PERSISTENCE…

At 1400 on 13 May 1944, CDR George C. Wright of DESRON 21 was ordered to take USS GLEAVES (DD-423), NIELDS (DD-616) and MACOMB (DD-458) out of Oran, Algeria, to search for a submarine that had torpedoed two freighters in Convoy GUS-39.  The sub was being held underwater by two British destroyers, but by the time the Americans reached the spot, the contact had been lost.  The effort was part of Operation “Monstrous,” an appropriately named effort to employ overwhelming force to counter a frustrating run of convoy losses in the western Mediterranean.

During that night, MV G.S. Walden and SS Fort Fidler were torpedoed and damaged 85 miles to the northeast.  ELLYSON (DD-454), RODMAN (DD-456), HAMBLETON (DD-455) and EMMONS (DD-457) were augmented to the fight, also out of Oran, under CAPT Adelbert F. Converse of DESRON 10.  When they arrived on scene HILARY P. JONES (DD-427) and two DEs were already searching.  JONES damaged the sub with depth charges, but she escaped.  Shortly a search plane radioed a contact 30 miles to the west.  The (now) eight destroyers rushed to the area, only to receive another airplane contact well to the north.  It was dark by now.  Signal flares guided Converse’s flotilla and rewarded them with a sonar contact.  They attacked, and the following morning, May 15^th, a ten-mile diesel oil slick revealed the sub had been hurt.

For two more days the destroyers combed the area near Cape Santa Pola, but without any luck.  Unknown to them, all these contacts were the same sub, U-616!

Then at 2226 on May 16^th a British Wellington bomber caught a U-boat on the surface about 35 miles from the destroyers, moving away fast.  Converse charged to the area, and at 2356 MACOMB’s radar picked up a surface contact at 4600 yards.  Her spotlight silhouetted a conning tower and Macomb got off six 5″ rounds before the sub went under.  The sonars pinged!  Contacts were made, and depth charges splashed.  Through the night the ritual went on.  Again, it was U-616, but she was damaged, flooding, batteries low, air bad, and with little hope of escape.  At 0807 this morning she could take no more.  She surfaced to allow her crew to abandon ship and was immediately brought under 5″ gunfire.  Fifty-three of her 54 crewmen made it out before U-616 sank.  Oberleutnant zur See Seigfried Koitschka ordered her rigged for demolition, and minutes after she disappeared below the waves a muffled boom told her fate.  Only one crewman was lost.  The tireless hunt for U-616 had stretched over 90 hours from the time DESRON 21 sortied from Oran.  They had been chasing U-616 the whole time.  It was the longest, most persistent prosecution of a submarine during the entire war.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  22 MAY 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, p. 186.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol X  The Atlantic Battle Won.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1956, pp. 257-59.

Roscoe, Theodore.  United States Destroyer Operations in World War II.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1953, pp. 371-73.

Wynn, Kenneth.  U-Boat Operations of the Second World War  Vol 2: Career Histories, U511-UIT25.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1998, pp. 84-85.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Neither G.S. Walden nor Fort Fidler (both British) was lost in the above attack.  U-616 was on her 9^th war patrol at the time operating with the 29^th U-boat Flotilla.  Across her career she is also credited with sinking two warships, the British landing craft HMS LCT-553 and USS BUCK (DD-420) both off Salerno, Italy, in October 1943.  Seigfried Koitschka was held in an Allied POW camp until June 1946.  During his captivity he was promoted to Kapitänleutnant and awarded the Knights Cross.

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