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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                                                  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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