Black May (32 page)

Enter
Snowflake
, which made the BdU rescue order moot. This corvette earlier, at 0231 and 0238, had dropped three heavy charges on U-107 (Gelhaus) as scare tactics. At 0330, while in station R, on the port quarter, Lt. Chesterman received a radar echo bearing 030°, range 4,100 yards, and, after advising
Tay
, commenced a chase. Fog had closed the visibility to one mile, and starshells were useless, so when he had closed to gun range, Chesterman directed four-inch fire at the target by radar alone. At 0340, the U-boat, which had been working to southward, dived before being sighted.
Snowflake
immediately obtained asdic contact at a range of 400 yards. Running over the contact at 0341, Chesterman dropped his penultimate D/C, a heavy charge set to 140 feet.

At the moment of dropping,
Snowflake
acquired a second radar contact bearing 170°, range 2,400 yards, moving rapidly left. Chesterman altered course to intercept and again engaged with the four-inch. While firing,
Snowflake
received yet a third radar echo bearing 185°, range 1,000 yards. Fearing a torpedo attack by this third, nearby boat, Chesterman broke off his gun action against the second boat and
turned to attack the third, which immediately dived. With asdic contact bearing 16o°, range 700 yards, Chesterman began a run in with his last D/C, but for some reason the asdic operator lost the contact before an attack could be made. Meanwhile, at 0349,
Tay
, to whom Chesterman had been reporting his three pursuits, signaled by R/T: “Sunflower assist Snowflake.”

Snowflake
then began an asdic and radar sweep through the last known positions of the three submerged boats. Chesterman commanded the operation from his action post in the center of the compass platform with, to his left, voice pipes to asdic and plot, and to his right, voice pipes to radar and plot. At 0354, radar picked up a
fourth
boat— on the surface, low in the water, and apparently stopped, since the range was closed rapidly. Visibility was bad. At 0400, when range had decreased to 100 yards (!), Chesterman ordered on the starboard searchlight. Its sword of white light revealed directly ahead a U-boat heavily damaged about the conning tower, under power though, working rapidly to starboard. Chesterman ordered the wheel put hard-a-starboard with intent to ram, and opened fire with every available weapon that could be brought to bear, scoring a number of hits. The U-boat averted being rammed head-on, but
Snowflake
, maneuvering inside the U-boat’s turning circle, came to dead slow alongside its starboard side, where only a few feet separated the two vessels, and illuminated its tower and deck with the port searchlight and ten-inch Signal Projector.

That close, Chesterman could see that the enemy boat was down by the stern, the tower was crumpled, the periscope standards were warped, the flak guns were crippled, and the after hatch cover had been blown off. That close, too,
Snowflake
‘s guns could not be depressed enough to continue fire, so Chesterman ordered a slow withdrawal. As the corvette drew back, the U-boat settled farther by the stern, causing air bubbles to rise from the submerging after hatch. Some German crewmen abandoned the boat at this point; some others lined the foredeck; but a few, more determined and belligerent, or perhaps more desperate, made for the forward deck gun. That endeavor was frustrated by
Snowflake
s port Oerlikon and 40mm pom-pom guns. An officer was seen on what remained of the tower, waving his arms as a sign of ceasefire
or surrender. When this was ignored, the rest of the crew went into the sea.

The U-boat’s sinking led Chesterman for a time to think that in coming alongside, his port bilge keel had rammed the U-boat’s starboard side, but on closer view he found that this was wrong. Suddenly five scuttling charges were heard from the sinking U-boat, the first charge louder than the rest. Sweeping with lights through the survivors,
Snowflake
saw some in a small dinghy, but most swimming singly through a large oil patch. Since
Sunflower
was now present, Chesterman thought that the survivors might be taken on board the two corvettes and delivered to St. John’s for interrogation, and he so suggested to
Tay.
Rescue, no doubt, was what the German crew was expecting when they scuttled. Sherwood’s reply by R/T was as fatal as it was laconic: “Not approved to pick up survivors.” Though Sherwood offered no reason, it is probable that he considered it too dangerous for the corvettes to remain stationary, rescuing survivors in the middle of an ongoing battle.

In the following minutes one of
Snowflake
s searchlights revealed
Sunflower
dangerously nearby, and both corvettes put wheel hard to avoid collision, which would have been a doubly sad event, since the Australian Chesterman on
Snowflake
and the Canadian Plomer on
Sunflower
commanded “chummy” ships, so much so that in B7 they had become known as
Snowflower
and
Sunflake.
Leaving then the forty-eight-man crew of U-125, for it was the same boat that had been rammed by
Oribi
, to bob upon the corpse-ridden sea,
Snowflake
, with
Sunflower,
steamed off to other echoes.
⁹
The
panische Angst
felt by the U-boat crew, who watched from meager flotage the withdrawal into fog of their only earthly hopes, is, of course, beyond verbal expression.

Snowflake’s
R/T log for the attack period fairly crackles with the teamwork displayed by the two corvettes:

T
O
T
AY
FROM
S
NOWFLAKE
:
“R.D.F. contact eight o’clock.” 0330.
“U-boat dived, chasing another.” 0340.
“Second U-boat dived, chasing third.” 0345.
“Am attacking with charges—last charge.” 0346.
T
O
G
ROUP FROM
T
AY
:
“Sunflower assist Snowflake.” 0349
T
O
T
AY FROM
S
NOWFLAKE:

“Not attacking with charges. All three dived. Am not in contact. Resuming station.” 0330.

T
O
S
NOWFLAKE
FROM
S
UNFLOWER
:
“Do you wish my assistance?” 0332
T
O
S
UNFLOWER
FROM
S
NOWFLAKE
:

“Yes. R.D.F. contact bearing two-six-zero degrees, three thousand yards from me.” 0334.

T
O
S
NOWFLAKE
FROM
S
UNFLOWER:
“I will pass round you and investigate.” 0336.
T
O
S
UNFLOWER
FROM
S
NOWFLAKE:
“Have rammed U-boat. Please join me.” 0401.
“Areyou in contact with me?” 0403.
T
O
S
NOWFLAKE
FROM
S
UNFLOWER:
“Am proceeding in your direction.” 0403.
T
O
T
AY
FROM
S
NOWFLAKE:
“Shall I pick up survivors?” 0407.
T
O
S
NOWFLAKE
FROM
S
UNFLOWER:

“Am in contact with you, three-one-five degrees, three-five-zero-zero yards.” 0410.

T
O
S
UNFLOWER
FROM
S
NOWFLAKE:
“Investigating another echo and leaving survivors.” 0411.
T
O
S
NOWFLAKE
FROM
Tay:
“Not approved to pick up survivors.” 0412.
T
O
S
NOWFLAKE
FROM
S
UNFLOWER:

“Am in your immediate vicinity.” 0413 [the time of the near collision].
T
O
S
UNFLOWER
FROM
S
NOWFLAKE:

“Sorry. Am resuming my station. Glad none of yours hurt. Have one charge for one more.” 0417.

T
O
S
NOWFLAKE
FROM
S
UNFLOWER:

“Nice work. Don’t mention it. Where shall we go next?” 0418.

T
O
S
UNFLOWER
FROM
S
NOWFLAKE
:
“Investigating underwater contact.” 0419.
T
O
S
NOWFLAKE
FROM
S
UNFLOWER:

‘You bear zero-nine-zero, two thousand yards. Am following you.” o423.
¹⁰

After that exchange,
Snowflake
dropped the last D/C in her stowage and resumed station.

Since
Offa’s
five attacks earlier that night from 2039 to 2218, this EG3 destroyer had rejoined the convoy on the starboard bow; assisted
Vidette,
who was giving three U-boats a headache around the midnight hour; proceeded over to the convoy’s port bow to provide cover for an alteration of course to 156° at 0200; gained, regained, then lost a radar contact; and finally, at 0300, regained and held the contact, bearing 258°, range 4,400 yards. The amplitude of the echo received on
Off as
Type 272 RDF equipment plainly indicated a U-boat, which the destroyer’s plot showed to be proceeding at 12 knots on a course of 190°. Captain McCoy increased speed to 20 knots and set a course of 210° to intercept. At 0312, with range at 500 yards, radar contact disappeared in the ground wave, but hydrophone effect picked up the characteristic high-pitched rattle of fast diesel engines on the same bearing. At 0314, the effect grew fainter, leading McCoy to assume that the U-boat had dived.
Offa
altered course slightly to starboard, and soon after, lookouts sighted a wake. The boat had not dived after all, and hydrophone effect became loud again. McCoy hauled out to port clear of the wake, took a course parallel to that of the boat, and at 0315 ordered the twenty-inch Signal Projector switched on.

Brightly illuminated on the starboard bow at 100 yards was a light gray-painted Type VIIC U-boat, trimmed down, with after casing awash. Abaft the tower was “a metal framework,” which would have been the
Wintergarten.
Immediately,
Offa
opened fire with the starboard Oerlikons, the main armament and pom-poms being unable to depress enough to gain aim, and several hits were observed against the conning tower. At 0316, when the U-boat began a crash dive, McCoy ordered the wheel put hard-a-starboard to ram. The ship’s bows began the turn, but the U-boat’s dive, at about eight knots, was very steep and
the conning tower was observed to be disappearing safely under the ship about level with the bridge. McCoy himself could see the hull of the U-boat under the surface as
Offa
passed over and ahead. In his after-action report he described what happened next:

Though the failure to fire was “lamentable,” as McCoy stated elsewhere, and whereas Admiral Horton himself lamented later “the failure of a rating to carry out an order at the critical moment,” the CinCWA judged McCoy to have conducted this operation “in a very able manner.” And while neither man would know it at the time, the detonations of the starboard throwers were sufficient to cause slight damage to the U-boat involved, which, it turned out in a recent reassessment, was
U—223
(Oblt.z.S. Karljüng Wächter). That boat, which had a bit of ginger taken out of her this time, would be rammed later, on 12 May, but survive again, until finally succumbing to four British warships on 30 March 1944.
¹¹

At 2240 on the 5th,
Sunflower
was manning station “M” on the port bow when Lt.-Cmdr. Plomer’s radar received a pulse echo from 4,300 yards.
Sunflower
altered course and closed the contact at 14 knots. The U-boat dived and asdic pursued it. At 200 yards from the contact the bearing began moving from left to right. Following, the corvette dropped six and fired four D/Cs in what Plomer called “our best D/C attack—almost exercise conditions.” Just before the D/Cs went overside, at 2251,
Sunflower
picked up a second radar contact at 3,400 yards,
and Plomer decided to pursue that one at once, in order, we may conjecture, to keep the U-boats off their stride. As he did so, asdic told him that a torpedo was approaching from red (port) 20°. He watched as it passed down the corvette’s port side. Immediately, radar picked up yet another contact at 2,800 yards, but now Plomer decided to pursue the U-boat that had attacked him, and at 2258 he sighted it close ahead.

Sunflowers
deck gun opened fire, but on the third round the cartridge jammed in the breach. Without an operative main armament, Plomer altered course to starboard at 2305 in an attempt to drive underwater his radar contact of fourteen minutes before. Two minutes later, asdic reported incoming torpedoes—a “full salvo”—from the boat he had just been pursuing. Putting helm hard-a-port, then point back,
Sunflower
managed to be 30° off pointing when the salvo arrived down the port side. Plomer signaled
Tay
at 2312: “Have broken off chase, fired two H.E.s [high explosive rounds], could not gain.” Two minutes later, however, his gun reported clear, and Plomer decided he was back in the game. For the next three and a half hours he chased five contacts, firing Hedgehogs at one and a five-charge D/C pattern at another, but all without result. The NHB/MOD reassessment believes it possible that these attacks were delivered against the same target, U
-954
(Kptlt. Odo Loewe).