Seizing the Enigma (41 page)

Among the more successful of these subs was the U-559. A standard Type VIIC submarine built by Blohm & Voss of Hamburg, she had had the same captain since her commissioning in February 1941. Lieutenant Hans Heidtmann, red-haired and bearded, was a solid, quiet man. He came from Lübeck, the ancient Hanseatic port of the Baltic, and was a typical north German: precise, orderly, no-nonsense. His first cruise, east of Greenland, resulted in no contact with the enemy but an unfortunate one with an iceberg, which damaged the periscope. His second likewise had good and bad aspects: the U-559 sank the 8,000-ton British freighter
Alva
northwest of Spain but was
attacked by three British destroyers. Heidtmann and his crew rapidly learned what war was like: 180 depth charges exploded around them while they shivered 600 feet down; after twenty-four hours underwater, with the attackers apparently gone, they surfaced and returned to St. Nazaire.

Then the U-559 joined the submarines transferred to the Mediterranean, sliding through the Strait of Gibraltar on the strong current from the Atlantic. At first she was based at the Greek port of Salamis, which gave her young crew members both a rumor to wonder about and an insignia to laugh about. The rumor was that 25 percent of the U-boat sailors contracted venereal disease from the complaisant Greek girls and that many of the young men were executed for their carelessness. The insignia came from the belief that in Salamis donkey meat was used in the salami the sailors ate. For fun they painted a white donkey on their conning tower. It was German humor.

In cruise after cruise, submerging at first light and surfacing after dark, Heidtmann and his crew sought their prey. On November 27, 1941, they torpedoed a small Australian warship, the
Parramatta
, off Bardia on the coast of North Africa. And twenty-four action-filled hours began just after midnight of December 23, when they detected the shadowy apparent shape of a cruiser to the west and fired a spread of four torpedoes, all of which missed. They then lost contact, dived, were attacked by bombers, and surfaced. Sighting a two-freighter convoy, the U-559 fired three torpedoes as the ships overlapped in her line of vision. One torpedo sank, and the other two ran on the surface, striking the second freighter amidships and sinking it at once. Heidtmann and his men tried to attack the other steamer but could not approach because of its three escorts. They fired a torpedo at one of the destroyers, then saw it avoid the torpedo and turn and approach their submarine. They dived. They heard a weak detonation and then a very loud one that shook the boat. After sneaking away to the northwest, they heard weak propeller noise to the west and seven depth charges not very close; at 11:40
P.M.
, they
surfaced and breathed deeply of the fresh salt air. Three days later, in the same area off the coast of Libya, where Hitler hoped to cut off British supplies to Tobruk, the U-559 sank a Polish steamer. Cruises like this earned Heidtmann the Knight’s Cross and compliments from Dönitz such as “Decisively and well carried out operation.”

At 4
P.M.
on September 29, 1942, the U-559 sailed from the Sicilian port of Messina on her tenth cruise. She headed for grid square CP 3468, which covered part of the eastern Mediterranean just south of Turkey, close to the Syrian port of Latakia. Three days later U-Boat Command radioed Heidtmann’s operational orders: “Free hunt off Palestine and Egyptian coast. Point of main effort: supply routes Alexandria-Port Said to Beirut, Haifa, Jaffa.” Over the next several days, U-Boat Command passed on an agent’s report that a British cruiser division in Haifa was expected to sail soon, listed the ships that were in the harbor at Beirut, and notified Heidtmann that a spy said two British steamers were sailing on October 10 from Port Said for the Turkish port of İskenderun, close to his operating area. On October 17, Dönitz moved Heidtmann’s operating area south, to the west of Haifa, then farther west into the Mediterranean. But neither these moves nor the information that a German airplane had sighted a three-vessel convoy with escorts a few hundred miles to the southwest helped him sink any ships on this cruise. So, late in the evening of October 29, after asking him to report the weather if possible, Dönitz told Heidtmann to return to Messina after he had used up his fuel and armament. In the early morning hours of the thirtieth, the U-559, using its Short Weather Cipher, transmitted the requested meteorological report.

A little before dawn that same day, a Sunderland flying boat reported a radar contact, “possibly a submarine,” in the eastern Mediterranean roughly halfway between Port Said, at the northern end of the Suez Canal, and Tel Aviv in Palestine. Four destroyers were ordered to search the area. Among them was H.M.S.
Petard
.

Built in Newcastle and launched into the brown waters of the River Tyne on a rainy day in March 1941, the
Petard
was one of eight P-class (for
Pakenham
) fleet destroyers. She had a handsome trawler bow, a single funnel, and a top speed of 32 knots, with great maneuverability at high speed and stability in bad seas. As her main battery she carried only four 4-inch guns, but she was otherwise well armed with eight torpedo tubes, one hundred depth charges, and two sets of depth-charge throwers. Her nine officers had individual cabins; the 211 ratings slept in hammocks.

By far the strongest personality aboard was the captain, a Royal Navy career officer, Lieutenant Commander Mark Thornton. He had come to the
Petard
after service aboard another destroyer, where he had won a Distinguished Service Cross for sinking a submarine. Of medium height, with a square, muscular frame, a square head, closely cropped thick gray hair, and a face as battered as a boxer’s, he struck terror into many. At the commissioning he promised to send back a trophy to show the shipyard the results of its efforts; his ferocious talk about destroying the king’s enemies left some of the workmen shaking their heads with pity for his crew. His energy seemed barely contained. At Scapa Flow, he would sometimes leap up from the officers’ mess, beat the after bulkhead with his fists until it boomed, and shout, “I must have action with the enemy now!” Earlier, during the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, many of his ship’s inexperienced crew members had proved incapable of performing due to seasickness, strain, and lack of sleep, so on the
Petard
he was determined that events would not overwhelm the crew. He toughened his new men with relentless, almost merciless exercises. Once, just as the men were turning in from an exhausting day, he staged a false alarm: pretending the
Petard
had been torpedoed, he hosed them with icy sea water as they struggled to action stations. Gradually he whipped his crew into “a fully trained fighting machine.”

Thornton’s first lieutenant was Antony Fasson, a Scot from the border country. An experienced career officer, he exerted a firm discipline
on his subordinates but also mixed easily with them. The ratings rarely took umbrage at his punishments; the junior officers found him a genial companion; those who fell short of the captain’s difficult standards found Fasson understanding. And Thornton considered him an exceptionally fine leader.

During the summer of 1942, the
Petard
was sent around the Cape of Good Hope through the Suez Canal to join the Twelfth Destroyer Flotilla. During that long cruise Thornton and Fasson spent many an hour in the captain’s cabin discussing the Mediterranean, an area Thornton knew very well. They formed a mutual determination to capture the confidential books from a U-boat: “Other destroyers might sink U-boats,” Thornton said later, in ignorance of the U-110 exploit, “but we would capture one!” So they drilled a boarding team, and Fasson, who would lead it, wore gym shoes and his personal boarding gear day and night while at sea. He and Thornton, never doubting that an opportunity would come their way, discussed the boarding from every angle.

On September 22, as the U-559 rocked at her berth in Messina, the
Petard
was moored fore and aft to buoys at Port Said, almost abreast of the statue of the builder of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps. The next weeks were filled with antisubmarine practices and patrols and a sudden sortie to investigate a reported high-speed surface contact that ended in the
Petard
’s repelling three Junker 88s. It was difficult to keep the sailors from the off-limits bars and brothels of Port Said. Off Haifa, the stench of animal skins piled on the quays produced for the men aboard what one called “a night of unforgettable nausea.” They spent seven days in Alexandria, where the crew, at sea on the night of October 23, saw the black sky to the southwest erupt with artillery flashes: the start of the battle of El Alamein! Thornton so itched for action that he repeated his bulkhead-beating performance. Then came the seaplane’s report of a U-boat sighting as the
Petard
and other ships were sailing to Haifa. Being nearby, they were ordered to hunt the submarine.

*     *     *

The four destroyers reached the U-boat’s suspected position a little after noon and began their sweep. The day was sunny, the wind light, the sea flat. The
Pakenham
obtained the first asdic contact, but the
Petard
attacked first, dropping five depth charges set to 250, 350, and 500 feet at 12:57
P.M.
After the explosions, the
Petard
’s crew saw oil and heard a noise of escaping air—but saw no submarine. A moment later, the
Dulverton
dropped ten depth charges. As the
Petard
was heading in for her second attack, she and the other ships heard a heavy explosion apparently under her. But they saw no disturbance of the water, and the cause remained a mystery. The
Petard
dropped ten depth charges, and soon the asdic operator reported a hissing noise. This contact was held for fifty-five minutes but eventually proved not to be the submarine. Perhaps underwater bands of different density and temperature, aggravated by the fresh water from the Nile, were affecting the asdic.

The hunt continued for hours, with intermittent attacks. In the U-559 the men were naturally fearful, but none lost control. Heidtmann, with the calm that had won his men’s admiration, repeatedly announced “Alarm!” in a quiet voice, so unlike the anxious, dramatic “Alaaaaarm!” of other skippers. As time went on, the air in the submarine, bad at the best of times with the smell of unwashed bodies, old cigarette smoke, toilets, garbage, diesel oil, diesel fumes, and cooking, grew even fouler.

The attacking destroyer was directed by a cross-bearing of asdic contacts by two other ships. Thornton seemed to have a sixth sense: when contact was lost, he conned the
Petard
back on target, constantly changing course and speed. Tension on the ship remained high. At slow speed, all hands topside scanned the sea for a periscope and torpedo tracks. When revolutions increased, men braced themselves against the thuds of the underwater explosions.

Darkness fell. The wind rose, and clouds covered the sky. A torpedoman aft sent Thornton word that he thought the submarine was
below 500 feet—the maximum setting then on Royal Navy depth charges—but if he stuffed soap in the holes of the depth charges, the water pressure would build more slowly and the charges would sink deeper before going off. He was granted permission to do so, and at 6:42 the
Petard
loosed ten soaped-up charges. The wait for the explosion was longer than usual, then the crew members saw the shiver on the surface and felt the thumps on the hull. The trick worked: the sub moved and contact was regained. Over the next three and a quarter hours, three more attacks were made.

A little after 10
P.M.
, Thornton signaled to the
Dulverton
his intention to attack and, when the ship replied with ranges and bearings that matched the
Petard
’s the ship’s company felt that the hunt was nearly up; the sub must be close at hand. At 10:17 the
Petard
dropped depth charges. The heavy detonations and the fountains of water were followed by silence except for the noises of the ship and the sea. In Thornton’s mind was only the lust to see the U-boat blown to the surface.

In the submarine, the crew counted 288 depth-bomb explosions; the last ones holed the bow and stove in plates on the starboard quarter. The air was intolerable: it seemed as if the oxygen had run out. Heidtmann ordered the ship up.

As the
Petard
nosed forward into the wind and the dark, a gun crew, the men on the bridge, and the gun director team suddenly and simultaneously smelled diesel fuel; a moment later, the asdic operators cried out that they could hear a submarine blowing its tanks. Guns were trained on the port bow bearing given by the asdic team; eyes strained to pierce the darkness. At 10:40, a patch of white water appeared on the black sea. The port signal lantern picked out a conning tower; a few moments later a 36-inch searchlight brilliantly illuminated a submarine with a white donkey painted on her conning tower and a few white figures bursting from it, then crawling and skidding along the slippery deck into the sea.

Thornton ordered his guns to open fire. The pom-poms and one of the Oerlikons did so at once. At that range one of his forward
4-inchers could not be depressed enough to fire at the target, so Thornton turned the ship away long enough to give the gun crew a shot. With their one round the crew members hit the base of the conning tower. Many of the 114 pom-pom and 79 Oerlikon rounds struck the U-boat, but it rapidly became clear that she was stopped and being abandoned and that further gunfire damage would make it harder to save her. Fasson rang the cease-fire bells. Thornton issued orders to put his boarding plan into effect.

By this time, the
Petard
had stopped and the submarine was lying to port in the destroyer’s lee, down by the bows in the roughening chop. Fasson was on the starboard side aft, starting to have the starboard boat lowered. Thornton roared at the gunnery control officer, Sub-lieutenant G. Gordon Connell, to dive over the side and swim to the U-boat. As Connell started to strip off his clothing, a young ablebodied seaman, Colin Grazier, joined him, shouting that he would swim across with him. Just then Fasson appeared. He told Connell to take charge of the whaler and bring it around the
Petard
to the U-boat. He himself was tearing off his uniform. Within moments he and Grazier had dived naked into the sea and were swimming to the U-boat. So was the fifteen-year-old canteen assistant, Tommy Brown, who had lied about his age to join the service. He dived into the sea before the canteen manager could stop him. A few moments later, the whaler, encumbered by German sailors clinging to it, reached the U-boat and made fast.