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00:00The Atlantic, Britain's lifeline. Treacherous enough in peacetime, in war, black with menace.
00:21You boat packs stalk through the night, knowing the danger. Their victims still plough on.
00:51Ships and cargoes go down. Their crews, some of them, survive. But early in 1943, it is Britain's survival, and the Allied hopes for victory over Germany, which are in doubt.
01:19THE END
01:49THE END
02:20When war began, Britain saw Germany's big ships as the main threat to her sea trade. So did the Germany.
02:28Germany's surface raiders would savage the merchant fleet on which Britain depended for much of her food, most of her raw materials, and all of her oil.
02:37Germany's U-boats were to operate in coastal waters, sweeping up anything left by the battleship.
03:16At least one man knew this, Karl Dönitz, chief of the U-boat arm. He could have been wrong, too, if Hitler had delayed his war with Britain until all the battleships planned for the German Navy had been built.
03:29As it was, Dönitz was certain that with enough submarines, he could win the war at sea. He had proved it to himself 20 years before.
03:42In October 1918, I was a captain of a submarine in the Mediterranean near Malta. In a dark night, I met a British convoy with cruisers and destroyers.
04:01And I attacked and sank a ship. But the chance would have been very much greater if there had been a lot of submarines.
04:15That's why the idea of a wolf pack to put the submarines together that they could attack together was very impressive.
04:31And that's why in all the years from 1980 until the year 1935, where we had the first submarines again in the German Navy, I never had forgotten this idea.
04:50Underwater, the 1939 U-boat was slow.
04:54On the surface, it was faster than any convoy of merchant ships. With this low silhouette, it could not be seen easily, especially at night.
05:15But its targets were outlined clearly against the sky.
05:18And with radio, the U-boats could quickly assemble into hunting packs.
05:37Dönitz knew Britain would try to protect her essential Atlantic trade by a system of convoys escorted by warships.
05:43To attack these convoys, Dönitz wanted 300 U-boats.
05:48When the war started, he had only 26.
05:51And these boats had long, dangerous voyages from base before they could reach their targets.
05:58When France fell, Dönitz gained new bases, much nearer the shipping routes.
06:03His sea wolves returned to these French ports as heroes.
06:15One special hero was Otto Kretschmer.
06:18In all, Kretschmer sank over a quarter of a million tons of British shipping.
06:21In October 1940, he joined the first real wolf pack.
06:26I remember that there was a signal that the convoy was coming in from America to England.
06:34And that its position was not known.
06:38And that Dönitz ordered all the submarines there, to the west of Ireland, to form a sort of recce line, stationary recce line, to let the convoy pass through.
06:55And when the first submarine was sighted, the convoy made a signal, its contact signal, this recce line was dissolved automatically.
07:07And every boat was free to go in for the attack.
07:10Convoy SC7, on the night of the 17th of October 1940, was passing Rockall.
07:19Thirty-four merchantmen, four small escort ships.
07:23Seven U-boats attacked on the surface.
07:26The attack took the same form as that we were used to, which was a single ship being struck.
07:34Very shortly after that, a second one was struck.
07:38And then, within a matter of five to ten minutes, further ships were struck.
07:49I tried to get through the escorts into the convoy, which was my own peculiarity of attacking,
07:58and failed for the first time.
08:01They saw me and shot starshells, so that I had to draw away again.
08:08But for the second time, I succeeded and was inside the convoy, going up and down the lanes, and looking for the most important, valuable ships.
08:17And had the opportunity to expand all torpedoes, air-12 in all.
08:26Like you see ships in various stages of sinking.
08:31A Dutch ship had stopped, and was attempting to pick up survivors.
08:38And whilst I actually watched her doing this, and was considering what to do about it, she also herself was torpedoed.
08:46This, along with another torpedoing, set the whole place to blaze.
08:56That night, 17 merchant men, exactly half the convoy, were sunk.
09:01The escorts had not been able to damage a single U-boat.
09:04I don't think I'd ever seen more than one ship sunk at a time before.
09:10And this was something very different indeed.
09:14This really was the first time that these tactics could be experienced by all of us.
09:23And also by Dönitz himself, who of course knew it only from our peacetime training.
09:28And the whole night, I think, was successful.
09:32It was called the Night of the Long Nives, because so many ships were sunk.
09:42In the first nine months of the war, Britain and her allies lost over two million tons of merchant shipping.
09:50In the next six months, with the U-boats operating from France, nearly two and a half million tons more went down.
09:58There were medals galore.
10:06There were medals galore.
10:22U-boat crews called this the happy time.
10:26I saw the ship going up, the stern going underwater, and she upended right up on end and went backwards.
10:32And I went down with her.
10:33After a bit, I came to the surface, and I was still sitting onto the overturned bridge boat, and there's all the submarine servicing.
10:39He went round and started picking up cases out of the water.
10:44General cargo, possibly spirits, food stuff, and so forth.
10:50They looked at us and circled round for a bit.
10:52They laughed at us and went away to the northeast.
10:55They never asked if we had any water, we had any damages, or anything else.
11:00And we were left, floating amongst record with one boat.
11:03We were halfway between Brazil and North Africa.
11:06The only thing I could think about was trying to get to the land as near as possible, so I shut the course as near as I could to the northeast.
11:16All we had was the one lifeboat, which was made for 48 people.
11:21We picked up 58.
11:23There wasn't really room enough for anybody to sit down.
11:27The boat was leaking badly through being on the chocks for some time.
11:32You had quite a bit of trouble getting the crew to move so you could bail.
11:38And you bailed for nearly two days until the wood, the wood of the boat started to swell and to tighten up.
11:46Half that wasn't so bad.
11:48The worst days, of course, were when there was no wind.
11:54Absolutely be calmed.
11:56The sun was terrific.
11:59So we started off by giving four ounces of water, two ounces in the morning and two ounces at night, and one biscuit.
12:07When there was a lot of noise in the boat, they were Chinese.
12:10And I said, what's all the bobbery?
12:12Which is a lot of talky-talky, you know?
12:15He said, I think number one farmer would go crazy.
12:19So eventually jumped over the side with a life jacket on.
12:23And after a wee while, we got him back again.
12:27And later that night in the darkness, he jumped again.
12:34We didn't get him back because the sharks got him.
12:38On the morning of the 13th, I used to sit on the water barrel to make sure nobody could help themselves.
12:44And somebody shook me up and said, hey, Captain, we see lights, green lights.
12:49Oh, I said, you're dreaming, you're dreaming.
12:52And I looked round and I saw some green lights.
12:55Which looked to me like New Brighton Pier, I couldn't make it out.
12:59So I said, well, burn a flare.
13:02They burned a flare.
13:04A few minutes by another, burned another flare.
13:06They burned another flare.
13:08And after a bit, I saw the green lights getting closer.
13:11More visible.
13:12More visible.
13:13Then after a bit, I saw a red light above the green.
13:16And then it dawned on me.
13:18That it was a hospital ship.
13:22The U-Birds had eyes in the air.
13:24Focke-Wulf Condor aircraft could range a thousand miles out to sea to scout for convoys.
13:29When used to bomb shipping, the Condor sank 30 ships in two months.
13:40Luckily for Britain, this partnership with the U-Boat was never properly exploited.
13:44But then it did exploit the fact that German naval intelligence had broken the British codes.
13:58We were aware that the intelligence for some reason was good.
14:02But I myself put this down to very superior hydrophone equipment that the submarines had,
14:09that the U-Boats had in their boats.
14:13Probably being able to pick up the noise of a convoy's propellers up to,
14:18oh, eighty or even a hundred miles.
14:21But in addition, I know that they would place their U-Boats in a line across,
14:28at right angles to the expected line of the convoy.
14:32And this line for, say, five U-Boats could be a hundred miles from end to end.
14:38And so, with good hydrophones, very little disguise of the position of a convoy could be affected.
14:46It was only after the war that we knew that they were breaking the codes,
14:50and that they knew very well the time of leaving port that the convoys had,
14:56and how many escorts were, and how many merchant ships in each convoy.
14:59The Royal Navy, searching for U-Boats underwater, had pinned its faith on ASDIC, an echo-sounding device.
15:20But U-Boats were attacking convoys on the surface.
15:34The Navy was not prepared for this.
15:37Convoy defence is not a very glamorous affair, and between the wars, I think rather naturally,
15:40the neighboring were inclined to concentrate more on more glamorous activities,
15:44like great mass torpedo attacks, and that sort of thing.
15:48All the information about the lessons of World War I were available,
15:52and for those who wanted to read them, all the lessons were there.
15:54But I'm sure that the U-Boats were attacking convoys on the surface.
15:57And as a result, trade defence as a whole was very bad and neglected.
16:07The neglect continued.
16:10In the early days, convoys could only be escorted for about 300 miles,
16:14and as a result, trade defence as a whole was very bad and neglected.
16:20The neglect continued.
16:22In the early days, convoys could only be escorted for about 300 miles from each Atlantic coast.
16:34There just weren't enough escort ships.
16:37Those available lacked endurance, and their crews were virtually untrained.
16:41My officers were three R&VR officers.
16:45One who was a civil engineer by profession.
16:49The other two were Canadian, several lieutenants,
16:55both of the age of between 20 and 21,
17:00who would come from Canada as passengers,
17:04and that was their sea-guying experience.
17:08The heads of the department were regulars.
17:13Some of them had retired and called back.
17:16And there were two or three seamen who were of the Pucker service.
17:21And the rest were straight in.
17:23Air cover was to prove all important.
17:36But surprisingly, the Navy's carriers did not at first supply it.
17:40That task went to the RAF, although Coastal Command was ill-prepared.
17:43With the exception of the Sunderland flying boats, a very small number,
17:49all the other aircraft, except the Anson, were lash-ups.
17:52They were borrowed from entirely dissimilar functions
17:57in order to do this job in Coastal Command.
18:00Secondly, the navigation aids were not there.
18:02It was entirely dead reckoning navigation.
18:04And whereas an experienced navigator can look at the sea and estimate the wind
18:09and where he's likely to be in an hour's time,
18:12this is very difficult for a new boy.
18:15And since the point to be navigated to, the convoy, was often equally at error,
18:21it was no wonder that we failed to meet many convoys.
18:24So lack of equipment, lack of training, and unsuitable aircraft
18:29were certainly severe handicaps at the beginning of the war.
18:32What is more, cooperation between the Navy and the Air Force in the field, as well as at sea,
18:38was very bad indeed, mainly due to stupid quarrels between senior officers in Whitehall.
18:48It took nearly two years before we had anything like the right sort of cooperation between ships and aircraft.
18:54It was a disgrace and a tragedy.
18:57So many ships were sunk and so many lives were lost unnecessarily during those first few years.
19:02So seamen suffered from quarrels in Whitehall, from the U-boats, and from the sea.
19:08Now, by popular request of the seamen's mastex, the Western approaches signature tuner.
19:15Someone's rocking my dreamboat.
19:19Someone's invading my dreams.
19:23It's very, very hard to describe to someone on the land after a tough convoy, by tough I mean bad weather, especially in the wintertime, what just over two weeks at sea is, living on corned beef and hard tack.
19:51And this is, you know, it's not a fallacy.
19:55We used to do this quite often when the seas come in and put the galley fires out and we couldn't just cook anything hot.
20:02The lucky ones had hammocks and the unfortunate ones had to lie on the lockers and it was very discomforting.
20:10We used to get chaps coming down from the middle watch at four o'clock, wet through, just clambering on the locker.
20:17Poor chap who was already trying to get some sleep would get soaked.
20:20There was no hygiene there.
20:23We really started smelling after about a week if you didn't watch it.
20:28We had a feeling that it was a necessary job.
20:31I'm not so sure that we realised that it was all that important.
20:34To us it was a very boring job.
20:36We were on lookout for anything that might come up and it was bitterly cold.
20:43It was an open bridge, open to all weathers.
20:46And it was still more really trying to keep warm, trying to keep the cold out, trying to keep dry,
20:55rather than realise that we were doing an important job.
20:59But they were doing an important job.
21:06They brought the cargoes without which Britain could not have kept going.
21:17Then you sit down and that's when you really think.
21:20Now we're in the open sea, we can catch a pack at any moment.
21:22There was many times when we saw little lights in the water and we assumed that these were survivors.
21:33But we couldn't stop and pick them up.
21:38The normal comparison that seamen made with their wage for the hours that they worked,
21:44was with the ammunition workers who were making a fabulous amount of money
21:48with no more risks than our housewives left at home.
21:57We lost one out of every three men.
22:00And without them this nation wouldn't have survived in more than three or four months.
22:07But the Germans were still celebrating.
22:10In the first half of 1941 they sank nearly three million tonnes of shipping.
22:15Ships were harder to replace than cargoes.
22:20If they could be sunk faster than they could be built, Britain would starve.
22:24But now the Canadian Navy, Tynier, the outbreak of war, was expanding to 50 times its original size.
22:38It would take over nearly half the burden of convoy escort in the North Atlantic.
22:44More and more convoys were leaving Canada.
23:00Decks laden with tanks.
23:03Holds full of supplies from the neutral United States under lease lend.
23:06Alarmed at continuing losses, the British war cabinet set up a new western approaches command
23:21to reorganize convoy defense.
23:23For the first time, the RAF and the Navy worked closely together.
23:28And in March 1941, Dönitz lost three of his ablest men.
23:42Gunther Preen, who had sunk the Royal Oak at its copper flow.
23:49Depth charged and killed.
23:53Joachim Shepke, rammed and drowned.
23:57And Kretschmer, depth charged to the surface.
24:11And taken prisoner.
24:17Only one third of Dönitz's fleet could be on patrol at any one time.
24:21His best captains had suddenly gone.
24:25Now he could only keep some half dozen U-boats at sea.
24:29With this small number of U-boats, of course, any decisive success in the Battle of the Atlantic was not possible.
24:38That's why it was necessary for the building of submarines to get first place in the German armament plan.
24:51But this was not done.
24:54In spite of all the requests made by Admiral Raeder, who then was chief of the German Navy.
25:03Worse was to come for him.
25:08The United States was still officially neutral.
25:11General quarters, general quarters, on the double.
25:16But after Churchill's Atlantic meeting with Roosevelt in September 1941,
25:20America announced that she would protect ships of any nationality
25:24flying between her shores and Iceland.
25:26There would now be enough warships to provide continuous escort across the Atlantic.
25:38It was time to counter attack.
25:40I got hold of a number of escort commanders,
25:45who...
25:47I asked the question,
25:48When a U-boat is known to be attacking a convoy, as they do now by night,
25:55I asked them what they did.
25:57And the answer, in most cases, was,
26:01Well, what can you do?
26:03It's a very tiny little thing and we can't see them.
26:06Radar, of course, in those days was very elementary and we had very few sets.
26:10But, in fact, there was one escort commander who had the idea,
26:20which is still absolutely relevant,
26:23that when an attack, of which there is no warning, takes place,
26:29that all of the escort should do the same sort of thing on a planned line
26:34at exactly the same time.
26:38So it has the maximum effect over the broad ocean around that convoy.
26:45And this, of course, was the then Commander Walker.
26:49Although he did not survive the war,
26:52Walker was to sink more U-boats than anyone else.
26:55At the end of 1941, he set a new style for convoy defence.
26:59The convoy was HG-76.
27:01In it were 36 merchantmen from all parts of the world.
27:06They assembled in Gibraltar for the trudge to Britain.
27:17The Navy knew there were at least six U-boats on the convoy's route.
27:21Their signals had been picked up by the Admiralty.
27:24When HG-76 sailed on the 14th of December 1941,
27:32it had an exceptionally large escort,
27:35seventeen ships commanded by Walker.
27:37Among them, for the first time,
27:40an auxiliary aircraft carrier, the Audacity.
27:42Three days out, Audacity's plane spotted U-131.
27:55The escorts quickly sank her.
27:57Dönitz homed five more U-boats on the convoy.
28:10Walker's team soon sank one.
28:14But that night, the U-boats attacked again.
28:20An escort and a merchant ship were sunk.
28:25Walker counter-attacked.
28:26Walker's own ship rammed and sank U-574.
28:44In the air, Audacity's fighters harried the German Condors.
28:48One was destroyed.
28:50Others were damaged.
28:52But some of the escorts were running out of fuel.
28:56They had to leave.
28:58A U-boat penetrated the gap.
29:00Audacity was the next victim.
29:04Another hectic night followed.
29:06The convoy lost one more ship.
29:08At Endras, another ship was destroyed.
29:11Another hectic night followed.
29:12Another hectic night followed.
29:14The convoy lost one more ship.
29:17At Endras, another U-boat ace was sunk in U-567.
29:21Next day, for the first time,
29:24a long-range liberator appeared and attacked.
29:29Dönitz decided he must withdraw.
29:32Walker had justified his tactics.
29:38Aircraft had proved their worth.
29:41Four U-boats had been sunk.
29:46But Dönitz was about to be given his greatest opportunity.
29:52In December 1941, the United States came fully into the war,
30:01but left her peacetime lights on.
30:03Dönitz was about to be taken
30:10with a long sailor.
30:11Dönitz was about to 1941,
30:12and the U-boats was not the only one who voted for the war.
30:13Then its U-boats never had it so good.
30:24This was the second happy time.
30:30The Americans did not have enough warships available for offshore escort, so there were
30:35no convoys there.
30:37Many ships were convoyed safely across the ocean to be torpedoed alone and unescorted
30:42offshore.
30:46The slaughter went on.
30:52In the second half of 1941, nearly one and a half million tons of shipping were lost.
30:58In the first half of 1942, over four million tons of shipping were lost, 1,000 ships.
31:06At this rate, the Allies would lose the war.
31:12We had to sink as many ships as possible before our Anglo-American opponent could develop an
31:24effective anti-submarine defense and could replace the merchant merchant ships which had been
31:33sunk.
31:34But most of Germany's U-boats were not in the Atlantic.
31:40They were patrolling off Norway, defending Germany's supply lines or confined in the Mediterranean.
31:47These dispositions infuriated Dönitz.
31:52He had no doubts whether U-boats ought to be.
31:54The German submarines must not be used for any other purposes.
32:01Their main strategic purpose was to sink as many ships as possible in the Atlantic.
32:12But Hitler and the High Command would not listen.
32:31Although preoccupied with the Pacific, the United States Naval staff were now willing to rethink
32:35Atlantic tactics.
32:37They finally established a system of offshore convoys.
32:49Sinkings of merchant men dropped off.
32:51Sinkings of U-boats began.
32:56Dönitz now switched his boats to the Caribbean, where many ships were still sailing independently.
33:07Warrior!
33:29In two months, seventy-eight ships were sunk, more than half of them oil tankers.
33:35It was a very long time ago, but I can see it now.
33:41The people that lived off, running around on fire and throwing themselves straight over
33:46the side into the oil which was on fire all round.
33:50In the meantime, I shouted to the remaining people in the boat to get the oars out and
33:56try and push her off from the ship's side, because the rivets of the ship's side had burst
33:59out and they were on fire.
34:02We rode around for a wee while and we heard some screams for help, and we pulled out of
34:09the water a fireman, or greasers we call them, and he was terribly burnt, so much so
34:15that when we pulled him in, the skin of his body and arms came off in the hands like gloves.
34:22We set sail and course for Trinidad, where I had a rough idea where it might be, and so
34:29we tidied up the boat and set off, but shortly after that, the greaser who had been in terrible
34:36agony all night, he died, and we laid him on the thwart for a wee while.
34:41And then shortly after that, the palman told me that the third steward had died too.
34:48So I went to have a look at him, and he was wrapped up in a blanket, and I took the blanket
34:54away and the whole of his stomach was severely damaged and hanging out.
34:59He had been very patient during the night, and the only thing he complained of was cold.
35:05So we laid him on the thwart and covered him with a blanket, and for about an hour, because
35:11I wanted to really make sure that they were dead, because we had nothing to indicate, everything
35:18I did indicated that they were so, eventually, after about an hour, we committed them to the
35:24deep.
35:25Morale in the boat at this time was very low, because these were all young boys, 17, 18, 19,
35:3322, and by this time it was a boatload of miseries, pain, and death.
35:43Only eight men survived from the San Emiliano's crew of 40.
35:53To Allied seamen, the U-boat crews were heartless killers, but the Germans were brave men too.
36:01They needed all their courage when depth charges exploded round them, sometimes for 12 hours
36:06at a stretch.
36:11Eight of every ten U-boat crewmen put a die in action.
36:18They call their U-boats iron coffins.
36:40The destroyer I met had radar, so he had me on his screen, and with full speed ahead, he
36:55ran me for the first time.
36:58And when I saw him, it was too late to dive.
37:02I tried to torpedo him, but the distance, 150 yards round about, was too close, so the torpedo
37:14wouldn't explode.
37:17So I tried to get a bigger, to have a bigger distance between the destroyer and the boat.
37:25And he was shooting during one hour or two hours with machine guns.
37:30An officer next to me was dead, and another officer, he had got a bullet through his throat,
37:39and I had got a bullet in my chest, and I had some 30 shell splinters in arm and leg, and
37:48a bullet in my head.
37:51After one hour of stress, the sailors were very anxious.
37:56And one of the petty officers, he lost his nerves and said, oh, this mad man, and why don't
38:04we surrender?
38:05But this was the only one.
38:07But the time was coming, when courage was no longer enough.
38:17Radio had remained essential to Wolfpack operations, but new allied direction-finding equipment could
38:22pick up German signals and plot where they came from.
38:33With shortwave radar, escorts could now locate a U-boat on the surface, often sighting the
38:55U-boat before her crew could see them.
38:59The low silhouette was no longer such an advantage.
39:03The low silhouette was no longer such an advantage.
39:06The low silhouette was no longer such an advantage.
39:12Light cut off.
39:16Aztec equipment, too, was improving.
39:19Escort ships could track a submerged U-boat as she twisted and turned at low underwater speed.
39:23There were new weapons like the hedgehog for the kill.
39:30There were new weapons like the hedgehog for the kill.
39:37The Germans did not realize the extent of British and American technical advances, nor did they match them.
39:44The Germans had some very high-class scientists indeed, and some excellent engineers.
39:51But they didn't achieve the results they ought to have done.
39:52First, I think, because they were mucked around, and the Germans kept altering the priorities.
39:58And secondly, and most important, is that I don't believe they were ever allowed to take any interest in the operational side.
40:05As opposed to what happened with us, where the scientists were made to feel full members of the operational team.
40:18And I believe this, much more than the question of weapons and devices, was the reason why the Germans fell so far astern in technological matters.
40:39The Allies themselves were still behind in using what was to prove the most effective counter to the U-boat.
40:45Aircraft with radar.
40:58Convoys could seldom be given continuous long-range air cover.
41:05When they were, losses were reduced and U-boat kills increased.
41:15The problem was range.
41:22Planes now flew to the convoys from North America, from Iceland, from the United Kingdom.
41:28But there was a vast gap in mid-Atlantic, which these escort planes could not reach.
41:34The U-boats could and did.
41:41In the second half of 1942, over three and a half million tons went down, nearly 700 ships, many of them in the Atlantic Gap.
41:51To close this gap, escort carriers were needed to sail with the convoys.
42:00But few were yet available.
42:02Or very long-range planes, like the Liberator.
42:07But in 1942, the Americans needed most of these in the Pacific.
42:12Or Lancaster bombers.
42:15But despite Admiralty appeals, the RAF kept them all bombing Germany.
42:21Although they did release other aircraft.
42:24Bomber Command diverted six squadrons to Coastal Command.
42:29And if you'd said it would have been better if they'd made that 10, yes it would.
42:33But the line had to be drawn somewhere.
42:36And as a Coastal type, I would have liked to have seen a few more squadrons in Coastal.
42:41But Bomber Command were pitifully short of airplanes, too, for the job they had to do.
42:46Surely, if there had been more Liberators allocated from America, then we could have improved the situation much earlier,
42:54and have saved the lives of a lot of seamen.
43:01More and more, the war effort depended on the United States.
43:15Merchant ships and escorts were mass-produced to carry the material and men for the invasion of Europe.
43:21Unless the Atlantic was secured, all else could fall apart.
43:26In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill decreed that the defeat of the U-boat be given top priority.
43:38Improved escort vessels were built.
43:40There were now enough of these to go over to the attack.
43:49But also in January 1943, Dönitz took over as chief of the German Navy.
43:55He paid off most of the big ships and released their crews for the submarine service.
44:00At last he could have U-boats mass-produced.
44:12Seventeen new U-boats were commissioned each month.
44:15By early spring 1943, Dönitz had over 400 U-boats in service.
44:34Once again, the convoys might be overwhelmed.
44:36In May came what was to prove the decisive battle around convoy ONS-5.
44:48ONS-5 was a rather small, very slow, and of course unladen, empty convoy.
44:55And we had a lot of trouble.
44:59The weather was very bad.
45:01The ships got disorganized.
45:04And south of Iceland, after three or four days, we had several attacks by submarines.
45:11Most of which we drove off successfully.
45:14And only had one ship sunk.
45:15Then after a spell, we had a long series of very bad gales indeed.
45:22Combined with a little nip into the ice pack off Greenland.
45:28And at this stage, my ship was running short of fuel.
45:34I couldn't fuel from the tanker because of the weather.
45:37And I had to leave.
45:38So I got the signal from Gretton that he had to push off to Newfoundland to get fuel.
45:46And will I come back and take out of the escort?
45:49I didn't say, would I?
45:51I say, you're in charge.
45:53May the 3rd.
45:55Four escort ships have left to refuel.
45:58In bad weather, ten merchant ships have lost contact.
46:01A line of U-boats is waiting.
46:03As they move in on the 4th of May,
46:05Aircraft from Canada sink one and damage another.
46:09At about half past four or five o'clock in the afternoon,
46:13the torpedoing started.
46:17I torpedoed two ships, each with two torpedoes.
46:21And one of these ships,
46:26well, it didn't explode.
46:29But after the explosion of the torpedoes,
46:32another big explosion happened.
46:33I looked back and I saw the captain.
46:36I would suggest the bridge was probably,
46:39oh, ten or fifteen feet.
46:41Might be a little more off the water
46:43when he jumped off the wing of the bridge into the sea.
46:45And there was a life raft nearby, I know that.
46:48Well, I couldn't stop and pick him up.
46:50And, well, it was in,
46:54oh, I suppose a matter of half a minute that I got one myself.
46:58Once more I was lucky by slipping through into a gap between two of the escort vessels and closing in to the fourth column of the convoy and I fired the two torpedoes.
47:14And both torpedoes hit the target ship.
47:20May the fifth.
47:22The U-boats make twenty-five attacks in eight hours.
47:26More ships are sunk.
47:28The outlook for the convoy is grim as Dönitz orders in still more U-boats.
47:32We picked up quite a lot of signals from other submarines also getting contact to this convoy.
47:41And so we thought that this convoy would be absolutely dead during the next night.
47:48Somewhere in the region of ten o'clock the attacks started and they became fast and furious.
48:00Suddenly dense fog came up and so it was nearly impossible to find the convoy again.
48:09I tried to do it but we couldn't find the ships again.
48:13Escorts were reporting submarines coming in, not ships being torpedoed.
48:22And this of course was absolutely, well it was the first time it ever happened, certainly to me.
48:30Staying on the surface during the dark time now in the dense fog, of course it was very dangerous.
48:38They were coming up all the time saying that a submarine was bearing so and so on radar.
48:44And then the next thing you get a submarine close alongside.
48:48Another one, a submarine just ahead of me, I'm ramming.
48:53And this one went on all night.
48:56I got a very firm ASIC contact about eight hundred yards from the nearest ship in the convoy.
49:01My immediate reaction, which I think was the correct one, in fact I know was the correct one, was to increase speed and give it a five charge pattern straight away.
49:14To keep the chap's head down so that he would put him off his stroke if he was going to fire torpedoes.
49:19But I was short of depth charges at that stage and I thought the conditions were perfect.
49:28The night was relatively calm, a bit of fog, perfect for a deliberate attack.
49:34And so I decided to do a deliberate attack with our forward throwing weapon, the hedgehog.
49:40We saw two distinct flashes a few seconds after the hedgehog bombs hit the water.
49:48And as we passed over the position where our hedgehog bombs had hit the water, we were virtually, our bow was virtually lifted from the water.
49:59As a result of the U-boat breaking apart and escaping air.
50:07And there was great exhilaration on the bridge because this was our first kill.
50:12We had no feelings at the time, I'm afraid, of destroying 70-odd people.
50:18Um, one's emotions, one had control of one's emotions by then, after three years of war.
50:25Uh, and it was just the thought that it's us or them, and on that occasion it was them.
50:31May the 6th.
50:33Although eleven merchantmen have been lost, the escorts have beaten off the largest wolf pack durn its consent against them.
50:39Seven U-boats have been sunk, others damaged.
50:44Demoralized by their failure to destroy the convoy, with the odds so much on their side, the U-boats withdraw.
50:51I think we really felt that at last, uh, um, our training and technology had got on top of the U-boats.
50:59We sailed for the next convoy, S-130, uh, SC-130, on the top of the wave.
51:06And despite the fact we had a very heavy battle with about 20 U-boats,
51:12we sank three of them and didn't lose one single ship.
51:16In that month, May 1943, 41 U-boats were sunk.
51:33One of them, Dönitz lost his younger son.
51:36In May 1943, the German submarines had lost the operational and tactical quality of surface manoeuvrability.
51:51They never regained it.
51:53Unable to range freely on the surface, the wolf packs were beaten.
51:58It was time to celebrate a victory in North Africa and in the Atlantic.
52:03More than 30 U-boats were certainly destroyed in the month of May.
52:10Foundering in many cases with their crews into the dark depths of the seas.
52:16Staggered by these deadly losses, the U-boats have recoiled to lick their wounds and mourn their dead.
52:25Our Atlantic convoys came safely through.
52:28And now, as a result of the May victory and the massacre of U-boats,
52:35we have had in June the best month from every point of view we have ever known in the whole 46 months of the war.
52:44The Atlantic lifeline was, at last, secure.
52:51Secure.
52:52Secure.
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