OPERATION “CAESAR”

On 5 December 1944 the Type IX long-range U-boat U-864 departed Kiel, northern Germany, for Penang, Indochina (modern Malaysia).  The Japanese coveted German jet aircraft technology and U-864’s mission was to transport Messerschmitt “Swallow” jet engine parts and two aeronautical engineers, Rolf von Chlingenspreg and Riclef Schmerus, to the Emperor.  This mission, Operation “Caesar,” was one of several U-boat shipments in the final months of WWII.  Two Japanese nautical engineers, Tadao Yamoto and Toshio Nakai, were on board hitching a ride home.  As well, 1857 flasks (65 tons) of the strategic metal mercury, used for explosive primers, were packed as ballast along the keel.

But U-864 had problems.  Avoiding the many British patrols of the North Sea required cruising submerged, running her diesel engines via a schnorkel breathing device.  Korvettenkapitän Ralf-Reimar Wolfram hugged the Norway coast, at least until he ran aground and had to put in at Bergen, Norway, for repairs.  While there, on 12 January, the Bergen submarine base was bombed by the British, damaging U-864 further.  Wolfram could not get underway again until 30 January, trying to make a 10 February rendezvous with an escort off the Hellisoy Light on Fedje Island, Norway.  But on this day the U-boat’s starboard engine began missing, a noisy problem that demanded a return to Bergen.

Little did Wolfram know that the British were aware of his movements.  Code breakers at Bletchly Park had deciphered the German “Enigma” encoder and were reading the message traffic to U-864.  The submarine HMS VENTURER had been dispatched to the Hellisoy Light where LT James S. Launders, RN, lay in wait, submerged.  His passive sonar now picked up a strange motor noise.  Turning his periscope in the direction of the noise he spotted the feather wake of a schnorkel.  For two hours he remained submerged, tracking the contact with passive sonar and plotting her movements.  Launders then took up a position along her expected path and at the calculated moment fired a spread of four torpedoes.

Wolfram knew his noisy engine would give away his position and was zig-zagging underwater back to Bergen.  For several hours he coursed invisibly–he thought.  But out of nowhere the sonarmen suddenly heard high-speed propeller noises.  The first, second, and third torpedoes passed into the distance, but the fourth struck U-864 amidships.  She broke in two and sank, taking all hands, in this first recorded duel between two submerged submarines.

The wreck of U-864 was located in 2003.  Though she is a war grave, the mercury aboard represents a serious environmental hazard, and clean-up efforts by the Norwegian government are ongoing.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History’  13 FEB 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Brasse, Marc, Christopher Rowley and Karl Vandenhole, Directors.  “U-864: Hitler’s Last Deadly Secret.”  Military Channel documentary (November 2012), Discovery Communications, 2007.

Tarrant, V.E.  The U-Boat Offensive 1914-1945.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, p. 137.

Wynn, Kenneth.  U-Boat Operations of the Second World War  Vol 2: Career Histories, U511-UIT25.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1998, pp. 177-78.

The post Operation “Caesar” appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                                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.

The post Persistence… appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                          DAISY CHAIN RESCUE

In 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, American freighters crossing the North Atlantic were being torpedoed by German U-boats as Hitler tried to starve England into submission.  By May, President Franklin Roosevelt declared an “Unlimited National Emergency” and detailed US Navy escorts for these convoys.  In addition, Patrol Wing 7 was hastily established and sent to Reykjavik, Iceland.  On 6 August 1941, the PBY Catalinas of PatWing 7, squadrons VP-73 and VP-74, became operational.

Seventeen months later, on 27 January 1943, one of PatWing 7’s PBYs operating out of Narsarssuak, Greenland, was en route to Ivigut to begin sweeping ahead of convoys.  She would report weather and ice conditions, and more importantly, German U-boat activity.  But thick fog set in as the plane droned on, and the pilot had increasing difficulty distinguishing the water’s surface.  Neither could the PBY climb over the soup.  Reluctantly the plane turned back.  Her pilot eased lower and lower in the deteriorating visibility, hoping to gauge the water’s surface until–with a sudden lurch–the flying boat’s belly scraped against ice and ground to a halt!

A radio call to Narsarssuak brought an Army plane to drop food, clothing, and spare parts, and for several days the Navy crew worked to repair their Catalina.  But the longer the heavy aircraft sat, the more deeply it sank into the newly forming crust.  Before too many days it became evident the plane was not going to be easily dislodged.  Now the most pressing concern became extracting the crew from Greenland’s frozen and forbidding wastes.

A rescue party of eight Army soldiers and a local cryolite mining operator who knew the area, Mr. Sinclair Adams, embarked on the seaplane tender USS SANDPIPER (AVP-9).  By the last of January, the tender had reached Arsuk Fjord, the nearest point to effect a landing of the rescue party.  Here the singular small beach was walled from the island’s plateau by cliffs.  After unloading the equipment, which included two motorized toboggans and a mobile base camp, it became apparent the cliff would present a considerable problem.  They grunted and strained in an attempt to lift their equipment to prominent ledges, but without much success.  Observing their plight, SANDPIPER’s skipper, LT H.T.E. Anderson, hatched an inventive idea.  Thirty sailors were sent ashore to scramble up the nearly vertical face and form a human chain.  One at time the party’s bundles were hoisted up, hand over hand, until all were safely atop the precipice.  The rescue party then set to their task.  The remainder of the evolution went well, and the party returned with the Navy fliers on the 3^rd of February.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  6 FEB 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare).  United States Naval Aviation 1910-1980.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, p. 109.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 1 The Battle of the Atlantic.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1947, pp. 77, 334.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  A successful rescue was not accomplished in every case of a downed aircraft in Greenland.  In fact, air operations in Greenland were complicated by clandestine German radio outposts who often broadcast sham distress calls, luring American fliers deep into the frozen Arctic.  From whence they often never returned.

SANDPIPER had barely completed this mission when a second rescue tasking was received.  On the early morning of the 3^rd, the Army transport USAT DORCHESTER was torpedoed in the Davis Strait, and the seaplane tender was asked to assist in searching for survivors.  By the time she arrived at the scene however, the 34^o water and 36^o air had left only bodies buoyed by their lifebelts.

The post Daisy Chain Rescue appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                              MV SAN DEMETRIO

The Eagle Oil and Shipping Company operated in England from 1912-59 moving petroleum products between Mexico, the Caribbean, and the United Kingdom.  Each of their tankers was given the Spanish name of a Christian saint.  MV San Demetrio was an 8070-ton tanker launched in 1938.  In October 1940 she shipped a cargo of 11,200 tons of aviation gasoline in Aruba and headed to Halifax, where she was to join 38 other freighters in British-bound Convoy HX-84, shepherded by HMS JERVIS BAY, an armed merchant cruiser.  By the eighth day at sea the convoy was halfway to Avondale, England.

The sky this day was overcast with only a ribbon of light on the horizon as the afternoon watch finished.  Lookouts spotted the masthead of a ship to port just as the sound of gunfire boomed across the moderate swell.  The German pocket battleship ADMIRAL VON SCHEER climbed over the horizon firing her 11″ guns.  JERVIS BAY turned to, making a suicidal charge.  She was burning from stem to stern before her seven 6″ guns were within range.  The gallant former liner sacrificed herself with the loss of Acting CAPT Edward S.F. Fegen and 189 crewmen, but she bought time for the convoy to scatter.  Fegen would later receive the Victoria Cross. 

Scheer now turned her guns on the convoy.  SS Beaverford, Fresno City, Trewellard, Maiden, and Kenbane Head all went down–Beaverford after engaging the attacker herself to buy more time.  San Demetrio was hit three times and caught fire.  A gasoline tanker ablaze is a potential disaster, and most are abandoned.  Such was the case when Captain George Waite, O.B.E., signaled “finished with engines” from the bridge telegraph–the signal to San Demetrio’s enginemen to abandon ship.  Sixteen crewmen led by 2^nd Officer Arthur C. Hawkins clamored into the starboard lifeboat and lowered to the roiling, gasoline-coated sea below.  The skipper and 22 others slipped away in another boat, but the two boats quickly lost contact.  Capt. Waite’s fears proved true, San Demetrio’s amidships tanks exploded like a giant Roman candle.

The starboard lifeboat drifted through the next day, sighting, but failing to attract, a passing ship.  On the second day another ship was seen on the horizon, emitting a column of black smoke.  It turned out to be San Demetrio, who burned but had not sunk.  Taking their chances, the men reboarded and revived the engines and fire mains.  Slowly they stemmed the fires.  Down by the bows, Hawkins set a course for Ireland, navigating by dead reckoning and the occasional glimpse of the sun.  Miraculously, on 16 November San Demetrio dropped anchor off Glasgow, her original destination.  Her tattered Red Ensign still waved, set a half mast for engineman John Boyle who had finally succumbed to his injuries near Ireland.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  11 NOV 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Brock, Paul.  “Am Engaging Enemy…Believed to be Admiral Scheer.”  Sea Classics, Vol 55 (4), April 2022, pp. 8-16.

Jesse, F. Tennyson.  The Saga of San Demetrio.  London, England: H.M. Stationery Office, 1943, (reprint by Pratt Press, 2007).

Warsailors.com website.  “Convoy HX-84-Page 2: Report of an Interview with Mr. Charles Pollard, Chief Engineer, and Mr. Arthur C. Hawkins, 2^nd Officer of M.V. San Demetrio.” dtd. 20 November 1940, AT: http://www.warsailors.com/convoys/hx84page2.html, retrieved 25 July 2024.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Three San Demetrio crewmen were killed in the initial attack and four more died of injuries after abandoning ship.  The men in Captain Waite’s lifeboat were rescued by a passing freighter and taken to Newfoundland.  Because San Demetrio had been abandoned at sea, the 15 crewmen who brought her safely to port were entitled to salvage compensation to the tune of £2000 for some.  Arthur Hawkins received the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) for his heroism in recovering and salving the tanker.

San Demetrio was repaired and returned to service.  She was torpedoed by U-404 and sank off Virginia on 17 March 1942.

Captain Waite had received his O.B.E. after the Eagle Company tanker San Alberto was torpedoed and broke in half in December 1939.  Days later, he and several crewmen reboarded the still-floating after section of the tanker, revived her boilers, but were unable to make headway, backwards, toward England.

In 1943 the story of San Demetrio was made into a movie, “San Demetrio London,” starring Walter Fitzgerald and Arthur Young.

An armed merchant cruiser was a former civilian freighter or ocean liner acquired by the Navy, armed usually with 8-inch guns or smaller, and detailed to escort duties.  Such would have been no match for a German pocket battleship.

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                                          BUCKLEY vs. U-66 (cont.)

Every available sailor manned BUCKLEY’s (DE-51) rail with a tommy gun, rifle, or any manner of weapon the arms lockers could yield.  Depth charges, set to explode at the surface, arched from the destroyer escort’s K-guns.  LCDR Brent M. Abel raced alongside the U-boat for several minutes, then in a flash threw his helm hard over.  Collision alarms blared as the escort’s bow struck and rode up across the foredeck of the U-boat.  At nearly the same moment Oberleütnent zur See Gerhard Seehausen ordered “Abandon Ship!”  In the darkness, smoke, and confusion, German submariners poured out of the hatches.  They were met with a hail of bullets, shell casings, tools, coffee mugs, shoe-shine kits, potatoes–anything the American sailors could grab.  Several scrambled aboard the fo’castle of the destroyer escort prompting an order not heard in the US Navy since the age of sail, “Stand-by to repel boarders!”

Abel now ordered “All Aback” to clear the U-boat, leaving five enemy sailors still crouched behind the anchor windlass on BUCKLEY’s foredeck.  One German even made it below decks but was arrested by a steward’s mate who defended his wardroom post with a hot coffee pot.  On deck the remaining Germans pleaded for quarter against a torrent of small arms fire.  They were corralled and taken below by a gunner’s mate brandishing a hammer. 

Meanwhile, with his engines still intact and enough crew left aboard, Seehausen seized this opportunity to speed ahead of the surface ship.  Abel quickly pulled abreast once again; more fire was exchanged.  But by now the U-boat was steering erratically, veering suddenly toward BUCKLEY, striking a glancing blow at the destroyer’s after quarter.  At precisely this moment, a deft American sailor lobbed a hand grenade down the sub’s main hatch.  Its detonation wrecked the control room and started an inferno.  Now completely out of control and shipping water, the U-boat zig-zagged away.  A few short minutes later her death plunge was heralded by turbulent waters and the sound of hissing steam.

The entire action took only 16 minutes, but in that time Abel’s destroyer expended over a hundred rounds from her 3″-50s, 3000 machine gun, and 360 pistol rounds.  Only one BUCKLEY sailor was injured, a deck hand who sustained a bruised fist in hand-to-hand fighting on the fo’castle.

Thirty-six German crewmen were rescued from the cold Atlantic waters, though captain Seehausen was not among them.  BUCKLEY suffered a flooded after engine room and a sheared starboard propeller.  A plow-shaped dent in her port bow made her prankish in answering the helm, but she remained seaworthy and ultimately made Boston under her own power.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  14 MAY 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 10  The Atlantic Battle Won.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1956, pp. 284-88.

Roscoe, Theodore.  United States Destroyer Operations in World War II.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1953, pp. 306-07.

Smith, Stan.  “Buckley’s Bare-Knuckles Bout with U-66.”  Sea Classics, Vol 38 (3), March 2005, pp. 30-33.

Wynn, Kenneth.  U-Boat Operations of the Second World War  Vol 1: Career Histories, U1-U510.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, pp. 46-48.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  By this time in the war, German U-boats were being aggressively prosecuted by the Allies.  Most were only able to surface at night, and then only for short time periods.  When BUCKLEY picked up these 36 prisoners, they all appeared pale and gaunt, and all showed signs of vitamin deficiency.

This incident harkens to the 1779 victory of BONHOMME RICHARD over HMS SERAPIS in which a savvy Able Seaman in the American rigging noticed the British hatch to be open and lobbed a grenade therein.  It landed on stacked canister ammunition which exploded, clearing the British gun deck.

German sailors in this event have been characterized in some accounts as aggressively attempting to board and commandeer the American warship, and in truth some might have been.  But the majority were probably following orders to abandon ship and were simply trying to save themselves.

BUCKLEY received a unit commendation for her actions this day.

The post <i>BUCKLEY </i>vs. <i>U-66</i> (cont.) appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                               BUCKLEY vs. U-66

Oberleütnant zur See Gerhard Seehausen was in desperate need of re-supply.  Operating in the mid-Atlantic west of the Cape Verde Islands, his cruise so far had been constantly dogged by US aircraft from a nearby hunter-killer group.  Forced to stay submerged for most of the last five days, the air in Seehausen’s U-66 was stale and his batteries were nearly dead.   U-66 was at the end of her endurance, and her diesel tanks were critically low.  She surfaced on the evening of 5 May so Seehausen could scan the horizon for his resupply boat, U-188.  Unknowingly he had surfaced only three miles in front of his pursuer of the last five days, the escort carrier USS BLOCK ISLAND (CVE-21).

The sight of a U-boat at 5000 yards was too close even for a anti-submarine carrier, and BLOCK ISLAND turned away immediately.  CAPT Francis M. Hughes launched an unarmed “night owl” TBM Avenger, equipped with radar for surveilling submarines after nightfall, and called his destroyer escorts, then operating miles in advance of the carrier.  USS BUCKLEY (DE-51) answered from 20 miles out.  At 0216 this morning, “night owl” pilot LTJG Jimmie S. Sellars painted the sub with his radar.  Seehausen spotted the Avenger, but chancing that it could not attack at night, he continued charging his spent batteries.  For his part, LCDR Brent M. Abel in BUCKLEY approached quietly, guiding off Sellars.  The night was calm with a near-full moon reflecting brilliantly off smooth seas.  BUCKLEY crept in from an angle that kept the U-boat between her and the moon.  Seven miles out, Abel spotted the low silhouette of the sub against the moonlight.  He called his crew to GQ and paid-out the “Foxer” towed acoustic torpedo counter measure.  He fancied the U-boat skipper might mistake his approach out of the darkness for that of the anticipated supply sub.

Indeed, three red signal flares coursed upward from the U-boat–Abel’s ploy had worked!  Nine more minutes ticked by until, little more than a mile off, Abel turned to unmask his main batteries.  At 2100 yards his 3″ gunners couldn’t miss; the very first salvo struck the U-boat just forward of the conning tower.

The sub sprang to life, returning some erratic fire from her deck gun.  Abel dodged a single torpedo that crossed his bows and closed further.  He brought the full firepower of his destroyer to bear and began matching the sub’s course move for move.  BUCKLEY closed now to within 20 yards and still Seehausen remained on the surface.  Every available man-jack poured onto the destroyer’s decks with tommy guns, rifles, and even handguns.  The ensuing storm of small arms fire cleared the sub’s deck.  BUCKLEY’s three-inch guns continued to hammer the U-boat as the combatants raced on, side by side, each nearly in the other’s wake.  American warplanes circling overhead had to restrain their fire for fear of hitting the friendly destroyer!

Continued tomorrow…

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A-B”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1959, pp. 132, 170.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 10  The Atlantic Battle Won.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1956, pp. 284-88.

Roscoe, Theodore.  United States Destroyer Operations in World War II.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1953, pp. 306-07

Smith, Stan.  “Buckley’s Bare-Knuckles Bout with U-66.”  Sea Classics, Vol 38 (3), March 2005, pp. 30-33.

Wynn, Kenneth.  U-Boat Operations of the Second World War  Vol 1: Career Histories, U1-U510.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, pp. 46-48.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  BUCKLEY remembers Aviation Ordnanceman Third Class John Daniel Buckley, who was stationed with VP-11 at NAS Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941.  He was killed while bravely repelling the Japanese attack in disregard for his personal safety.  He is not to be confused with LT John Duncan Bulkeley, commander of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 in the Philippines in 1941-42.

The post <i>BUCKLEY </i>vs. <i>U-66</i> appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                        STAFFORD vs. MANCHEN

Convoy KN-382 coursed its way slowly north from Key West to New York, this night reaching a position 98 miles east of Cape Henry.  The long war looked to be winding down, at least in Europe, where Allied troops were fighting in the streets of Berlin.  The danger of German U-boats was still great however, and four warships of Task Group 02.10 escorted this convoy.  One of them, the patrol frigate NATCHEZ (PF-2), picked up a sonar contact off her starboard bow.  At nearly the same moment lookouts spotted a periscope wake.  Of grave concern was that a schnorkel was also sighted behind the periscope!

A schnorkel was an engineering innovation that allowed the sub to draw air through a snorkel tube, and thus operate her diesel engines while still submerged.  Slow submerged speed was the U-boat’s greatest vulnerability, and this innovation frightened American anti-submarine planners!

LT John H. Stafford, USNR, turned NATCHEZ directly for the sub, hoping to drop depth charges or at least to ram.  COFFMAN (DE-191), BOSTWICK (DE-103), and THOMAS (DE-102) were vectored to the scene as well.  But the sub disappeared before NATCHEZ reached the spot.  Stafford launched a pattern of depth charges and turned back to search again.  Sonar contact was reestablished and the frigate surged forward.  But an emergency turn by the convoy nearly caused a collision, and NATCHEZ had to veer off course.  The frigate again acquired the target, slowed to 10 knots, and launched hedgehogs (programmed to detonate only if they contact an object).  No explosions were heard.  Persisting with the contact now at 1400 yards, Stafford dropped magnetic depth charges that detonate only near a metal object.  Two explosions emanated from great depth, but at 2250 another escort, COFFMAN, acquired the same contact.

Kapitänleutnant Erwin Manchen dove, circled, backed down, changed speeds, fishtailed, and released pillenwerfer, bubble-generating devices to confuse sonar.  But the escorts boxed the contact, and more depth charges blasted the deep.  At 0207 a barrage from NATCHEZ brought oil to the surface.  Attacks continued for two more hours until a deep blast was heard at 0447.  No subsequent contacts were made.  Nothing further was heard from U-879 or her 52 crewmen, even after Germany’s surrender on 7 May.

U-879 had been hunting off our eastern seaboard since mid-April; she had sunk SS Belgian Airman on the 14^th, and damaged the tanker SS Swiftscout on the 23^rd.  She has been confused in both German and American records with U-548, the latter being the probable victim of REUBEN JAMES (DE-153) and BUCKLEY (DE-51) off Sable Island on April 19^th.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  6-7 MAY 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A-B”.  (letter “B” and appendices), Washington, DC: GPO, 1959, p. 170.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 20.

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, p. 344.

Roscoe, Theodore.  United States Destroyer Operations in World War II.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1953, p. 513.

Wynn, Kenneth.  U-Boat Operations of the Second World War  Vol 2: Career Histories, U511-UIT25.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1998, pp. 26, 182.

The post Stafford vs. Manchen appeared first on Today in Naval History.

            THE FRENCH PROBLEM AND OPERATION “TORCH” (cont.)

The landing of 84,000 American troops in French North Africa brought the full rage of Vichy President Marshal Philippe Pétain against President Franklin Roosevelt.  “It is with stupor and sadness that I learned tonight of the aggression of your troops against North Africa…  France and her honor are at stake.  We are attacked; we shall defend ourselves; this is the order I am giving,” Pétain railed, as Vichy broke diplomatic relations with the United States.  Clearly any invasion of French soil was to be opposed, even if by a staunch ally!  Off Casablanca French resistance sank 40 Allied landing craft, but despite these losses the Allies secured a foothold.  On November 9^th, US forces attempting to flank the city of Oran met heavy French resistance.  (History may well forgive Pétain.  Holding no love for Hitler, Pétain was nevertheless almost powerless, caught between the violent Axis and the worried Allies).

But Allied-leaning French Admiral François Darlan, commanding all French forces in North Africa, broke with Vichy on November 10^th, ordering all French forces to lay down their arms.  Darlan had been the target of intense US pressure in the pre-invasion months, even being encouraged to stage a coup against Pétain.  Oran and Casablanca were successfully occupied, and on the 13^th, American military commander MGEN Dwight D. Eisenhower flew to Algiers to meet with Darlan, among other matters, to discuss the fate of the French fleet that still lay in Toulon.

The entry of the first Americans into the European theater spiked Hitler’s ire as well.  On November 11^th his troops overran the rest of “free” France, claiming a desire to “protect France” and “arrest the continuation of the Anglo-British [sic] aggression.”  An autonomous defensive zone was established around Toulon, where the guns of the free French fleet at anchor were still respected by Nazi troops ashore.  For two weeks German soldiers and French sailors stared each other down.  Then on November 27^th the Nazi’s stormed into Toulon.

French sailors had generally been the most anti-Hitler element in the French armed forces, and true to this persuasion, they opened the seacocks on their warships.  One by one the vaunted warriors of the French fleet slipped below the water.  Rather than surrender to the Germans, the fleet was scuttled.  Indeed, the Germans had mined the exits to Toulon harbor, and their Stuka dive bombers would have likely finished off any ships escaping the mines.  Three battleships, 7 cruisers, 15 destroyers, and 92 smaller ships and auxiliaries were destroyed.  The fleet lay on the bottom of Toulon harbor for the remainder of the war in Europe.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  16 NOV 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Breuer, William B.  Operation Torch:  The Allied Gamble to Invade North Africa.  New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.

Goralski, Robert.  World War II Almanac, 1931-1945:  A Political and Military Record.  New York, NY: Bonanza Books, 1981, pp. 215, 242, 243, 244, 245.

Langer, William L.  Our Vichy Gamble.  New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol II  Operations in North African Waters.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1950, pp. 88-114.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, pp. 155-56.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The scuttling of the French fleet was effective in denying its use by Hitler.  Only the submarine CASABLANCA escaped Toulon to reach Allied forces in Algiers.  The Axis managed to salvage only two guns from the battleship PROVENCE during the rest of the war.  These were mounted in a coastal fortification guarding the entrance to Toulon.  When they saw action against the southern D-Day forces in June 1944, it represented the only element of the French Navy to be employed by Hitler against the Allies.

Operation “Torch” was a success.  Coupled with the October 1942 victory of British LGEN Bernard Montgomery over Rommel at El Alamein, Anglo-American forces finally evicted the Germans from North Africa in April 1943, setting the stage for the next step, the Allied invasion of nearby Sicily in July 1943.

Though the Vichy puppet government “talked” a good pro-Nazi line, Hitler was never really satisfied with their true support for his war efforts.  On the same day he overran Toulon, Hitler dissolved the Vichy military, subsuming France into the Third Reich.  With the liberation of France in 1944 the remaining officials of the Vichy government were discredited and tried for treason.

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                  THE FRENCH PROBLEM AND OPERATION “TORCH”

After the fall of France to the wehrmacht in June of 1940, der Fuhrer was content to allow France to be divided.  A German puppet government centered in the city of Vichy controlled the economically important and populated areas of France.  This left as unoccupied, certain “free” areas of France, including Toulon, where French Navy was based (Hitler had little interest in naval forces).  As well, France’s extensive worldwide colonies in Indochina, northern and western Africa, Madagascar, the Caribbean, and the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland, remained free.  This concerned US military planners, for if Hitler did gain access to far-flung French colonies, or if the impressive French naval fleet was to fall into German hands, our national security could be compromised.  American policy makers therefore elected to maintain relations with the Fascist Vichy government in the hopes they could be convinced to deny Hitler these key resources.

French possessions in North Africa were particularly worrisome.  If U-boat bases were built in French North Africa (Algeria and Morocco), Germany might cut US trade with South America and the Mediterranean.  Suspicions that the Nazi’s were planning an assault on North Africa through Sicily were confirmed when Erwin Rommel landed in Tunisia and pushed the British nearly to Egypt by the Spring of 1942.  The US planned to support British resistance with an invasion of North Africa through free French territory.  Then in April 1942, Pierre Laval, a known Nazi collaborator, was appointed to the second highest position in the Vichy government.  Convinced Vichy might soon extend Nazi control to French North Africa, President Franklin Roosevelt acted.

One question that vexed the coming American invasion was how the French would react.  Many free French leaders were still loyal to Vichy President Marshal Philippe Pétain.  In fact, on May 5^th, Pétain called on free French forces in Madagascar to resist a British landing there, for “…the honor of France.”  The last thing Roosevelt wanted was for our troops landing in Operation “Torch” to be fighting those with whom we shared a common enemy!  Political intrigues were employed to bring control of the French forces in Africa under generals and admirals sympathetic to the American cause.  Then on this day Operation “Torch,” a three-pronged Anglo-American assault, struck Casablanca in French Morocco, and Algiers and Oran in French Algeria.

At Casablanca, our fears proved valid as French naval forces counterattacked.  The unfinished battleship JEAN BART opened fire from her berth in the harbor.  The French fleet sortied, but shellfire from vastly superior American warships and bombing from F-4 Wildcats sank the destroyers BOULONNAIS, BRESTOIS, FOUGEUX, and FRONDEUR, and eight submarines.  The cruiser PRIMAQUET was disabled and run aground.  The action claimed 490 French sailors.

Continued tomorrow…

Breuer, William B.  Operation Torch:  The Allied Gamble to Invade North Africa.  New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.

Goralski, Robert.  World War II Almanac, 1931-1945:  A Political and Military Record.  New York, NY: Bonanza Books, 1981, p. 215.

Langer, William L.  Our Vichy Gamble.  New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol II  Operations in North African Waters.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1950, pp. 88-114.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, pp. 155-56.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Only three American sailors aboard USS MURPHY (DD-603) died and 25 more were wounded in this one-sided naval battle of Casablanca.  In addition to their 490 killed, the French suffered 969 wounded.

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                                                  CONVOY RB-1

In the decades before practical automobile transportation, Americans traveling between cities of the eastern United States often did so by way of intercoastal steamer.  Numerous private steamship companies offered passenger service on 200-400-foot, shallow draft screw steamers in the Chesapeake, Delaware, and Long Island estuaries.  With the coming of WWII, the British requested under the Lend-Lease program any fast, shallow draft steamers that might be useful for transporting men and supplies across the English Channel.  Thus, several intercoastal packet steamers were transferred to the British Ministry of War Transport in June of 1942.  These included the SS Yorktown and President Warfield of the Old Bay Line, Boston and New York of the Eastern Steamship Line, the Chesapeake packets Northland and Southland, and the Nantucket steamers Nashuon and New Bedford.  All assembled in St. Johns, Newfoundland, to await British crews and escorts for the trans-Atlantic crossing.  Not having been built for the open ocean, the wait was used to shore their bows and superstructures against the boarding seas expected in the U-boat infested North Atlantic.

On this day the eight flat-bottomed steamers formed Convoy RB-1 (River Boat-1) and departed for England.  Shepherded by the destroyers HMS VETERAN and HMS VANOC, the first three days were uneventful.  Then suddenly, around noon on the 25^th Boston (convoy flagship) disappeared in the fireball of a German torpedo.  Panic struck the rest of the convoy as sailors darted for guns that had been hastily bolted to the decks in St. Johns.  For several hours the steamers zig-zagged, and would-be periscope wakes were riddled by nervous gunners.  President Warfield and VETERAN even teamed up to prosecute a sonar contact, claiming a probable kill.  But at dusk a second steamer, New York, was hit and rolled over.  HMS VETERAN, her decks already crowded with survivors from Boston, slowed to begin fishing sailors from the oily waters, but was quickly torn apart by third torpedo from U-404.  She rolled and went down with all hands.

Aboard Yorktown the tension was palpable as she steamed into the evening.  Then just before sundown her steering engine failed.  The rest of the convoy disappeared over the horizon, leaving her a “sitting duck” while repairs were effected.  She was underway again the next morning, having apparently gone unnoticed by prowling U-boats.  Then, about 0900 a violent explosion broke her back.  Her survivors were rescued two days later.  German radio crackled in the days that followed with reports of the sinking of several “Queen Mary-class liners” in a “fierce battle” with an “American troop convoy.”

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  27 SEP 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 375.

Holly, David C.  Exodus 1947, (rev ed).  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1995, pp. 21-29.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 1 The Battle of the Atlantic.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1947, pp. 323-24.

Wynn, Kenneth.  U-Boat Operations of the Second World War  Vol 1: Career Histories, U1-U510.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, p. 267.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The loss of 4 of 10 ships from this convoy was not unusual for North Atlantic convoys in 1942, so effective was the German U-boat effort.  And the outlandish German claims in no way diminish the sacrifice of the 131 British merchant mariners who died bringing this convoy to England.  The Germans claimed two of the “liners” sunken to be Duchess of Bedford and the Spanish Reina del Pacifico.  Both of these liners had indeed been converted for troop transport, but in truth, both survived the war.

At least three of the above steamers, President Warfield, Southland and Northland, served the British only temporarily.  They were transferred back to the US Navy in 1944 and participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.  PRESIDENT WARFIELD (IX-169) was to earn even greater fame following the war.  She was purchased by a secret organization smuggling Jewish immigrants to Palestine.  Her name in this role changed to Exodus 1947 and she became the titular inspiration for the Leon Uris novel.

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