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 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 eastwardly, and after rounding Cape Horn again this month toward Germany, her crew was anticipating Christmas with their families.  But on her way north, ATLANTIS was called upon to resupply 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.  While the U-boat skipper, Kapitänleutnant Ernst Bauer, called on CAPT Bernhard Rogge of ATLANTIS, the raider shut down her port engine for repairs.  All seemed to be going well for the moment.

By 1941, the Royal Navy had redoubled anti-submarine efforts.  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 continued to bombard from beyond ATLANTIS’ range.  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.  It took nearly two days to reach the nearby supply ship PYTHON.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 NOV 24

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 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 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 a passenger aboard the Egyptian freighter Zam Zam, and who was wounded when ATLANTIS sank that freighter on 17 April 1941.  He had been held aboard ATLANTIS for medical treatment.  He survived the two subsequent sinkings above to return to America.

Ernst Bauer survived this encounter and returned to command U-126 on three more successful cruises.  He is regarded as one of Germany’s U-boat “aces” and is a recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, Germany’s highest military award of WWII.  He left U-126 before her 6^th cruise, a cruise upon which the U-boat was lost with all hands in an attack by British aircraft.  Bauer died in March of 1988 at his home in Germany.  He was 74.

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                                      GERMAN RAIDER ATLANTIS

Recognizing at the outset of WWII that the Kriegsmarine had not the strength to match the Royal Navy’s warfleet, Hilter’s maritime strategy concentrated on guerre de course, interrupting the flow of merchant ships carrying the necessities of life to the island nation.  His U-boats performed such yeoman service in this regard that they overshadowed the efforts of Germany’s auxiliary cruisers and surface raiders.  These latter were converted freighters that mounted concealed heavy guns behind an innocent outward appearance.  One of the most successful was ATLANTIS (Schiff #16), who escaped to sea through the British blockade in March 1940.

This morning found ATLANTIS cruising the eastern Indian Ocean, deceptively rigged and painted as a Norwegian freighter.  At dawn, she found herself on a converging course with the British Blue Funnel Lines freighter Automedon, who was outbound from Liverpool to Far Eastern ports.  By this time in the war, British merchant captains had become wary of any ship that approached on the high seas, and Automedon immediately altered course.  At this, ATLANTIS charged and unmasked her guns.  The freighter’s panicked radio calls were quickly squelched with a barrage of 6″ shells to her bridge and radio shack.  Heavily outgunned, Automedon hove to and awaited the German boarding party.

Kapitänleutnant (equivalent to LT) Ulrich Mohr stepped aboard the freighter to find the deck running with blood.  ATLANTIS’ first shells had killed Automedon’s master and most of her officers.  Her cargo proved worth the effort as she was carrying an assortment of crated airplanes, autos, uniforms, medicines, supplies, cigarettes, and 550 cases of whiskey.  More importantly, the sudden demise of her officers had prevented the destruction of Automedon’s papers.  The Germans struck gold.  Automedon’s safe yielded invaluable Admiralty sailing instructions and copies of three Merchant Naval Codes, fleet cipher tables, top secret high-level correspondence, and the plans for the British defense of Singapore!  After commandeering her whiskey, cigarettes, and fresh vegetables, Automedon was scuttled.

CAPT Bernhard Rogge dispatched the captured documents with his most trusted officer to Axis ally Japan on the captured tanker Ole Jacob.  Korvettenkapitän (LCDR) Paul Kamenz arrived in Kobe on December 6^th, and in Tokyo, shared the documents with Tojo’s planners.  Rather than risk a seaborne transit through the British blockade, he journeyed to Vladivostok, then overland through Moscow on the Trans-Siberian railway.  In Berlin, his captured documents were as well received as Rogge anticipated.

Follow the further story of ATLANTIS on 22 NOV

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Frank, Wolfgang and Bernhard Rogge.  The German Raider Atlantis.  New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1956, pp. 84-88.

Hoyt, Edwin P.  Raider 16.  New York, NY: World Publishing, 1970, pp. 129-39.

Matthews, Alan.  “S.S. Automedon:  The Ship that Doomed a Colony.”  AT: http://www.forcez-survivors.org.uk/automedon.html, retrieved 22 November 2009.

Rusbidger, James.  “The Sinking of the ‘Automedon’ and the Capture of the ‘Nankin:’  New Light on Two Intelligence Disasters in World War II.”  Encounter magazine, May 1985, AT: http://www.defence.gov.au/sydneyii/SUBM/SUBM.003.0034.pdf, retrieved 22 November 2009.

Slavick, Joseph P.  The Cruise of the German Raider Atlantis.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2003.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The British have still not come to grips with this embarrassing intelligence coup.  Though Automedon’s documents were found in the German Foreign Ministry archives in Berlin at the end of the war, London refuses to publicly acknowledge the gravity of this security breach.  In 1983, when Margaret Thatcher was asked by historians to look into the Automedon affair, she stalled for seven months before stating it would be “improper” to release any details.

In light of the fact that the captured documents above were shared with the Japanese, it is interesting to recall the details of the fall of Singapore.  The “Gibraltar of the Pacific” fell to the Japanese in March 1942 after mediocre, some said trifling, resistance.  It seems the British defensive plan anticipated a seaborne assault, but the Japanese surprised the defenders by attacking from landward through the jungles of the Malay peninsula.  In fact, after the fall of Singapore the Emperor of Japan gifted Rogge in April 1943 with an exclusive katana Samurai sword.  Only two other individuals have been similarly honored–Erwin Rommel and Herman Goering.

The survivors of Automedon were placed aboard the German blockade runner Storstad and landed in Bordeaux, France, on 5 February 1942.  Here they were herded aboard trains bound for POW camps near Munich (sub-camps of Dachau).  While en route across France Automedon’s 4^th Engineer, Samuel Harper, jumped from the train.  He located friendly Frenchmen who secreted him for several weeks, shifting him to Marseille.  He was smuggled across the Pyrenees, but on 13 April he was captured by Germans in Spain.  As Spain was not part of the Axis, the British successfully negotiated his release on 29 May 1942, and two days later he arrived in Gibraltar.

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