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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 • • 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