and
Oribi,
which had been conducting Observant around the sinkings. At 2039
Offa
gained a firm asdic contact and during the next hour and 38 minutes made five large-pattern attacks.
³⁹
Oribi
joined in the hunt but was unable to acquire contact. McCoy’s onslaught resulted in extensive damage to
U-266,
the slayer of
Selvistan, Gharinda,
and
Bonde.
Kptlt. von Jessen reported suffering damage to diving tank No. 3, trim cells, Junkers air compressor, and starboard dynamotors. Forced to move off for repairs, the boat never rejoined the
Fink
line, eventually being sunk by an aircraft on 15 May.
⁴⁰
With no evidence of a kill or damage,
Offa
broke off the action and shaped course for the convoy, taking
Oribi
with her. Explained McCoy: “Heavy W/T activity indicated that the convoy was threatened with annihilation and I considered it imperative to return to it before dark.”
⁴¹

In the meantime, at 1954, a VLR Liberator, Aircraft J/120 from Reykjavik, appeared overhead and made R/T contact with Sherwood. Its appearance gladdened everyone in the convoy. Sherwood asked the pilot to search astern for stragglers and wrecks. This the Liberator was able to do for only 45 minutes until, reaching PLE, the pilot and Sherwood had this exchange: Aircraft: “Don’t want to go, but have to.”
Tay.
“Thank you for your help.”
⁴²
Commodore Brook observed that this Iceland-based bomber was the first air escort he had seen since 2 May, “though air support was so sadly needed.”
⁴³
(He must have missed seeing the Fortress from Gander on the 3rd; the two Cansos from Gander on the 4th were too distant to be seen.) He might have wondered, though, why he was not seeing aircraft from Newfoundland at this hour late on the 5th, when Gander and Torbay were not far distant. An RCAF Canso of Eastern Air Command did sight four “single vessels,” probably stragglers, between 0810 and 0845 earlier in the day but made
no contact with
ONS
-5’s main body.
⁴⁴
A second Canso intended as escort for the convoy crashed on takeoff from Gander, killing five crew members. According to a message from RCAF headquarters in Ottawa on 7 May, a Fortress from Gander met
ONS
.5 during a ten-hour sweep on the 5th, though its presence was not observed by either Sherwood or Brook. The message containing this information about the Canso and the Fortress was sent to Washington to counter “comment” in the U.S. Navy Department that, “Apparently there was no air support for
ONS
.5 on 5 May and this [was] assumed to be due to weather.” The RCAF response essentially agreed that foggy weather was the reason.
⁴⁵

At
ONS
.5’
s
position the Atlantic surface was calm, there was no wind, and the air was heavy with drizzle and mist. The convoy ships in contact with the Commodore numbered twenty-three in ten columns, on course 202°. As darkness embraced the wrinkled sea and a high volume of HF/DF activity engaged
Tay
s receivers, Sherwood once again deployed his close escort forces for nighttime vigil:
Tay
ahead, his broken asdic on listening watch only;
Sunflower
on the port bow;
Vidette
on the starboard bow;
Snowflake
on the port quarter; and
Loosestrife
on the starboard quarter. The port and starboard beams were uncovered.
Pink
was still occupied with her small flock astern, and the two EG3 destroyers
Offa
and
Oribi
were assigned to positions five miles out on each bow. At BdU in Berlin, Admirals Donitz and Godt were drawing up their own plans for the night, expressed in four W/T exhortations to the
Fink
boats, of which fifteen are known to have been in contact with the convoy in the evening and early nighttime hours.
⁴⁶

The mist of early night thickened to fog and drizzle. The U-boats could be seen, phantomlike, mustering on the surface.
Tay
sighted seven boats in close proximity. They may have been the same seven seen by Günter Gretschel in U-707:

Gretschel and the weather notwithstanding, between the hours of 2252 on the 5th and 0947 on the 6th the
Fink
boats made no fewer than twenty-four attempted attacks on the convoy from every direction except ahead. And at battle’s end the night did not belong to the U-Bootwaffe, as Berlin had expected. Instead, thanks to a dense fog bank, to shipborne centimetric radar, and to the pluck and skill of the escort Captains, the night belonged to the Royal Navy, which not only protected ONS.5 and
Pink’s
Party from further harm, but sank four of the U-boat attackers and damaged and repeatedly drove off other boats or forced them to dive.

The escorts made twenty attacks of their own during the hours named. Every ship of B7 and EG3 was engaged, churning at full speed across the ocean surface in this direction or that, throwing and dropping D/Cs, firing guns, or ramming, then quickly rejoining the screen. Ships of First Escort (Support) Group, when they came on the scene at 0600, similarly threw themselves at the enemy with great energy. In the midst of which actions Commodore Brook ordered another convoy emergency turn, 90° to starboard at 2310, resuming course at 2336, and evasive turns to 186° at 0100 and to 156° at 0200, in conditions when visibility was one mile by 2202 and 100 yards by 0100! Around and inside the convoy columns, combat was fierce, continuous, and confusing. Proving that sea warfare is one of the most confounding of human activities, the night of 5/6 May proceeded in such seeming disarray that at its conclusion, Sherwood threw up his hands and conceded, “It is quite out of the question to give a detailed account in chronological order.”
⁴⁹

In the narrative that follows an effort will be made to place a template of order over the tortured seascape by focusing on the principal actions of individual escorts, while leaving aside the parries and thrusts that had no known results. Throughout, it bears keeping in mind that whereas the shipborne Type 271 RDF (radar) oscilloscopes were displaying to Sherwood’s men bright, clear U-boat echoes that conveyed enemy positions and ranges, the U-boat Commanders, lacking comparable equipment, were groping about blind. Said Günter Gretschel on U-707: “Surfaced, pitchblack night, fog, can’t see your hand in front of your face” [
Hand nicht vor dem Augen zu sehen].
⁵⁰
Advantage: U.K.

A
T
2309
^*
ON THE
5th,
Vidette
was in escort position “C,” starboard bow of a fog-blurred convoy anxiously keeping station by whistle, when she acquired a radar contact nearly dead ahead bearing 200°, range 5,100 yards. Hart sounded action stations, altered course slightly, and increased speed to 18, then to 20 knots. At 2317 a second, smaller
echo came in from a radar contact bearing 190°, 7,200 yards. Six minutes later, Hart sighted a U-boat ahead steaming away at high speed. Directly after the sighting, the U-boat commenced a dive and by 2325½ it was fully submerged 700 yards ahead. Hart ran over the still-visible diving swirl and at 2326½ fired the first of a ten-charge pattern; the tenth D/C left the throwers 25 seconds later. Nearly a minute after the last gray geyser, the bridge personnel, D/C crews, and engine room ratings heard a large underwater explosion, after which members of the D/C party as well as the Engineer Officer at the top of the engine room hatch observed a dark column of water rising between 300 and 600 yards astern.

Hart considered the U-boat to be seriously damaged if not destroyed. The NHB/MOD reassessment credits him with the destruction of U-531, a Type IXC/40 boat commanded by Kptlt. Herbert Neckel. Launched only nine months earlier by the Deutsche Werke yard at Hamburg, U-531 was on her first war cruise, having sortied from Kiel on 13 April. Two and a half hours earlier, this boat had reported sighting two destroyers in qu AJ 8368. Neckel, a native of Kiel, had earlier served under Kptlt. Fritz-Julius Lemp on U-jo, which had sunk the British passenger liner
Athenia
on the first day of the war, with the loss of 112 passengers. Now his war was over, too.

Instead of seeking an asdic confirmation, Hart went after the second radar contact, which was then at range 2,000 yards. Reaching 900 yards, he sighted the U-boat, which soon after appeared to alter course 30° to starboard and to dive. At 2333½ Hart laid a five-charge pattern over the submerged boat’s estimated position. After opening range to 1,200 yards, he returned to sweep the area by asdic, but made no contact. While returning to his escort station, he swept the position of his first attack, but there, too, he made no contact. It may well be that one of the U-boats known to have been damaged this night suffered that hurt from
Vidette
’s second attack, probably U-707 (Gretschel), which recorded suffering D/C damage at about that time.
¹

After resuming station at 0125,
Vidette
went an hour without a contact, until at 0226 radar showed a U-boat bearing 230°, range 1,500 yards. Increasing speed to 20 knots, Hart altered course toward the
target, but just past range 700 yards the radar echo disappeared into the ground wave. Starshell fired was of little use in the existing fog, but Hart dropped one D/C set to 50 feet just to assure the intruder that he was not being ignored.
²
Back in station,
Vidette
obtained, and pursued, two other radar contacts, at 0310 and 0341, but with no better luck than she had on the 0226 chase.

Then, at 0406, when the destroyer was sweeping back to the convoy screen, her luck changed. The asdic operator reported a contact. One minute later, the contact was classified as “submarine,” bearing 097°, range 800 yards. Hart decided to attack with the Hedgehog, and at 700 yards he told the H.H. crew that he would give the order to fire by voice pipe, since, owing to electrical shorts caused by water penetration, the fire buzzer was not reliable. The recorder showed a relative speed of approach to the target of nine knots; it showed, furthermore, that the U-boat was moving slightly to the right, calling for a deflection of 3° right on the projectile pattern. With the last center bearing at 108° and the gun put at
iii°
to allow for a 3° throw-off to the right, Hart gave the fire order at 0408½

All twenty-four H.H. bombs were successfully fired and there were no prematures on impact with the water. About three seconds after the last splash, lookouts heard two distinct underwater explosions—H.H. projectiles, which were not fused for depth, did not ordinarily explode unless their nose pistols struck a solid object—and, furthermore, observed flashes. Shortly afterward, the Asdic Control Officer reported “very loud” blowing of tanks and “metallic banging noises.” As
Vidette
maintained course and speed, the First Lieutenant and the D/C party reported that the U-boat appeared to be surfacing on the starboard side. It did not do so, but on that side there was a pronounced disturbance on the surface that Hart thought was caused by air escaping the U-boat.

Asdic contact was lost at 120 yards past the point of attack, and though the point and surrounding area were reswept, contact was not regained. No debris appeared on the surface, but Hart was certain on this one: “In my opinion this U-boat was destroyed.” And he was right. The boat was U-630, commanded by twenty-eight-year-old Oblt.z.S.
Werner Winkler, a native of Wilhelmshaven and a product of the “Olympic” Kriegsmarine officers’ class at Flensburg-Mürwik in 1936. A Type VIIC boat, still on her first-ever combat patrol,
U-630
had one merchantman to her credit, the British frozen-meat ship
Waroonga,
sunk with the loss of seventeen seamen during B7's escort of HX.231 in early April. Now U-630 herself plunged into the locker with twelve unexpended torpedoes and forty-four untold stories of froth-corrupted lungs.
³

At 2326, while steaming on the convoy’s starboard beam, the corvette
Loosestrife
obtained a radar contact bearing green (starboard) 8o°, range 4,700 yards. Lt. Stonehouse altered course to pursue and eight minutes later, sighting the contact moving from right to left on the surface, opened up with Oerlikons and one four-inch round at a range of about 800 yards. The 20mm tracers could barely be seen through the fog caroming off the enemy’s tower and upper hull, as the U-boat careened like a wraith through a catacomb, and then dived. Asdic contact was gained at 300 yards and the corvette attacked it with a ten-charge pattern by recorder trace. The NHB/MOD reassessment believes that the target was U-575 (Kptlt. Günther Heydemann), which was undamaged. With no visible result,
Loosestrife
resumed station at 2345. Another radar contact soon after proved to be
Vidette.

At 0009, in a reshuffle on the convoy screen, Stonehouse was ordered to transfer his vessel to position “H for Harry,” starboard quarter in A.C.I.'s screening diagram N.E.6, which was his very good luck, since in that position, at 0030, he detected the boat that he would kill: U-192, a Type IXC/40 on her first patrol. Commanded by Oblt.z.S. Werner Happe, a native of Alfeld/Leine, south of Hannover, and a graduate of the “Olympic” class of 1936, U-192 had sortied from Kiel, Germany, on 13 April, and on 1 May, in qu AJ 3797, had launched a torpedo that missed one of the ONS.5 merchantmen, identity not known. Now, at 0030 on 6 May, U
-192
appeared as a small pulse echo on
Loosestrife’s
radar set, bearing red (port) 95°, range 5,200 yards. Stonehouse rang up emergency full ahead and went after it.

Six minutes later, the blurry form of Happe’s boat came looming before the lenses of Barr and Stroud Pattern 1900A 7 x 50 binoculars on
board
Loosestrife,
where lookouts called out the range—500 yards— which was a remarkable sighting given the fog. Just as remarkable, Happe’s lookouts apparently sighted the corvette at the same instant, since the U-boat abruptly turned to release the venom in her tail, launching two torpedoes from stern tubes, and then commenced a “violent zigzag” ahead.
Loosestrife
’s gun crew loaded the four-inch with H.E., but held their fire since Stonehouse’s intention was to ram.

At 0040 U-192 commenced an alarm dive on about the same course very close ahead. As she did so,
Loosestrife
ran directly up her wake. Failing to make ramming contact, Stonehouse fired a ten-charge pattern set shallow. When the D/Cs released their anvil-like blows, the U-boat was observed to break surface, where, seconds later, she shuddered from an interior explosion. The mortally wounded frame was enveloped in a “greenish-blue” flash, which was the description given by several on board the corvette, including two lookout numbers specially posted aft to confirm results. The officer in charge aft watch also saw debris thrown up from the U-boat. Inside the corvette’s engine room and boiler room the deck plates lifted in reaction to the explosion, leading some of their occupants to fear that
Loosestrife’s
stern had been blown off. After Stonehouse turned to investigate, his First Lieutenant and Yeoman of Signals saw “an immense patch of oil spreading from port hand to starboard bow” as well as floating debris. In combination, the explosion, oil, and debris constituted as definite a confirmation of destruction as Stonehouse was likely ever to get, excepting the retrieval of a Commander’s white cap. While his after-action report does not mention it, one may suppose that after so long an ordeal at sea, there was prolonged hearty cheering by ship’s company. Certainly we know there was elation among
Loosestrife’s
passenger list of twenty-nine survivors from
Bristol City,
whose Master, A. L. Webb, said: “The whole action was extremely exciting, and all my crew thoroughly enjoyed themselves.” Stonehouse then set a course of 200° to the convoy, where he resumed station at 0105.
⁴

The next success belonged jointly to
Oribi
and
Snowflake.
First,
Oribi.
This EG3 destroyer was in station five miles on the convoy’s port bow
when, at
0252½
her asdic operator reported, “Echo bearing green thirty—close.” Lt.-Cmdr. Ingram had to make an “instantaneous decision” whether this contact was a U-boat or the corvette
Sunflower,
which was thought to be nearby. Since he had no radar contacts to starboard, where
Sunflower
would have shown up as a blip, Ingram swung his ship to that heading, where, with huge relief, he sighted not the corvette but a U-boat sliding out of the fog about one cable (608 feet) on the starboard bow, steering from right to left. It was a perfect plot for a ram, and Ingram’s bridge braced for the impact.
Oribi
had been proceeding at
22
knots, but her speed now was somewhat attenuated by the drag met on turning to starboard. As the destroyer bore down, the fo’c's’le hid the U-boat’s conning tower, and the stem plowed into the enemy hull probably abaft the tower. The force of the collision slewed the boat around to port side, where, in Ingram’s words, “she heeled over with her bows and conning tower out of the water.” While a shallow D/C pattern had been ordered, there was no time to get it off; furthermore, the impact of the ramming had broken the light that illuminated the clock and plot.

Worried about damage to his bows, Ingram ordered slow both engines and asked for reports. The forepeak and lower central store were flooded, he learned, but the flooding was contained by a still watertight bulkhead abaft. The asdic dome it was found by trial was slightly damaged, but there was no interior evidence of underwater damage to the hull. At 0310 a still seaworthy
Oribi
turned to port and searched for wreckage from the U-boat. Visibility had improved to about two cables, but lookouts found no sign of the ramming victim except for “a very strong smell of oil over a very wide area,” indicating a puncture of the U-boat’s portside fuel bunkers. At 0314 the asdic operator reported both asdic and hydrophone contact with a U-boat at green 50°, range 1,100, and Ingram pursued, though at a reduced speed of 12 knots, since the forward bulkheads had not yet been shored. At 0318, by stopwatch,
Oribi
dropped a single charge, set deep, on the last estimated position. At 0332 the search was abandoned, and Ingram shaped course to resume station, at which he had no further actions during the night.

Said Ingram in his report of the ramming: “Taking into account own ship’s speed and the damage sustained by herself, together with the force and angle of impact I have no doubt whatsoever that this submarine was sunk.”
⁵
It was a perfectly reasonable conclusion, one that was concurred in by the Admiralty’s U-Boat Assessment Committee, on 21 June 1943. In fact, however, the U-boat struck, Type IXC U—125(Folkers), survived the ramming, though with serious damage rendering her unfit to dive.
⁶
At 0331, Kptlt. Folkers reported his plight to BdU:
HAVE BEEN RAMMED—AM UNABLE TO DIVE. QU AJ
8652.
REQUEST ASSISTANCE. COURSE
90
DEGREES;
and heard back assurances from nearby boats U-552, U
-381,
U
-413,
U
-260, U-614,
and
XJ-402
that they were proceeding to his succor.
⁷
Three hours later, at 0625, BdU ordered only the first four boats named above to tend to the needs of Folkers and his crew; the latter two were to remain on operations. The four rescue boats hunted for Folkers until the morning of the 7th, when they reported failure and broke off to refuel from the tanker
U—461
in the adjoining
Marinequadrat
AK 89 directly to the east.
⁸