Black May (55 page)

The morning of the 21st broke CAVU—Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited—and Squadron VC-9 flew continuous search patrols. At twilight on that perfect day, squadron skipper Bill Drane, flying an Avenger with four D/Cs at 3,000 feet 60 miles ahead of the convoy, sighted and pursued a streak of silver with a black splinter at its head. He increased speed to 200 knots, circled, and made his approach from dead ahead, lowering his landing gear on the final run in to reduce speed and avoid the D/C ricochets that had ruined Lt. Santee’s chances the month before. This time four Mark 44 flat-nosed D/Cs, released by intervalometer from 50 feet, dug in properly and blanketed the U-boat with explosive geysers. Nothing was seen of the boat thereafter, and no evidence of damage appeared except for some unidentified dark specks in the center of the Torpex slick. Having reached PLE (30 gallons left on return), Drane called for destroyers to investigate and returned to
Bogue.
After the war it would be learned that he had severely damaged U-231 (Kptlt. Wolfgang Wenzel), forcing her back to base.
⁸¹

There was no action overnight, but on the 22nd, which dawned clear with occasional rain squalls, VC-9 made no fewer than five Avenger attacks on three separate U-boats of
Mosel’
s southern wing, beginning at 0635 when Lt. (jg) Roger C. “Bud” Kuhn, U.S.N.R., dropped four D/Cs up the wake of U—
468
(Oblt.z.S. Klemens Schamong), which, unable to dive for slightly over an hour, circled slowly, emitting a bluish oil streak. Kuhn’s call for backup went unanswered both because he had erred in plotting his position and because he was in a “null” area where ship’s radar could not get a fix. Finally, the U-boat sank stern first, and though seriously damaged, managed to make a successful
Rückmarsch.
⁸²
Second out of the box, at 1103, was Ensign Stewart E. Doty, U.S.N.R., who found a fully surfaced boat proceeding at high speed almost broad on the convoy’s bow 18 miles distant. Just before he mounted an attack the U-boat was DFed by
Bogue.
Coming out of an
overcast sky at 1,500 feet, Doty survived incoming flak and released four D/Cs on the
U
-boat, obtaining one explosion, apparently under the hull between the conning tower and bow, the other three D/Cs falling well to port ahead. As the spray subsided, the
U
-boat was observed to shake violently to starboard, then to submerge slowly. A bluish oil bubble, about 50 feet in diameter, came to the surface. Shortly afterwards, the boat lifted its bow out of the water at an angle of 45°; then it settled back under at the same angle. Like “Bud” Kuhn’s boat,
U-305
(Kptlt. Rudolf Bahr) was forced out of the hunt and back to base.
⁸³

At 1325 Lt. (jg) Robert L. Stearns, flying 26 miles off the convoy’s starboard quarter, sighted 5 miles distant a “large dark object” leaving a long wake on a course of 035°, directly opposite to that of the convoy. It was the same
U-305,
on her way home to Brest with a severe headache. Stearns dove out of a 1,200-foot cloud base and attacked through heavy flak, dropping a four D/C salvo from 125 feet. The charges exploded close aboard
U-305,
inflicting additional damage (she would spend nearly three months in Brest) and sending her under again to lick her wounds.
⁸⁴

Lt. (jg) William F. “Champ” Chamberlain, U.S.N.R., who catapulted off
Bogue
’s deck at 1757, had a daredevil reputation and a record of being hard on aircraft. No one who watched him leave the deck was surprised to see him bank the big Avenger as though he were flying a Wildcat—which is what he used to fly until he complained that the Wildcat pilots were not getting enough flying time. Born in Hoquiam, Washington, he attended the University of Washington, where he studied aeronautical engineering and joined Navy ROTC, eventually entering USN flight school. He was short and stocky, a man of unquestioned courage, without, as an acquaintance said, “a shy bone in his body.” Among his adventures: he crash-landed a plane on his parents’ farm, ground-looped fighters, and ditched an Avenger at sea when he misjudged the height of waves he was skimming. Aircraft Radioman second class (ARM2c) James O. Stine, who rode with him in May, told the writer: “Our old Chief ‘Dusty’ Rhodes, who made the crew assignments, couldn’t get anybody to ride with Chamberlain. But I said I would. I was older than he was, and sort of a fatalist. I was on board when he went into the drink. But we survived.”
⁸⁵
‘

Chamberlain was launched to chase down a U-boat bearing that
Bogue
had established at 1723 with her new British HF/DF set. Taking a course of 067°, at an altitude of 1,500 feet in the base of broken cumulus, he bore down the invisible Huff-Duff track at 170 knots, and seven minutes after launch made a visual sighting of the transmitting U-boat 25 miles distant from
Bogue,
proceeding at high speed on a course of 180°. He climbed into cloud cover and circled so as to dive, he hoped undetected, from the U-boat’s stern. When properly positioned, he pushed over at 20°, and at 100 feet altitude and still in the dive, he let go four Mark 17–2 flat-nosed TNT D/Cs set to 25 feet that appeared to straddle the U-boat. Two of the D/Cs were captured while still falling in a remarkable photograph taken by Radioman Stine (see frontispiece); at the same time, Gunner Donald L. Clark, AMM2C, swept the bridge and its startled watch with gunfire. Noting with satisfaction that the U-boat crew had been “completely surprised,” Chamberlain watched as the U-boat slowly dived in the sea of explosive foam.
⁸⁶
Then, expecting that the Germans, if hurt badly enough, would resurface, he called
Bogue
for another TBF—1 with D/Cs to relieve him.

On her ninth war cruise, out of La Pallice on 19 April, U-569 was a singularly unsuccessful boat, with only three ships to show for twenty-one months on operations. Her second Commander (since 30 January 1943) was Oberleutnant der Reserve Hans Johannsen, a thirty-two-year-old native of Hamburg who had been a prewar merchant marine officer with the Holland America Line. Largely because the boat had achieved few sinkings, Johannsen had found his new crew dispirited and listless. On taking command, therefore, he had had the motto
Los geht’s
(“Let’s go”) together with a compass rose painted on each side of the conning tower in an attempt to bolster morale. But there were other crew problems that were not so easily addressed, such as a general disaffection from the U-boat arm and a widespread belief that Germany would lose the war.
⁸⁷

On 18 May, U-569 had refueled and revictualed from the supply boat U-459. On the 22nd she was part of southern
Mosel,
operating ostensibly against HX.239, and in 50°,0'N, 35°oo’W when surprised by Chamberlain.
⁸⁸
According to her survivors, the Avenger’s charges cracked open high-pressure water lines and water began leaking into
the after compartments. The boat dived to 120 meters, but when water reached the maneuvering room and the boat became very heavy by the stern, it was no longer possible to maintain trim, and the crew were ordered to the forward torpedo room in a desperate effort to correct the imbalance. When the boat failed to respond, Johannsen gave the order to surface.
⁸⁹

Just as U-569 broke above the waves at 1840, Lt. H. S. “Stinky” Roberts, U.S.N.R., appeared overhead in Avenger “7.” Sighting the U-boat’s bow beneath his port wing from 3,000 feet, Roberts knew that he had little time before the bridge hatch opened and his presence was discovered. So he pushed over immediately into a 50° dive-bombing attack, releasing four D/Cs in train at 600 feet and pulling out at 100. As Roberts reported afterwards:

Johannsen had tried to surrender by waving a white napkin, but when Roberts’s gunner continued fire, a white sheet was brought up and waved instead. Meanwhile,
Bogue
had called upon the Canadian destroyer H.M.C.S.
St. Laurent
to assist, and Chamberlain, who had flown toward the carrier when Roberts relieved him, returned to the scene after hearing by R/T that the boat had resurfaced, allowing Gunner Clark to get in a few more licks before the white sheet went up. Though it appears that most of the U-boat crew who sprang into the water were wearing life jackets, many were carried away in the heavy sea and lost. One of Johannsen’s officers secured a line about his waist
and leaped into the water to save two crew members. When at last
St. Laurent
hove into sight, the L.I. descended the tower ladder and opened the sea cock, which scuttled the boat; he did not reemerge. Altogether, the destroyer picked up twenty-five survivors, not including the L.I. and the II.W.O. One crewman, critically wounded, was hospitalized in St. John’s. The remainder were turned over to USN authorities in Boston for interrogation.
⁹¹

For the first time in naval warfare, a submarine had surrendered to carrier aircraft. For the first time, too, a U-boat had been destroyed by a CVE’s aircraft operating alone. During nineteen months of operations in the Atlantic, Composite Squadron Nine went on to become the highest-scoring ASW squadron in the Navy, with nine U-boats sunk and eight damaged. The
Bogue,
her squadrons, and her surface escorts would together destroy eleven more underseas craft—nine U-boats and two Japanese submarines—during the remainder of the war. “Champ” Chamberlain was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Silver Star for his action against U-569. In March 1944, at Norfolk, Virginia, VC-9 boarded CVE-67, U.S.S.
Solomons.
During a cruise in the South Atlantic out of Recife in Brazil, “Champ” showed that his reputation as a plane-buster was still deserved. On making a landing aboard
Solomons
—he was never one, his fellow pilots said, to pay much attention to the Landing Signal Officer—he collided with the edge of the flight deck ramp and split the aircraft in half. “Champ” ended up on deck, but his two crewmen in the tail section careened off the five-inch gun on the fantail into the sea, where, fortunately, they were rescued by the group guardship.

On 15 June 1944, “Champ’s” lucky string ran out. Diving on U
-860
(Freg. Kapt. Paul Büchel), which had already been attacked by six VC—9 aircraft, he approached so low—fewer than 50 feet off the deck and into the teeth of heavy flak—that either the flak, or the explosions of his D/Cs, or an internal explosion aboard the damaged U-boat caused his Avenger to be engulfed in flames. Though he managed to make a 180° turn and splash into the water ahead of the U-boat, neither he nor his crew (James Stines had been replaced by his best friend among the ratings) was found by destroyers dispatched to the scene.

That night, a remarkable vigil took place aboard
Solomons
, when one of the carrier’s lookouts reported to the bridge that he had heard a sound in the sea that sounded like a human voice. Though it was a dangerous thing to do in U-boat waters,
Solomons
Captain Marion Crist ordered the carrier’s speed reduced to two-three knots so that engine, wake, and bow wave noise might be diminished; and all hands—over a thousand—were positioned around the edge of the flight deck to listen for a call from the black, moonless sea. But, though they strained, no one heard a thing other than the pliant waves slapping against the hull, and after a decent, caring interval, the men were returned to normal duties, their only consolation being the knowledge that U
-860
had been sunk with half her complement.
⁹²

Deciding on Sunday the 23rd both that the
Mosel
boats were too far behind ON.184 to continue operations against it and that “it is not possible at present, with available weapons, to attack a convoy escorted by strong air cover,” BdU ordered Groups
Mosel
and
Donau
to break off from that convoy and from HX.239 as well.
⁹³
The ON.184 columns proceeded on the remainder of their voyage to New York unmolested, arriving on the 31st. U-boats were still in contact with HX.239 to the south on the 23rd, however, which would prove the undoing of one of their number, U-752 (Kptlt. Karl-Ernst Schroeter). That boat, on her eighth war cruise, made the mistake of surfacing in daylight to make a contact report and encountered a Swordfish from the CVE H.M.S.
Archer
carrying a weapon that was used successfully that day for the first time in combat. It was an airborne rocket fitted with a 25-pound solid steel armor-piercing (A.P.) head called simply “R.P.”

Rockets had been fired from Royal Flying Corps aircraft during World War I, though with little success. In the years immediately before the second conflict, their use was considered again in Great Britain as ground-to-air and air-to-air anti-aircraft weapons. As development and trials proceeded in both Army and RAF testing establishments, the rockets came to be called, by the Army, “U.P.s,” for Unrotated Projectiles, and by the RAF “R.P.s,” for Rocket Projectiles. The RAF developed two types of heads, one a 60-lb. High Explosive
(H.E.)/Semi Armor Piercing shell of 6 inches diameter for attacks on U-boats and merchant ships, and the other a 25-lb. Armor Piercing (A.P.) solid shot of 3.44 inches diameter for attacks on land targets such as tanks, gun positions, and concrete emplacements. In one of those odd paradoxes that characterized some Allied operational research and testing, it was found that the H.E. head worked better against land targets than did the A.P. head; and that, conversely, the latter worked better against submarine and ship hulls. Thus their roles were reversed.