USS SANTEE

Even before the United States entered WWI, our Navy was assisting the British in combating Kaiser Wilhelm II’s U-boats.  This effort intensified after US entry in June 1917.  At the time, targets for the U-boats were so plentiful in the waters around Britain that U-boats had to return to port not for fuel or provisions, but for more torpedoes!  Indeed, U-boat skippers learned to save precious torpedoes by surfacing and attacking defenseless freighters with their deck gun.  An Allied counter measure was the Q-ship–a merchant freighter armed with hidden guns.  The Q-ship would cruise about, baiting a U-boat to surface, then unmask her guns to duel the enemy.  Our Navy toyed with the Q-ship concept as well, in both World Wars.

On 27 November 1917 the Royal Navy Q-ship HMS ARVONIAN was transferred to our Navy, “for war purposes.”  CDR David C. Hanrahan was placed in command of a crew drawn from other US warships in the theater.  As combat was assured, her crew included Medical Officer LT James P. Compton and Assistant Surgeon Thomas L. Sutton.  ARVONIAN was impressively armed with three 4″ guns, three 12-pounders, two .30 caliber machine guns and four 18″ torpedo tubes.  She fitted-out in Devonport, England, and on 18 December was commissioned as USS SANTEE,, after the river of central South Carolina.  The absence of an assigned hull number indicates the ad hoc nature of her service in American hands.  On this day she cruised south of Kinsale, Ireland.

At 2045, a lookout spotted the wake of an incoming torpedo!  Kapitänleutnant Victor Dieckmann in U-61 had sent the underwater missile at the innocent-looking freighter.  It struck to port, abaft of the engine room.  Electric power blinked, then SANTEE went dead in the water.  Hanrahan ordered his crew to battle stations and dispatched the “panic party,”–men who took to the boats in a ruse they hoped would entice the German skipper to the surface.  Indeed, Hanrahan later wrote that the boatmen exited in, fine panicy [sic] style.”  Meanwhile SANTEE’s concealed gun crews waited.

Moments ticked by.  Damage control temporarily stemmed the flooding but could not re-fire the engines.  Lookouts aloft strained to see into the darkening horizon but detected nothing.  Two and a half glasses slipped by.  No U-boat appeared.  Dieckmann had slinked away, whether he knew it or not, dodging a bullet!

Hanrahan now radioed for tugs while STERRET (DD-27) and CUMMINGS (DD-44) picked up the boat parties.  No sailors were lost in this, SANTEE’s only combat action with our Navy.  Her short service ended after repairs.  She was returned to the Admiralty for the remainder of the war, operating from Gibraltar as HMS BENDISH.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  3 JAN 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1991, p. 414.

Helgason, Guömundur.  “Ships Hit during WWI: Q-Ship SANTEE.”  U-boat.net website.  AT: http://uboat.net/wwi/ships_hit/5437.hmtl, retrieved 16 March 2018.

“Victor Dieckmann.”  U-boat.net website.  AT: http://uboat.net/wwi/men/commanders/51.html, retrieved 16 March 2018.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  ARVONIAN ultimately served in two world wars with three nations.  After changing hands multiple times between wars, she ended up in Latvia as SS Spidola.  She fell into German hands with Hitler’s July 1941 invasion of the Baltic States and carried freight for the Nazis throughout WWII. 

Dieckmann was one of the more successful U-boat “aces” of WWI.  His two commands, UB-27 and U-61 totaled 43 Allied ships sunk, 11 damaged, one captured, and included USS CASSIN (DD-43) (damaged), the British Q-ship HMS WARNER (sunk), and the French Q-ship HMS JEANNE et GENEVIEVE (damaged).  He is twice the recipient of the Iron Cross.

          Time can be kept at sea using sandglasses, also known as clepsammia (“thief of sand”).  Nautical sandglasses came in three denominations, 4 hours (duration of a watch), 30 minutes, and 28 seconds (for measuring ship speed).  Two and a half glasses equals 75 minutes.

          SANTEE above was the second of three US warships to bear this name.  The first was a Civil War sail frigate.  The last was an escort carrier from WWII.

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                                                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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