BATTERED BY NATURE – AND BY ADOLF’S MEN
‘The night promised to be a busy one’
For the first six days of the passage west, ONS5’s only opponent was the weather. It was, Peter Gretton wrote later, “consistently adverse”. And when it wasn’t merely adverse it was “extremely bad”. On the 26th, it was the latter. At midday, the ships were making just 3kts, a couple of hundred miles south of Iceland. The gale blew itself out late the the Atlantic. Fleeting contacts. Depth next day, and by the morning of April charge attacks. Oil slicks. Torpedo 28, ONS5 was 250 miles southwest wakes streaking through the night. of Reykjavik, ploughing along – Certainties were few – except for briefly – at almost top speed. one. By the time the first glimmer of But at the same time as Kenneth light appeared on the eastern horizon, Brooke was filing his mid-day a little after 4am, no ship in the situation report, HMS Duncan began convoy had been sunk. to pick up a U-boat’s transmission Gretton reckoned that his force – from somewhere ahead of ONS5. Duncan, Sunflower, Snowflake and Gretton charged ahead through hazy Tay – had thwarted at least half a weather – visibility was no more dozen attempts by the Germans to than three miles. Nothing. U650 had penetrate the escort screen and sink vanished. the merchantmen. But she was out there. And if she HMS Duncan alone made four was, there were likely to be more. attacks that night – in less than an And there were. U650, which had hour. “The ship was pitching and only recently entered the fray after rolling badly – the seas were washing leaving Bergen in Norway in the down the quarterdeck, soaking the middle of April, had flashed a signal men there, while the heavy and to U-boat command in Berlin, a call cumbersome depth charges were to arms. difficult to reload,” Gretton recalled. She was one of 16 boats assigned He kept his men appraised of to a U-boat Gruppe, or group. the battle via loud hailer – “there History has come to know them as is nothing worse than working on wolfpacks. This particular pack – blindly, literally in the dark as to Group Star – was 16 U-boats strong, what is happening”. but they were struggling to respond At one point, Duncan tried to to U650’s clarion call in the rough ram a U-boat – “a splendid method weather. As night fell, only four had of sinking submarines” – the escort joined her for the hunt. commander observed. It was, but But that still meant five submarines it invariably inflicted great damage lying in wait. on hunter as well as hunted. With Although ONS5 was within range Duncan 1,000 miles from the of aircraft based in Iceland, the nearest harbour, the ocean evidently weather thwarted all flying. Before swarming with U-boats, and the nightfall, Gretton sighted at least one U-boat on the surface. It dived before convoy far from its destination, Peter Duncan could make an effective Gretton chose not to ram. Instead he dropped a pattern of depth charges as attack. the U-boat disappeared in a swirl into Otherwise, the wolves were the depths of the Atlantic. gathering at their leisure, Peter The records show that four U-boats Gretton observed. With typical RN tried – and failed – to attack ONS understatement he wrote: “The night 5. Two limped away badly bruised promised to be a busy one.” from their encounter. One, U528, was further crippled by bombing a week later and eventually sunk.
‘Anticipate’
Aboard HMS Pink, Robert Atkinson read a signal from Duncan: Anticipate. It was all that was needed. By this stage in World War 2, the convoy escorts were a skilled machine, their practices well-honed. Atkinson decided it was time for tea and let his men grab some food before clearing lower decks and briefing them. “There’s going to be a hell of a battle tonight. I’m not sure how many of us will see daylight. I intend to see it if I can.” He urged his men to don their warmest clothing and rest until 1am. Some men slept, many did not. All were ready for action come 1am.
RN 1 – Reich 0 The wolves were, in fact, early. They closed in for the kill just before the witching hour. What followed is a rather confusing night of battle – typical for
Scourge of the enemy again ☞
Continued from page i, column 6 understood the mindset of the U-boat commander. It meant, Anthony Kimmins observed, that “he seemed to have an uncanny pre-vision of what the enemy would do next.” After six months in charge of Western Approaches, Max Horton could see the writing on the wall for the U-boat. Three and a half years of war had honed his convoy escorts into a potent fighting force, while aircraft flown from bases ashore and small ‘escort carriers’, joining the Fleet in increasing numbers, were becoming proven U-boat hunters. The time had come, Max Horton reasoned, not to defend convoys but to kill U-boats. www.navynews.co.uk
RN 1 – Reich 1 With daylight, Peter Gretton breathed a sigh of relief. The weather was improving. The convoy and escorts had regrouped after their exertions of the night. Duncan’s commander retired to his cabin to sleep. He was there not five minutes. The alarm sounded: Ship torpedoed astern. The victim was a 6,200-tonne American freighter, the McKeesport, whose forward hold imploded when the torpedo from U258 impacted. For half an hour, the crew toiled to save her, before abandoning their efforts – and abandoning their ship. All but one of them got off safely, picked up by the rescue trawler Northern Gem. There was no time to prosecute U258 – the convoy continued towards the New World. The opening round in the Battle for ONS5 was over.
Jews still defy SS oppressors in Warsaw The uprising by Jewish fighters in the Warsaw ghetto has entered its third week, reports from Poland suggest. An estimated 1,000 freedom fighters are holding at bay a force of Nazis at least twice as strong under brutal SS general Jürgen Stroop. Up to 400,000 Jews were thought to have been squeezed into the ghetto – an area of just 1.3 square miles – where they have lived in appalling conditions since 1940. Most of the ghetto was cleared out by the SS overlords last year, but small numbers of Jews have remained. They have been valiantly fighting overwhelming German forces since April 19. Berlin claims just 17 soldiers have been killed to date. (AP)
The Atlantic fights back ‘Blowing like the bells of hell’
In the coming days, it was the steep Atlantick which was the convoy’s greatest foe – not the U-boat. There never was a good day’s passage throughout the convoy – just consistently bad weather with the odd lull “sandwiched between the gales,” Gretton recalled. The forecasts he received were “shocking” and the merchantmen – always sluggish – were becoming slower and slower. By the first day of May, the Atlantic was at its most furious. “The wind was blowing like the bells of hell,” wrote Gretton. The ships were barely making any progress – “at times we seemed to be moving backwards”. Aboard HMS Pink AB John ‘Snowy’ Pells was tasting life on his first ship – and his first convoy duty. He had not enjoyed the experience so far. “In rough weather the boat, being flat-bottomed, was battered and rolled a lot. It was scary to see the metal ship’s sides bending in and out. Sea water would be washed down below and sloshed across the mess decks as the boat rolled.” In heavy seas, ONS5 made perhaps 20 miles a day. “The weather was so bad – there were times when the convoy was literally stationary,” recalled sick bay attendant Howard Goldsmith of HMS Snowflake. “Although the engines were turning, the screws were turning, we were just sitting there, stationary. “People don’t realise the tremendous power of the sea – unless you’ve seen what it can do.” The storms tore away the fresh meat lockers welded to Snowflake’s upper deck – there were no fridges aboard; it was the only way of keeping meat cool. All that was left when the storm passed were the welding spots; the lockers and meat were gone. And as for marshalling the freighters and steamers in strict formation, it was now impossible. From Duncan’s open bridge, the escort commander watched “the convoy melting away before our eyes”. When the storms abated, Gretton was finally able to corral his scattered ships – aided by a long-range Liberator bomber from Iceland. But the rough seas had done more than just hinder the progress of ONS5. They thwarted Gretton’s hopes of refueling. By the morning of May 4, Duncan’s tanks were almost empty. Her captain had two options: make for Newfoundland, or stay with the convoy and be towed when the fuel ran dry. “After much heart-searching, I decided that Duncan had to go,” he recalled two decades later. He handed over command of his group to HMS Tay and turned for St John’s. The mood aboard the destroyer was as foul as the weather. “We felt we left the group in the lurch and were thoroughly ashamed of ourselves,” Gretton admitted, “though there was really no-one to blame except the staff who had decided in the 1920s the endurance of such destroyers.” Before this first Tuesday in May had passed, three more of ONS5’s escorts had left the merchantmen, their fuel tanks dry. It left barely half a dozen warships shielding the convoy which, at a sluggish 6kts, was still four days’ sailing from Newfoundland and over a week from its destination of Halifax. There were now more than 50 U-boats waiting for the approaching convoy – 29 forming a line 400 miles long (‘Group Fink’), and further to the west, two dozen submarines gathering off Newfoundland to form a second line (‘Group Amsel’). On the afternoon of May 4, three Fink boats spied ONS5.
OUR BOYS – EVER ALERT On an open bridge – exposed to all the Atlantic might throw at them – officers of a convoy escort keep watch on their priceless flock. For now, however, Peter Gretton was focused solely on defence. With Kenneth Brooke, he began marshalling the disparate merchantmen in ONS5 into formation. “It is difficult – unless one has seen it from the air – to visualize the size and clumsiness of these vast convoys,” says Cdr Peter Gretton, commanding officer of an Atlantic escort group. Arrayed in a dozen columns of half a dozen vessels each, a convoy is large, unwieldy, sluggish, difficult to marshal, even more difficult to command. “Manoeuvring this mass of ships took time – and much time too was needed to get signals around the convoy, even by flags,” says Gretton. Before dusk Gretton signals orders for the coming night to the merchantmen and warships under his charge – hoping all will receive and follow his instructions. “Night was the anxious time for an escort – especially in bad weather,” he says. “On a dark night it was by no means easy to keep in station – and it was not rare to find one or even two escorts adrift at dawn.” And that’s if Adolf’s boys haven’t struck during the hours of darkness... Picture: Imperial War Museum A 5667
The reaper’s grim harvest Waged from the first day of the war to the last, the Battle of the Atlantic took a terrible toll of ships and souls from all the warring nations
188 Royal Navy escort vessels equipped with ASDIC were sunk during the war (139 destroyers, 11 sloops, ten frigates and 28 corvettes)*
In 1943, U-boats sank
12 escorts
30,000 Merchant Navy sailors were killed – around one in six became casualties 1,700 RAF Coastal Command aircraft were lost 6,000 Coastal Command personnel were killed 757 U-boats were destroyed by the Allies There were no survivors from 429 U-boats lost at sea Over the course of the war, 2 out of 3 U-boat men never returned * These figures include ships lost in the Arctic, Far East and Mediterranean
BLACK MAY 2013 :
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