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00:00London, January 1943.
00:18Buried deep in the cellars below Whitehall lay one of the world's most secret hideaways,
00:31Prime Minister Winston Churchill's cabinet war rooms.
00:45This was the inner sanctum of wartime British government.
00:48The room where Churchill presided over the anti-U-boat warfare committee.
00:53German sinkings of Allied shipping had halved the vital war supplies coming to Britain from
00:57North America.
00:58On his personal transatlantic line to Washington, Churchill shared these grim tidings with his
01:04close ally, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
01:07The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and also the most important battle fought during
01:13the entire Second World War because upon its success depended the success of every other
01:20campaign in every other theatre of the war worldwide.
01:24And if the United States and Great Britain were to invade, occupied Europe and then the heartland
01:30of Germany itself, the U-boat had to be defeated.
01:34The two leaders agreed on the severity of the situation and met in Casablanca for ten days
01:39to address the problem.
01:41Politically, the significance of the Casablanca Conference 1943 was that it put defeat of the
01:48U-boat as the Allies' top priority and that made sense because unless the U-boat was defeated,
01:56unless the Atlantic was free for the passage of American troops and material, there could be no
02:02invasion of Europe, there could be no defeat of Hitler.
02:06While the Allied chiefs of staff hammered out a strategy, U-boat sinkings of merchant ships
02:12in the Atlantic reached record proportions.
02:15In the first three months of 1943, it seemed that Britain's vital supply lines with North America
02:25were about to be severed by the German wolf packs.
02:29In the first twenty days of March, fighting Allied convoys, the U-boat sank half a million
02:37tons of Allied shipping.
02:40And in the British Admiralty, there was grave concern that they might be staring defeat in
02:46the face because if the convoy system did not work, what could work to replenish the needs
02:54of Great Britain?
02:55It really began to look at that point as if the convoy system itself would
02:59break down, that the Atlantic would be barred to Allied traffic, if you like, the losing of the war.
03:08With U-boat production at its highest level ever, Dönitz's commanders were confident of victory.
03:16We assumed that in 1942-43, the war could be ended by forcing England to her knees.
03:27We participated in some of the largest convoy battles of the war.
03:34The spirit in April 1943 was rather high.
03:41Because of the successes we had achieved at that time, we felt we would be able to starve out England
03:49within the next year or so and the war would be over and we all could go home.
03:53It seemed that the commander-in-chief of U-boats, Admiral Karl Dönitz, through the armed determination
04:00of his leadership and the prowess of his men, had victory within his grasp.
04:04But the intrinsic nature of the U-boat war was changing in a way Dönitz failed to see.
04:10The German effort during World War II reflected a rather romantic view of war, that after all,
04:19the human dimension is the decisive dimension, that men who are the best trained, with the best
04:28inspiration, with the most to fight for, will be those who triumph rather than those who might have
04:35material advantages or numbers on their side.
04:39The Battle of the Atlantic was not only a battle between the U-boat crews on one hand
04:44and the aircraft crews on the other, and of course the surface ship crews.
04:48It was also a battle between the scientists and technologists on each side.
04:53The key player in this scientific revolution was radar. A new invention at the beginning of the war,
04:59confined to large land-based stations, it was rapidly miniaturized and placed on ships and in aircraft.
05:06Many of us in universities were summoned before the war began to take part in the development of the radar.
05:13The transference of these radar systems, which worked on a comparatively long wavelength of about
05:1916 meters, to operate in aircraft was just beginning. One of my jobs was to help put the one and a half
05:27meter system in the new Hudson aircraft for Coastal Command to use against U-boats.
05:33That metric radar system became the invisible scout for detecting surface U-boats from the air
05:40and catching their crews unawares.
05:44The planes came out of a complete blanket of clouds and attacked us.
05:49They couldn't have seen us. They had to have located us by radar.
05:55Our leadership in the operations department didn't want to believe it when we reported it.
06:03The reaction from the person responsible for this, Captain Mechel, said such a small U-boat,
06:13it isn't possible that it was located by radar.
06:17Despite this initial skepticism, the Germans soon introduced their own countermeasure.
06:23They made a very simple receiver known as METOX or METOX, M-E-T-O-X, and they were able to listen to
06:30the pulses from the one and a half meter radar, and when they heard those they simply submerged.
06:35When we became acquainted with this, the solution was immediately obvious, change the wavelength.
06:42So the Germans could not listen to our aircraft approaching them.
06:47The possibility had arisen of generating very powerful radio waves on a wavelength of 10 centimeters
06:55in the surface by the discovery in Birmingham by Randall Naboo to the cavity magnetron.
07:00The cavity magnetron was one of the great scientific inventions of the war.
07:04Today there is one in every domestic microwave. This vital component transformed the ability of radar
07:11to detect U-boats on the surface. The centimetric radar it made possible
07:16was adapted for use in the planes of Coastal Command by Sir Bernard Lovell's team.
07:20Within remarkably short time, the whole of this was miniaturized and transformed
07:27through a series of really brilliant ideas by many of the young scientists who were working there.
07:32And within a few months, we were flying this.
07:35Radar removed the surface U-boat's cloak of invisibility at night,
07:40the time at which it came up to recharge its batteries. But Allied planes,
07:44even though they could now locate a U-boat at night, still lacked the means of successfully
07:49attacking it in the dark. In 1942, there was introduced the Lee Light,
07:55the brainchild of a remarkable Wing Commander Lee, whereby a searchlight was mounted in an aircraft
08:03and used in conjunction with radar, was able to illuminate a U-boat found on the surface at night.
08:10I formed 172 Squadron. We trained the new crews to fly the Lee Light Wellingtons.
08:17The aircraft would pick up the target by radar, then home onto it, gradually reducing height
08:30to 250 feet when the Lee Light was switched on. And as soon as the Lee Light picked up the target,
08:39it was lit up like daylight. And the searchlight operator holding the submarine in the beam,
08:50reduced height to 50 feet and himself dropped the stick of depth charges across the U-boat.
08:59For the first time, the aircraft of Coastal Command had the ability to kill U-boats both by day and by night.
09:08The new centimetric radar system entered widespread service in naval escort vessels in 1942.
09:15This Type 271 was the first effective naval radar in the world and transformed the ability of escort
09:22ships to locate U-boats on the surface of the water. But there was another kind of system for detecting U-boats
09:28that the Germans never knew about. Called HFDF, High Frequency Direction Finding or Huff Duff,
09:35it homed in on the U-boat's radio transmissions back to base.
09:38The great contribution which HFDF made to the Battle of the Atlantic was that it enabled escorts to
09:51track down the transmissions that a U-boat was making in the vicinity of the convoy.
09:59If a U-boat had a message, if it had sighted us for example, it would surface, make a transmission
10:08which started in Morse, B-bar, B-bar, B-bar. Now we carried receivers which were tuned to that frequency
10:18and the output of the receivers was displayed on a cathode ray tube. So as soon as a U-boat came up,
10:26it started to transmit and that appeared on the cathode ray tube as a direct straight line,
10:34a straight line and this pointed to a gyro compass ring round the cathode ray tube. So the operator of
10:42the HFDF equipment was able to read off the bearing on which the U-boat was transmitting.
10:51All we had to do then was to gently cruise down the bearing and eventually we would come to the
10:57submarine either on the surface or by then it would probably have submerged and we'd pick it up on sonar
11:04and attack them with depth charges.
11:07The contribution which HFDF made to winning the Battle of the Atlantic was enormous and it probably
11:15has never been really recognized. The contest between allied and German scientists to invent
11:21new devices to confound their enemies had become a key factor in the U-boat war. So had the capacity
11:28to build these products. The United States outstanding ability to manufacture a standard item in huge
11:34numbers became critical, especially in this tonnage war where the enemy's declared aim was to sink
11:41allied merchant ships faster than they could be built. In 1940 America constructed 54 ships. Two years
11:49later that number had grown to 746. One decisive contribution of America was from her shipyards
11:58in mass producing merchant ships which were called liberty ships in such quantities because in the
12:06last resort the Battle of the Atlantic was a war of attrition. Yet another enormous contribution of
12:14American shipyards was in the production of naval escorts. Not only the small escorts but also by the end
12:22of 1942 into 1943 the first of the escort carriers which could carry just a few aircrafts and which
12:30could accompany a convoy and that meant that each convoy actually had with it its own air cover and that
12:37was almost entirely American built ships. The introduction of escort carriers marked a new phase in the U-boat
12:45war providing continuous air protection for the convoys from one side of the Atlantic to the other.
12:50The balance of advantage in the Battle of the Atlantic lay with the submarine. Most of the advantages
12:57were his. If we could produce air power over the convoy then that shifted the balance markedly.
13:05And one of the things that we did was to introduce the max ship which was the merchant aircraft carrier
13:11and these were standard grain and oil carriers which are rather rudimentary flight deck was put on
13:17and then three or four swordfish were embarked on them. And if one could just imagine the North Atlantic in
13:25the depths of winter it must have been quite horrendous flying these string bags as we affectionately call
13:31them from these from these aircraft carriers. They had that tremendous deterrent effect that whenever
13:38the submarine put his periscope up scanned the horizon if he saw the dear old string bag up there he knew that
13:44it was carrying a torpedo he knew that had bombs it had the ability to really spoil his day and that
13:49was enough to make him keep his head down. And the aircraft would have achieved its aim just by flying.
13:56Air power had achieved another aim increasing numbers of very long-range liberators operating out of
14:02Iceland and Newfoundland had at last plugged to the mid-Atlantic gap the so-called Black Pit where U-boats
14:09had traditionally operated with devastating success against convoys. By May 1943 the lines were drawn.
14:16A decisive battle was about to take place between a confident U-boat fleet buoyed up by its great
14:21successes in March and an allied force with a rapidly growing technological and tactical superiority.
14:31In May in one of the most dramatic turnarounds of the entire Second World War
14:35war. The experience level of the escort vessel crews and of the aircraft crews and also this new
14:43technology radar airborne as well as seaborne and puffed up and aircraft such as the VLR liberator gave the
14:52allies a technological advantage. In early May 1943 one night our convoy was surrounded by 32 U-boats,
15:02a wolf pack and that night and a few days later something like 18 ships were sunk but five U-boats were sunk.
15:19The U-boats lost 41 of their craft in that one month alone and the Allies lost only 36 freighters and tankers.
15:28Very soon afterwards something like 100 ships came through with no losses at all made into the gills
15:37with munitions and food. That proved to be the decisive month of the war and at the end of that month
15:44Admiral Carl Dernitz commander-in-chief of U-boats called back all of his U-boats in the North Atlantic
15:50convoy lanes. We realized that the war at sea had changed drastically and we had to reconsider
16:04all of our options. Dernitz considered those options not just as the chief of the U-boat arm.
16:12Early in 1943 Hitler had made him head of the navy. He had taken up residence in Berlin at the Hotel
16:18Amsteinplatz and continued to direct the U-boat war though increasingly at a distance. Withdrawal from
16:26the Atlantic was temporary he assured his commanders. A tactical retreat not a defeat. Their type 7 U-boats
16:32would be improved he promised and there would be more of them. With Hitler's approval type 7
16:37sea production was increased to a record 40 vessels a month. Headquarters was so convinced that one type
16:47of submarine the 7 sea boat would successfully complete the war at sea and win the war at sea for
16:55Germany. They concentrated on that type and never improved that type to meet the changes that were
17:06in the offing. Large numbers of submarines of that type were ordered to be built. When the changes came
17:14out of the blue sky we were not prepared with new designs with new submarines to meet those changes at sea.
17:23Late in the day Dönitz addressed these changes. This building in Berlin became the headquarters for
17:30one of the highest priority projects in wartime Germany. On Dönitz's orders a whole new generation
17:37of technically advanced U-boats were to be designed. Machines so sophisticated they would render all the
17:43enemy's anti-submarine measures ineffective. The Allies had their big secret too. Bletchley Park,
17:53north of London, housed Britain's top secret code breaking team. Working quietly in this motley
17:59collection of huts and outbuildings they had cracked the new German naval Enigma code at the end of 1942
18:06after a nine-month blackout period that had followed the addition of a fourth rotor to the German code
18:11machine. It was one of the most significant achievements of World War II. For the rest of the war the code
18:18breakers at Bletchley could read all the secret messages that passed between Dönitz and his U-boats.
18:24Despite the suspicions of some U-boat commanders that their signals were being read their superiors dismissed
18:30that possibility. The German cipher and signals authorities were so convinced that the Enigma
18:40was unbreakable that however many operational doubts were brought to their attention
18:50they shoved them off and said there must be some other explanation you're dreaming there's some other
18:55explanation and a very big inquiry assured them that it could not be the Enigma due to this central
19:04German conviction that the Enigma is an impregnable machine can't be broken it could be broken for
19:12a day or two here and there if it's captured or a few pages of the settings are captured but continuous
19:19reading is out of the question that's what they that's what they said they start from that point
19:25and everything else follows. In late September 1943 the U-boats returned to the Atlantic in a new and
19:33terrible offensive Dönitz was spinning his hopes on stopgap technology the fitting to the type 7c of
19:41multiple deck guns to shoot down enemy aircraft an acoustic torpedo attracted to its target by noise from
19:48the ship's propeller a steel gauntlet was once again being applied to the allied throat
20:02and for Dönitz there were still propaganda coups flying 48 victory pennants from his periscope his
20:09claimed sinkings during the war Wolfgang Lut returned to Bordeaux in October 1943 after a record
20:16patrol of almost seven months in the Indian Ocean this made him the top scoring ace with Otto Kretschmer
20:26he received Hitler's highest military order the addition of diamonds to his knight's cross oak leaves
20:32and swords the trip was a remarkable feat of endurance and survival for him and his men
20:39the wonderment about how the little U-boats went so far and did so much that's one of the reasons we have all the rumors that persist till today
20:49how did they do it and the way they did that was to get resupplied from these huge U-boat tankers or supply ships called milk cows if they jokingly call them and refueling took place in the Atlantic and that enabled the U-boats to go to the U-boat
21:01to go as far as they did to carry on as long as they did the milk cows provided extra torpedoes food fresh baked bread everything that could be needed even carried doctors on these that sometimes did surgery for the injured U-boat men
21:19U-boat men so they were just a vital assistance to the U-boats the milch cow was a purpose-built supply submarine twice the size of a type 7c U-boat it had developed out of the extension of the submarine war to the American east coast in 1942
21:35sinking one milk cow the allies realized would starve many combat U-boats of essential supplies the team at bletchley park were able to pinpoint the time and place of their remote rendezvous
21:59the team at bletchley park were able to pinpoint the time and place of their remote rendezvous through their deciphering of German messages
22:06armed with that information American escort carriers were deployed to hunt down the milch cows and sink them
22:14it marked a significant change in the U-boat war for the first time the allies were on the offensive rather than defensive bletchley's decoded information was now being used aggressively
22:26to take the war to the enemy to take the war to the enemy and hit them where it hurt the most
22:33we crippled the operation of U-boats at any distance I mean they couldn't keep the boats at sea long enough without refueling them and we killed about 14 or so mother refueling boats
22:47by the end of 1943 we'd almost killed their refueling system altogether
22:53this was a catastrophe of attorneys his hopes of a formidable offensive in distant waters collapsed overnight
23:00also his new acoustic torpedoes had been unsuccessful in November he abandoned the convoy lanes as an area of operations for a second time
23:08once again retreated to his lair to lick his wounds
23:15tactics as well as technology were changing the U-boat war
23:18dedicated groups of support ships were now being assigned to hunt down and kill U-boats
23:23the leading U-boat hunter was the charismatic Johnny Walker
23:27a Royal Navy captain
23:29his support group sank more U-boats than anyone else
23:32a record 28
23:34the essence of Walker was
23:37an offensive attitude
23:39an aggressive attitude
23:41it was not defensive
23:43it was not stand back and wait for them to come in
23:46it was go for them
23:47as a support group we didn't have to go back to a convoy
23:51we were there to sink U-boats
23:53we were there to hunt U-boats and to sink them
23:56Walker's strength was in total dedication to his job
24:03total technical competence
24:06and
24:08a ruthlessness
24:11his great innovation was the creeping attack
24:16a deadly tactic against a U-boat seeking to escape detection by diving deep and remaining silent
24:22while one of his sloops held sonar contact with the U-boat and acted as a controlling ship
24:27another quietly crept up on the unsuspecting target
24:31suddenly releasing large numbers of depth charges around it
24:41the end of January 1944
24:44we went out on a patrol
24:46and in the course of that patrol we sank six U-boats in succession
24:54on our return to Liverpool
24:57the entrance to Gladys and Dark was lined with staff from the base
25:05wrens there were hundreds of them there
25:08sailors all cheering us in
25:10and waiting for us when we came along the dark side
25:14was the first Lord of the Admiralty
25:17Mr Avery Alexander
25:19who was there to greet us
25:22and he compared our activities
25:25he compared what Captain Walker was doing
25:29to Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar
25:32they were sort of grouped together in his speech of welcome
25:38of course we had brought prisoners back too
25:40I don't know what they thought of it when they saw all these thousands of people
25:44waiting to cheer us into Gladys and Dark
25:47but a very moving experience otherwise
25:54and one I shall long remember
25:56that joy was to be short-lived
26:00Walker died suddenly of a stroke brought on by extreme exhaustion
26:04the result of his relentless pursuit of U-boats
26:07his crew were devastated
26:09when Walker died
26:14it became a personal thing
26:16this great man
26:20whom
26:22his
26:23thousand British tars
26:26in his
26:27six sloops
26:29loved
26:30had gone
26:32and it became the fault of the Germans
26:39and I think
26:40it's difficult
26:41to dispel that thought even today
26:43it was a different world
26:49without him
26:51it is all too easy to take a look
26:57at war
26:59particularly the conduct of battle at sea
27:02in romantic terms
27:04or to reduce it
27:06to statistics
27:08to think in terms of chess pieces moving across an ocean however violent
27:13but the fact of the matter is that there was intense human suffering
27:18one only has to see pictures or hear reports of
27:22men who've been burned
27:25from tankers that have been torpedoed in a wild Atlantic sea
27:29to see survivors dragged alongside coughing out their lungs which have been filled with bunker sea oil
27:35to see survivors in broken lifeboats
27:38who can never be picked up as the convoy goes by
27:41and you know that that person will never be found again
27:43these are the dimensions of war which are bitter
27:50which are terrifying
27:52which are morally repugnant
27:54war is nasty business
27:56war is about suffering
27:58war is about violence
28:00allied propaganda created a fearsome image of the Nazi submarines
28:09u-boat men were cold-blooded killers in this wartime film starring Humphrey Bogart and Raymond Massey
28:16look out for the diving veins
28:18come clear
28:24in wartime you have to paint your enemy in black and white
28:27and for this reason all the negative images which could be evoked to promote a hatred and a scorn and an anxiety about this weapon were used by allied propaganda
28:38where the public perception has been that of brutality acts of violence or machine gunning survivors in the water
28:45the documented evidence suggests that with the exception of one case
28:51where a court a military court found that a submariner had actually machine gun survivors in the water
28:58that the German submariners were impeccably correct in their behavior
29:02both in terms of the laws of the sea these unwritten understandings of how people behave
29:07when they are at sea as well in terms of international law
29:11the examples are legion of submariners who have stopped to give aid to victims in lifeboats
29:18give them water or some basic supplies and give them a course for land
29:22Ernest was aware of this and he really was very uneasy about it
29:27he understood why his commanders wanted to do these kind of things but he knew that they were putting the boats at risk
29:33this situation came to a head in September 1942 with the sinking by U-156 of the British liner Laconia in the South Atlantic
29:43on surfacing the commander of U-156 a man named Hartenstein discovered that most of the men on board were Italian prisoners of war
29:52and he decided on his own initiative that he would undertake a rescue mission not just of the Italians but of everyone who had survived the sinking
30:02and he radioed his intentions to Dönitz in Germany
30:06in the evening the U-boat which we had seen from time to time overtook us
30:15we learned later that her captain was a man named Hartenstein who had taken it on himself to organize a rescue
30:25not only of the Italians who were his allies but of all survivors
30:32the sight of a U-boat alongside us our archenemy was a very menacing proposition
30:40and without meaning to he put the fear of God into us
30:46a reluctant Dönitz agreed to the action and he diverted boats to participate in this mission
30:55they also got the cooperation of the Vichy French government to send vessels from their port of Dakar
31:02to link up with the U-boats and help bring in the survivors
31:07U-507 was one of two other U-boats sent to help Hartenstein with the rescue
31:13we got the radio message that we were to go to Hartenstein and take part in the rescue operation
31:20we took the English Poles and Italians on board
31:28we gave them food and water and we even let them have a smoke
31:36with about 180 Italians and 250 English men, women and children
31:43we soon got to the limit of what we could hand out
31:49during the rescue mission an American bomber appeared over one of the U-boats involved
31:58and circled and radioed back to base for instructions as to what it should do
32:05it disappeared beyond the horizon for a while and then returned
32:09its orders were to proceed with an attack on the U-boat
32:13despite the fact that the U-boat's deck was covered with survivors
32:17and the boat was towing several lifeboats
32:20the Liberator dropped two depth charges
32:26we were blown into the air
32:29it was a wooden lifeboat
32:31and the lifeboat was destroyed
32:35along with, I suppose, about half its complement
32:41about 30 men died in that attack
32:45those of us who were strong enough
32:54scrambled on top of the wrecked lifeboat
32:57upside down
33:00we were...
33:02I remember being terrified of my genitalia
33:06and clutching myself
33:08absurd
33:10but absolutely terrified
33:13the Liberator dropped further depth charges in successive runs
33:17throughout the air attack
33:18Hartenstein had a white sheet emblazoned with a red cross draped over his deck guns
33:24all this time Hartenstein
33:27and his U-boat men
33:29who had reasonable anti-aircraft equipment
33:32had not moved to their guns
33:36and had they done so
33:38the Liberator was in such a position
33:41so low and so intent on its work
33:44that I think Hartenstein might have blown it out of the sky
33:48the air attack forced the three U-boats to reluctantly abandon their rescue mission
33:53the majority of survivors were picked up by the Vichy French boats from Dakar
33:58Tony Large, however, spent a horrendous 40 days adrift in an open lifeboat before his rescue
34:04Eckerhard Schiraus injured his hand during the Laconia rescue
34:10and could not sail with his U-boat on its next mission
34:13he was a lucky man
34:15his boat was sunk with all hands off Trinidad
34:18the two other U-boats suffered similar fates
34:21on the next patrol the U-boats U-156 Hartenstein
34:27and U-506 Wodemann
34:30were sunk with the loss of all hands
34:33I have nothing but reverence and fondness for the memory of Werner Hartenstein who was the captain of U-156
34:36who saved my life and saved the lives of many many others
34:53having done his damnedest to destroy us
34:55following the Laconia incident
34:57Dönitz issued a notorious edict to his men
35:00forbidding any similar rescues
35:03but Hitler wanted him to go further
35:06it is important to note that while Dönitz opposed
35:09any real actions on behalf of survivors
35:12by his commanders
35:15he nevertheless actively resisted Hitler
35:18on every suggestion by the Fuhrer
35:21that survivors should be shot
35:23Dönitz
35:26directly opposed Hitler on that issue
35:29and said no, Mein Fuhrer, we cannot do that
35:32it is against the honor of the U-boat service
35:35to undertake such actions
35:37you cannot maintain the morale of an elite service
35:41if you order them to machine gun helpless people in the water
35:45Dönitz as head of the Navy
35:47now moved in the upper echelands of the German High Command
35:50although he was a leader of the Navy
35:53he was increasingly remote from their daily operations
35:56and the personal contact with his men was fast fading
35:59Dönitz had entrusted the production of his new secret submarine
36:03the Type 21
36:05to Albert Speer
36:07German Minister for Armaments and Munitions
36:09until they were ready however
36:11Dönitz's crews had to sail out in their obsolescent machines
36:14to face the Allied onslaught
36:16We faced the enemy in 1944 the same way as we faced it in 1940
36:31but because of the spirit in which we were trained
36:35because of the strength of the German upbringing within us
36:42we were ready to commit harakiri
36:48just like the Japanese committed kamikaze suicide
36:55we did exactly the same thing
36:59only in a slightly different way
37:02and all of our crews were ready to commit suicide for the Fuhrer
37:09and for the fatherland
37:11yes we did
37:12we tried to commit suicide
37:15we went out again and again
37:17in our attempt to commit suicide
37:20because it was nothing else
37:22during the last couple of years of the war
37:25there was no sense
37:28in going out
37:31to win the war
37:33it was lost
37:35but we couldn't tell our men
37:39we could not even suggest it to ourselves
37:42and we had to go on
37:45and we followed
37:47what we were trained to do
37:52to commit suicide
37:54most of us succeeded
37:56fortunately
37:58I did not succeed
38:00and I brought my men home
38:03and I am proud
38:05Dernitz said to his U-boatman
38:11by continuing the fight
38:13you are tying down allied resources
38:17that could otherwise be used against Germany
38:21and in effect he is saying
38:23you are buying time
38:26you are in effect being almost sacrificed
38:30until we have the kind of U-boats available
38:33that we can carry on the fight in a new campaign
38:36with renewed vigor and strength
38:39through a brand new type of submarine
38:41which will defeat the new allied counter measures
38:44but that new submarine was not ready
38:47and in the first three months of 1944
38:50Dernitz lost 33 boats
38:53the one device that might have stemmed the losses
38:55the Schnorkel
38:56was slow in being fitted to the type 7s
38:59this was a breathing tube
39:01that allowed the U-boat to take in air
39:03and charge its batteries without surfacing
39:05in 1944 allied air cover of the oceans
39:09became so intense
39:10that a U-boat's chance of survival
39:12without this device was extremely poor
39:15Anglo-American mastery over the U-boat
39:20was defining the course of World War II
39:22it made it possible to safely transport by sea to Britain
39:26an American expeditionary force of 300,000 men
39:29and the millions of tons of war materials needed
39:32for the allied landings in France
39:34it meant in the months before D-Day in June 1944
39:39the allies were able to run 100 ship convoys to Britain without loss
39:44but Dernitz still planned to redress their balance
39:49slipping quietly into the water in Hamburg
39:51a few days before D-Day on its first sea trials
39:54was Dernitz's long-awaited wonder weapon
39:57the Type 21 Unterseeboot
40:00Type 21 was the first real submarine in the history of naval warfare
40:04it was no longer forced to surface to charge batteries
40:08but it could stay for extended periods under water
40:11so a new era in the U-boat warfare started
40:15it was the era of total underwater war
40:17before their submarines had been basically surface ships
40:20that would occasionally submerge
40:22they built a submarine that was intended to remain submerged all the time
40:26the main advantages of the Type 21 over the existing U-boat Types 7 and Type 9
40:34were first the extended range underwater
40:38the increased underwater speed
40:40the increased diving depth for these U-boats
40:43and of course the greater firepower
40:45because they had six boat tubes
40:47and were capable of firing a total number of 18 torpedoes
40:50within less than 20 minutes
40:53it had a snorkel built into it
40:55but it was built in telescopic like a periscope
40:57it went straight up and down
40:59and this Type 21 submarine was bigger
41:02much, much faster
41:03it could go up to about 16 or 17 knots submerged
41:08and it could run on batteries for several hours at 16 knots
41:12which is an amazing development
41:14but the fundamental thing was
41:16it could remain submerged and could make high-speed submerged
41:19the Allied fear that the new boat would render all their anti-submarine measures ineffective
41:27prompted massive aerial bombing raids of the Type 21 construction yards in Hamburg, Bremen and Danzig
41:33where final assembly of the U-boats took place
41:36despite the havoc this caused
41:39by the beginning of 1945
41:4190 boats had been completed
41:43and Dönitz was planning a return to the Atlantic in a new March offensive
41:47meanwhile his men still went to war
41:50in the obsolete Type 7s and 9s
41:53in the final six months of 1944
41:55Dönitz lost 112 U-boats at sea
41:59life expectancy for U-boat men on patrol
42:02had sunk to two months
42:04and still they went out
42:06it is difficult to understand today
42:11that we did what we did
42:16and yet we did it without questioning
42:22without asking
42:23we did it because we were trained to do it
42:27we were brought up in a rigid society
42:31that knew nothing else
42:34but to obey an order
42:37whether the order was right or wrong
42:39the losses at sea were quite obvious
42:43especially when you were out on a mission
42:46you could hear of their last message
42:50it was a standing order to send a message if you could
42:54of your own demise
42:57and when we came back to Port
43:00we found that our pens were deserted
43:05so you realize that the losses were extraordinary
43:12but you tried to avoid thinking about it
43:17it was quite obvious
43:20that the intent was
43:24to send our men out
43:26to die at sea
43:30Dönitz gave a speech once
43:35where he spoke of the fanatical willingness to die
43:40of the fanatical willingness to die
43:44and these young people had been imbued with this
43:49it was clear to them that their chances out there weren't great
43:54but they were nevertheless willing to die
43:57as far as the navy was concerned
44:00service itself was an end in itself
44:03service for the fatherland was an end in itself
44:07irrespective of whether the National Socialist Workers Party was at the helm
44:12or any other party that they could have imagined
44:15political ideology it would seem
44:18played a minor role in life aboard a U-boat
44:21there were individuals on board
44:24a particular U-boat
44:25who might be known to be an enthusiastic Nazi
44:28and typically people would know
44:30what to talk about around him
44:32or what to avoid
44:34but you really didn't have this kind of
44:36politicization of a U-boat crewman
44:39that some people seem to think did occur
44:42the fact that they were such efficient fighters
44:45the fact that they put up with the losses they did
44:48make them appear to be fanatical
44:51and yet all of my experiences
44:54both with individuals
44:56and with primary source documentation
44:59does not support that contention at all
45:02at Winston Churchill's secret underground headquarters in London
45:08the scene of so many uncertain moments in the U-boat war
45:12a new confidence prevailed
45:14at the heart of allied success
45:17lay that great transatlantic partnership of Churchill and Roosevelt
45:21and their joint determination for five and a half years
45:24that the goods would be delivered
45:26and the rattlesnakes of the sea would be vanquished
45:29the success of the Normandy landings
45:32the re-establishing of the Western Front
45:34and the clearing of the way
45:35for an eventual invasion of Germany itself
45:38all stemmed from the defeat of Dönitz's U-boats in the Atlantic
45:42and his failure to sever those vital supply lines
45:45between Britain and North America
45:48by March 1945
45:50Dönitz's plans for a new offensive with the Type 21 had crumpled
45:55the Russian army had taken Danzig
45:57the Western allies had crossed the Rhine
45:59and were mounting devastating bombing raids on Bremen and Hamburg
46:02at the end of April 1945
46:05following Hitler's suicide
46:07Dönitz became German Head of State
46:10and began to negotiate the nation's unconditional surrender
46:14on the 4th of May
46:16he sent out a special message to his beloved U-boats
46:20undefeated and spotless
46:23you lay down your arms after a heroic battle without equal
46:27a continuation of our fight is no longer possible
46:30it is an index of the U-boat crew morale
46:37that on the last day of the war in May 1945
46:41there were still 43 U-boats at sea looking for targets
46:46they were stunned by Dönitz's order
46:49some believing it was a hoax by the allies
46:52but the majority surrendered obediently
46:54a few in American waters off New Jersey and Maine
46:57but the majority around the British Isles
47:02over 1,150 U-boats had been built during World War II
47:07at the war's end almost 800 had been sunk or destroyed
47:11the U-boat crews came ashore for the last time
47:14their iron discipline intact
47:17the majority of the U-boats which surrendered
47:21were moored either at Lyssa Halley in Northern Ireland
47:25or at Cairn Ryan in the southwest of Scotland
47:28at Lyssa Halley we had between 45 and 55
47:33and they were moored in trots of 5 or 6 abreast
47:38the main work of maintaining them was carried out by German crews
47:45they sang vigorously as they were marched down in the mornings
47:49to the boats and quite likely sang again as they came back to their quarters
47:55they still regarded their U-boats as theirs
47:59they were proud of them and wanted to see that they were maintained
48:03to the necessary standards
48:06the major allied governments
48:10United States, United Kingdom and Russia
48:15agreed that they would each be entitled to take 6 U-boats
48:22and that the remainder would be scuffled in the North Atlantic in deep water
48:28the main object was to dispose of them
48:35so that they could not be used offensively again by any country
48:40in Operation Dead Light
48:42the Royal Navy and Air Force used the remnants of the once mighty fleet
48:46for target practice
48:47it was the end of Dönitz's iron coffins
48:51Dönitz was tried by the allies at Nuremberg
48:56and sent to Spandau prison for 10 years
48:58he served his full sentence and was released in 1956
49:02when he died on Christmas Eve 1980
49:05he was refused a state funeral by the German government
49:08he lies buried with his wife and two sons
49:11both of whom were killed at sea during the war
49:13in this village cemetery near Hamburg
49:16and what of those who served their beloved Grand Admiral so loyally?
49:27the U-boat effort was undertaken with such faith
49:31with such zeal, with such superhuman effort
49:35these men waged a campaign of unbelievable exertion of energy
49:41and will and morale
49:44the losses they suffered were so horrific
49:4932,000 killed or captured out of a total force of 40,000
49:54a rate loss that's matched only by the kamikazes
49:58in the Pacific during the end of World War II
50:01and yet they were still able to perform
50:04they were still fighting up to the last day
50:07and in the end
50:09it was for a regime
50:11that represented what?
50:13Auschwitz, Buchenwald
50:19and that I think has been
50:21the difficulty that U-boat submariners
50:24that U-boat crewmen today
50:26still have to deal with
50:29the last of the iron coffins completes a long sea journey
50:43its final resting place ironically is Liverpool
50:46the city that masterminded the U-boat's defeat
50:49where it is to go on public display
50:52it comes not as a trophy of war
50:55but as a reminder to future generations
50:57of the fearsome threat the U-boats posed
51:00above all
51:02it is a lasting testimony to the courage
51:05fortitude and sacrifice of the thousands of individuals
51:08on the Allied side
51:10whose united efforts
51:12eventually ensured the U-boat's
51:14decisive and very necessary defeat
51:18to encourageemen to fulfill every factor
51:22and with financial aid
51:23the U-boat's competitiveness
51:39beyond all humans
51:41who for fear
51:43is as only
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