Shadow Divers (43 page)

U-869
at sea during training. Note the Olympic rings on the conning tower, which indicates a submarine commanded by a graduate of the naval class of 1936, the year of the Berlin games.

RICHIE KOHLER

Richie Kohler and Gisela Engelmann, Berlin, January 2002.

HERBERT GUSCHEWSKI

Crew of
U-869,
after commissioning, January 26, 1944. The three officers stand in the bottom row on the right: Siegfried Brandt is on the far right, Helmuth Neuerburg is to his right, and Ludwig Kessler is third from the end.

A NOTE ON SOURCES

John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, the two divers around whom this story revolves, were my business partners in the writing of this book. They gave me full access to their files, photographs, videotapes, notes, and dive logs. I spent hundreds of hours interviewing Chatterton and Kohler: at their homes in New Jersey, by phone, by conference call, on the dive boat
Seeker,
while cruising the autobahn with Kohler in Germany, while crouching inside the captured German submarine
U-505
with Chatterton in Chicago. Their accounts of the quest to identify the mystery U-boat—both in the water and on land—were the foundation upon which this book was written. Each served as the first and most critical check on the other. Upon completing the book, I asked Chatterton and Kohler to review the manuscript for accuracy. Neither was allowed editorial control or input—a condition to which each had agreed before we became partners. Any manuscript changes they suggested were strictly of a technical nature.

For accounts of Chatterton’s and Kohler’s in-water exploration of the U-boat, I relied frequently on their recollection of events; deep shipwreck diving is a solitary sport in which memory is often the only witness. I viewed videotapes of their dives on those occasions when videotape was shot. I studied photographs of the wreck, and consulted Chatterton’s and Kohler’s handwritten dive logs. I interviewed fourteen divers who accompanied them on overnight trips to the wreck, including nine of the original members of the team that had gone searching for the mystery set of numbers secured from the fishing boat captain by Bill Nagle.

The wreck came to life for me through a drawing, reproduced here in the frontispiece, made by Captain Dan Crowell, the current owner of the
Seeker
and a longtime diver of the U-boat. His rendering, an amazing work of memory and experience, remained taped to my desk throughout the writing of this book. It is considered by most who have dived the wreck to be a small masterpiece. Several divers, including Steve Gatto, Brian Skerry, Christina Young, and Kevin Brennan, shot excellent underwater photographs of the wreck, which helped me to envision the scenes described to me by Chatterton and Kohler. I also studied photos, diagrams, and plans of Type IX U-boats in various books, the most useful being
Vom Original zum Modell: Uboottyp IX C
by Fritz Kohl and Axel Niestlé. Equally valuable was the illustrated tour of
U-869
provided by PBS on their Web site for
Hitler’s Lost Sub,
the
Nova
documentary on the mystery wreck (pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostsub). On numerous occasions, I toured the captured
U-505
at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry; each of those visits gave me a tangible feel for the Type IX U-boat, exactly the kind discovered by the divers in 1991.

I came to know the dive boat
Seeker
personally. Captain Dan Crowell showed me the vessel’s corners and contours while it was dry-docked in Brielle, New Jersey, then invited me on an overnight trip—to also hunt mystery numbers—to a location about seventy miles offshore. The seas were constantly violent and I was tossed from my bunk several times; there is no more immediate way to understand a dive boat’s character, foibles, and nobility than to spend twenty-four hours aboard it in the middle of an angry Atlantic.

Many of the stories about deep-wreck diving contained in this book were told to me by Chatterton and Kohler, as well as by other divers, boat captains, and witnesses. Because the sport is so dangerous and has so few participants (probably just a few hundred in the United States), many of its stories remain oral history. Whenever possible, these stories were checked with the principals involved. Occasionally, witnesses provided slightly different accounts of events, especially when their stories were of close calls or fatalities and they had been panicked, distracted, or distressed. Those inconsistencies were slight; when they occurred, I used the consensus version of events to conclude, say, that a diver had been underwater for ten minutes rather than twelve. For the deaths of the
Texas Tower
diver and of Joe Drozd, Chatterton was present and a witness to events. For the death of Steve Feldman, I interviewed nearly all of the divers present, including Feldman’s dive partner Paul Skibinski, Doug Roberts and Kevin Brennan, who were in the water and witnessed much of the unfolding disaster, and John Hildemann and Mark McMahon, who did the dangerous sand sweeps searching for Feldman on the ocean’s bottom. I also inspected the written accounts of the incident provided to the Coast Guard by each diver after returning to shore. For George Place’s close call, I interviewed Place and Howard Klein, the captain of the
Eagle’s Nest,
who set out to rescue his stricken diver. Kohler was present and a witness to that event as well. For Dr. Lewis Kohl’s close call, I interviewed Kohl, his dive partner John Yurga, and Chatterton and Kohler; all were present and witnessed the event. For the deaths of Chris and Chrissy Rouse, I relied on interviews with Chatterton, Kohler, Yurga, and Crowell, all of whom were present and participated in the rescue attempt and subsequent recovery of equipment. I also read Bernie Chowdhury’s book,
The Last Dive: A Father and Son’s Fatal Descent into the Ocean’s Depths,
from HarperCollins, which recounts the Rouse tragedy and is a very good account of the dangers of deep diving.

I gleaned insight into the culture of wreck diving in the American Northeast by spending time with and interviewing divers and boat captains. Bucky McMahon’s story, “Everest at the Bottom of the Sea,” published in the July 2000 issue of
Esquire,
was exceedingly useful to me and remains perhaps the best account ever written of
Andrea Doria
diving and the characters who challenge that legendary wreck. Kevin F. McMurray’s book
Deep Descent: Adventure and Death Diving the
Andrea Doria, from Pocket Books, was also helpful to me in digesting the long and dangerous history of the
Doria
and the psyches of those who dive it.

The physiology of deep water scuba diving was made understandable to me by several books, the most useful of which was Tim Ecott’s
Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World,
from Atlantic Monthly Press. Ecott writes beautifully, not just about diving physiology, but about the transcendent potential of scuba exploration. His work was inspiring. Physiologist R. W. Bill Hamilton was patient with me in explaining some technical aspects of deep scuba.

The life and times of Bill Nagle were described to me by Chatterton, Kohler, Yurga, Crowell, and Andrew Nagle. Nearly every diver and boat captain I interviewed had something to say about Nagle’s legend. Captain Skeets Frink was very helpful to me in explaining how Nagle came to possess the numbers to the mystery wreck.

I learned about Atlantic Wreck Divers history and culture from Kohler, one of the group’s original members, as well as from Pete Guglieri, John Lachenmeyer, and Pat Rooney. I talked to numerous sources about the age-old rivalries between dive boat captains; McMurray’s
Deep Descent
and Gary Gentile’s
The Lusitania Controversies—Book Two: Dangerous Descents into Shipwrecks and Law,
from Gary Gentile Productions, were also useful to me along those lines. For information on Steve Feldman, I interviewed his dive partner Paul Skibinski, as well as his friends Tommy Cross, Marty Dick, John Hopkins, Andrew Ross, and boat captain Paul Hepler. For the lives of Chris and Chrissy Rouse, Chowdhury’s
The Last Dive
was quite interesting. For the lives of Chatterton and Kohler, I spoke to their ex-wives, current wives, friends, and family. For Chatterton’s Vietnam experience, I interviewed John Lacko, with whom Chatterton saw combat, and Dr. Norman Sakai, a battalion surgeon who served with Chatterton. Charles Kinney, a former Vietnam medic and author, provided an enlightening overview of the medic’s place in the Vietnam War.

I relied on several sources to confirm the process and substance of Chatterton’s and Kohler’s research. Their files contained copies of many of the original historical documents they used to pursue the identity of the mystery U-boat, including attack reports, analyses of antisubmarine action, radio-intercept intelligence summaries, translations of U-boat Control diary entries, and incident reports. In rare instances in which the divers gleaned information from historical documents they had not or could not have copied, I used books and consulted with experts to confirm the information. Invaluable to me in this endeavor (and many others) was Clay Blair’s superbly researched and astonishingly complete two-volume set,
Hitler’s U-boat War,
published by Random House. In these volumes, Blair includes information from both the German and Allied sides, which is not true of every book on the subject, while covering the operational, technical, and intelligence aspects of the U-boat war with rare readability and insight. The set was the single most useful written resource I used while writing
Shadow Divers.
On countless occasions, German naval researcher Axel Niestlé confirmed or refined the accuracy of Chatterton’s and Kohler’s research. I inspected dozens of letters between the divers and various sources with whom they corresponded about the mystery U-boat, many of which helped me understand the mood, evolution, and maturity of their research. At the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., I interviewed Dean Allard, Bernard Cavalcante, William Dudley, and Kathleen Lloyd, all of whom spoke to me about the divers’ methods, resources, approach, and character. Timothy Mulligan at the National Archives in Washington was similarly helpful. On the subject of the Civil Air Patrol and its possible role in the sinking of the mystery sub, I spoke to Lt. Col. Gregory Weidenfeld of that organization, and also read his monograph on the topic,
The Search for the Haggin-Farr Sub Kill.
On the subject of blimps and U-boats, I interviewed Gordon Vaeth, former intelligence officer for the Atlantic Fleet airships during World War II, and benefited greatly from his book,
Blimps & U-Boats: U.S. Navy Airships in the Battle of the Atlantic,
published by Naval Institute Press. The personal letters of U-boat ace Karl-Friedrich Merten, written to Chatterton in the early stages of the divers’ research, helped me understand that officer’s opinion about the mystery wreck. Most newspaper accounts cited in the book were saved by Chatterton and Kohler and kept in scrapbooks, and were easily checked. Finally, I studied the divers’ extensive research notes, which chronicled not just their findings, but often their mind-sets. In very rare cases, where opinions in published sources or between experts conflicted, I relied on Blair’s
Hitler’s U-boat War.

To learn the history of the U-boat war, no source was more valuable to me than Blair’s books. I also relied regularly on a Web site—uboat.net—the best Internet resource for information on U-boat history, commanders, the fates of various submarines, and much more. It is virtually impossible to research U-boats without utilizing this excellent, thorough, and well-designed resource. The transcript to
Nova
’s program
Hitler’s Lost Sub,
available at the aforementioned PBS Web site, was also useful for its interviews with various scholars and U-boat veterans. For the histories and fates of individual U-boats (other than
U-869
), Blair’s books were a primary source, as was Niestlé’s
German U-boat Losses During World War II: Details of Destruction,
from Naval Institute Press. When I needed information on U-boats that I could not find, I called or wrote to Niestlé, who was always helpful. Statistics on U-boats and U-boat losses vary widely among the many books and articles published on the subject; my figures were taken from the above-mentioned book by Niestlé. A German private researcher, Niestlé is among the most original minds writing about U-boats, and continues to work at the forefront of reexamining U-boat losses. His book, in addition to providing many of the most current U-boat statistics, also includes an excellent explanation of postwar assessment mistakes—the very kinds of mistakes that made the mystery at the core of this book so difficult to solve.

For information on the lives and times of U-boat crewmen, I constantly referred to Timothy Mulligan’s excellent book
Neither Sharks nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany’s U-boat Arm, 1939–1945,
from Naval Institute Press. The book, set against the context of the larger war effort and the changing fate of Germany, is a classic overview of the men who fought the U-boat war. Mulligan, an archivist who specializes in captured German and World War II–era records, based much of his research on surveys of over a thousand U-boat veterans. I read several books by Jak P. Mallman Showell, many of which can be commended for painting incisive pictures of life aboard the U-boats, the command structure of the U-boat force, and the men who manned these vessels. The most useful to me among them was
U-boats Under the Swastika,
published by Naval Institute Press; at just 132 pages, it provided a fine and easily digestible primer. I spent invaluable time in Toronto with Werner Hirschmann, the former chief engineer of
U-190.
In a few days with Mr. Hirschmann, I learned more about U-boat life than I might have in years of reading.

In learning about the history, fate, and crew of
U-869,
I benefited greatly from the following sources:

For the life and career of commander Helmuth Neuerburg, I inspected his military records and interviewed his son, Jürgen, and brother, Friedhelm, in Germany. (Neuerburg’s first name is spelled in various ways by various sources; I used “Helmuth,” as that is how he appeared to sign his own name on his military records.)

For the life and career of First Officer Siegfried Brandt, I inspected his military records, interviewed his brother Hans-Georg Brandt, and his friends, Clemens Borkert and Heinz Schley, in Germany.

For the life and career of torpedoman Franz Nedel, I interviewed his fiancée, Gisela Engelmann, in Germany.

I devoted several days in Germany to interviewing Herbert Guschewski, the former radioman on
U-869.
It was through Guschewski that I gleaned insight into the sub’s crew and officers, especially Neuerburg, Brandt, and Martin Horenburg, the U-boat’s senior radioman. Many stories and details of
U-869
’s training came from these interviews with Mr. Guschewski, as well as from the boat’s training diary. General information about U-boat training, some of which informed the chapters on
U-869
’s training, was taken from several books, most notably Mulligan’s
Neither Sharks nor Wolves,
as well as from my interviews with Werner Hirschmann.