The Secret Capture Read online

  Meanwhile Rahmlow and his crew were being passed through the British interrogation routine, to whose efficiency the enemy has paid tribute since the war,1 and we thereby gained valuable knowledge regarding other U-boats, and their equipment and methods of operating.

  At the end of September 1942 the Admiralty decided that the Graph should join our own operational submarine fleet, and commissioned her under Lieutenant P. B. Marriott. She was the only captured submarine which ever rendered such services to her captors. We cannot here follow her career under the White Ensign in detail, but an incident in which she was involved on 21st October, 1942, while patrolling against blockade runners in the Bay of Biscay, must be mentioned—if only for the sake of historical accuracy. At about 3.40 p.m. she heard propeller noises at long range, and closed in their direction; but for a long time Lieutenant Marriott could see nothing through his periscope, because of the heavy swell that was running. Just before 5 p.m., however, he gained a fleeting but clear glimpse of a conning tower. He turned at once to an attacking course, and fired four torpedoes at what he described as a “ sister ship.” He then altered course right round with the intention of taking a stern shot, and in doing so twice more sighted his enemy. Between 5 and 6 minutes after firing the salvo from the bow tubes, which was about the correct running time for the torpedoes to reach the target, Marriott heard two loud explosions, which were followed by a large number of lesser cracks and bangs. The Graph’s crew were confident that they had sunk the enemy; and as it was dark when they surfaced at 8.30 their confidence was not shaken by the fact that they sighted neither oil nor wreckage. The Admiralty—cautious as ever about accepting such claims— assessed the result as “ probably sunk ”; but we now know from German records that, although the Graph did actually attack a genuine “ sister ship,” namely U.333 (Cremer) she did not sink her. It therefore seems regrettable that, in a book published as late as 1958 which purports to describe her career in British hands, the author should have stated that her attack on 21st October, 1942, was successful.1

  In December 1942 we find the Graph among the submarines watching Altenfiord in north Norway, where a powerful German squadron, including the giant Tirpitz, had been concentrated to threaten our Arctic convoys. During the latter part of 1943 the Graph underwent an extensive refit in Chatham dockyard, but defects again developed early in the following year, and in February 1944 she reduced to reserve at Aberdeen. The Admiralty then abandoned all intention of using her again, and in March she was towed away to be scrapped. While on passage, however, the tow parted, and she was wrecked on the island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland on 20th March; but by that time she had given the Royal Navy all the useful service of which she was capable.

  The next two submarines to be captured were both Italian, and were both seized by boarding parties from British escort vessels in the Mediterranean. At 5.30 p.m. on the evening of 9th July, 1942, a look-out in the corvette Hyacinth (Lieutenant J. I. Jones, R.N.R.), which was on passage from Haifa to Beirut, sighted two torpedoes approaching from the port beam. She at once altered course to comb the tracks, and the torpedoes passed a few yards astern of her. The Asdic operator quickly gained contact at 1,000 yards, and Jones attacked with six depth charges set to 100–150 feet. Patches of oil came to the surface, but Jones, who was evidently experienced in anti-submarine warfare, “ viewed this with scant enthusiasm,” and made two more attacks with a total of eight more depth charges. At 5.45 just after the third attack, the submarine broke surface, and the Hyacinth engaged with all her guns. Very soon the submarine’s crew could be seen abandoning ship, and when a white flag was waved the corvette ceased fire and lowered a boat with a boarding party under Lieutenant J. Pollard, R.N.R. Included in its crew was a Maltese officers’ cook named John Zammit, who was to act as interpreter. Sub-Lieutenant J. Rowley, R.N.V.R., and Able Seaman Sharratt of the boarding party were the first to leap on to the submarine’s deck, and they forced those of the crew who were still on board, who included all the officers, back into the conning tower. The Hyacinth was meanwhile picking up those who had taken to the water. They were at once placed in the fo’c’s’le head under guard, and a preliminary interrogation took place, with another Maltese rating, Officers’ Steward Simmons, acting as interpreter.

  Pollard had meanwhile inspected the inside of the submarine, which turned out to be the Perla, and when he reported that she was fit for towing Jones signalled to Haifa for assistance. The corvette Gloxinia and two M.T.B.s at once put out to sea, while a Fleet Air Arm Walrus amphibian took off to provide air anti-submarine escort. Two submarine experts, Commander H. ? Browne and Commander (E) W. G. Pulvertaft, came out from the base, and one of the M.T.B.s rushed them onboard the captured vessel, where they took charge of the remainder of the Italian crew, who co-operated very willingly in restarting machinery and making the Perla seaworthy. By 10 p.m. she had been taken in tow by the Hyacinth and was heading for Beirut with the Gloxinia and M.T.B.s screening the tow. The fact that the Perla’s rudder was jammed hard-a-starboard caused trouble at first, and the tow parted once; but the boarding party very soon centred the rudder and thereafter no serious difficulties arose. At 1 a.m. on the 10th, only about seven hours after she had surfaced, the Hyacinth reached the Haifa boom, where a tug took over her prize. It had been a remarkably smart piece of work, and the men who carried it out certainly deserved the decorations awarded to them. Jones added the D.S.O. to the D.S.C. which he had gained earlier in the war, Pollard and Rowley both received D.S.C.s, and five of the Hyacinth’s crew were awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

  The Perla was a valuable prize, the more so because the boarding party had acted so quickly that her crew had no time to destroy books and documents and damage equipment. She had originally been based at Massawa in Eritrea, and her Captain (Teniente B. Napp) had got her away shortly before we captured that base on 8th April, 1941. She then sailed south, passed round the Cape of Good Hope and, after fuelling twice from German supply ships, reached Bordeaux safely on about 1st June. Her crew must be given full credit for this enterprising break-out from the Red Sea, which had become a trap for the Italian ships based there, and for taking their ship some 11,000 miles—in spite of the fact that she had not had damage from an earlier bombing attack properly repaired. The journey lasted 81 days. After being refitted by the Germans at Bordeaux she sailed south again on 15th September, passed through the Straits of Gibraltar safely in spite of being attacked by our destroyers, and reached Naples. She had sailed from Messina on her final patrol under a new Captain (Teniente G. Ventura), with five officers and 39 men, only ten days before her capture. The interrogation of the survivors yielded conflicting evidence regarding which of the Hyacinth’s attacks forced her to the surface; but the main weight of opinion indicated that all three did some damage—and especially the first and third. The quick arrival of Commanders Browne and Pulvertaft on board the prize undoubtedly contributed greatly to bringing her into port intact; and they commented in their report on the splendid work of Zammit as interpreter. “ He gave,” they said, “ of his very best. His pride in Malta and his contempt for the Italians produced many delightful moments.” Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, forwarded the captor’s reports with the remark that the Hyacinth had carried out “ a series of excellent attacks which allowed the Perla no respite ”; and the Naval Staff read what they called Jones’s “ lively account of a very fine performance … with admiration.” A few days after her capture the Perla was commissioned into the 1st Submarine Flotilla with a British crew.

  Just over a year later another Italian submarine, the Bronzo, fell into our hands. On the 12th of July, 1943, the minesweepers Cromarty (Lieutenant-Commander C. G. Palmer, R.N.Z.N.V.R., senior officer), Seaham, Poole and Boston were screening the bombarding ships between Augusta and Syracuse during the combined operations for the invasion of Sicily. At 12.50 p.m. the Seaham (Lieutenant-Commander Robert E. Brett, R.N.R.) sighted a submarine on the
surface about a mile away. Brett went full speed ahead with the intention of ramming, but when the submarine crash-dived he quickly had his depth charge settings adjusted for a shallow attack. Before he could carry it out, however, the submarine broke surface again; so Brett altered once more on to a ramming course, opened fire with his 3-inch gun, and swept the submarine’s deck with his lighter weapons. The Poole and Boston also joined in the gun action which, however, lasted only a few minutes, as some of the crew jumped overboard while others made obvious signs of surrender. The Seaham quickly got a boarding party away, and the Bronzo was soon taken in tow. Nine of her crew had been killed, including the Captain (Teniente A. Gherardi); but 36 men were picked up and made prisoner. At 4.30 p.m., only some four hours after she was first sighted, the Bronzo was towed triumphantly into Syracuse. Her mission had been to attack the bombarding ships which the Cromarty and her consorts were protecting, and she had left the base of Pozzuoli near Naples only two days earlier.

  We now come to the capture of U.505 commanded by Oberleutnant Harald Lange, by the American escort carrier Guadalcanal and the four destroyers who were working with her, on 4th June, 1944, off Cape Blanc in West Africa; but as Rear-Admiral Daniel V. Gallery has told that story very fully and vividly in his book We Captured a U-boat1 there is no need to recapitulate it here. But certain statements made in that account demand comment. Firstly no British officer who fought in the Atlantic Battle or in the Mediterranean will accept Admiral Gallery’s implication that the idea of capturing a surfaced submarine was an original inspiration on his part; for we have already seen how many, if not most British escort commanders had such an object very much in mind from the early days of the war. Secondly, although it is true that, as Admiral Gallery points out, the case of U.570 differs from his accomplishment in capturing and bringing in U.505 in that the former was not boarded until some time after she had voluntarily surrendered to Squadron Leader Thompson’s Hudson, he is wrong to claim that U.505 “ was the only German submarine boarded and captured at sea ” (p. 67). The facts are that, although U.570’s crew had time to destroy virtually all the material which might have furnished us with valuable operational intelligence, from U.110 the gain to the Allies was every bit as great as from Gallery’s U.505, and it came to us moreover at a far more critical period of the war. One can only presume that, when he wrote his book Admiral Gallery had never heard of the Royal Navy’s achievement. Nor is that surprising, for the secret was so closely guarded at the time that no one except the actual participants and a few highly placed officers in the Admiralty ever knew the whole story; and although, when co-operation between the Royal and the United States Navies became complete shortly before America entered the war, we certainly passed to our Ally all the benefits gained from the capture, we seem never to have told the Americans exactly how it came to pass. It is indeed a remarkable fact that although the crews of three escort vessels, and many survivors of recently sunk merchantmen who were on board them at the time—totalling at least 400 officers and men—all knew that a U-boat had been captured, not one of them ever breathed a word about it. Rarely can discretion have been more severely tested, or a secret better kept. But there is another very important fact regarding the capture of U.110, and moreover one which makes the accomplishment absolutely unique. Whereas the original crews of Admiral Gallery’s 11.505, and also of the Galileo Galilei, U.570, the Perla and the Bronzo, were all fully aware that their ships had been captured, so skilfully was the seizure of U.110 carried out that to this day the German survivors have never discovered that their ship fell into our hands. It will be plain to anyone versed in intelligence work that this astonishing accomplishment greatly enhanced the value of the capture; for as soon as any belligerent knows, or even suspects, that one of his ships has fallen into the other side’s hands he will at once take every possible step to mitigate, if not eliminate, the harm which may have been done to his cause. But if, on the other hand, a ship is captured with her equipment intact and the enemy never discovers it, then we will be able to reap the greatest possible benefit. That was, very precisely, what happened with U.110—more than three years before Gallery’s men hoisted the Stars and Stripes above the Nazi’s crooked cross on board U.505 !

  Lastly, to drive a final nail into the coffin in which some of the claims made with regard to U.505 should be encased, we may mention several other instances in which U-boats were boarded at sea, but their captors did not succeed in towing them in. On 10th September, 1941, while escorting convoy SC.42, the Royal Canadian Navy’s newly-commissioned corvettes Chambly and Moose Jaw forced U.501 to the surface, and a boarding party from the former got aboard her and did their utmost, though unavailingly, to prevent her sinking.1 Secondly, on 6th March, 1944, the Canadian and British ships escorting convoy HX.280 hunted U.744 for over 30 hours, and when she surfaced a boarding party from the R.C.N. corvette Chilliwack got on board in time not only to hoist the White Ensign but to remove what the Canadian historian calls “ a precious haul of books and equipment.”1 But towing was quite impossible in the heavy sea then running, and one of our own ships finally sent the U-boat to the bottom with a torpedo. Yet another example of a surfaced U-boat being boarded at sea occurred on the evening of 12th April, 1945, when the frigate Loch Glendhu of the Eighth Escort Group blew U.1024 to the surface in the Irish Sea, about twenty miles south of the Isle of Man. Her consorts the Loch Achray and Loch More then joined in, boarding parties were sent away and the Loch More took the U-boat in tow. Unhappily thick fog came down at that moment, which made towing extremely difficult. At midnight the tow parted, and the U-boat sank.

  To conclude this brief survey of submarine captures, it should be recorded that, to the best of my knowledge, no Japanese or American submarine was ever captured intact by the other side during the last war. Perhaps the nearest we came to achieving such a success was when the New Zealand Navy’s little minesweepers Kiwi and Moa blew the I-1 to the surface off Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands on the night of 29th–30th January, 1943, and then fought their much larger adversary so effectively that they drove her ashore. Divers later penetrated inside the hull, from which some equipment was removed. On the American side the only time the enemy gained a glimpse of the interior of one of their submarines was when, on 23rd October, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Darter ran ashore. The crew was taken off by another submarine, but every attempt to destroy the vessel failed, and the Japanese later boarded and inspected her. They found, however, nothing of value.

  1 The following are British equivalents of the German ranks:—

  Fregattenkapitän—Commander

  Korvettenkapitän—Lieutenant-Commander

  Kapitänleutnant—Senior Lieutenant

  Oberleutnant-zur-See—Junior Lieutenant

  Leutnant-zur-See—Sub-Lieutenant

  1 This was the former trawler Franken, of 435 Gross Register Tons.

  1 After the loss of three submarines (the Seahorse, Undine and Starfish) while on patrol in the Heligoland Bight in January 1940, and the discovery that the crews of two of them had been made prisoner, the Admiralty ordered the fitting of two depth charges in the bilges of submarines which were to patrol in shallow water close off the enemy’s coasts. The charges were set to explode at 50 feet depth, and the idea was that if the interior of the submarine was flooded and she sank in any depth greater than that set on the depth charge pistols, they would destroy the submarine. The Seal was fitted with such depth charges; but they could not, of course, be used to scuttle the ship, and as her hull never became wholly flooded they did not function at all.

  1 In 1948 Commander Lonsdale was ordained Priest in the Church of England.

  1 Now Admiral Sir Geoffrey Robson, K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O., D.S.C. He served with great distinction in destroyers, and was twice sunk during the war. The Kandahar was lost after striking a mine off Tripoli on 19th December, 1941, and the Hardy, also under Robson, fell victim to a U-boat’s torpedo on 30th January, 1944, while escorting convo
y JW.56B to Murmansk.

  1 See Che Ha Fatto La Marina ? by Commander M. A. Bragadin (Milan, 2nd Ed., 1950), p. 42, and The Italian Navy in World War II by the same author (United States Naval Institute, 1957), p. 23.

  1 See Roskill The War at Sea, Vol. I, p. 150 (H.M.S.O. 1954).

  1 See for example Burt and Leasor The One That Got Away (Collins with Michael Joseph, 1956). The authors are, however, wrong to state (p. 72, fn.1) that Leutnant Bernhard Berndt, who was later hounded to his death while in prison-camp by his compatriots, was captain of the captured U-boat. Rahmlow was the Captain, and Berndt his First Lieutenant.

  1 See John Drummond ?.M.U-Boat (W. H. Allen, 1958).

  1 Sidgwick and Jackson, 1957.

  1 See Schull The Far Distant Ships (Ottawa, 1952, pp. 83–86).