Black May (51 page)

From this description, it is little wonder that airmen nicknamed the weapon “Wandering Annie.” But its official designation, to mask the Top Secret nature and purpose of the device, was Mark XXIV Mine. (Another reason for use of the term
mine,
it has been suggested, was to keep the weapon out of the ponderous USN torpedo establishment
with all its baggage.
²⁴
) It also was called FIDO, and when that was thought too closely to suggest “sniffing,” the code name was changed to PROCTOR. From the beginning, Mark XXIV was cloaked under the strictest official secrecy, since if word of its function leaked to the Germans, all a U-boat had to do in order to avoid its fatal sting was to proceed at slow submerged speed after diving, when cavitation would fall below the sound sensors’ threshold. When a manufacturer’s lot of Mk.24S was ready for shipment from Kearny, New Jersey, it was kept hidden and loaded on military aircraft in off-ramp, secure areas. Usually a guard of one officer and five technicians accompanied the lot until it reached its destination, either USN or RN.

The first RN-destined weapon, however, traveled to the United Kingdom under the guard of only one officer, Acting Group Captain Jeaff Greswell, R.A.F., who had been in the United States on liaison ASW missions to USAAF bases and was asked to escort the Mk.24 on the British liner
Empress of Scotland.
It was Greswell who had worked with Humphrey de Verde Leigh in developing the Leigh Light, who had formed the first operational L.L. squadron, No. 172, and who, on the night of 4 June 1942, had made the first L.L. damaging attack, on the Italian submarine
Luigi Torelli
, while attacking the Italian
Morosini
as well. At a New York dock, Greswell told the writer, he received the weapon from a USN truck heavily guarded by armed sailors, who carried it up the gangway in three separate unmarked boxes, one containing the nose section, one the midsection, and one the tail. Greswell signed off on the USN documents and, after the ship’s Captain had the boxes placed in his ship’s safe, Greswell asked for and received a receipt. Upon the ship’s arrival at Liverpool much the same high-security procedures ensued, and the three boxes were secretly whisked away on a highly guarded RAF lorry. Imagine his surprise, he asked the writer, when, on leave, Greswell received a postal notice from His Majesty’s Customs inquiring why he had failed to declare the importation into the United Kingdom of an airborne homing torpedo for use against U-boats!
²⁵

More efficient security attended the first consignment of Mk.24s in number to Northern Ireland on 27 April and to Iceland on 1 May.
Originally the weapon was to have been used first against independently operating Japanese submarines in the Pacific, but the British delegation to the Washington Convoy Conference in March had persuaded Admiral King to permit simultaneous use against the U-boats, for which the date 8 May was set, later advanced to 6 May. The greatest secrecy was imposed on USN, Coastal Command, and RN aviation personnel engaged in operational use of the weapon. It was not, for example, to be released except when a U-boat was diving with the conning-tower hatch closed, or when one had already dived (though never beyond two minutes time), so that the nature of the weapon could not be observed. It was not to be used in the presence of any surface ships, both because their propeller sounds might deflect the Mk.24 from its intended target, and because even the crew members of Allied ships without need-to-know clearance were not to observe or learn about the weapon. Nor was the Mk.24 to be used in the Mediterranean or in inshore waters of the Atlantic where it might run ashore. Even the aircrews employing the weapon were not to be told anything about its operation other than the drill required for maintaining, arming, and releasing it, though most crews could figure out Wandering Annie’s scheme. These restrictions were so faithfully observed that the Germans did not learn about the Mk.24 until after the war.

In the newly formed second VLR Liberator Squadron, No. 86 at Aldergrove, Northern Ireland, aircrews found that a VLR could carry two Mk.24s plus four D/Cs, and this became the standard load. The first operational sorties with the homing torpedoes took place on 7 May, but there were no attacks. At this stage, it should be mentioned, tactical doctrine was minimal, and only after some operational experience was it learned that an individual Mk.24 aircraft was advised, upon sighting a U-boat, to dive upon it with D/Cs or strafing fire to force a dive so that the Mk.24 could be employed. Later, in USN attacks by CVE aircraft working in tandem, the F4F4 Wildcat induced the dive and the TBM-1 Avenger dropped the Mk.24. It was on 12 May that the first-ever attacks employing the weapon were made, all in support of Convoy HX.237, which was being hounded by the U-boats of
Gruppe Drossel
in 46°40'N, 26°20'W. Three Coastal VLRs from 86 Sqdn. at Aldergrove each sighted a
Drossel
boat and released a Mk.24 after it
dived.
²⁶
Two FIDOs wandered off from the scent. But the third hit bang on.

Liberator “B” had lifted off at 0344 with Flight Lieutenant John Wright at the controls. Seven and a half hours later, at 1113, while flying cover for HX.237 in showery weather, Wright and his seven-man crew sighted a surfaced U-boat at 46°4o’N, 26°2o’W and initiated an attack. The target was M-456, a Type VIIC boat on her third patrol, having sortied from Brest on 24 April. Her Commander, born at Kiel in 1915, was Kptlt. Max-Martin Teichert, a Knight’s Cross holder who had torpedoed, among numerous other ships, the trophy RN cruiser H.M.S.
Edinburgh
on 30 April 1942, while the warship was escorting convoy QP.11 on the Murmansk run; the cruiser had to be finished off by a British torpedo. And, more immediately, on 11 May 1943, Teichert had shared with Clausen (U-403) in the sinking of the HX.237 straggler
Fort Concord.
Now, on 12 May, the
Edinburgh
was about to be avenged.

Lookouts on U
-456
sighted the approach of Wright’s B/86, and Teichert gave a fateful order to dive. With the conning tower going under, and no ships nearby, Wright’s bombardier released a Mk.24 from his bay, and after the torpedo entered the water, B/86 circled while all eyes on board searched the water’s rough surface. Two minutes later, within a half-mile of the diving swirl, a “brownish patch” appeared, about 90 feet in diameter. Shortly afterwards, U
-456
resurfaced and proceeded at high speed on a zigzag pattern, firing away at B/86 with her Flak armament. The Liberator returned fire and made a D/C run in, but overshot with a stick of three. With no more D/Cs, Wright called up the surface escort on R/T and two destroyers,
Pathfinder
and H.M.S.
Opportune
, raced toward the scene. The Liberator stayed overhead until 1435, when PLE forced it home to base.
²⁷

Teichert sent a first distress signal to BdU and nearby boats at 1130, following it up with another at 1151:

AM NOT CLEAR FOR DIVING. QU BD 6646. AIRCRAFT IS KEEPING

CONTACT. URGENTLY REQUEST HELP.
²⁸

The source of his problem was made clear in a signal at 1325:

AM STEERING COURSE 300 AT HIGH SPEED. BAD LEAK IN AFTER

COMPARTMENT, NEED HELP URGENTLY.
²⁹

The puncture had been made at some point other than at the propeller shafts, since the boat was moving smartly on the surface. From Berlin BdU ordered U—
89
(Lohmann) to proceed at maximum speed to Teichert’s assistance, and later detailed
U-603
(Oblt.z.S. Rudolf Baltz) and U-190 (Kptlt. Max Wintermeyer) to the same task.
³⁰
Teichert may have been heartened to hear the order given to U
-89,
and he sent out beacon signals for Lohmann to home in on, but it is clear from his message traffic that as time passed, he became more and more anxious about U-89's whereabouts. At 1526 and 1606:

WHERE IS OUR U-BOAT? [FRAGE WO STENT EIGENES BOOT U.D.] …

LEAK WILL HOLD FOR AWHILE YET.
³¹

TO LOHMANN. WHAT IS YOUR POSITION? DO YOU HEAR MY HOMING SIGNAL? MY POSITION IS BD 6569, COURSE 220, SPEED 11.
³²

Of course, Lohmann’s position was on the seabed, where he no longer heard anything. And soon Teichert would have to fend for his fate alone. At 1640, the destroyer
Opportune
, bearing down at flank speed, had the conning tower of U—456 in sight from 10 miles distance, and no doubt the U-boat had the larger vessel in sight as well. In that extremity Teichert must have thought that there was but one supreme expedient and that was to test the material integrity of his wounded boat against the depths, for at 1645
Opportune
observed the U-boat dive. Did Teichert think the gamble preferable to surrender? We shall never know. The dive became an irreversible plunge into a bourne from which no hand returned, ranks and ratings closed up at Diving Stations forever.

Though
Opportune,
joined by
Pathfinder,
searched the scene, which was probably BD 6594, or 46°39'N, 26°54'W, no further sign of the U-boat was observed. The Mk.24, unaided by any other agency, had performed its appointed duty, and just seventeen months after its conception. Sole credit for U-456's destruction is given to Liberator B/86.
³³
Dönitz/Godt in Berlin, having, like Teichert, no idea what had really happened to
U—456,
speculated in the BdU war diary for 13 May that she was “probably sunk by a bomb hit on her stern.”
³⁴

In addition to the sinking of two of the U-boats attacking HX.237, surface and air escorts succeeded on 12 May in damaging several other boats, which had to move off for repairs. At BdU it must have been clear that
Drossel
had taken a beating; accordingly, at 0821 on 13 May, those boats that were operational, unless they were in positions ahead of HX.237, were ordered to abandon that convoy and retire to the southwestward in order to shore up Groups
Elbe I
and
Elbe II,
which had been formed from
Elbe
and
Rhein
three days before to intercept SC.129. Before they got away, however, the
Drossel
boats took one more licking. At 0635, Sunderland “G” of 423 RCAF Sqdn., detailed to a dawn patrol over HX.237, sighted a U-boat at 48°35'N, 22°50'W, ten miles distant from the convoy closing its starboard beam. The Queen made a D/C attack on the surfaced boat, without result, then circled over it, exchanging gunfire. Corvette H.M.S.
Drumheller
observed the aircraft circling low to the water and sped to the scene, bringing her four-inch gun to bear at 0655. The boat dived, and
Drumheller,
acquiring an asdic echo, fired depth charges. She was soon joined by the frigate
Lagan,
which made a Hedgehog attack at 0729 that led to two explosions.

Within one minute of the H.H. firing, a large air bubble mushroomed on the surface, followed by smaller bubbles that lasted about ten minutes and then by quantities of diesel oil that eventually formed a patch 600 feet in diameter. Pieces of wood and a rubber eyepiece were recovered by
Lagan.
Definitely sunk was U—
733
(Korv. Kapt. Alfred Mannhardt von Mannstein), which had sortied from La Pallice on 5 May. It was her sixth patrol. There were no survivors.
³⁵
Following this action there were a few scattered attacks on sightings by
Biter
aircraft, but by late morning, with the enemy having disappeared from every quadrant,
Biter
and EG5 disengaged to the southwest to support SC.129, about a day’s steaming away.
³⁶

That convoy’s close escort EG B2 had had a busy time since the afternoon of the nth, when first contact with the enemy was made in 41°N, 33°W, running down HF/DF and radar bearings and dropping D/Cs on various asdic contacts.
³⁷
At 1800 that day, two merchant ships,
Antigone
and
Grado,
were sunk by U-402 (Korv. Kapt. Siegfried
Freiherr von Forstner). Commander Donald Macin tyre, SO on the destroyer H.M.S.
Hesperus
, became particularly occupied on the night of the 11th/12th, when he made four D/C, two Hedgehog, and one ramming attacks between 0129 and
0232½
against U-223 (Oblt.z.S. Karljung Wächter). The ramming resulted after the harried U-boat was sighted surfacing and
Hesperus
opened fire with her 4.7-inch gun and Oerlikons, scoring at least three hits. The boat, which was seen first as trimmed down, or decks awash, then became fully surfaced, and some of the crew came up onto the conning-tower bridge, which was now illuminated by the destroyer’s 10-inch signal projector, where some were seen hit by Oerlikon fire and two went overboard (one, a Fireman second class named Zieger, was recovered by U
-359
[Oblt.z.S. Heinz Förster] and later handed back to
XJ—223).

The boat then turned under full helm 360° and came beam on across the destroyer’s bows. Mindful that he was still ten days’ steaming from home and that he did not want to disable himself with two other U-boats known present, Macintyre decided to administer only a “halfhearted ram.” With engines stopped and proceeding at about 10 knots,
Hesperus
struck U-223 just abaft her conning tower. Gunfire delivered at the same moment produced a “blinding red” explosion. As
Hesperus
withdrew, lookouts reported torpedo tracks from another U-boat approaching from astern. The warheads missed. Thinking the rammed U-boat to be in a sinking condition, Macintyre rejoined the screen of SC.129. U-223, in fact, did not sink but, extensively damaged, was forced to return to base, which she reached, after limping through the dangerous Bay of Biscay, on the 24th.
³⁸