HMS DEVONSHIRE vs. ATLANTIS
22 NOVEMBER 1941
HMS DEVONSHIRE vs. ATLANTIS
One of the Royal Navy’s early successes in WWII was the effort against German surface raiders. Indeed, KMS ATLANTIS had accumulated some impressive statistics by November 1941. Converted from the former freighter SS Goldenfels, she had escaped the British blockade in March of 1940 to become the first of several dozen auxiliary cruisers to raid Allied merchant shipping. She had sunk or captured 22 freighters totaling 144,387 tons. In doing so, she remained at sea longer than any German surface ship, her 622 consecutive days of cruising eclipsing the previous 445-day record of the WWI raider WOLF. She had circumnavigated the globe eastward, and after rounding Cape Horn this month, her crew was anticipating Christmas with their families in Germany. But before heading home, ATLANTIS was called upon to re-supply several U-boats. This morning ATLANTIS met U-126 350 miles northwest of Ascension Island. A fuel hose was passed to the sub and small boats began ferrying food and supplies. The U-boat skipper, Kapitänleutnant Bauer, called on CAPT Bernhard Rogge of ATLANTIS, and the raider shut down her port engine for repairs.
The Royal Navy had re-doubled efforts against Hitler’s guerre de course. U-boats replenishing from tenders on the open sea were particularly vulnerable if they could be located. This morning ATLANTIS’ deck watch spotted the three-funneled silhouette of a British cruiser. U-126 capped her fuel port and crash dove, stranding her skipper on ATLANTIS. The raider jettisoned the fuel hose, leaving a tell-tale oil slick, and threw her starboard engine to full power. But her limping ten-knot speed was no match for the cruiser’s. DEVONSHIRE opened from ten miles, straddling ATLANTIS, then hitting her amidships. At that great range ATLANTIS’ smaller guns were useless; the raider could only hope to draw the cruiser across the path of the lurking U-boat. But the panicked submarine had dived deeply and was not positioned to assist. Rogge laid a smoke screen which provided momentary cover, but DEVONSHIRE lingered outside gun and torpedo range and continued to bombard. After a 90-minute running battle ATLANTIS was left crippled and burning.
The raider hove to and set scuttling charges. Pummeled further by the cruiser, she sank by the stern, leaving 305 men drifting in open boats. DEVONSHIRE disappeared over the horizon. U-126 resurfaced later in the afternoon and took the lifeboats under tow. For nearly two days ATLANTIS’ crewmen endured daytime heat and nighttime chill in crowded open boats that constantly shipped water as they were dragged behind the sub to the nearby supply ship PYTHON.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 29 NOV 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Frank, Wolfgang and Bernhard Rogge. The German Raider Atlantis. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1956, pp. 136-45, 151-54.
Hoyt, Edwin P. Raider 16. New York, NY: World Publishing, 1970, pp. 208-28.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: After spending nearly two days splashing behind the sub in open boats, the crew of ATLANTIS was still not out of danger. PYTHON fell under the attack of HMS DORSETSHIRE while refueling U-68 only seven days later. Her fate was the same as ATLANTIS’, leaving 414 sailors re-stranded in her open lifeboats. Again, the shipwrecked crews endured insuperable conditions as their open boats were towed behind two submarines. After several more days of this treatment the party was met by additional U-boats that ferried the shipwrecked sailors to occupied France.
One American was party to this adventure. Frank Vicovari, a civilian who had been traveling on the Egyptian freighter Zam Zam, and who was wounded when ATLANTIS sank that freighter on 17 April 1941, had been held aboard ATLANTIS for medical treatment. He survived to return to America.
