Black May (35 page)

Behind their weary screws flowed runnels of gray and white Grand Banks wash. Beneath their keels the Atlantic shoaled on the continental shelf. The long billows of the central ocean gave way to a shorter and choppy surface, while on either beam squadrons of gulls parked on the water to announce the impending shore. What was best, we may believe, the scent of victory was in the air. No one yet could let down his guard, and none could forget merchant mariners left behind in the deep transepts of the cathedral sea, but a lightened mood understandably took hold among all ranks and ratings, whether under the white ensign or the red duster. There was occasion now for the concertina, the George Formby song, dominoes, “uckers” (ludo), or cribbage. And a long unburdening sigh.

Game, set, and match: U.K.

That night, at 2357,
Pelican
received a signal from CinCWA directing her,
Wear,
and
Jed
to part company from the convoy at daylight on the 7th, if convoy considered no longer threatened, and to proceed at economical speed astern of the convoy to search for torpedoed ships that might still be afloat. They would find no derelicts, but on the forenoon of the 8th, in thick fog, they sighted wreckage and empty lifeboats. After several course changes to support convoys ON.181 and ONS.6, as directed by CinCWA, the three support ship vessels returned through heavy broken pack ice to St. John’s, arriving on the 12th.
³⁹
At 1650 on the 7th, on orders from
Tay, Vidette
and
Loosestrife
disengaged from the convoy to escort three vessels to St. John’s:
British
Lady, Empire Gazelle,
and
Berkel
(the last of which had survived the collision with
Bornholm
on 25 April). They arrived on the forenoon of the 9th. The remaining ships of
By, Tay, Snowflake,
and
Sunflower,
parted company for St. John’s on the same day, arriving on the 8th.
Pink
with her straggler party made the same port on the 9th. As for the main body of ONS.5, destined for Halifax, Boston, and New York, Commodore Brook’s final report read simply (in local time):

It was twenty days since the departure from Oversay. A few individual stragglers made port in the days that followed.

On shore, the
By,
EG3, and First Support Group Captains typed up their proceedings and after-action reports. Several of them offered, in addition, their reflections on such topics as convoy routes, the performance of personnel, the endurance of escort vessels, the usefulness of weaponiy and equipment, and U-boat tactics. A preliminary summary of certain of these comments was prepared on 9 May by Flag Officer Newfoundland Force (Commodore H. E. Reid, R.C.N.) for ciphered transmission to Commander-in-Chief North West Atlantic (CinCNA), Rear Admiral L. W. Murray, R.C.N., in Halifax. The summary began with the observation that the convoy battle had been divided into two periods, 28 April to 1 May and 4 May to 6 May, with a three-day gale in between. After noting that scare tactics based on HF/DF bearings had proved successful, the summary continued:

Among the individual ship reports,
Tay
commented: “All ships worked hard, capably, and with intelligence and considerable humour, and the situation was always well in hand.”
⁴²
And again: “All ships showed dash and initiative. No ship required to be told what to do and signals were distinguished both by their brevity and their wit.”
Sunflower
stated that his asdic team were “most keen and efficient at all times,” and that his D/C team were a close second. The radar operators, with one exception, had no prior sea experience; they compensated for that somewhat by their zeal. The Chief Bos’n's mate and the Coxs’n had shown exceptional leadership in keeping ship’s company, many of whom were at sea for the first time, up to the best service traditions.
⁴³

Snowflake
observed that the four-inch H.E. was effective in forcing a U-boat to dive when radar reported a boat dead ahead and the gun was trained with sights set to zero: “This obviated the necessity of a long chase.” (The corvette, it is remembered, was slower than the U-boat on the surface.) During a concentrated attack by U-boats,
Snowflake
recommended, priority should be given to the speed rather than to the accuracy of the counterattack, so that the escort could retake position on the screen in the shortest possible time.
⁴⁴

Destroyers
Penn
and
Panther
of EG3, which had been with the convoy for fewer than two days (2–4 May) because of fuel depletion,
weighed in with comments about their short-legged craft,
Penn
suggesting that support group operations should be so arranged that destroyers heavy on oil fuel were not sent long distances from base, “as their first need on meeting a convoy is a large amount of fuel,” and bad weather often made refueling impossible.
⁴⁵
Panther
suggested “that Sloops and Frigates (who are not constantly faced with fuel problem) ought to make up support groups, and that destroyers should always form part of a definite escort group”—a suggestion fully concurred with by CinCNA, Rear Admiral Murray at Halifax.
⁴⁶
For his part, Convoy Commodore Brook praised “the splendid work throughout on part of Escorts, not forgetting (SO) HMS ‘DUNCAN’ who unfortunately had to leave Convoy short of fuel just before Convoy Battle materialized.”
⁴⁷
Senior Officer Peter Gretton was all too conscious of his misfortune as he talked in St. John’s with the
B7
captains and read their reports. That misfortune being that he had missed out on the events of 5/6 May, which were, he said, “probably the most stirring of convoy history.” By a combination of “skill, luck, initiative, and sheer guts,” his
B7
group, helped by EG3 and First Support Group, had brought off one of the epic victories in the story of sea warfare. Twenty-one years later he would still be tending to his “wounded vanity,” writing: “I shall never cease to regret that I did not risk the weather and stay with them until the end.… The weather did improve and I would probably have been able to fuel.… I had missed the ‘golden moment’ which comes but once in a lifetime.”
⁴⁸

Yet Gretton’s wounded vanity should have been assuaged by the commendations that came to him on every side for having trained so capable a force as
B7,
which, as
Tay’
s report noted, needed no further instructions on what to do when the hour of maximum danger arrived. Rear Admiral Murray was unstinting in his praise: “The absence of the Senior Officer of
By
on the big night, while unfortunate and inevitable, nonetheless speaks volumes for the training he is responsible for in this outstanding Group.”
⁴⁹
Admiral Horton himself commented that it was “a credit to the training of the group that in his [Gretton’s] absence it was so ably led by his second in command, Lt.-Cmdr. R.E. Sherwood, R.N.R., H.M.S. TAY.”
⁵⁰

Gretton had been the first to laud Sherwood’s performance. He had been in
Tay
with Sherwood during the battle for HX.231, and “I knew that he could compete.” In his own analysis of the 5/6 May engagement, produced shortly after the arrival of the B7 Captains at St. John’s, Gretton wrote that, “Lieutenant-Commander Sherwood of HMS TAY handled a very dangerous situation with ability and coolness. I consider he did exceptionally well, being ably backed up by the group.” It is worth adding that the two-and-a-half-ringed reservist won his victory in the presence of two RN Captains.
⁵¹

With the after-action reports in hand, Gretton offered further comments on the two stages of the battle: He agreed with his Captains that the convoy had been routed too far to the north, where ice and gales retarded forward progress, prevented fueling, and scattered ships. (This view subsequently was endorsed by Rear Admiral Murray. Recognizing that the far northern route had been selected for evasive purposes, Murray concluded, “It is very much doubted if the game is worth the candle.”)
⁵²
Since near Greenland W/T ship-to-shore communication was impossible on any frequency, and the U-boats, which had superior wireless gear, were having the same trouble, the Admiralty should not assume, said Gretton, that a convoy in those latitudes was not being shadowed because of an absence of signals. EG3 was a model of cooperation and assistance, and the presence of
Offa
and
Oribi
on 5/6 May made a significant difference in the battle. Aircraft, particularly the Liberators, which flew to the extreme limit of their endurance in appalling weather, deserved great credit for their coverage, as did the RCAF Cansos from Newfoundland that attacked two U-boats on the 4th, though fog prevented further air assistance from that quarter.

Crediting her as exhibiting “the most outstanding performance” in his B7 group, Gretton singled out
Snowflake
for “carrying out at least 12 attacks and finally bagging a U-boat"; though in fact
Snowflake
, which made seven attacks during the voyage, did not actually sink a boat, and the palm might more fittingly have been awarded to
Vidette
, which sank two. His only criticism was reserved for
Pink,
which, he said, made “an incorrect decision” in leaving his straggler station to go after a U-boat (U
-358)
on the 5th, but, he conceded, “I would have made it
myself.” In his operation against ONS.5, the enemy had been “dealt a blow that may have far-reaching results on their future tactics and which must inevitably increase the proportion of day to night attacks.”

In what was perhaps Gretton’s most provocative observation—one that would draw comment from the demanding, some would say irascible, Captain G. W. G. “Shrimp” Simpson, R.N., Commodore (D) Western Approaches in Londonderry—he stated that the just-completed convoy battle proved, as had HX.231 before it, that in favorable seas, an efficient close screen in correct station could alone prevent surfaced night attacks on a convoy.
⁵³
Simpson’s read on Gretton’s confidence in the close screen was more differentiated and searching:

Admiral Horton concurred in this criticism, noting only that a close escort of eight was the minimum required “at night under normal circumstances.” Where Simpson went on to criticize
Tay
for taking the ahead station on the screen when her asdics were out of action, Horton thought that under the circumstances her position ahead was the correct one. And where Simpson criticized the escorts for not firing Hedgehog in incidents where its use was appropriate, and for sometimes using inaccurate depth settings on D/Cs—“the errors have been
pointed out to the vessels concerned”—Horton countered generously: “The skill and determination of all escorts engaged in this operation leaves little to be desired.” In that compliment he specifically included the Third and First Support Groups commanded by Captain McCoy and Commander Brewer, respectively, who “loyally gave complete cooperation with the Junior Officer in command of the close escort.” And to all involved he had earlier, on 6 May, sent a W/T message: “My heartiest congratulations on your magnificent achievements.”

Even by-the-book Simpson acknowledged the final showing as “a major victory,” and the fact that there were only two failures among the 340-odd D/Cs fired or dropped by
B7
and its support elements he attributed to “a very high standard of depth charge efficiency in these groups, and [that] is definitely the result of stiff training.” In Horton’s comments on Simpson’s appreciation of the ONS.5 screen operations, the CinCWA judged that not only were those operations “a classic embodying nearly every method and form of tactics current at the time,” they probably marked the end of large U-boat pack attacks: “It may well be,” he wrote to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, “that the heavy casualties inflicted on the enemy have gravely affected his morale and will prove to have been a turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic.”
⁵⁴
Like Winn, Horton may have been more optimistic than correct about the battle’s effect on German morale. But he was proved right on the second point: In the remaining twenty-four months of war no other U-boat group would attack with the same apparent pluck and confidence. The wolfpack mystique lay at ruinous discount.