Read The Battle of the St. Lawrence Online
Authors: Nathan M. Greenfield
Four days later, in the signal that told that he was abandoning the North Atlantic, Dönitz again promised “new and sharper weapons” with which “you will be superior and will be able to triumph over your worst adversaries, the aircraft and destroyer.”
The magic technologies—hulls covered with radar-and sonar-absorbing materials, the “Elektro boat” (a larger U-boat with huge electric motors that gave it an underwater speed of 17 knots, some 11 knots faster than either Type VII or Type X) and the “Walter boat” (which burned hydrogen peroxide, obviating the need for air for its engines)—either never arrived or arrived too late to affect the outcome of the war.
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Two combat-design Walter boats were produced. On a shakedown cruise that began on November 15, 1944, U-2519, under the command of “Ali” Cremer, reached 17.5 knots underwater. On April 5, 1945, while it was in dock at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, Allied bombers destroyed Cremer’s boat. Walter boats undertook no operational cruises.
However, two technologies did arrive early enough to be deployed in the Battle of the St. Lawrence: the acoustic torpedo and the Schnorchel. The T-5
Zaunkoning
acoustic torpedoes, nicknamed “Gnat” (for German navy acoustic torpedo) by the Allies, came into service in August 1943. Billed as “destroyer crackers,” Gnats were equipped with acoustic sensors tuned to 24.5 kHz and attached to the torpedo’s guidance mechanism. Instead of the
mechanism executing a programmed course, it directed the torpedo toward the sound created by the target’s propellers. Countermeasures such as altering a ship’s speed, dropping depth charges (the explosion of which caused the Gnat’s firing pistol to go off prematurely) and steaming noisemakers that attracted the torpedo away from the ship were routinely used by Allied ships after the middle of 1943 when U-boats were known to be near.
The
Schnorchel,
developed by the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1933, was a simple device that turned the U-boat from a submersible weapons platform into something approaching a true submarine. Prior to the introduction of the snorkel in 1944, U-boats spent on average only 10 per cent of their running time underwater because of limited air supply and battery power. The necessity of surfacing to recharge the ship’s batteries and air supply meant that the Bay of Biscay, which was heavily patrolled by Allied ships and planes, became less a passageway to the Atlantic than a killing field. In 1943, twenty-seven U-boats were destroyed there; in 1944, another twenty-six were sunk.
A set of physically ungainly tubes attached to the conning tower, the
Schnorchel
was elegant in its simplicity. Each of the two 25-foot tubes extended no more than a foot above the surface of the water, making it invisible to lookouts and to all but the best Allied radar. One tube drew fresh air into the boat; the other served as an exhaust. Each was fitted with a valve (the most common was a ball-type float connected to a flap) that shut when water washed over the tubes. To keep the diesels running when waves washed over the
Schnorchel,
the float valve triggered another valve that allowed the combustion engine to suck air from the U-boat and to vent the diesel exhaust into it. Though fouling the boat’s air was, of course, a concern, the immediate effect of this procedure was first a rapid decrease in air pressure and then an increase, which caused intense ear pain. Although Dönitz’s engineers had originally thought that the snorkel would be used only for recharging a boat’s batteries, tests revealed that U-boats could operate using a snorkel for long periods of time at speeds up to 13 knots.
Six weeks after D-Day, on July 17, 1944, as thousands of British and Canadian troops readied for the following day’s attempt to break out of
Caen, some 15 kilometres from the Normandy coast, Dönitz again ordered U-boats into the St. Lawrence, in hopes of drawing Allied escorts off the North Atlantic. Over the next four months, four radio operators would hand their captains the following message from the
Führer der Unterseeboote:
[This] operational area has not been occupied since 1942. Great surprise successes are possible as area has abundant traffic. Area was evacuated in view of appearance of a/c [aircraft] and location [anti-submarine radar], which impeded battery charge. But area is easily navigable with
“Schnorchel.”
…
4. Countermeasures: Situation in 1942
Medium to strong air with and without location [radar], especially after being observed. Sea [naval] countermeasures relatively slight and unpractised. Location [sonar] conditions very unfavourable to the enemy, as there is marked underwater density layering. Find out about this density layering, even for considerable depths, before a depth-charge hunt starts.
In General: Main defence by a/c. Sea defence little to be feared. Situation thought to have altered little since 1942.
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Between the beginning of July 1944 and the end of November 1944, U-802, U-541, U-1223, U-1228 and U-1231 invaded Canadian waters. Despite
Kapitänleutnant
Helmut Schmoeckel’s claim that U-802 had sunk a “destroyer” on September 13 (the torpedo he fired at HMCS
Stettler
exploded prematurely), he had nothing to show for his patrol in Canadian waters. There were, however, frightening memories of being attacked by both the RCAF and USS
Bogue
‘s hunter-killer group. RCAF coverage so unnerved Schmoeckel that he credited Canadian land-based radar with being “able to pick up my
Schnorchel,”
an ability it did not have.
Kapitänleutnant
Kurt Peterson’s bravado on U-541 led him to claim that the layering effect of the salt and fresh water in the gulf made him feel “as secure as in the bosom of Abraham.”
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His one attack in the gulf, however, was carried out on the surface. The attack was broken up by gunfire from the corvette HMCS
Norsyd.
Upon leaving Canadian waters, Peterson’s war diary recorded the cost of having broken radio silence: “About two hours
[after having broadcast] we heard weak signals on our radar warning devices …. Seconds after we had dived, bombs exploded in our vicinity. The boat was shaken and the periscope developed a leak. From my perspective the Canadian defences had reacted and operated magnificently. Swift detection of our radio transmission, good evaluation with precise position, good attack by aircraft with sparing and rational use of radar. If we had dived but a few seconds later, the bombs would possibly have hit us at the beginning of the diving manoeuvre.”
All
Oberleutnant zur See
Paul Ackermann, commander of U-1221, had to show for his Canadian sojourn was the loss of Able Seaman Emil-Heinz Motyl, who apparently committed suicide by jumping overboard after having been disciplined for falling asleep on watch.
The two other U-boats drew Canadian blood. On October 14, 1944, two years to the day after the sinking of SS
Caribou,
a Gnat fired by U-1223, commanded by
Oberleutnant zur See
Albert Kneip, crippled the frigate HMCS
Magog,
killing three men. Six weeks later, on the night of November 25,
Oberleutnant zur See
Friedrich-Wilhelm Marienfeld (U-1228) destroyed the corvette HMCS
Shawinigan,
killing ninety-one officers and ratings of the Royal Canadian Navy.
OCTOBER 14, 1944
Three thousand five hundred miles east, workers at Deutsche Werft AG lay the keel for U-2354; workers at AG Weser in Bremen lay the keel for U-3024.
Three thousand five hundred miles east in Berlin, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who is suspected of complicity in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, chooses suicide instead of a public trial for treason. Doing so protects his family from prosecution and he is given a state funeral.
Four thousand miles east in Greece, British and Greek forces capture Athens.
Seven thousand five hundred miles southwest in Burma, under heavy attack by the Japanese 33rd and 55th divisions, the British 123rd Indian Brigade is forced from its defensive positions at Rathedaung in Arakan.
At 10:25 a.m., some five miles off the Point-des-Monts lighthouse, the five-month-old River-class frigate
Magog
zigzagged off the starboard side of convoy ONS-33.
Magog
and two other 301-foot 6-inch, 1,440-ton frigates, HMCS
Stettler
and
Toronto,
were escorting a twelve-ship westbound convoy. Normally at this time in the morning,
Magog
‘s captain, Lieutenant Commander Louis T. Quick, RCNR, would have been on the bridge. The crew would be mustered on the quarterdeck, where the officer of the watch, Sub-Lieutenant Herb Montgomery, would be leading a centuries-old duty: distributing the daily ration of grog.
At thirty-four minutes before eleven bells, however, Quick’s first officer, Lieutenant Edgar T. Stanger, RCNVR, was officer in charge on the bridge. Quick, Montgomery and two other officers, Lieutenant Verdun P. Gilbert, RCNVR, and Lieutenant (Engineering) Bertil F. Larson, were in the captain’s cabin a short distance away. Quick, whose career began when he joined the RN at the age of fourteen and who had quite a reputation for drinking when on shore, was “weighing off” Leading Seaman Ted Davis, known as “the Buffer,” and several other ratings who had “raised hell in one of the pubs” on the thirteenth, the night before
Magog
departed Gaspé.
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“I was in the captain’s cabin listening to him weighing off the sailors,” recalls Montgomery, “when all of a sudden we felt a tremendous jolt and the ship took an immediate list.”
The jolt was caused by the explosion of the first of two Gnats Kneip aimed at
Magog.
(The second exploded harmlessly fifty yards off
Magog
‘s port quarter.) The blast that killed Petty Officer Ted E. Davis, Ordinary Seaman Gordon T. Elliot and Able Seaman Kenneth J. Kelly and badly injured three other ratings also blew off sixty feet of
Magog’s
stern. Half of the wreckage, thirty feet of hardened steel weighing at least one hundred tons, was literally peeled ten feet up over the remaining boat deck. Only the mass of one of the aft-deck guns, upon which part of the deck came to rest, saved the life of nineteen-year-old George G. Hunter, an engine-room artificer: “I was standing at the gun platform when the explosion occurred. Part of the [quarter]deck lifted up and folded over the top of my head …. The gun mounting took the shock of the weight …. I was knocked to my knees and dazed,” he told the Canadian Press.
As
Magog
struggled to find buoyancy, settling finally at a 9° list, Kneip’s
Leitender Ingenieur
ordered the closing of the compensation ballast tanks
that he had opened in the seconds after the torpedo sped away from U-1223. Kneip’s boat was back on an even keel before Montgomery, Gilbert, Ted Davis and Quick ran from the captain’s cabin.
It took Quick about thirty seconds to get to his bridge. Stanger had arrived (from the chart room just off the bridge) seconds before, while debris was still falling from the sky.
Neither could see the ship’s stern, which had been demolished.
Quick called Action Stations. Since he was not sure that the buzzer could be heard, he shouted it down from the bridge to ensure that the call was repeated throughout the stricken ship.
Deep in the ship, twenty-year-old electrical artificer Harold Robertson was stunned but alive. “I was just leaving the electrical stores,” he told Canadians in an article not published until April 17, 1945. “I don’t remember anything of what happened, but I do know that I came right through a steel bulkhead and landed in the water. There was a steel deck above me, below me and a steel wall around me, and even though I was injured, I figured I’m mighty lucky to be here.” Robertson was one of three men picked out of the water by damage-control parties.
Gilbert ran first toward the wheelhouse. Then, after realizing the damage was to the stern, he ran aft. “As I reached the quarterdeck, I saw a man was stunned and walking toward the stern of the ship, so I grabbed him and two ratings took him forward. At the same time there was a man in the water and two ratings pulled him up,” Gilbert wrote in his report.
Gilbert then headed for the engine room. By the time he got there, Chief Stoker Norman Howse was putting out a fire in one of the boiler rooms. Gilbert’s report explains why Howse received special commendation for his actions: “Fire broke out in one of the boiler rooms. Howse put on a smoke mask and went down and saw that it was extinguished. That in itself may not have been remarkable, but at the time he went down [below the water-line] we were disabled and a pretty easy target.”
After being told by an engine-room artificer that the “after bulkhead of the engine room was holding [and that there] was no water in the engine room,” Gilbert ran back to the bridge and told Quick that he “thought she would float.”
Gilbert wasn’t the only one to bring Quick this hopeful news. Larson ran
straight from Quick’s cabin to the engine room. The artificers had already stopped the ship’s 5,500-hp main engine, so he went straight to check the bilges for “signs of water.” There were none, which told him that the aft bulkhead was holding. A few moments later, after examining the bulkhead itself and finding, despite the huge explosion that ripped one-fifth of the ship apart, that the aft “bulkhead had in no way been affected and was very sound,” Larson sent a messenger to Quick to tell him that
Magog
was in no imminent danger of sinking.
Taking no risks, Larson ordered the engine-room staff to begin shoring up the aft bulkhead with two-by-fours. Using cloth-covered wooden wedges, he patched a small leak in the starboard side. Then he turned to correcting the ship’s list. He ordered the pumping of fuel oil from the starboard and port tanks until
Magog
was once again on an even keel.
“Sub-lieutenants,” recalls Montgomery, “didn’t have a ‘station’ in the same way that the captain or the engineering officer did; we were responsible for the day-to-day running of the ship. I was officer of the watch, so when I ran from Captain Quick’s cabin, I went first to my cabin to get my life jacket and then to the deck. Once there, I found myself being yelled to come here, come there.”