Download A History of the Submarine U-153, 1939-1942

A History of the Submarine U-153, 1939-1942:
Wilfried Reichmann, Four Victims & Loss
A rare photo depicting Wilfried Reichmann atop the conning tower of U-153, most likely in Lorient, France June 16, 1942. Reichmann, aged 36, is likely the man seated to the left in the white commander’s cap. The younger man
standing with megaphone is likely First Watch Officer Ober Lieutnant zur See Wolfgang Felsch, aged 25. Note
broad ax on starboard side, and the Viking ship emblem on the front of the conning tower. In color on page 11.
Source: http://www.u-historia.com/uhistoria/historia/huboots/u100-u199/u0153/u153.htmi
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By Eric T. Wiberg, Norwalk CT USA, www.uboatsbahamas.com, 2 Dec. 2012
12,000+ words / 30 pages / 12 illustrations / 81 citations / Bibliography / map pending
1 The village of Wittigwalde, then in East Prussia, now in Osterode county, Poland, is
nestled in a forest of evergreens and surrounded by two lakes, named Obs and Gugoroo. The
estate in nearby Osterwein was pillaged by Emperor Napoleon’s men after the Battle of Eylau in
1807. The local church, then Lutheran, now Roman Catholic, has been without a priest for years,
and the manor house in Osterwein has been abandoned for decades. Then part of German East
Prussia, Wittigwalde is now known as Wigwald and is 200 miles east of the present border with
Germany.ii
Into this bucolic setting Wilfried Reichmann was born on the tenth of October, 1905.iii In
old German the name is said to mean “rich man.” Perhaps tellingly, his birthplace was only 50 or
so miles southeast of the Baltic Sea, where the bay encompassing Danzig (now Gdynia) leads to
the Baltic. This inland sea in turns accesses the North Sea, which leads to the wide Atlantic. That
is the course that young Wilfried was to take in his career in the German navy, or Kriegsmarine.
In 1924, at the age of 19, Reichmann graduated from the Naval Academy at Mürwik
(Marineschule Mürwik) on the Jutland Peninsula flush against the Danish border, between the
Baltic and the North Sea. Situated in Flensburg, the academy was only opened in 1910 by Kaiser
Wilhelm II, and was to serve, for a mere 20 days, as the capital of Germany in the spring of 1945
when Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz commanded the final days of the Reich.iv
In order to gain entry to the prestigious naval academy at the age of 16, Wilfried must
have been exceptionally bright, well connected in the navy, or both. Little is known about his
early naval career, except that since there are no vessels attributed to his command, it can be
presumed that he pursued the staff officer route. By the first of July, 1939 he had obtained the
rank of Korvettenkapitän, or Corvette Captain. In that capacity he was assigned to occupied
Norway in June of 1940 and served as the Staff Officer to Counter Admiral August Adolf Karl
Thiele, headquartered in Trondheim.v
Aged 46 at the time, Thiele was in command of the heavy cruiser Lützow. He would go
on to earn the Knights Cross for the attack on Oslo, of which he took command after the Blücher
was sunk. At the time his Trondheim command reported to the overall Admiral in command of
Norway and was responsible for German naval matters from central Norway all the way north to
the Finnish border.vi
Reichmann’s tenure with Thiele was short-lived at five months, ending in October
1940. He returned to Germany, most likely to oversee the construction of his new command of
the submarine U-153, the keel of which was laid on the 12th of September, 1940. Since it was
customary for commanding officers to oversee aspects of the construction of the submarines, it
can be safely assumed that Reichmann had relocated to Bremen, situated on the Weser River
which leads to the North Sea. Nine months later Reichmann was entrusted with command of the
attack submarine for its commissioning on the 19th of July.
vii
2 Little is known about Reichmann personally – his family, and whether he had one of his
own - except that he showed compassion for, and rendered assistance to, crews of the three ships
he sank. This directly saved a number of Allied lives; the men from the Anglo-Canadian were
shepherded together by the sub crew and given precious drinking water, survivors of the Potlatch
were rescued after colorful drama in the Bahamas, and one of Ruth’s only survivors was literally
placed on a life raft by Reichmann’s men.viii
The original order for the Type IXC German submarine U-153 – and indirectly the death
warrant for the steamship Potlatch, two other Allied vessels and a German submarine - was
signed on the 25th of September, 1939. This was mere weeks after the declaration of war between
the UK and Germany and the subsequent sinking of the Athenia by U-30/Lemp.
It would be a year before the ship yard, Deschimag AG Weser in Bremen, on the Baltic,
would commence construction on its 995th vessel. Known as Schiff-und Maschinenbau
Aktiengesellschaft, or ship and engineering corporation, AG Weser was the result of a merger in
1926 of eight shipyards. The keel was laid on the 12th of September 1940.ix Krupp purchased the
majority stake in 1941.
Overall AG Weser in Bremen would construct a total of twenty-four Type IXCs, almost
half of the total fifty four ever built. The total cost of construction was 6.5 million German Reich
Marks, or roughly $2.5 million at the 1940 exchange rates. In today’s currency that would be
roughly $41.25 million US dollars.x
Launched after nearly seven months of construction, the submarine was 740 tons, 253.3
feet long, 22.3 feet wide, and her draft while surfaced was 15.5 feet. The total height of the
vessel was 30 feet 10 inches. She displaced 1,232 tons of water when submerged. The submarine
was powered by twin nine cylinder 4,000 horsepower MAN diesel engines which could propel
her at 18.3 knots, or 22 miles per hour while surfaced. Her range at 10 knots was 24,880 nautical
miles when surfaced, easily enough to reach Panama from France (c.5,000 miles), and then
patrol and return.xi
In addition to the diesels, the U-boat had two 1,000-horsepower electric motors and 62
battery cells for operating whilst submerged. Underwater her top speed was 7.3 knots. She could
submerge as deep as 330 feet, to a maximum depth of 750 feet before being crushed like a can by
the pressure. Her range under water was 117 nautical miles before she had to surface and
ventilate recharge the batteries.xii
The main difference between a Type IX and a type IXCxiii boat was an increase of fuel
capacity by 43 tons to 208 ton. This resulted in an extension of 2,300 nautical miles over its
predecessor design. Also an extra periscope was added in the conning tower.xiv The sub’s total
horsepower output was 4,400 surfaced and 1,000 submerged. U-153 could be equipped to carry
and lay 44 TMA or 66 TMB mines, however this was never done.xv
3 U-153’s armament consisted of twenty-two torpedoes fired from four tubes in the bow
and two in the stern. On deck she carried a 10.5-centimeter gun with 110 to 180 rounds of
ammunition as well as a 3.7-centimeter cannon with 2,625 projectiles and a 2-centimeter gun
with 4,250 rounds. The submarine was manned by between 48 and 56 officers and men, the
minimum required being four senior officers and 44 crew.
The U-boat was commissioned three and a half months after its launch. Its only
commander was Wilfried Reichmann, aged 35 at the time. The boat’s first assignment was to the
4th Flotilla for training. They were based in Stettin Germany, now just over the border in Poland
and renamed Szczecin. Training was conducted over eleven months between July 1941 and 31
May, 1942.xvi However work-up and training was extended because of a tragic accident.
U-153’s early operational career was marred by the death of 45 of her comrades in a
collision. On 15 November 1941, after less than four months of training, Reichmann and his
crew rammed into the new submarine U-583, which was commissioned three months earlier.
According to the interrogation of Horst Degen, of U-701, by his American captors,xvii there was a
new moon and the night was exceedingly dark. A number of new U-boats were training 90 mile
northwest of Danzig and only 30 miles from shore. The U-boats were practicing an attack on a
dummy convoy then evading counter attack.
At 9:48 pm U-153 was motoring on the surface when the officer in charge on the conning
tower shouted “U-boat dead ahead!” Though the other boat was some 500 feet away, it was too
late to avoid a collision, and Reichmann’s submarine found itself wedged deep into the port side
of U-583, between the other boat’s conning tower and gun platform. Reichmann and his men
managed to scramble below and shut the hatch behind them as both U-boats plummeted to the
sea floor. Ten agonizing minutes later U-153 managed to break free of the other boat and soar to
the surface.
As soon as they broke surface Reichmann signaled “Have just rammed a U-boat!”
Confusion reigned and the exercise was broken off. When a general signal was sent inquiring
“Who sank whom?” three different U-boats claimed responsibility. It turns out that U-582 under
Kapitänleutnant Werner Schulte was also rammed on the same night, by U-503 under Otto
Gericke, aged 32. While the damage to U-582 was limited to dents on her stern, U-153 was not
so fortunate. Her bow was bent to a right angle to the port side, debilitating the forward torpedo
tubes as well as hindering steering. There was also some flooding to the forward torpedo room
which the crew managed to control.xviii The boat would have to go into dry dock for extensive
repairs.
After an exhaustive search, the only signs of U-583 were two life jackets. They were
empty. Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Ratsch and his entire crew were drowned under 300 feet of
water in the cold Baltic Sea. Ratsch, from Berlin, was 27 years of age at the time of his death,xix
which was announced in the German press on the 29th of November. Writers for various online
4 forums have speculated that given watertight doors, it is possible that the forward and aft torpedo
rooms were made airtight, and that men could have survived. Three hundred feet is after all less
than half the crush depth of an undamaged submarine.
Indeed, according to the Spokesman Review of August 16, 1979,xx a letter on wax paper
signed by “Lt. Heinz Ratsch” was discovered in a metal canister 36 years later. It read in part
“…our submarine is resting on the sea bottom, engine and torpedo rooms flooded. Five men
besides me are alive.” Since Ratsch claims in the note to have been attacked by a four-engine
British bomber on 11 November, the note can be dismissed as a hoax. But the possibilities of U583’s men dying a slow death of asphyxiation, waiting for a rescue which would never come,
must have haunted the survivors on U-153.
All members of U-153’s crew survived the collision, though thoroughly shaken up.
Repairs added time to the work up before the eager crew could begin their first war patrol. In
addition the commander, Reichmann, was hospitalized and out of commission for nearly two
months, from the 7th of January (seven weeks after the collision), until the 13th of February,
1942. Whether Reichmann’s hospitalization had anything to do with the stress of having
inadvertently killed 45 men is not known, however it must have had quite an impact on the
commander.
It must have been terrifying for the survivors, to endure a massive impact, then begin a
death spiral into the depths, held in the clutches of another vessel, only to be released at the last
minute. No doubt they could hear their colleague’s submarine sink to crushing depth, the sounds
audible through the hull as well as sub-sea listening devices. Degen was still haunted by Ratsch’s
loss, telling his captors that he had dined with his fellow commander only three nights before the
sinking.
On the 18th of May 1942 U-153 moved from Germany to the port of Kristiansand, in
German-occupied Norway. The voyage took three days. The submarine was being repositioned
to France, where it was to join a “front” flotilla, the 2nd Flotilla, in June. Since the flotilla was
based in Lorient the submarine had to leave the shelter of the Baltic and proceed there on its first
war patrol.xxi
Reichmann was supported by three able senior officers. His Chief Engineer was Hans
Döbereiner, aged 28, a Captain Lieutenant of Engineering. The temporary Second Watch Officer
for the voyage from Germany to France was a Lieutnant Zur See named Gunther Kempkes. A
member of the Crew of 1/1941, Kempkes was “inexperienced and conceited. He was not
respected by any of the crew.” Later made a prisoner of war from U-801/Brans, he was “arrogant
and ungrateful” towards his captors.xxii
The new Second Watch Officer (2WO) was Lieutnant zur See Eduard Thon, aged 24,
who had previously served on U-158 under Erwin Rostin, possibly on his highly successful
patrol to Hatteras during which seven ships of just under 55,000 tons were sunk. The patrol
5 ended on 31 March, 1942 after 54 days, and so Thon would have been able to enjoy a 30-day
furlough on shore between leaving U-158 and joining U-153. His combat experience would have
been a welcome enhancement to U-153’s team. Reichmann’s First Watch Officer was Wolfgang
Felsch, OberLieutnant sur See, who turned 25 the week of the collision with U-583.
After a layover in Norway of less than 24 hours the crew set out for the North Sea.
Riechmann must have been exhausted by the coastwise navigation and anxious to be entering
enemy territory for the first time. Since the English Channel was too heavily patrolled by the
Allies, U-153 took a route north of the Shetland Islands south of the Faroes, and around Scotland
and Ireland.xxiii
Crossing over the western approaches the English Channel U-153 arrived in Lorient,
France – her new home – on the 30th of May, after a voyage of ten days. With so much U-boat
activity off the coasts of the United States and the Caribbean that month, the eastern Atlantic was
comparatively quiet, and Reichmann and his men found no opportunity to engage the enemy.
Finally, on the first of June 1942 U-153 was formally welcomed into to the 2nd Flotilla, which
was an attack group led by the veteran Corvette Captain Viktor Schütze, winner of the Knights
Cross with Oak Leaves, who had attacked 37 ships of 195,000 tons.xxiv
Reichmann and his crew were given less than a week to rest and recuperate before they
were sent out on their second – and final – patrol on 6th of June. In many ways the voyage
originating from Germany in May and culminating in the submarine’s loss two months later off
Panama represents a continuum of westward movement. Two days after their arrival and the day
following their entry into the 2nd Flotilla, Seaman Second Class Johann Dronskowski turned 20
years old. A day after their departure, while still transiting the Bay of Biscay, Machinist Warrant
Officer Ernst Bruns celebrated his 28th birthday.
Reichmann was quite reticent on the radio, which compared to his more loquacious
colleagues like Rostin in U-158, whose many radio signals led to the loss of his boat, was
probably a good thing. It is established that the Allies were using decoding devices to read
German submarine signals. They would then send this intelligence into the field so that hunterkiller groups could locate submarines, track them down from the skies and the surface of the seas
as well as sub-sea sonar, and sink them. From the re-constructed radio log, or KTB (Krieg’s Tag
Buch, or War Day Book), we know that U-153 checked in with headquarters on the 10th of June,
four days after departure.
Between the 13th and 14th the submarine made a bold sweep eastwards from the Azores,
towards mainland Portugal. Clearly Reichmann was hoping to intercept merchant marine traffic
approaching or leaving Europe, however the diversion left him empty handed.xxv On the 15th
Reichmann again sent the boat’s westward progress to Admiral Dönitz’s headquarters, called
Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, or B.d.U.. This was moved from Karneval France to Berlin.
6 On the 16th of June the boat experienced a near-miss. A “large freighter” was sighted
bearing 230 degrees, 450 miles southwest of the Azores Islands. Frustratingly, Reichmann
reported that because of problems with the diesel engines, he was unable to pursue the attractive
prey. No doubt this was an exasperating time for Reichmann and an anxious one for his engineer,
Döbereiner, could expect to have the commander breathing down his back to get the diesels back
into full operation.xxvi
The sub crew’s luck was about to change. By the 23rd of June U-153 had crossed the midway point of the Atlantic and was proceeding briskly for its assigned patrol area off the Panama
Canal Zone. On the 23rd of June U-153 recorded the first of several “radio checks” with fellow
U-boat U-156. U-156 was led by a living legend, Werner Hartenstein, who would go on to win
the Knights Cross.
U-153 came across U-156 in the midst of a veritable killing spree – on a single patrol of
77 days east of the Caribbean U-156 attacked 13 ships and disabled 55,000 tons of Allied
shipping. Overall, Hartenstein would attack 23 ships in his career and destroy or damage 117,500
tons of Allied trade. He was the central player in the Laconia incident in which his boat was
attacked by US aircraft despite undertaking a rescue mission and declaring truce in the clear via
radio. This resulted in an order for U-boat commanders not to rescue Allied survivors.xxvii
It must have been both tantalizing and frustrating for the men of U-153 to learn of the
exploits of such an ace in their very midst, whilst they had failed to bag a single enemy ship. It
would be like standing at the same spot on the coastline while the person next to you pulled up
fish after fish and your hook dangled empty. The next day U-156 sank the Willimantic nearby,
and U-153’s Machinist Warrant Officer Gustav Schaback turned 32 years old.
Perhaps based on a reported sighting from U-156, or possibly to put some space between
the two boats, Reichmann made a dog-leg to the northeast for a day, until the 24th.xxviii U-153
then resumed a southwest trajectory for the northeast corner of the Caribbean Sea.
On the 25th of June U-153’s luck changed. She came across the 5,268-ton British-flagged
motor ship Anglo-Canadian, making its plodding progress from the east coast of India to Cape
Town and from Ascension Island to Charleston, South Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland. The
ship, under Captain David John Williams, aged 37, had been at sea over three weeks when it
sailed into the crosshairs of Reichmann’s eager crew.
Launched in 1928 and owned by Nitrate Producers Steamship Company, the AngloCanadian had already experienced a dangerous voyage. Whilst waiting to load off Vizag
(Visakhapatnam, India) on 16th April 1942, the ship was dive bombed by Japanese aircraft for
two hours and set on fire. Later, once the fire was out, Captain Williams, chief Officer Bernard
Beavis and Carpenter Eugene Bergstrom carried one of the unexploded bombs off the ship.xxix
7 At 7:22 in the morning (local time) Reichmann lined up his forward torpedo tubes and
fired at the Anglo-Canadian. The projectiles were well-aimed, and the ship, which had been
sailing in ballast, quickly sank. Only one out of her crew of fifty, Third Radio Officer Leo
Maurice Housley, aged 18, was killed. His body was left aboard the ship, however he was
successful in sending an SOS message, which was picked up by the Putney Hill nearby. (Putney
Hill would be sunk the following day by U-203 under Rolf Mützelburg. One of her survivors,
Apprentice Alan Shard, later befriended a U-boat commander also living in Vancouver).xxx
The forty nine survivors of the Anglo- Canadian – including ten naval gunners - observed
that their attacker was approximately 200 feet (50 feet less than actual, but some of the stern may
have been submerged from view), and that it carried a “12 pounder gun apparently French A/A
gun looking like Oerlikon on aft deck.”xxxi At the time of the attack the ship was 600 nautical
miles northeast of Antigua, 650 miles southeast of Bermuda and 1,500 miles southwest and
downwind from the Azores. It would be a long voyage in open boats before they would make
land, and Felsch, Thon and Reichmann must have known it.
The British motor ship Anglo-Canadian, 5,628 tons: U-153’s first victim, on 25th June 1942.
Source: http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/1850.html, from the Allen Collection
It must have still been dark after the attack, because, at considerable peril to itself, the
men on U-153 are reported by Anglo-Canadian survivors to have turned on a search light to
assist them in searching for other survivors. This helped all but the stricken radio operator to
assemble on board the lifeboats. No doubt several of the survivors were in shock and might have
drowned otherwise. When asked for supplies, Reichmann and is officers provided the Brits with
15 cigarettes described as “American” in taste a well as precious water – quantity unknown. It
was the 19th birthday of Machnist Ludwig Fetzer.
Reichmann would demonstrate his humanity with each of the three ships he sank, helping
to muster crew aboard lifeboats, asking after the well-being of the survivors, and providing what
was asked for, within the constraints of wartime. Two factors contributed to his being able to do
so: U-153 sank the ships hundreds of miles outside of the Caribbean, where no Allied aircraft
were patrolling at the time, so he could afford to linger without great risk to his boat and his men.
8 Secondly, the very distance from land meant that the survivors needed as much help as they
could muster for the long open boat voyages ahead.
After a voyage of 16 days, all of the Anglo-Canadian survivors safely landed on the
island of St. Kitts, from which they were transferred on local schooner to Saint Martin. There
they met survivors of the Dutch motor ship Tysa (sunk by the Italian submarine Morosini) as
well as men from other Allied merchant ships cast adrift in the Axis onslaught on the Caribbean
that summer. These included men from the Willimantic, sunk by Hartenstein in U-156 on the 24th
of June, the day after his radio conversation with Reichmann, as well as the Thomas McKean,
sunk on 29th June by U-505/Loewe.xxxii
Following the boat’s first success, Reichmann resumed his course for the Caribbean. On
the 26 , for whatever reason (a hunch? a lead from Hartenstein?) Reichmann made a diversion
towards the southeast for roughly 24 hours. He was rewarded by encountering the American
steamer Potlatch.xxxiii The attack took place well east northeast of the Virgin Islands. It was a
long attack and was to have ramifications for survivors landed in the Bahamas one month later.
Again U-153 provided cigarettes, but were neither asked for nor provided water.
th
Altogether forty nine men managed to get away from the doomed ship in between three
and four minutes. The torpedo had hit on the port side, aft of the bridge, creating a large hole at
the waterline and tilting the ship sternward immediately. When the port lifeboat was lowered,
the aft falls failed, spilling the men inside it into the water. What happened next is best described
by an eye-witness, Henry Jensen, one of the merchant sailors:
“The boat hit the water. A wave immediately swamped it and it was sucked into
the torpedo hole under our feet. Jonah [Navy Gunner Jake Jatho]xxxiv hauled himself up,
but I was lower down and in the water up to my knees, hanging on by my left hand. I saw
a small bare foot floating by me; I grabbed it, but the suction tore it out of my grasp and
it disappeared into the ship. Later I found out that it was Paleragas, our injured assistant
engineer, who had been put into the boat. I seemed as if the whole ocean was pouring
into the Potlatch. My shoes and socks were sucked right off my feet.”xxxv
Men swam towards the rafts and boarded them, or were pulled aboard the lifeboat. While
they did so, Reichmann brought his submarine in among the wreckage. Seeing two of the huge
crates (containing trucks, according to Lapointxxxvi) still floating, they fired into them with deck
guns (“rifle fire”) and sank them. Gunner Estil Dempsey Rugglesxxxvii and Jensen said that as
many as 30 German sailors lined the decks and conning tower, though this would have been
nearly two-thirds of the complement. If true (we have no German version of events to go on),
then Reichmann was allowing a number of his men the chance to stretch their legs, get some
sun, witness and photograph the enemy up close. In this he was not unique amongst skippers.
9 There was so much oil on the water that Ruggles said when he climbed aboard a raft he
was, in his words, “blacker than any nigger,” and that the caramel pigment of the heavy fuel oil
for bunkers was stained by the sun into his skin, and stayed that way for two months. The
Americans must have made quite a sight to the comparatively clean German sailors.
Reichmann pulled the sub along the life raft and his men used a boat hook to pull the raft
along the submarine’s starboard side. The men were pre-occupied with saving themselves, and
most of the crew believed that their captain, John “Jack” Lapoint had indeed drowned with the
ship. An officer asked for the master, but when he was told by Jensen and others that the captain
had gone down with the ship, he pursed his lips in impatience. Next to him stood a German
officer with an open book, taking notes. These men were almost certainly Thon and Felsch –
why would Reichmann risk standing on the sub’s deck to interview survivors who might be
armed?
The German officer asked in fairly good English for the cargo and destination as well as
the name of the ship. Since some of the life rings still said Narcissus, the crew gave the U-boat
skipper this erroneous information as the ship’s name (even though some of the crates were
marked Potlatch), and the Germans accepted it. Reichmann subsequently radioed that he had
sunk the Narcissus.
The American steam ship Potlatch, ex-Narcissus, of 6,085 tons was sunk by U-153/Reichmann on 27 June, 1942.
Photograph by the US Coast Guard on the 6th of June, 1942 in New York – the same day that U-153 set off from
Lorient. Note the trucks carrying liquid tanks on their chassis. This led to confusion over whether the ship carried
actual combat tanks.
Source: Steamship Historical Society of America archives, Cranston RI, USA, www.sshsa.org
Next the submariners asked if there was anything that the survivors needed. When told
that they needed cigarettes, they shared two packets of German cigarettes, but Dempsey
described these as “not fit to smoke.” Jensen called them “ersatz” or fake. However within a few
days they were improvising “cigarettes” out of old rope ends and wasting matches to light them.
On the question of water, Dorothy MacDowellxxxviii interviewed Lieutenant Dorsey
Lybrand, head of the naval gun crew, and wrote that “Water was requested by the men of the
10 raft, but either there was a misunderstanding or a deliberate denial, for there was no water
given.” Given that U-153 had provided water for the Anglo-Canadian survivors just 48 hours
previously, it would appear that U-153’s men were not made aware by the Potlatch survivors of
an urgent need for water. If they had been, based on recent experience, they would have
provided it. After all, U-153 was capable of producing fresh water from salt, using its
condensers.
McDowell further notes that the submarine “submerged leaving no further damage or
deaths” – as though the men were relieved that the sub didn’t open fire on them in the water,
something Allied propagandists would have had them believe could happen.xxxix
The submarine crew was described as well tanned. The American sailors observed a 30 x
14-inch crest on the submarine’s conning tower which they described as “a golden serpent or
dragon on a blue background, with crossed broad axes on the lower part.” In fact the emblem of
U-153 represents the golden bow of a Viking ship with a broad axe behind it, and a shield of
yellow with a red fringe and a green plant, on a blue background for the sea and the sky, as
follows:
Emblem of U-153 brought to life from black and white photographs by being colored in.
Sources: http://www.mille-sabords.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=40300&pid=356130&st =175&#entry356130,
and http://www.u-historia.com/uhistoria/historia/huboots/u100-u199/u0153/u153.htm
Jensen described their questioner as “not more than twenty-three. He wore an open shirt,
shorts and boots, and brown hair showed under his gold-encrusted cap. He certainly had bearing
and good looks.” This officer had to have been Sub Lieutenant of the Sea Wolfgang Felsch, First
Watch Officer (second in command), who was 25. Reichmann was 36, and Thon was 34 and it is
unlikely that Jensen’s estimate of the man’s age was over a decade wide of the mark. Jensen,
after all, was in his late teens and presumably a decent judge of someone in their early twenties.
When told the name of the ship was Narcissus the questioner confirmed with the man
holding the notebook, who said “Ja,” “…checked the name off in his book and flipped up his
mustaches. I could have bashed his face in” wrote the 18-year-old Jensen.
11 Felsch then asked the Second Officer of the Potlatch, Frederick Sorensen, about the
ship’s armament, but the merchant and navy crew did not want to volunteer this valuable and
potentially damaging information to their enemies. On their refusal to answer “the sub
commander became angry, threatened those on the raft – and the information was given.” Jensen
said that “the sub commander gave a signal, and the two submachine guns were turned and
pointed at my chest. Someone behind me shouted “Four twenty-millimeters and one four-inch
gun!” xl
“That broke the tension. The machine guns were pointed skyward. “For what company
are you sailing? The commander asked quietly. “The United States Government.” “Government,
government? What company I asked you?” … “The Shipping Board, as in the last war.” Because
of her age and condition, the men on the Potlatch often referred to their ship as a carryover from
the First World War, however she was built in 1920, a year later. “ ….[I]n a different tone he
asked ‘Is there anything I can do for you? Is anyone hurt?” to which Jensen’s reply was “Not
that I know of.”
Without their captain nearby the mostly young and inexperienced merchant mariners and
naval gunners didn’t ask for more than cigarettes, where Captain Lapoint might have requested
charts, a sextant, and medical supplies, for which there was an urgent need. There is no limit to
what skippers could ask for; Captain Luis Kenedy of the Wawaloam asked his attacker Walter
Schug of U-86 for a tow back to Canada in August, 1942.xli Survivor Sol Goodman, the vice
mayor of a small town before the war and a naval gunner during it, told a reporter that “they
wanted the captain, but we told them that he was lost.”xlii
Another navy gunner, Thomas Marion King, wrote that “I had not seen the submarine
and was dumbfounded when it broke surface right under our noses. The submarine commander
called to the skipper in an Oxford accent. He was standing on the submarine deck flanked by
two or three other officers. He asked who our captain was… the sub moved closer to us. He
seemed to be pretty mad at something and said, “Why didn’t you get your other life-boat off?
What kind of sailors are you that you let one of your boats go down with your ship?”
“The captain [actually Sorensen or Chief Mate Larsen] explained that the other boat had
been swamped when the ship began to list from the torpedo trough the engine room.” Here King
is incorrect, as Captain Lapoint, in his detailed log of events, makes no mention of speaking with
submariners directly. Bleeding from his mouth, Lapoint was busy at that time surviving having
been dragged down with the ship, tangled in the rigging, breaking his ribs.
King opines: “I thought the sub commander had a lot of nerve for bawling us out for not
getting the boat off, as the ship went down in three minutes. I thought we were pretty lucky to
get off at all.”xliii With an understanding of Reichmann’s history – having sunk a friendly sub –
as well as his concern for the men on the Anglo-Canadian, it appears that he – or Felsch – were
exasperated not so much with the men of the Potlatch as with the fact that half of the available
life boats for their survival were destroyed.
12 Under most circumstances the submariners must have figured they were looking at dead
men floating: that with only a 25’ boat for 49 men some 500 miles from land, the crew of the
Potlatch were as good as doomed. No doubt the men on U-153 on some level felt guilt and
complicity in the fate of the helpless men in front of them.
Deck Engineer Alfonso Delatorre published a vivid account of the sinking in a men’s
magazine twenty two years later. Crippled in the attack by a broken leg, Delatorre was
nevertheless dragged on board one of the rafts. He described the interaction with the submarine
crew thus:
“I’d been dry [on the raft] no more than ten minutes when all heads turned at a
tremendous turbulence in the water just yards off our stern. My insides, and probably
everyone else’s, tightened into a knot of fear as we witnessed the surfacing of the enemy
U-boat. We came face to face with one of Hitler’s almost legendary undersea monsters.
These were the raiders responsible for the 400-odd Allied ships swallowed by the
Atlantic since Pearl Harbor. The two previous vessels I had quit were among them…xliv
“Immediately enemy sailors emerged from the hatches and manned the guns. We sat
silently, rocking in the waves, bracing ourselves for whatever might follow. Then their young
commandant came on deck. He hailed us in English….” After a roster of questions about cargo,
armament, destination “…he said “Has anyone been hurt badly?” Luckily I had expected this
question, and told the chief [Mate Larsen] to say “No,” which he did. I would take my chances
in an open boat with my comrades a million times before entering any German hospital or
whatever else might await me on the other side.”
Delatorre’s narrative continues: “By now we had drifted alongside the U-boat and could
plainly see the features of the sailors, who looked Italian. Most of them were in shorts and
carried machine guns. Other members of the crew were shooting motion picture films of our
lifeboat and the wreckage. The commandant dropped blankets and some German cigarettes into
our boat. He also promised to scour the area for any survivors.”xlv As fate would have it, the
motion and still pictures would not survive the war – and nor would Delatorre have if he had
allowed himself to be taken prisoner aboard U-153.
This is the only reference to blankets being provided to the survivors. Certainly they
would have been needed: amongst the forty nine Potlatch men there were just three pairs of
shoes and a handful of shirts. Thirteen of the survivors were stark naked, and men like Cadet
Michael Carbotti, of Mediterranean complexion, shared his only shirt with Lieutenant Lybrand,
who had very fair skin being burnt by the sun. Blankets would have been very handy against the
night-time chill, particularly for Delatorre, whose leg was broken above the knee. Since only one
out of a dozen or more first-hand accounts mentions blankets, the report, written over two
decades later, is probably not reliable on this point.
13 Wrote King: “The sub commander wanted to know what cargo we carried and the
captain said he didn’t know, that the manifest was sealed.” Anyone with eyes could have seen
the deck of the Potlatch had been loaded with trucks, and the water was littered with floating
debris such as crates and spare tires. “The sub commander’s next question was “What’s the
name of your ship?” Our Captain [one of the sailors] replied that he didn’t know. The sub
commander laughed, as the name was printed on the life jackets.” King continued:
“The sub commander then asked if any of the men had been hurt, and he swung
around a couple of times to see if there were any more men in the water. Not finding any
he came back to us and pulled some cigarettes from his pockets and tossed them to us.
The captain [Mate Sorensen] put them in the locker with the rest of the emergency
supplies. Then he told us were three hundred miles from land and that if we headed due
west we would make landfall.”
“Then as he turned to go below he waved to us. “Lots of luck” he said. All of them were
laughing as they went below. We watched him pull away and submerge. As his periscope sank
out of sight we shouted things at him that could not be printed.”xlvi Henry Jensen continues:
“Good luck, gentlemen” the commander said as he saluted us. We returned the salute. As they
moved away they began using their deck guns to sink trucks – and Lord how they missed!”
According to Captain Lapoint, “…the raft was shoved clear of the sub. The sub cruised
among the wreckage, picking up several of the tires attached to the wheels which were floating
around, taking some on board.” Perhaps emboldened by the knowledge that no SSSS or SOS had
been sent, the sub remained in the vicinity of the Potlatch sinking until nightfall, lurking
amongst the wreckage. However Lapoint relates that “It was still on the surface, heading due
east when I left with the rafts in tow.”xlvii
The forty nine men in the single lifeboat and four rafts were faced with a challenge: how
to navigate at least 600 miles in a boat without a motor that had to tow four crowded bits of
deadweight, with limited supplies. Amazingly, 47 out of 49 of the survivors subsisted on little or
no rations for the last two weeks of a 29-day open boat voyage of over 1,125 nautical miles.
They landed in Inagua and later Acklins Bahamas after nearly a month, the assistant cook David
Parson dying in Captain Lapoint’s arms within sight of rescue.
U-153 motored west for a day, then on the 28th turned north-northwest. The same day
they contacted U-68, outbound from the Caribbean under Karl-Friedrich Merten, another
Knights-Cross-holding ace. On its patrol in the area U-68 was to sink seven ships worth 50,774
tons. Overall, Merten would accrue 27 ships sunk for over 170,000 tons - a very impressive total
and more than Hartenstein’s on U-156. U-153 radioed to U-68 that it intended to carry out an
attack for the next ten hours. Reichmann, who was 275 miles northeast of Merten, asked U-68 to
14 maintain radio bearings on his submarine during that time, in case the two boats might work
together – something which turned out to be unnecessary.
U-153 encountered the Ruth, 4,833-ton American steamer on its way from Rio de Janeiro
to Baltimore Maryland via Trinidad with 5,000 tons of manganese ore. This was to prove the last
of its victims, on the 29th of June.xlviii The survivors of the Ruth gave the wrong position, stating
at first that the ship had been sunk in the Crooked Island Passage in the Bahamas. This may have
been ignorance of their true position, or perhaps because that was where the ship was supposed
to be according to Allied routing instructions. This confusion bled into both Allied survivor
reports and German records.
The matter has been resolved now using radio reports from U-153. Since the sub never
went anywhere near Crooked Island, was confirmed to have sunk the Ruth, and could not have
deviated from its known course to reach the Bahamas and return to its course in the time
provided, the position has been corrected.
In an act of compassion Reichmann collected a member of the Ruth’s crew, pulled him
onto the deck of the submarine, motored over and put him in a life raft with three other survivors.
The survivors – Harold Dayse, Andrews, Dowdin and Whitecotton - were to spend three days
drifting in the area before being rescued by the USS Cory DD 463, north of Puerto Rico.
The survivors told their rescuers that the “Captain, about 24, asked survivors name of
ship, number of crew, cargo, home port and why the vessel sank so quickly.” Since First Watch
Officer Felsch was 25 at the time, and Reichmann was eleven years older, it appears that Felsch
and not the commander questioned the survivors. This is consistent with survivor statements
from Potlatch and Anglo-Canadian. The fact that Felsch asked why the ship sank so quickly
illustrates either a concern for the sudden loss of the ship and the majority of its complement, and
also a curiosity about the mechanics of ship destruction – a business in which the U-153 had only
begun that week.
The salient point about the encounter between the U-153 and Ruth on the high seas that
June afternoon is that out of 35 merchant marine officers and crew under Robert Melville Callis
and four armed guard, all but four perished. Within 15 days all 52 men of U-153 would also be
drowned. So the rendezvous between 91 men in the empty stretches of the ocean meant that the
Ruth survivors were the last to see the U-boat men alive. Normally it was the other way round –
that the submariners were witness to the painful final hours of mangled and freezing merchant
seamen.
15 US Steamship Ruth, sunk by U-153 northeast of Anguilla on 29 June 1942, leaving only four survivors.
Source: Capt. Arthur Moore, “A Careless Word, a Needless Sinking,” US Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point,
NY, 1983/1990, p.245
Based on treatment of 102 Allied survivors (49 each from the Anglo-Canadian and
Potlatch, and four from the Ruth), it is possible to discern a pattern in Reichmann’s behavior. In
all instances he seems to have used First Watch Officer Felsch as the point person or liaison with
the survivors. Felsch, however, can be presumed to have been carrying out the instructions and
wishes of Reichmann. What emerges is the picture of a commander sincerely concerned for the
well-being of his victims, albeit after having sunk their homes and livelihoods from under them.
This is notwithstanding that Potlatch survivors alleged that U-153’s crew pointed machine guns
at their chests in order to obtain sensitive military information from them.
Though it is conjectural, the evidence suggests that Reichmann did not take pleasure in
killing his enemy. The same cannot be said of other members of the Kriegsmarine, including
Helmuth von Ruckteschell,xlix commander of the auxiliary raider Widder, which sank the Anglo
Saxon on 21 August 1940 and is alleged to have machine-gunned sailors as they scrambled off
the ship.l
There may be a link between Reichmann’s hospitalization and his submarine’s accidental
killing of 45 of their comrades. Furthermore, it would appear that not just U-153 but Reichmann
needed time out for repairs and recuperation following the sinking of U-583. By going out of his
way to help survivors of the ships he sank, Reichmann may have been atoning for the loss of life
caused less than two years earlier in his career.
On the 1st of July, one day out of the Caribbean, Machinist’s Mate Walter-Kurt Grossgart
turned 28 years of age. The same day Reichmann was promoted from Corvette to Frigate
Captain. It is not known whether this promotion was transmitted to U-153, however it was
customary for headquarters to have done so. U-153 entered the Caribbean unmolested, utilizing
the Anegada Passage inbound on the night of the 2nd to 3rd of July. Though assigned to patrol
Panama, on the 5th of July Reichmann deviated from its assigned patrol area to investigate the
waters around Curacao, site of a major refinery in the Dutch Antilles, north of Venezuela.
16 The following day, after exactly one month on patrol, the U-boat was sighted on the
surface by a Douglas A-20A Havoc type aircraft from the United States Air Force. Piloted by
Lieutenant Marshall E. Groover, Jr. a member of the 59th Squadron based at Hato Field on
Curacao, the aircraft zoomed in for attack.li Whilst diving down he released four depth charges
aimed along the beam of the submarine. They landed along the swirl left by the crash-diving sub.
At most they were only successful in damaging the retreating U-boat.
A Douglas A20A Havoc like the one which Marshall E. Groover Jr. attacked U-153 from off Columbia.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-20_Havoc
The position of the attack was north of Cabo de la Vela, Columbia, or west of Curacao
and north of Bahia de Portete. This is 120 nautical miles west of Aruba and only 15 miles north
of the peninsula guarding the western end of Maracaibo Bay, Venezuela. Though bubbles were
observed, U-153 appears to have escaped with only damage. On that day Radio Officer Ernst
Hoffmann turned 20. The following day Machinist’s Mate Max Buchwitz turned 25 years old.
Reichmann continued west towards Panama, following the coast. He was still some 500
miles east of Panama. Four days later a mysterious radio transmission is said to have been sent
by U-153 to U-boat headquarters in France. In it, Reichmann is said to have repeated the details
of the sinking of the Ruth. Gaylord Kelshall in U-Boats in the Caribbeanlii makes much of this
transmission, however it does not appear in the reconstructed war diary of the boat, which lists
the last transmission received as occurring on the 30th of June – the day after the Ruth attack,
which makes the most sense.
Since there was no reason for Riechmann to have imperiled himself and his boat over
repeating an old transmission – one that had already been made successfully, and since no
mention was made of the air attack off Columbia, it is likely that this transmission never
occurred, but was a clerical error entered under the incorrect date. The Allies, however find such
a signal useful in confirming that U-153 survived her attack off Columbia and ultimately met its
end off Panama roughly eight days later. This is because they are thus able to spread credit for
17 the U-boat’s sinking across a number of navy ships and aircraft, rather than giving it exclusively
to a solo pilot. The remains of U-153 have not been located as of the end of 2012.
On the 11th of July Reichmann made a brazen, and questionable, attack on a
comparatively small target. He fired five torpedoes at the US Navy net tender USS Mimosa AN
26, YN 21,liii sixty miles from Almirante, near Colon, Panama. Three of the torpedoes passed
under the Mimosa, whose draft was only twelve feet. The other two simply missed their target.
Firing five torpedoes in quick succession would have required Reichmann to utilize both his bow
and stern torpedo tubes, since there are four bow tubes, and reloading torpedoes took
considerable time.
The Mimosa was built in Cleveland Ohio and launched on 15 March, 1941. She was
commissioned under Lieutenant W. L. Freeburn on the 28th of October 1941 and had thus only
been operational for eight months at the time of her attack. She was on her way back from laying
anti-torpedo nets in the port of Puerto Castilla, Honduras, some 600 miles to the north,liv no
doubt as a reaction to U-161’s attack on Puerto Limon, Costa Rica earlier in the year.lv
Why Reichmann would have expended five highly valuable torpedoes (about one third of
his remaining armament following the attacks on three ships), remains unclear. Mimosa was only
560 tons, an Aloe-class ship of only 163 feet length, and 30.5 foot beam. She only had a single
diesel engine and was capable of 12.5 knots. Armed with a 3-inch gun and three 20-milimeter
machine guns and manned by 48 men, she should have easily been dispatched by the far superior
U-153. The fact that she was not sunk sealed the doom of the invading submarine.
Sister ship of Aloe-class net tender USS Mimosa, YN 21, AN 26, Aloe-class net tender attacked by U-153 on 10
July 1942 off Panama. Mimosa went on to serve at Saipan, and her commander, W. L. Freeburn helped construct
Mulberry piers Omaha Beach on D-Day.
Source: shipscribe.com/usnaux/AN/AN06, and europebattlefieldstours.com/OmahaSector/OmahaSector1
Mimosa scurried into nearby Colon, Panama to report the attack. She called up aircraft
stationed at nearby Coco Solo airfield and they immediately pursued U-153, dropping depth
charges where the submarine was believed to lie. Given that its location was known and in close
18 proximity to a major US navy base and naval air station, it should have only been a matter of
time before U-153 became the first German submarine sunk in the Caribbean Sea.
It seems clear that Reichmann underestimated the strength of US anti-submarine
defenses. It is equally clear that the Americans were not about to allow a highly aggressive,
rogue submarine disrupt the vital supply link of Panama. Massive amounts of men and materiel
were flowing through the canal to US efforts against the Japanese in the Pacific. The attack on
Pearl Harbor had occurred only seven months previously. Mimosa had arrived from the Great
Lakes via Jacksonville, Florida in December of 1941, specifically “to bolster the defenses of the
high priority Panama Canal.”lvi
U-153 had stumbled into a veritable hornet’s nest. Fourteen Allied ships had been
attacked in recent weeks off Panama by U-172/Emmermann (Lebore, Motorex, Bennestvet, and
Resolute), U-68/Merten (Surrey, whose survivors were picked up by the schooner Resolute,
Ardenvohr, Port Montreal, and Frimaire) and U-159/Witte (Edith, Fort Good Hope, Sixaola,
Solon Turman, Flora, and Ante Matkovic). Meanwhile U-504/Poske and U-107/Gelhaus sank
another dozen or so ships in the Yucatan Channel to the north.lvii The Allies, without enough
resources in the area at the time, were thrown off balance.
The attack on the Resolute, an unarmed interisland Columbian schooner, was particularly
galling to the Allies. Theodore Roscoe in his United States Destroyer Operations of World War
II claimed that “the U-boat closed to machine-gun range and opened fire, slaughtering the
women and children who stood screaming on the schooner’s deck.”lviii Out of the ten persons on
board, six were killed and four survived. The presence of women and children on board has not
been verified. The attack was interrupted by the arrival of an Allied plane. The skipper, Carl
Emmermann was debilitated by a medical condition shortly thereafter. Whatever the facts of the
case, the Americans believed that a slaughter of innocents had occurred aboard the Resolute, and
were out for revenge.
Just ten days before U-153 was attacked, U-161 under the daring Albrecht Achilles (who
had also penetrated Trinidad’s Port of Spain and Saint Lucia’s Castries Harbour earlier that
spring) torpedoed and (temporarily) sank the San Pablo in Puerto Limon harbor, Costa Rica. The
attack killed 23 stevedores and two of the ship’s crew and further enflamed sentiment against
Axis invaders. As Roscoe put it, “something had to be done quickly.”
A month before U-153’s arrival, as a result of U-159’s depredations, the port of
Cristobal, in Colon, was closed to Caribbean-bound ships. US Navy Admiral Van Hook sent a
Task Group to the defense of the area, including the destroyers USS Edison DD 439 and USS
Barry DDG 52, as well as navy and army aircraft. USS Landsdowne DD 486 would follow.lix
On the 13th of July, a day before Machinist Ernst Witte was to turn 21 years of age, U153 was dogged by the US Navy patrol craft Evelyn R, PC 458, under Lieutenant (Junior Grade)
Matthew Vaughan Carson, Jr.lx Both Carson and his command had interesting stories. Born in
19 Cleburne Texas, Carson obtained his law degree in 1934 at the age of 23. He was practicing oil
and gas law in Corpus Christi and Fort Worth, Texas when was commissioned an Ensign in the
US Naval Reserves on 23 May, 1938. Two years later, in December 1940 he was called to active
service.
The Patrol Craft, or PC 458 had humble roots but a promotion in its immediate future.
She was built as a steam yacht named Ena J IV at the boatyard of George Lawley and Sons in
Neponset, Massachusetts in 1923.lxi The yacht’s overall length was an impressive 120 feet, her
width 20 feet and draft 7.6 feet. Her second name was Kooyung II. By 1940 the vessel’s name
had changed again to Evelyn R II. On the 21st of August of that year the US Navy acquired her
from Mr. W. R. Reid of Houston Texas. She was partially converted to a Patrol Craft in
Galveston.lxii
On the 16th of January, 1941 Evelyn R II was commissioned into the US Navy under the
command of Lieutenant Carson. Two days later, on the 18th of January the re-named PC 458
sailed from Galveston to Charleston, South Carolina, where a final refit extended until February.
In mid-March PC 458 reported to the 15th Naval District and was assigned to Panama.
At 3:55 am on the morning of the 13th of July a Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat
detected U-153 on the surface less than 100 miles west of Colon. Immediately diving in for an
attack, the plane managed to straddle the submarine with four depth charges. It also dropped
flares to illuminate its prey. As Roscoe wrote, the sub was “undoubtedly hurt,” but managed to
crash dive to a safer depth. The hunt for U-153 was on.
A Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat like the ones which identified by radar and attacked U-153.
Source; http://blog.covingtonaircraft.com/2012/09/18/history-of-the-flying-boat-part-5/
Carson on the former yacht Evelyn R was ordered to the location. At 20 knots it would
have taken them four hours to reach the area, and it did. On arrival after 08:00 the men on PC
458 observed an oil slick and moved in for a kill, calling in reinforcements by air and sea. With
a PBY supporting him overhead Carson delivered a barrage of four depth charges ahead of the
oily bubbles and on another run delivered two more, bringing the number of bombs sent to U153 to ten.lxiii
20 Three hours later, at 10:50 am Carson was ready to let others have a go. For the next ten
hours the PBY and several US Army aircraft dropped a series of eight depth charges and 24
smaller bombs on the target. The chase extended for 25 miles and resulted in a total of 42
projectiles being hurled at the slowly escaping sub. It would appear that one or more of the
charges ruptured a fuel tank, possibly a saddle tank, on U-153. This would cause the sub to leave
a potentially fatal tell-tale trail of oil above it on the surface, for the enemy to see. One of the
only ways to repair it would be to surface and send a repair team on deck – something that was
obviously not possible whilst the sub was under attack. Also Reichmann may not have known of
the oil leak.
According to his citation for the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V,” Carson “directed
the PC 458 in a skillfully coordinated depth-charge attack on the target and contributed to the
destruction of one of the enemy’s vital combatant ships as evidenced by the appearance of an oil
slick and a large quantity of air bubbles on the surface of the water.” The PC was nineteen years
old at the time, and her commander thirty two.
The position of the culmination of the attack was 09.46 north by 81.29 west, or 25 miles
northeast of Panama’s remote Isla Escudo de Varaguas. The depth there is some 9,000 feet. This
is 80 miles due west of the US navy base station at Colon and the air base at Coco Solo. At least
two PBY Catalina flying boats were dispatched to the scene to pin down the U-boat until larger
ships could arrive.
PC 458, ex-Evelyn R II, commanded by Matthew Carson off Panama against U-153 on July 13, 1942
Source: ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-1944-U-S-NAVY-PC-458-SUBMARINE-CHASER-WAR-SHIP-RPPC-REALPHOTO-POSTCARD-/271071282819
Next on the scene was the USS Landsdowne DD 486, under the command of Captain
William Renwick Smedberg, III. Her keel was laid down on the 31st of July 1941 at the Federal
Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Newark Bay, New Jersey. The Landsdowne was
designated flagship of Destroyer Division 24, and sailed for the Canal Zone.lxiv Along the way,
off Cape Hatteras on 3 July 1942, she delivered a “severe depth charge attack,” resulting in
“large quantities of oil” bubbling to the surface.lxv However no post-war records corroborate that
21 the attack was against a German U-boat. Rather, it is likely that the Landsdowne had detected
and attacked one of the hundreds of hulks which litter Cape Hatteras, perhaps even one sunk by a
U-boat in what was known as ‘torpedo junction.’
Proceeding south, Landsdowne is said to have escorted a convoy to Panama. The most
likely point of departure would have been either Guantanamo or Key West. Since no merchant
marine convoy is recorded as having left in Landsdowne’s time window, it is likely that the
destroyer escorted a special convoy composed of naval assets being rushed to the Pacific to fight
the Japanese. To cover the necessary 1,600 or so miles without stopping she would have had to
have maintained over seven knots average speed. It is likely she stopped to take on bunkers and
meet the convoy, and kept up a higher average speed underway in less time underway.
At any event, Landsdowne did not arrive off Cristobal, near Colon, until the morning of
the 13 of July, just as the PBY was vectoring Carson and PC 458 towards U-153. The destroyer
was ordered to the scene immediately and at top speed. It took Smedberg and his crew until 6:30
pm to reach the site of Carson’s last attack.
th
Smedberg did not waste time. Using ASDIC equipment superior to that aboard a Patrol
Craft, Landsdowne’s men quickly picked up the trail of a large metal object moving underwater.
Named after an anti-submarine investigating committee, ASDIC works by transmitting an
acoustic pulse under water and measuring the distance over time of the returning echo. It works
like Sonar, which stands for sound navigation ranging.lxvi
It took Landsdowne only fifteen minutes from taking over from PC 458 to locating U153. According to Roscoe, “after setting to work to get a bead on the target… the DD picked up
a sharp sound contact.”
“The destroyermen raced to battle stations. Smedberg maneuvered his ship into
attack position. A brisk run. A pattern of 11 depth charges appropriately laid. Thunder
under the sea. Then up came a great spreading swell of oil that carpeted the nearby seascape. Landsdowne probed the area with detection gear. Sound instruments could obtain
no answering echo from water 1,500 fathoms deep.”lxvii
The citation for the award of the Legion of Merit with a Gold Star with Combat “V”,
awarded on May 12, 1943, describes Smedberg’s role in the ensuing attack. “His ship made
contact with an enemy submarine and attack was made with depth charges. The attack was
accurate, oil and air bubbles in large quantities burst to the surface, and it was determined that
the submarine was not under control.”lxviii “A night of radar searching found nothing on the
surface. But next day oil was still rising from the depths.”lxix
22 The destroyer USS Landsdowne, DD 486, credited with sinking U-153 off Panama.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lansdowne_(DD-486)
July the 13th was also a dangerous day to be an American submarine off Colon. Though
the details are limited, numerous sources report that in the heightened alert surrounding the
detection and attack on U-153 Allied forces initiated friendly fire. During the hunt for U-153 the
submarine USS S 16 SS 121 was accidentally damaged by a US Army Air Force plane off
Panama.lxx The 22-year old sub built by the Lake Torpedo Boat Company of Bridgeport,
Connecticut was under the command of Lieutenant Commander Oscar E. Hagberg when
damaged off Panama by an American pilot who clearly mistook her for a German U-boat.
Built between 1918 and 1919 for the First World War, S 16 was 218 feet long and
displaced 854 tons surfaced.lxxi By comparison the U-153 was 253 feet long and displaced 740
tons. The attack coincided with the attacks by multiple aircraft and two surface ships on the
Atlantic/Caribbean side of the Panama Canal. Not surprisingly, though it is cited by the German
historian Jürgen Rohwer in his Chronology of the War at Sea, Allies make only very sparing
references to this self-inflicted damage.
USS S 16, SS 121, the World War I-vintage sub accidentally attacked by USAAF aircraft on 13 July 1942.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_S-16_(SS-121)
The attack on U-153 took the combined efforts of at least two PBYs, two US Army
aircraft, a patrol craft and a destroyer. Together they expended at least 53 bombs. By contrast, in
a much simpler attack, Second Lieutenant Mario Ramirez Delgado of the Cuban gunboat CS
23 13lxxii utilized only three depth charges set at different depths to destroy U-176/Dierksen off the
northwest coast of Cuba, on 15 May 1943. Delgado used two further depth charges to finish off
the job. That being said, some Allied hunts for U-boats lasted days and cost hundreds of depth
charges, and were not always successful. According to Gaylord Keshall, author of The U-Boat War in the Caribbean, “Surface
escorts only sank three of the seventeen U-boats lost in the area, despite hundreds of contacts an
depth-charge attacks.”lxxiii U-176 was sunk by the Cuban CS 13, and U-94 under Otto Ites was
sunk by being rammed twice by HMCS Oakville, a Canadian Flower-class Corvette on 28
August 1942 off the southwest coast of Haiti. Though aircraft and navy ships (Halifax and
Snowberry) were involved in the action, the Oakville received credit for sinking the sub, which
was boarded by a party led by Petty Officer A. J. Powell.lxxiv
This means that in completing the sinking of U-153 the Landsdowne was, by elimination,
the only US surface ship to succeed in sinking a German U-boat in the Caribbean in the duration
of the war, as well as being the first Allied surface ship to do so. This is even more remarkable
given that the destroyer arrived in Panama on the day of the successful attack.
Landsdowne was to operate under the Commander of the Panama Sea Frontier until
August 21 1942 before being dispatched to the Pacific. Five weeks after the U-153 attack she
transited the Panama Canal. In the war against the Japanese Landsdowne sank the disabled
aircraft carrier USS Wasp CV 7, on the way to earning an impressive twelve battle stars for war
service. At the culmination of the campaign Landsdowne carried Japanese emissaries from
Yokohama to the battleship USS Missouri for the signing of the surrender documents on the 2nd
of September 1945. She was ultimately sold to the Turkish government, renamed TCG
Gaziantep DD 344 and served in the Turkish navy until 1973.lxxv
William Renwick Smedberg III went on to become a Vice Admiral in the US Navy. His
family lineage traced members of the military going back to the Revolutionary War – his father
was a Brigadier General in the Army. Born in 1902, he graduated from the US Naval Academy
in 1926, two years after Reichmann left the Marineschule. Smedberg was 40 at the time of the
U-153 attack. From April to the end of 1943 Smedberg served as Lieutenant Commander under
Commander Pratt, aboard the USS Hudson, DD 475.lxxvi While Smedberg was aboard Hudson
took part in the attack on Bougainville, in the New Hebrides.
Between 1951 and 1952 Smedberg commanded the USS Iowa BB 61, a 45,000-ton
battleship known as the “The Big Stick,” which saw action in the Korean War. Later, Smedberg
served as the Commandant of the US Naval Academy between 1956 and 1958, during which he
signed two of his son’s diplomas. One of them also became an Admiral in his own right.
Smedberg was awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal for duties between 1960 and
1964, when he served as Chief of Naval Personnel and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. He
24 was known amongst sailors as an enlisted man’s admiral. His easygoing nature and sense of
humor made him popular amongst the rank and file. He died in 1994 at age 92.
Rear Admiral William Renwick Smedberg, III, skipper of the Landsdowne which sank U-153.
Source: Photo courtesy of Bill Gonyo, http://www.navsource.org/archives
Two months later, on the 10th of September, Marshall Groover, the pilot of the plane
which attacked U-153 off Columbia, survived an accident aboard an L-4A airplane at Curacao.
Originally from Balground Georgia, he received the Air Medal for overseas combat. Groover
married Louis White of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in August, 1944 while based at MacDill Field,
Florida. He retired from the Air Force on 31 March, 1961 as a full Colonel. A medical doctor, he
was a flight surgeon and specialist in heart disease and surgery on primates, later working for the
Florida State Department of Health in Jacksonville.lxxvii
The skipper of S 16 ended the war on a football pitch. After leading three patrols against
the Japanese in command of the submarine USS Albacore from Brisbane, Australia, Oscar
Hagberg went on to coach the US Naval Academy football team in Annapolis, Maryland,
between 1944 and 1945.lxxviii
Matthew Carson, skipper of the surface vessel which first engaged U-153 on the final day
of its patrol, would remain in the navy nearly two decades, returning to his roots as counsel. He
was promoted to Captain in 1954. He commanded the Submarine Chaser SC 1268 and was
Executive Officer of the destroyer escort USS Levy DE 162 before commanding the USS Leray
Wilson DE 414.
Evelyn R II (PC 458) was renamed Retort and reclassified PYc 49, for Coastal Patrol
Yacht, in a commissioning ceremony on the 15th of July 1943, almost exactly a year after she
helped dispatch U-153. It is likely that her name was changed from Evelyn after the USS Atik,
formerly known as Evelyn, was sunk by Reinhard Hardegen of U-123 with all hands after a
failed bid to act as a decoy or Q-Ship.lxxix Struck from the Naval Register on the 14th of October
1944 after 21 years afloat, the fate of this gallant yacht-turned-ship is unknown.lxxx
25 During his three patrols of 51 days Wilfried Reichmann and the men in his crew sank
only those ships recorded in this patrol, worth 16,186 tons total tonnage. He and his 51 comrades
are commemorated at the U-boat Memorial at Möltenort, Germany, near Kiel. The site is
“dedicated to the memory of all U-boat men of German Navies who lost their life at sea. More
than 35,000 names of the fallen German U-boat men of both World Wars are [memorialized] on
bronze plates.”lxxxi It overlooks the same Baltic Sea where Reichmann grew up over a century
ago.
26 BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Busch, Rainer & Roll, Hans-Joachim, German U-Boat Commanders of World War II, Greenhill
Books, London, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, US, 1999
Blair, Clay, Hitler’s U-Boat War, The Hunted, 1942-1945, Random House, New York, NY, US
1998, pp. 2 & p. 104
Carr, J. Revel, All Brave Sailors, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2004
Helgason, Gudmunder & Kolbicz, Rainer www.uboat.net, Germany, 2011 – 2012
Kelshall, Gaylord, The U-Boat War in the Caribbean, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, US,
1988 / 1994
Mason, Capt. Jerry, www.uboatarchive.net, Victoria, BC, Canada
Moore, Capt. Arthur, A Careless Word, a Needless Sinking, US Merchant Marine Academy,
Kings Point, NY, 1983/1990, p.245
Niestlé, Axel, German U-Boat Losses During World War II, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis,
MD, US, 1998
Wynn, Kenneth, U-boat Operations of the Second World War, Volume 1 and Volume 2, Naval
Institute Press, Annapolis MD US, 1998
Rohwer, Jürgen, Chronology of the War at Sea, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, US, 1972
/ 2005, p.180
Rohwer, Jürgen, Axis Submarine Successes of World War Two, Greenhill Books, London, Naval
Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, US, 1999
Roscoe, Theodore, United States Destroyer Operations of World War II, Naval Institute Press,
Annapolis, MD, US, 1953 / 1988
Russell, Joe, The Last Schoonerman, Nautical Publishing, Florida, 2006
27 END NOTES:
i
Photo and emblem also available at http://www.mille-sabords.com/forum/index.php?s=
d0252a44dc17a491b003d2bbeb5b548e&showtopic=40300&pid=356130&st=175&#entry356130 – not sure which
posted the identical images first, this or http://www.u-historia.com/uhistoria/historia/huboots/u100u199/u0153/u153.htm
ii
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ziemer/HEINRICH/osterwein.html - description of
Reichmann’s birthplace in East Prussia / Poland
iii
http://ubootwaffe.net/crews/crews.cgi?uquery=1;boatnum=153 – Crew list of U-153 with birthdays.
iv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Academy_at_M%C3%BCrwik – description and history of the German Naval
Academy in Murwick
v
Busch, Rainer & Roll, Hans-Joachim, German U-Boat Commanders of World War II, Greenhill Books, London,
Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, US, 1999
vi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Thiele
http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=9470
viii
All references to survivor statements from Anglo-Canadian, Potlatch and Ruth are taken from
www.uboatsbahamas.com, originally from the National Archives of the US (NARA) in Washington DC, unless
otherwise stated. The author’s researcher at NARA is Mike Constandy of www.westmorelandresearch.com.
ix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Schiff-_und_Maschinenbau
x
dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation
xi
http://uboat.net/types/ixc.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Type_IX_submarine
xii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Type_IX_submarine
xiii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Type_IX_submarine
vii
xiv
xv
uboataces.com/uboat-type-ix
Uboat.net, http://www.uboatarchive.net/DesignStudiesTypeIXC.htm
xvi
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_153_(Kriegsmarine)
http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-701INT.htm - U-701 Horst Degen interrogation report, and
http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-451INT.htm - U-451 interrogation report, 1st Oberleutnant zur See Kohler
xvii
xviii
uboat.net/forums/read.php?3,72162,72183#msg-72183
uboat.net/men/commanders/975
xx
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19790816&id=Y_QjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K 4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=7078,525630 – for the hoax note purporting to be from Ratsch of U-583
xix
xxi
http://www.uboat.net/boats/patrols/patrol_3939.html
ubootwaffe.net/crews
xxiii
http://www.uboat.net/boats/patrols/patrol_3939.html
xxiv
http://www.uboat.net/men/schuetze.html, Biography of commanders
xxv
http://www.uboat.net/boats/patrols/patrol_3940.html
xxvi
www.uboatarchive.net – KTB provided by Capt. Jerry Mason, translation the author’s
xxvii
http://www.uboat.net/men/hartenstein.htm, Commander biographies
xxviii
http://www.uboat.net/boats/patrols/patrol_3940.html
xxix
http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/war-sea/19579-merchant-navy-awards-33.html
xxx
The author met with Alan Shard in Vancouver in May 2012 and discussed his friendship with a U-boat
commander locally. The sub ace had the number of his U-boat customized to his car license plate.
xxxi
Survivors Statements, dropdown tab, www.uboatsbahamas.com
xxxii
Survivors Statements, dropdown tab, www.uboatsbahamas.com, and
http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/1871.html
xxii
28 xxxiii
The author has hundreds of pages of articles, interviews, photos, etc. about the Potlatch. If anything cited herein
is not clear, then the best citation is simply “author’s collection”.
xxxiv
The author is in contact with Jatho, who lives in Illinois. He identified himself as the one referenced as Jonah.
xxxv
Jensen’s article was serialized in Liberty magazine, June 12 and 19, 1943 under the title “Torpedoed”. It was
buy Henry Jensen as told to Earl Schenck. The author obtained a copy from the Weyerhaueser Lumber Company of
Oregon, USA (Megan Moholt) in 2012 and an original magazine copy online.
xxxvi
Capt. John Joseph Lapoint’s detailed log book of the open boat voyage was entitled “Nothing Sighted Today”.
It is on reserve at the Weyerhaueser Lumber Company archives, Megan Moholt, RG 12, non-periodic publications,
box 3.
xxxvii
Author’s interviews via phone with Ruggles 2011 and 2012, plus contemporary news articles
xxxviii
Aiken Standard, South Carolina, May 8, 1973, “Yesteryear S.S. Potlatch, Part II”
xxxix
Aiken Standard, South Carolina, May 8, 1973, “Yesteryear S.S. Potlatch, Part II”
xl
Jensen, “Torpedoed,” Liberty Magazine, June 19, 1943, see above citation/s
xli
Russell, Joe, The Last Schoonerman, Nautical Publishing, Florida, 2006
xlii
Petersburg Index, Virginia, 22 June 1958
Sunday Telegram, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Oct. 9, 1955
xliv
Action for Men, Vol. 8, No. 5, Vista Publications, New York NY, Sept. 1964
xlv
Action for Men, Vol. 8, No. 5, Vista Publications, New York NY, Sept. 1964
xlvi
Sunday Telegram, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Oct. 9, 1955
xlvii
Capt. John Joseph Lapoint’s detailed log book of the open boat voyage was entitled “Nothing Sighted Today.” It
is on reserve at the Weyerhaueser Lumber Company archives, Megan Moholt, RG 12, non-periodic publications,
box 3.
xlviii
All material from a short “Survivors Statements” from www.uboatsbahamas.com from US Archives at NARA.
xlix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Ruckteschell
xliii
l
Carr, J. Revel, All Brave Sailors, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2004
li
Kelshall, Gaylord, The U-Boat War in the Caribbean, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1988 / 1994, p. 119
Kelshall, Gaylord, The U-Boat War in the Caribbean, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1988 / 1994, p. 119
lii
liii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mimosa_(AN-26)
liv
uboat.net/allies/commanders/6569, history.navy.mil/danfs/m11/mimosa
http://www.uboat.net/boats/patrols/patrol_3985.html
lvi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mimosa_(AN-26)
lvii
www.uboat.net, Kelshall, general searches for ships sunk, Roscoe, p. 80
lviii
oocities.org/pentagon/camp/3166, Roscoe, p. 80
lix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lansdowne_(DD-486), and Roscoe, Theodore, United States Destroyer
Operations of World War II, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, US, 1953 / 1988, p. 80
lv
lx
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/OOB/PacFleet/Org-450501/index.html, and
http://www.reocities.com/pentagon/8932/Page11.html
lxi
http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/010458.htm
lxii
navsource.org/archives/12/010458, history.navy.mil/danfs/r5/retort
lxiii
Roscoe, p. 80
lxiv
http://destroyerhistory.org/benson-gleavesclass/index.asp?r=48602&pid=48603 from “A Short History of Lucky
L” this source material covers much of what is written about Landsdowne and her career
lxv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lansdowne_(DD-486)
www.thefreedictionary.com/asdic
lxvii
Roscoe, p. 81
lxviii
http://www.militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards
lxix
Roscoe, p. 81
lxvi
29 lxx
http://ww2timelines.com/1942/july/07131942.htm
http://www.warshipsww2.eu/shipsplus.php?language=E&period=&id=64292 for all info on S-16 and Hagberg
lxxii
http://www.histomil.com/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=8331&hilit=boat, loss of U-176 to CS 13
lxxi
lxxiii
Kelshall, Preface, p. xv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Oakville_(K178)
lxxv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lansdowne_(DD-486)
lxxvi
http://www.uboat.net/allies/commanders/4017
lxxvii
http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=47333, and
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1969.tb56352.x/abstract
lxxviii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Hagberg
lxxix
Gannon, Michael, Operation Drumbeat, Harper Perennial, New York, NY, 1991
lxxx
http://www.navalcovermuseum.org/restored/RETORT_PYc_49.html, and
http://www.historycentral.com/navy/yacht/retort.html
lxxxi
http://www.ubootehrenmal.de/web2/index.php?lang=en
lxxiv
30