The Burning Shore (25 page)

Degen and his crew were waiting for the
William Rockefeller
’s approach. Earlier that morning, U-701’s hydrophone operator detected what he called a “heavy” engine noise approaching from the south. Sitting at the periscope control in the conning tower when the report came in, Degen quickly raised the periscope above the surface and gasped aloud. “There it approached,” he later said, describing the sight, “the unique chance for a submerged U-boat torpedo attack against a big tanker that was lying deep in the water because she was full to capacity with oil.”

Judging that the tanker’s closest point of approach would be 1,000 yards, Degen ordered his torpedo gang to prepare to launch a pair of G7e electric torpedoes. On the command “Los!” (Release!), Oberleutnant zur See Konrad Junker turned the firing handle, and U-701 shuddered from the twin blasts of compressed air that expelled the torpedoes. Degen recalled thinking, “Endless seconds, waiting, waiting . . . was this to be a failure?” He was about to fire a third torpedo when there was an enormous eruption. Raising the periscope again, Degen looked out at a scene of complete devastation.

Stewart was in the
William Rockefeller
’s chart room marking the ship’s current position when, at 1216 hours EWT, one of Degen’s
torpedoes struck amidships on the port side. The blast ripped a twenty-foot hole in the ship and sprayed burning oil over the rear half of the hull. The master sounded the general alarm, and Chief Engineer Edward Synder shut down the engine, closed the fuel oil valves, and activated a steam smothering system to suppress the fire. However, when Stewart emerged on deck to assess whether the ship could be saved, he found that the entire crew had panicked and abandoned ship without orders. In their haste, the men had fouled the rigging for the lowering of two of the tanker’s four lifeboats, forcing several of them to jump overboard into the oil-coated water.

Stewart finally climbed down into a lifeboat and studied his stricken ship, which was burning fiercely amidships but had not settled lower in the water and remained on a level keel. He argued with the officer commanding the coast guard patrol craft that had picked up the crew that the ship was not in danger of sinking and should be reboarded. But when told that a number of his crewmen needed urgent medical attention after swallowing oil in the water, Stewart acceded, and the patrol boat took the crew into Ocracoke Harbor, arriving at about 1700 hours EWT. There, a coast guard officer told Stewart that they would have to wait until the next day to inspect and possibly reboard the ship but assured him it was under close observation by another patrol craft out of Norfolk.

At dusk, Degen called down into the control room and invited a handful of sailors to climb up and get a quick glimpse through the periscope of the burning oil tanker. Several men were taking turns looking through the eyepiece when three sharp, nearby explosions suddenly rocked their boat. Realizing that at least one patrol plane was attacking, Degen ordered his planesmen to take them down deep. U-701 silently moved away from the area. After two hours, Degen again ventured up to periscope depth, where he saw the distant tanker still ablaze but guarded by at least two escort ships. Degen tried to approach the damaged vessel on four separate occasions that afternoon, but the escorts picked up U-701 on sonar each time and drove it away.

The fate of the 14,054-ton oil tanker
William Rockefeller
, torpedoed by U-701 on June 28, 1942, remains clouded in doubt. Horst Degen claimed to have watched the tanker sink hours after U-701 torpedoed it, but the US Coast Guard reported its aircraft bombed and sank the burnt-out derelict the next day to prevent its becoming a hazard to navigation. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION.

Later that night, Degen noticed that the two escorts were no longer in sight. U-701 closed in on the surface and circled the burning vessel from 1,000 yards out. “What we saw was hell on board that tanker,” Degen recalled. “The night was bright
like a sunny day due to the enormous fire.” In a daring, almost reckless move, Degen invited a group of crewmen up onto the cramped U-boat bridge to watch the stricken ship. Shortly after 2330 hours EWT, he fired a coup de grâce, and the tanker swiftly sank. “The bow rose high into the sky like a torch in a terrible nightmare,” he said. “It stood up there for a few moments, then suddenly the whole ship went down by the stern in a giant glide, hissing all over. The giant fire went out instantly and we found ourselves in a completely dark night.” This account remains controversial, since the US Coast Guard reported that its aircraft had found and bombed the burnt-out tanker the next day to prevent its becoming a hazard to navigation. In any event, the
William Rockefeller
was U-701’s last victim.

S
IX WEEKS INTO THEIR THIRD WAR PATROL
, the men of U-701 had every reason to be proud of their accomplishments. The boat’s record was four ships sunk by torpedo, gunfire, or mines totaling 21,789 gross tons and another four vessels totaling 37,093 tons seriously damaged. The mining operation at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay had been an unparalleled success, in contrast to the missions of the other two U-boats assigned to lay mines along the North American coast during the same period. U-373’s minefield off Delaware Bay sank a solitary 396-ton tug, while U-87’s mines laid near Boston sank nothing. The attacks on the
Tamesis
,
British Freedom
, and
William Rockefeller
had left U-701 with only two remaining torpedoes, but U-701 still had sixty-five cubic meters (17,000 gallons) of diesel fuel in its tanks. Degen intended stay on patrol and to hunt at least one more ship before breaking off for the return to France.
⁴

Within a week of the sinking of the
William Rockefeller
, however, the crewmen of U-701 could not have helped wishing their patrol was over. By day, the boat lurked deep underwater out where the continental shelf dropped off to several hundred feet, its crew gasping and vomiting in the overheated, putrid air inside the pressure hull. The hydrophone operator heard no sounds of passing merchant ships, and quick glimpses through the periscope confirmed that the ocean was empty. In desperation, Degen resumed a daily surfacing maneuver to ventilate the boat, even though the American air defenses were becoming visibly stronger with each passing day. On Monday, July 6, Degen sent a sober message back to BdU Headquarters in Paris:

SITUATION CAPE HATTERAS; SINCE 28 JUNE TIGHTENED SEA AND AIR PATROL. DURING THE NIGHT OF 2 JULY, 2000 GRT FREIGHTER WITH 3 SUSPICIOUSLY REMOTE ESCORT VESSELS, PROBABLY A TRAP. OTHERWISE OUTSIDE AND WITHIN THE 200-METER LINE NOTHING MORE SEEN.

It was the last message that Admiral Dönitz and his staff ever received from Horst Degen and U-701.
⁵

S
HORTLY AFTER
0945 EWT
ON
T
UESDAY
, J
ULY
7, Lieutenant Harry Kane and his four aircrewmen donned their flight suits, boots, and lifejackets and walked out onto the tarmac of Cherry Point to begin yet another patrol flight off the coast. Another five-man aircrew followed behind them, heading for a different aircraft. The sun was already well up in the east, promising another
scorching summer day. The five airmen had already flown at least ten missions since the 396th Medium Bombardment Squadron arrived at the Marine Corps air station, and this one gave no indication of being any different from the previous ones.

The airmen walked up to the port side of the Lockheed A-29 Hudson, ducking under the left wing before reaching the main cabin hatch in the side of the fuselage. Entering the cabin, the five fliers began the long-practiced routine of preflight inspection. Corporal George E. Bellamy entered the aircraft first. The thirty-year-old bombardier was one of the older men in the squadron; his flight station was in the spacious nose of the bomber, where a small moveable seat allowed him to handle the sensitive bombsight that guided the plane’s aerial depth charges to their target. Kane followed the corporal into the aircraft, walking up the canted metal floor plates to the small access door leading to the flight deck. Seating himself in the left-hand seat, Kane opened up his satchel and took out the aircraft’s flight manual. Meanwhile, twenty-four-year-old navigator Lieutenant Lynn A. Murray and twenty-two-year-old radio operator Corporal Leo P. Flowers entered the Hudson. Murray followed Kane into the flight deck and lowered the foldaway seat on the right-hand side. Flowers sat down at the radio station in the cramped radio compartment immediately aft of the pilot’s station. Flight engineer Corporal Presley L. Broussard, also twenty-two, remained outside to observe the engine start-up procedure.

Kane, as a Brooklyn native, was the only city boy on the aircrew. Bellamy was a native of Overton, Texas. Murray came from a family that had settled in North Dakota at the turn of the twentieth century. Flowers was a native of San Bernardino, California, and Broussard was from Delcambre, Louisiana. Despite
their varied backgrounds, the five men had been flying together as a team for months and had become professionally close as they proceeded through their extensive transition training and subsequent U-boat patrols.

Kane briskly proceeded through the engine start checklist. “Master battery switch on,” he began. Kane’s eyes moved down the checklist, hands grasping the proper switch or button as he continued. “Brakes locked. . . . Landing gear lever down. . . . Wing flap lever neutral.”

Another half dozen checklist items went by as the pilot checked the tail wheel position, bomb bay door, automatic pilot, and other flight instruments. Finally, Kane cracked the two engine throttles to the position of 1/10 open, reached down in front of him, and grasped the hand fuel pump, giving it three strokes. Turning the master ignition switch to the on position, he then engaged the starter and booster for the left engine. The fourteen-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-1830 sputtered into life, its three-bladed propeller quickly blurring as he powered it up to 1,000 rpm. He then repeated the process for the starboard engine, and the Hudson was soon ready for taxiing. Finally, Broussard climbed into the cabin and belted himself in. Kane began taxiing toward the main runway.

At 1015 hours, Kane’s Hudson and a second aircraft were barreling down the Cherry Point runway. When they reached altitude, the planes flew in loose formation until they reached a point about twenty-five miles off the coast. Once there, in accordance with the squadron patrol plan, the two planes separated. Kane banked A-29 No. 9-29-322 to the right and headed southwest toward Cape Lookout. The second Hudson headed northeast to parallel the coast on its way up to Norfolk.
⁶

A
T ABOUT
1400 EWT
ON
J
ULY
7, Degen decided to ventilate the boat for its daily cleansing. After confirming with Grotheer in the hydrophone compartment that the nearby ocean was empty of ships, he ordered U-701 up to periscope depth. A quick 360-degree scan of the sky revealed no aircraft passing overhead. Degen called down, and his designated lookouts—Junker, the first watch officer (1WO); Günter Kunert, the navigator; and
Oberbootsmaat
(Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class) Kurt Hänsel—came climbing up the ladder from the control room.

“Blow all tanks! Diesels full speed ahead,” Degen ordered. As U-701 broached the surface, he reached up and twisted the conning tower hatch wheel, then popped the circular hatch open. The four men quickly climbed up onto the narrow bridge. Down below, Chief Engineer Karl-Heinrich Bahr ordered the engine room watch to start the two Germaniawerft diesel motors. Instead of opening the bridge-mounted air intakes that normally fed air directly to the two engines, the crew deliberately left them shut. The two diesel engines roared as Bahr ordered full power, and a rush of clean air swept through the bridge hatch into the sweltering U-boat. U-701 slowly advanced on a course of 320 degrees, heading in the direction of the Outer Banks some thirty to thirty-five miles away.

Degen was concerned about Junker, a former Luftwaffe officer who had transferred into the U-boat Force. Many of the men disliked the twenty-five-year-old for his officious and overbearing manner. “He was very arrogant,” Gerhard Schwendel said years later of the 1WO. “He always wanted to command the crew.” But Degen was bothered by something else. Earlier that morning he had caught Junker not paying close attention while on lookout
duty. “He was looking around and playing about,” Degen later recalled. “I told him, ‘You must pay more attention. You can’t carry on like that.’ I warned him seriously.” Those words would prove prophetic.
⁷

L
OCKHEED
H
UDSON
No. 9-29-322 had been in the air for more than four hours when Kane brought it back from Charleston on a northeast course to the area off Cape Hatteras, flying about thirty miles offshore. Although USAAF tactical doctrine directed the patrol aircraft to fly at an altitude of just one hundred feet above sea level, Kane had opted to take advantage of current weather conditions. Spotting a cloud layer at 1,200 feet, he decided to conceal the aircraft in the thin layer on the assumption that he and his crew could see much farther off than at the lower altitude while remaining hidden from any U-boat lookouts. Kane edged his Hudson up to 1,500 feet, placing the bomber just above the base of the clouds. Since there were gaps between the clouds, the aircrew was mostly concealed from view from below but, at intervals, could scan the ocean for any U-boats. “I was mostly in [the clouds] . . . for two or three minutes and I’d break out for thirty seconds,” Kane explained, “and then I’d be back in them for two or three minutes. . . .”