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It's January 1943 in the Pacific and American submarine skipper Dudley Morton is just 10 days into his first patrol aboard USS Wahoo. His mission: to sink Japanese ships and disrupt supply lines. This aggressive strategy is a radically new tactic for the U.S. Navy, and Morton is just the man to carry it out. See these water wars up close and witness Morton take on entire Japanese convoys above and below the Pacific in this thrilling exploration.
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00:00In the early days of the Second World War, one of Hitler's most successful U-Boat aces, Otto Kretschmer, sinks dozens of Allied ships.
00:21First alone, then as part of the lethal wolf packs.
00:25Until a fateful mistake threatens everything.
00:44In World War II, a subsea weapon allows warriors to fight from beneath the waves.
00:51With cunning, force, and tenacity, their enemies strike back.
01:01Revolutionary, but still sometimes primitive, it's a desperate bid to change the course of war.
01:10Their stories are legend.
01:16July 8th, 1940.
01:17The Nazi U-Boat U-99 has sunk an Allied merchant ship just south of Ireland.
01:27The Nazi U-Boat U-99 has sunk an Allied merchant ship just south of Ireland.
01:32Now a British escort turns in pursuit.
01:33When you attack the enemy, you are the hunter.
01:35And as soon as you get attacked by the escorts, you are the prey.
01:39The crew of U-99 performs a dive to escape.
01:40And as soon as you get attacked by the escorts, you are the prey.
01:42The crew of U-99 performs a dive to escape.
01:46Berlin, new hunters.
01:47serie light here!
01:48representation.
01:49As soon as you get attacked by the escorts, you are the prey.
01:56The crew of the U-97 performance is the chance that they have to make out sue
01:59And as soon as you get attacked by the escort, you have to make the prey.
02:00We have!
02:00Stationry and soldier who do not earn chopper.
02:02escape. U-boat commander Otto Kretschmer has served Hitler's underwater
02:19service since the start of World War II. He's just sunk his 12th ship in 10
02:25months and earned a reputation as the best torpedo shot in the German Navy.
02:31He proves ruthlessly efficient. His motto is one torpedo one ship.
02:40Otto Kretschmer was not one of the ordinary submarine commanders. He's a part of an elite
02:48group to really do most of the damage. Not only is he pleasant and skilled but he's cold as a
02:54cucumber. It's only Kretschmer's second patrol aboard the recently commissioned U-99.
03:03He and his untried crew face an explosive initiation. It's the first time when the cool and calm character
03:15of Kretschmer is virtually forged in flames because it's the first time when he's attacked by allied escorts.
03:25The warship that hunts Kretschmer is one of Britain's new flower class corvettes. 205 feet long with a displacement of 940 tons. It's been adapted from commercial whalers to hunt submarines.
03:48So when the war starts the attack that the Germans launch on British trade is unanticipated and the British are simply not materially prepared for it nor are they psychologically prepared for it.
04:05And the Brits have to adapt their maritime preparations to deal with warfare that they just are not ready for.
04:12Just after 8 a.m., the flower class corvette launches underwater bombs, called death charges, in a bid to sink Kretschmer's submarine.
04:30They weigh about 400 pounds and detonate when they sink to a preset depth between 50 and 500 feet.
04:37All of a sudden, there will be the explosions.
04:43Submarine is thrown around underwater. Kretschmer described it like a thousand hammers knocking on a submarine.
04:57And when the dead charge exploded, one after the other, they look around in the submarine. Is there something broken? Is the hole still fully intact?
05:16They do not only drop one salvo, two salvo, or three salvos. They start attacking for hours and hours.
05:27U-99 is a Type 7 U-boat. First commissioned in 1936. They are 218 feet long and 20 feet wide.
05:39Type 7s normally carry 14 torpedoes and a crew of 45 men.
05:46Germany produces more of them than any other submarine.
05:52The Type 7 U-boat is actually a bit on the small side. It's developed from the so-called UB submarine, one of the smaller submarines of the First World War.
06:01It did have significant seagoing capacity.
06:06More than 700 were built, based on its relatively simple and inexpensive design.
06:16The man who deploys the U-boats is Karl Donitz, Hitler's mastermind of submarines.
06:22I think the best way to understand Karl Donitz is he's a consummate professional submariner. He lived, breathed, thought submarines all the time.
06:31Dönitz launches his U-boats to key shipping routes in a bid to strangle the British Isles.
06:37This became the core strategy of the German naval command, to cut those lifelines, those maritime lifelines, fighting the convoys, starving Britain into defeat.
06:52The whole thing turns into, quite literally as often said, a chess match, because you're matching wits with the other guy.
06:58Where is he now and where will he be? You've got to be thinking several moves ahead.
07:02Dönitz uses naval intelligence to assign the few submarines he has to locate ships.
07:09There are not many U-boats at sea at this stage of the war.
07:14The Germans have had to make choices in their war production, and U-boats were not one of those choices,
07:18because, of course, they were planning to fight on land, first in the west and then in the east.
07:23So he had to use these small numbers, and the only thing he could do is to spread them over the ocean like butter on a very big sheet of bread.
07:38Therefore, in the first stages of the Second World War, they were still fighting like in the First World War, one submarine on one patrol on its own.
07:46Early on July 8th, Dönitz's U-99 attacked the enemy alone, and has been under siege for hours.
08:01Everybody is under stress, so the sweat is coming on their face, dropping down, and if you are under stress, you breathe a lot.
08:11Uncertain of how long the attack will last, Kretschmer takes action to preserve the submarine's limited supply of air.
08:20The commanding officer needs to conserve the oxygen, and so the people get the order to lie down, to sleep.
08:30They get biscuits, and they get chocolate, to get over the situation. After hours, they are probably very fatigued.
08:45Some of the crew don masks that absorb carbon dioxide, in an effort to make the U-boat's atmosphere last.
08:51It's almost impossible to imagine what these people felt at this very moment. It must have been horrendous.
09:06But as another salvo hits, the man who commands the U-boat appears unfazed.
09:21Kretschmer was sitting very calm and reading a novel, a criminal novel.
09:25And the guy on the Hildreau acoustics, Kassel, was looking at him and he thought,
09:30Oh, that's a great guy. We are under the pressure.
09:34He is just sitting around, reading his novel.
09:43After some minutes, Kassel again is looking at him, and he realized, the book is upside down, so he can't read.
09:50And all the time, he did not flip any page.
09:55So Kretschmer, in this case, was a brilliant military leader.
10:01I can take the time to just read a novel, so you could keep calm too.
10:20When the attacks are going on for hours, Kretschmer had to keep in mind a lot of different things.
10:29The first thing is to keep the submarine in a depth where it doesn't get destroyed by the pressure of the water.
10:35And therefore, he needs propulsion. And to produce propulsion, he needs to use battery energy.
10:42Submerged, 124 battery cells power U-99's propellers and all its systems.
10:51They can only be recharged on the surface.
10:58Twelve hours after the depth charge attack begins, Kretschmer and his crew remain pinned down.
11:05Kretschmer is told by his engineer that he is running low of battery fuel.
11:20Kretschmer must make a move or U-99 will be lost to the sea.
11:26To wait until the battery is totally down, then there is no chance of surviving.
11:31During the 12 hours of depth charge attack, U-99 has been cruising just fast enough to maintain a constant depth to conserve power.
11:50To keep his submarine moving, he needs the propulsion.
11:54And therefore, he had to use the battery fuel in an efficient way, as long as possible, to keep the boat on moving for propulsion or for operations.
12:13As his batteries die, Kretschmer risks the last of his power on a course change in a final bid to escape.
12:18Kretschmer and his crew tried to evade by zig-zagging, changing depth and the likes.
12:28More than 14 hours after the attack began, the sound of enemy propellers fades.
12:35And then they had the information that the escorts were moving away.
12:40U-99 survives 127 depth charges.
12:51Menner, bereit machen zum auftauchen.
12:53Bereit machen zum auftauchen.
12:55Battery fuel was extremely low, and oxygen was nearly disposed, and therefore, he had to get up.
13:02He had to get up.
13:14When they surface, the escorts have moved out of sight.
13:17It is said that the air is yellow-greenish, and the author of one famous novel about Kretschmer, he explains, looking like the deaf leaving the submarine.
13:35He was one of the first German commanding submarine officers to have an experience of a long-lasting depth charge.
13:46He was lucky, so the escorts really disappeared.
13:48To the east, the man in charge of Germany's U-boats gains a critical win.
14:09Hitler's troops have invaded France.
14:11Jönitz can use its Atlantic ports to launch its submarines.
14:22After the fall of France in 1940, the Germans suddenly possessed new bases, ideally suited for attacks on the British convoys in the Atlantic.
14:34Before that, they had to send out their boats from their bases in Germany, which meant they would spend a lot of fuel for travelling to and through those operational areas.
14:51And so now, in France, the boats had considerably more time for actually hunting and fighting the Allied convoys.
15:04On October 13th, 1940, Jönitz deploys U-99 from Lorient, France.
15:11Intelligence has learned 34 enemy ships transport timber, steel and other war materials in a convoy from Canada to Britain.
15:21A convoy is a grouping of ships, a number of ships together, escorted by a number of warships.
15:28You might think that putting a lot of ships together is a lot of eggs in one basket, but actually, because the sea is such a big place, if you concentrate shipping, then it's very difficult for the enemy to even find them.
15:38And when they find them, they find them escorted with warships, and it's a hard job to attack them.
15:44Kretschmer and his crew race northwest in search of convoy SC-7.
15:52All convoy routes have their own designation. HX, Halifax. SC, slow convoy, for slow ships when they start convoys for slow ships.
16:03So it normally means something, and it helps divide convoys up.
16:12Dönitz assigns more U-boats to join Kretschmer in locating the convoy.
16:17It's one of the first mobilizations of a wolf pack, a tactic that Hitler's submarines would make famous.
16:25The essence of the rudel tactic, the wolf tactic, was to bring several submarines to bear against the convoy.
16:35The control of the wolf pack is done ashore at Tönitz headquarters.
16:40It's on the big board, you get a big plot and little pins and moves submarines around.
16:43Think of it as a kind of vast drift net of submarines at about twice the visibility distance apart one from the other,
16:52deployed perpendicular to the line of advance that you'd expect convoys to follow.
16:57And the idea is simply to use it as a kind of tripwire system so you can snare them.
17:01Another submarine to join the hunt is U-100.
17:19The U-boat is commanded by Joachim Shepke, friend and rival to Kretschmer in U-99.
17:26Shepke and Kretschmer were among the first to complete Dönitz's elite submarine training.
17:34Thirteen months into the war, they rank among Hitler's U-boat aces, cunning men driven to sink Britain's ships.
17:45The number of aces in the U-boat fleet is never very big and they do most of the heavy lifting.
17:50If you look at the success rate for German submariners, about three quarters of the tonnage is sunk by like 20% of the captains.
18:02Because they're prepared to take things right to the edge.
18:07But can these lone wolves hunt as a pack?
18:09By fall of 1940, a new era of submarine warfare has begun.
18:24Admiral Karl Dönitz counts on aces Kretschmer and Shepke to deliver on his new wolf pack tactic.
18:31Germany has only 27 operational submarines.
18:39Nearly a third of Dönitz's active fleet is at stake.
18:43His strategic objective is tonnage sunk per U-boat day at sea.
18:48It's also a logical strategy. It's just about the only one they've got.
18:52But it means you do have to sink ships. You have to destroy their carrying capacity.
18:56Attacking a convoy presents the perfect opportunity.
19:11The 34 merchant ships of Slow Convoy 7 are protected by only four escorts.
19:18Their main weapon for detecting U-boats is sonar.
19:22An active pinging system also known as ASDIC.
19:28Echo bearing green 2-0, drawing right.
19:32ASDIC was invented towards the end of World War I.
19:36It uses sound pulses called pings to search the ocean for submarines.
19:41The big innovation in the fall of 1918 was the introduction of an active acoustic location system developed primarily by the French and then shared with the British.
19:54So what you have is that stuff you see in Hollywood movies where a sound goes out, it hits something and it comes back.
20:01And you measure the distance and that gives you some idea of how far away the object is.
20:08It was the key to the existing anti-submarine tactics of the Royal Navy.
20:13A submerged submarine, in fact, was vulnerable.
20:16But the biggest drawback is that it doesn't work against surface vessels.
20:19And when a submarine becomes a low, hard-to-detect surface vessel at night, it soon proves to be a very dangerous enemy indeed.
20:34After convoy SC-7 is intercepted, Kretschmer and the rest of the Wolfpack close in.
20:39And then the order would be given that at the right moment in the dark of night, you're free to attack.
20:49And then the pack would come in.
20:53There's a lot at stake, not simply in sinking the ships, but in creating that shock effect and demonstrating to the British that they can sink their shipping at will.
21:02Shepke and the other commanders prepare to fire from outside the convoy.
21:16But Kretschmer has his own plan.
21:23At 10pm, U-99 slinks past the escorts to ambush the enemy from where they least expect it.
21:29Kretschmer has this killer instinct.
21:33He is a perfectionist.
21:36So he finds a way of sneaking in on the surface into the convoy.
21:43He manages cold-blooded to sail inside the convoy.
21:48And then starts to torpedo the merchant vessels.
21:52Kretschmer ISA
21:58Another enemy is the merchant vessels.
22:01Torpedo four, load!
22:02Torpedo four, load!
22:04It's a war!
22:07Torpedo two and four, load!
22:10Torpedo three, load!
22:16Torpedo four, load!
22:19The first knowledge they have that there's an attack taking place is when an explosion
22:29strikes a ship and flares start to go up, then the escort has to react.
22:36The Allies target the convoy's perimeter, where the U-boats usually prowl.
22:46The soldiers in the Wolfpack are forced to dive.
23:15But inside the convoy, Kretschmer stays on the attack.
23:22It turned into a pyrotechnic nightmare.
23:36They're just sinking ships.
23:39Terrifying for the men in the convoy.
23:41Just terrifying.
23:43No one thought that they would actually get inside the convoy in the dark of night and
23:47spit death and destruction out both ends at a high speed.
23:50In the early hours of October 19th, U-99 fires the last of its 14 torpedoes.
24:12The convoy loses 20 ships while in transit.
24:1580,000 tons of shipping is lost to the war effort.
24:19Shepke claims three ships, Kretschmer seven.
24:27Many more than any other ace in one of Germany's first Wolfpack offensives.
24:31It's a radically new kind of use of submarines that the Brits simply do not have defenses for.
24:38Once the Wolfpack snares a convoy, it's chaos for the Allies.
24:45A few days later, U-99 docks to a cheering crowd.
24:59Kretschmer and his fellow commanders are celebrated as idols.
25:03The German U-boot aces were used by the German war propaganda, of course, as propaganda heroes.
25:11You can almost like them to the pop stars of their days.
25:16In any war, it's very much the same.
25:19You need heroes.
25:20You need successors to raise the spirit of your own folk.
25:25In Britain, war strategists race to thwart Germany's new U-boat tactics.
25:36The British Empire's a maritime empire, and it relies on shipping.
25:40Now, that's a strength because it means that the British can access the world as far as supplies are concerned.
25:45But on the other hand, it means Britain must control the sea.
25:50The Royal Navy reassigns warships guarding the British coast to the Atlantic to protect convoys.
25:57It must not allow the enemy to deny it the use of the sea.
26:01Efforts are also underway to apply a new technology called radar.
26:05Radio waves used to detect enemy airplanes to the seas.
26:09In the process of having to make this adjustment, Britain is being bombed.
26:14The ports are being destroyed from the air. The Blitz is being launched.
26:19It's a very trying period for Britain.
26:26March 1941.
26:29Nazi wolf packs have dominated the Battle of the Atlantic for five months.
26:34Now, convoy HX-112 steams in transit from Halifax to Britain.
26:39HX, Halifax.
26:42HX-112 was the 112th fast inward-bound convoy.
26:46It was composed of different kinds of ships, tankers, cargo ships, etc.
26:51And one of the features which makes this convoy interesting and significant is that for the first time, the U-boats are facing a well-trained escort group.
27:01Overseeing the seven escorts that guard the 41-ship convoy is Commander Donald McIntyre.
27:11McIntyre has proved a shrewd hunter since he captained his first British patrol vessel in 1935.
27:18McIntyre was focused on U-boat killing.
27:23That's what he wanted to do.
27:24He wanted to sink submarines.
27:27McIntyre took command of HMS Walker a few weeks before.
27:32The lead destroyer, one of Britain's first dedicated convoy protection fleets, Escort Group 5.
27:39It was a very risky business, not only to serve on a warship or a merchant vessel, but also to travel the Atlantic.
27:51There was also this constant threat of being attacked by a U-boat and facing a gruesome death.
28:00150 miles south of Iceland, McIntyre faces the first assault against convoy HX-112.
28:19The U-boat cripples one of the convoy's prized oil tankers.
28:23Critical fuel for Britain's war effort burns.
28:27Tankers are always spectacular targets.
28:29They go up in huge bouts of flame, and this tanker was no exception.
28:35It made a great impact on McIntyre, who said, you know, it was rather a depressing sight to see this huge explosion taking place.
28:43And it showed that the U-boats were mounting effective attacks.
28:46In the North Atlantic, the U-boat has downed a tanker carrying fuel guarded by Britain's Escort Group 5, commanded by Donald McIntyre.
29:03The submarine that has ambushed the convoy is U-110, and it takes immediate evasive action.
29:17The dive is ordered by Fritz Julius Lemp.
29:37Like Kretschmer and Schepke, Lemp is one of Hitler's elite U-boat aces.
29:47He's best known for sinking the passenger liner Athenia on the first day of World War II.
29:54The attack on the civilian vessel sends the stark message that every British ship is at risk.
30:00At the start of the war, the admiralty isn't sure that the Germans are going to start unrestricted submarine warfare.
30:07But when the Athenia is sunk, then the admiralty decides, yes, it is unrestricted submarine warfare, and so a convoy system is introduced.
30:17Before diving, Lemp transmits the coordinates of convoy HX-112 to U-boat headquarters.
30:23Dönitz deploys Kretschmer and Schepke in a wolf pack to intercept.
30:30All the first round draft picks, all the key characters, are in this convoy battle.
30:42But one of the convoy's escorts also carries a new weapon rigged to foil U-boat tactics.
30:48McIntyre's warship fleet includes the HMS VANOC, recently fitted with radar.
30:55A technology that allows ships to locate submarines on the surface.
31:03VANOC was one of the first destroyers to be equipped with a radar system.
31:07And this was entirely new, and a new threat to the U-boats.
31:11Now they could be detected at night at the surface.
31:20Unaware of this critical development, Germany's top submarine commanders prepare to attack.
31:26They have had great successes against poorly escorted convoys.
31:31Now the tide is beginning to turn, but they don't know that yet.
31:34March 16th, 1941.
31:42Having located the convoy, Kretschmer plots his creep into HX-112.
31:48U-99's commander scans the fog with prized binoculars made for an ace.
31:53As an ace submarine commander, Kretschmer has been presented with a rather higher standard of binoculars than other captains.
32:04And they're part of his ability, especially at night, to seize targets on the surface.
32:10And it's a very important part of Kretschmer's self-image that he has them.
32:14Kretschmer must use his sharp eyes to avoid an accidental crash with an enemy ship.
32:24The North Atlantic in March is not a very hospitable place.
32:28And you get mist and fog and so on.
32:30And therefore it's going to be quite difficult to attack.
32:34But Kretschmer was a person who liked taking risks.
32:36He wanted to get inside the convoy.
32:38That was his tactic.
32:39Get inside the convoy, target-rich environment, sink everything inside.
32:43And he tries to do this despite the weather conditions.
32:46By 10pm, U-99 navigates the fog to land inside enemy lines.
32:52Where none of the convoy escorts would expect to find a Nazi submarine.
33:02Avoiding underwater detection and cloaked in darkness, Kretschmer and his crew are ready to strike.
33:08They attack at night, on the surface, when the Aztec doesn't work, the sonar doesn't work.
33:25And therefore they create chaos, they create a certain amount of shock effect.
33:29And large numbers of ships and then blow up in quick succession.
33:32We go three, fire!
33:34Three!
33:38We go four, fire!
33:39Four, go!
33:48Aboard the lead British escort, McIntyre scans the perimeter for the U-boat that's ravaging his ships.
33:55If the escort gets a sniff, it can strike against the pack.
34:00It can push it off and maybe get through the night with very few losses.
34:08But at 1am, another submarine is detected.
34:14McIntyre spots Shepkin in the customary position outside the convoy.
34:17The British destroyer steams toward its target, at 34 knots.
34:28Nearly twice as fast as U-100 can speed.
34:34Fire! Fire!
34:36Fire!
34:37Fire!
34:38Fire!
34:39Fire!
34:40Fire!
34:41Fire!
34:42Fire!
34:43Fire!
34:44Fire!
34:45Fire!
34:46Fire!
34:48Nearly overtaken on the surface, Shepke's only option is to try and hide beneath the waves.
34:54In such a battle situation, you can't think for hours and hours over what to do next.
35:07And so made this split-second decision to evade an attack by the destroyer by diving.
35:14What's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, right?
35:23McIntyre summons HMS Vanoff to join him in a depth-charge attack.
35:27Come on, boys, let's go!
35:30Depth-charges are very large explosions.
35:35And if they occur close to the submarine, then they do a lot of damage.
35:41Bulbs become untied, water leaks in, controls burst, bulbs burst.
35:54200!
35:56All kinds of damages are inflicted.
35:59You have, you have my leg, you have it!
36:06The damage is overwhelming.
36:08It leaks so badly that if it doesn't come up, it's probably going to sink.
36:16On McIntyre's ship, HMS Walker, the sonar operator struggles to ping U-100.
36:23With the Aztec system in an ocean distorted by explosions.
36:27The sea is a very complicated environment and, of course, if you're dropping depth charges,
36:32it's quite hard to actually separate the depth charges from the submarine.
36:37Another problem was that Aztec faced forwards and your weapons were dropped over the stern, the rear of the ship.
36:44So this means that when you're attacking a submarine, there is a gap between your losing contact and the depth charges actually being dropped.
36:51And then you have to re-acquire the target.
36:52Nearby, HMS Vanhock uses its first generation radar to scan for U-100 in case it surfaces.
37:01The new technology could deliver a target, but its application is limited.
37:05The first radar they put in service is the Type 286, which is a 1.5-meter radar fixed to the masthead.
37:13The essential problem with Type 286 radar is the target had to be straight ahead.
37:18He couldn't turn the antenna, so he had to point the ship.
37:20Just after 3 a.m., Shepke pops up a thousand yards away from the escorts, betting he can repair the flooding and limp away to safety.
37:37In an incredible twist, he lands directly in front of the first radar system, able to detect him.
37:45If they had been a little bit left or right or some other place, the 286 on the masthead probably wouldn't have picked it up.
37:51Vanhock races head-on.
37:54The commander decides to ram the U-boat.
37:58We're not able to do it. We're going back.
38:08Having picked up a surfaced U-boat on its newly installed radar system,
38:11the British ship Vanhock resorts to a standard First World War tactic
38:17and charges to ram the damaged submarine.
38:20The destroyer hits the U-boat, U-100, amid ships and smashes the conning tower.
38:35And Shepke is crushed with his legs between the hull and the periscope, is thrown into the water and is killed.
38:48And the U-boat is lost.
38:49Aboard U-99, Kretschmer is oblivious to the fate of his fellow ace.
39:04Out of torpedoes, U-99's crew clears the convoy to head for home.
39:10This is a classic Kretschmer attack.
39:14Five ships sunk, so he seems to be doing well.
39:18But now the training of the escort force comes in.
39:21They carry out what they can of a systematic search.
39:25As U-99 slinks away, Kretschmer's lookout spots McIntyre's destroyer.
39:30In a panic, the crewman is convinced they've been discovered.
39:39On the crewman's warning, the submarine dives.
39:44When he saw this destroyer extremely near, he simply expected that they would have been detected by the destroyer.
39:58And so made this split-second decision to evade an attack by the destroyer by diving.
40:06McIntyre's lookouts were unaware of U-99.
40:10But as the submarine descends, the destroyer's sonar comes into play.
40:24They're listening all the time, and they're playing this kind of deadly game of cat and mouse.
40:30The sub's down here, and he's listening till you ping off him.
40:33And at some point, because the sonar beam is fixed, it's going to sweep over the sub.
40:41New contact.
40:43Range, 400 yards.
40:46Once it can be picked up on ASDIC, it can be attacked with DAP charges.
40:51McIntyre's crew launches its underwater bombs.
40:54In a bid to sink the submarine.
40:59They threw the DAP charges, and they detonated near the U-boat, causing extreme damage.
41:18With controls failing, their equipment and gauges shattered, Kretschmer and his crew plunged towards the seafloor in a severely wounded submarine.
41:43They got two options at that point.
41:53You blow ballast and get out, or you become a bottom feature.
41:57Kretschmer's crew attempts to blow out water to raise their plummeting U-boat.
42:05The only way of escaping was returning to the surface.
42:10So this was the decision Kretschmer made, simply to save the life of his crew.
42:16But the air valve is jammed.
42:19He's forced down. In fact, he goes down very deep indeed.
42:22It looks as if the submarine is going to be crushed.
42:34The crew monitors their descent.
42:37To their horror, they drop deeper and deeper.
42:4220 feet below crush depth.
42:53The valve finally gives.
42:56The U-boat begins to climb.
43:0020 feet below much sight of blazing.
43:0220 feet below my air.
43:03It could be 50 feet below your video.
43:04180 feet below.
43:05On the surface, a determined Mcintyre waits for the submarine.
43:09waits for the submarine as soon as she surfaces
43:21she's engaged with gunfire
43:28certain amount of damage is inflicted and it seems as if the time has come for u-99 to be abandoned
43:35but from the sinking submarine hitler's top u-boat ace orders a final transmission
43:45after his luck has run out kretschmer still is this professional he sends a last message to
43:51donuts very short simply says depth charge two destroyers 53 000 tons at kretschmer
44:01that last message he sends from the submarine have sunk a number of ships
44:04some thousand tons leaving the sub kretschmer that's just an indication of what a cool
44:12customer he actually was more than five hours after u-99 launched its attack
44:17kretschmer orders his crew on deck to prepare for surrender
44:22kretschmer i think to calm his crew lights a cigar just to show that he's still in charge
44:28he signals to the british to take off his crew
44:36and the british will do that because there isn't much hatred man man to man
44:41once the submarine sunk that's the job dump
44:46kretschmer is the last one pulled aboard the british destroyer
44:51mcintyre claims the ace's binoculars as his prize
44:54kretschmer is treated very well on board hms walker he plays bridge he's plied with whiskey
45:02they're very uh uh pleased that they've captured somebody so distinguished kretschmer spends the
45:09rest of the war as an allied prisoner
45:14the battle against convoy hx-112 cost dunitz two of his top submarines
45:19when kretschmer and shepke go down in march of 41 that's a catastrophic development for german public
45:28relations you've trumpeted the success of these heroes and now all of a sudden they're gone
45:34and the flip side of that is that the brits actually appear to be giant killers because they've
45:39taken them out it's tragic that they lose them all in a very short period but you still got lots of
45:47young very capable submariners coming along the german submarine fleet is by no means done it's really
45:52just getting started
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