“The U-505’s Service History before Capture: The War Patrols of Axel-Olaf Löwe” by S.M. O’Connor

EXCERPT

On Friday, February 6, 1942, Admiral Karl Dönitz personally inspected the U-505.[1] The U-505 was in Lorient for just eight days before she left for the Central Atlantic around three o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, February 11, 1942.[2] As crewman Hans Göbeler later recounted, all the crewmen who were not on watch stood in parade ground formation on the Upper Deck while the Kommandant (Commandant) of the U-505, Kapitänleutnant (Captain-Lieutenant) Axel-Olaf Löwe and the men on watch stood on the Bridge, which was adorned with flower garlands.[3] When Löwe gave orders to cast off the mooring lines (ropes), a naval band began to play military marches and the dockside audience cheered as the U-505 slipped out of her the submarine pen into Lorient’s harbor at six o’clock in the evening.[4] A minesweeper escorted the U-505 and U-68, which was commanded by Karl-Friedrich Merten, to the hundred-fathom curve, at which point the three vessels would part ways.[5] As they passed Fort Louis and before they lost sight of land, Löwe ordered the First Watch Officer, Oberleutant zur See (Over-lieutenant of the Sea, the equivalent of a Lieutenant, Junior Grade in the U.S. Navy) Herbert Nollau to throw the flowers on deck over the side.[6] In “sea-lore, at least in German sea-faring tradition, it was bad luck to carry flowers,” machinist Hans-Joachim Decker later recalled. “No hexes for us, so over the side they went.”[7]

The U-505 was on her first war cruise (and second operational patrol) and the U-68 was on her fifth.[8] Only when they were at sea did Löwe inform the crew of the U-505 where they were going.[9] Both U-boats would operate off the coast of West Africa with a focus on the sea lanes to and from Freetown, which is in an estuary of the Rokell River, where the Rockell River flows westward into the Atlantic Ocean, on the river’s southern bank.[10] The enlisted men looked at each other, perplexed, because they could not picture where Freetown was on a map, so they began to speculate.[11]

Freetown was then the capital city of British West Africa and is now the capital of Sierra Leone.[12] This colony was the most important British outpost between Great Britain and the Union of South Africa (now the Republic of South Africa).[13] That second operational cruise for the U-505 was from Wednesday, February 11, 1942 to Thursday, May 7, 1942.[14] According to Decker, Löwe authorized a “free bridge” after the U-505 passed the Aazores, which meant the men could come up to the Bridge to smoke, and after they passed the Canary Islands they “shut down one engine and ran at half speed to conserve fuel.”[15] The U-505 was in her operational area from Sunday, March 1, 1942 to Tuesday, April 21, 1942.[16]

The U-505 was a lone wolf rather than part of a U-boat wolf pack, so Löwe had an independent command on a brand-new U-boat at the head of a crew he had personally trained.[17] He had nineteen torpedoes aboard the U-505 and if he sank 50,000 tons worth of Allied ships, he would win an Iron Cross.[18] If he sank 100,000 tons, Hitler would have awarded him the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.[19] The very best U-boat ace, Otto Kretschmer (1912-1998), sank 325,000 tons.[20] For the Kriegsmarine, 1942 was the “Happy Time” during which German raiders sank 1,570 Allied ships that accounted for 7,700,000 tons.[21]

Since they were in the tropics, the German submariners would have stored away their formal uniforms to be brought out again when they returned to port.[22] U-boats were not equipped with air-conditioning.[23] After the U-505 crossed the Tropic of Cancer, she would “heat-up like a furnace” during the day while she ran at the surface, so the men would seek any excuse to go up on the Upper Deck, and whenever the U-505 dove underwater, the pressure hull would cool off and drops of condensation would fall on the crew, Göbeler recollected.[24] Far out at sea, the crewmen would have worn skivvy canvas pants and sneakers, but no shirts.[25] When they went on the Upper Deck or Bridge, they wore pith helmets.[26] The men would have grown beards (if they could) and their hair would have grown long.[27] Admiral Gallery later commented “You could make a pretty fair guess as to how long a U-boat had been away from base when you fished its survivors out of the water, from the length of the crew’s hair.”[28]

Göbeler recalled that on this war cruise they had started out with 3,000 eggs and if they had stayed in the North Atlantic those eggs would have lasted for two to three months, but in the tropical heat they to worry about them spoiling after a couple of weeks, so Löwe told the men they could eat as many eggs as they wanted with each meal.[29] After a while, the smell of eggs turned the stomachs of certain U-505 crewmen for years to come.[30]

When they were at sea for several weeks, Löwe moved Göbeler from the position of periscope pump operator to diving manifold operator.[31] As such, it was his responsibility to control the level of water in the dive tanks.[32] Göbeler explained, “The tanks needed to be blown out with air or filled with water in a precisely timed sequence les the boat lose pitch control.”[33] This would remain Göbeler’s job aboard the U-505 until her capture, although he would also help out with repairs to the diesel engines.[34]

The U-505 arrived in her assigned operational area on Monday, March 2, 1942.[35] On the evening of March 5^th she sank the SS Benmohr, a British steamship of the Ben Line, and on the morning of March 6^th she sank the MV Sydhav, a Norwegian tanker, both southwest of Freetown[36] The U-505’s lookouts sighted the Benmohr, a 6,000-ton freighter on her way to Oban, Scotland with a cargo hold full of silver bullion, pig iron, and rubber that traveled without escort, 120 miles from Freetown at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 5, 1942.[37] He tracked her for over four hours and a little before 11:00 p.m. fired two torpedoes from 600 yards away, yet missed.[38] A third torpedo struck the Benmohr amidships.[39] She stopped and sent a distress signal that gave Löwe all the information he needed to make an accurate record in the U-505 War Diary, which is now at the M.S.I.[40] David Boag Anderson knew his ship was doomed when she started to list and ordered his men to abandon ship.[41] Löwe waited for the lifeboats to get in the water and then fired a fourth torpedo that sank the Benmohr.[42] According to Paterson, “Loewe ensured the lifeboats were provisioned and watertight before backing his boat away and making good his escape.”[43] However, Admiral Gallery indicated on this occasion, Löwe made no effort to help the survivors and sped away.[44] Göbeler reported when they sank the Benmohr they looked at the survivors in lifeboats, but made no mention of giving them supplies.[45] Three hours later, Löwe had to make a crash dive to escape an aircraft, a Sunderland that had clearly been dispatched in response to the S.O.S. from the Benmohr.[46] British aircraft recovered the survivors.[47]

The U-505 sighted the Sydhav, a 7,600-ton tanker that carried 11,400 tons of oil, at 9:30 in the morning on Friday, March 6, 1942.[48] Just as the Sydhav entered a squall, Lowe fired two torpedoes.[49] The storm ended ten minutes later and from a distance all Löwe could see was smoke rising from the ocean’s surface.[50] [That much is Gallery’s reconstruction of events based on the U-505’s War Diary. Göbeler related the same basic story but reversed the order of events, as he stated the Sydhav emerged from a squall and then they attacked it.[51]] The U-505 surfaced and Löwe saw oil and debris on the surface of the ocean.[52] Many of the Sydhav’s crewmen had to jump over the side because she sank so quickly and several of the men were pulled underwater by the suction of the ship sinking.[53] Captain Nils O. Helgesen and eleven of his thirty-five men never made it back to the surface.[54] Another sailor who clung to a mattress died when sharks pulled him under.[55] The others managed to right a lifeboat and started to row back and forth calling out names of their missing comrades.[56] Eventually, Löwe found one lifeboat and two rafts and noted the survivors were coated with oil.[57] Some of them were burned and needed medical attention.[58] According to Admiral Gallery, Löwe intended to give them morphine, salve, and bandages, but his lookouts spotted an airplane and they dove instead.[59] Göbeler insisted, “Löwe maneuvered our boat to render aid to the dazed survivors, many of whom had suffered burns. We gave them fresh water, food, medicine, and bandages. The grateful sailors told us that the tanker was the Sydhav, bound for Freetown.”[60] Paterson also stated Löwe gave them “fresh water, food, and bandages to treat their burns” before he dove to escape the Sunderland.[61] Göbeler related they fled because they spotted a Sunderland approximately 8,000 meters away and only in the aftermath of the war did they discover the plane missed both the U-505 and the oil slick of the Sydhav.[62] A British Royal Navy destroyer picked up the survivors on Saturday, March 7, 1942 after they rowed north.[63] The survivors made it to Freetown.[64]

On Saturday, March 28, 1942, Löwe’s crew woke him up at 3:00 a.m. because they had received the order, “All U-boats east of twenty-nine degrees West proceed toward Lorient at high speed.”[65] The cause for this order was that a little after midnight the British Royal Navy had rammed the former U.S. Navy destroyer Campbelltown into the dock gate of the inner harbor of Saint-Nazaire after a diversionary air raid that assured the German defenders would be looking up.[66] Special Service Brigade commandos had stormed off the Campbelltown and a flotilla of motor launches wrought destruction with demolition charges and the survivors escaped in those motor launches with air support from the R.A.F. or were captured and taken prisoner.[67] A Kriegsmarine staff officer concluded this was the start of an invasion instead of appreciating this was merely a raid.[68] Kapitänleutnant Merton, Commandant of the nearby U-68, was a veteran who dismissed this order, but Löwe was a novice commanding officer and replied with a radio message asking if he needed to comply.[69] A response came that he should remain where he was (off Cape Palmas in Liberia).[70]

On the afternoon of March 29^th, while German engineers were aboard the Campbelltown, trying to figure out how best to dislodge her bow from the dock gate, souvenir-seekers were looting the Campbelltown, sightseers were exploring her, and bystanders were standing around her (in some cases, with their wives), time fuses detonated and the ship exploded.[71] The dock was out of commission for the remainder of the war.[72] The point of the raid was to destroy the only dry-dock in occupied France that could accommodate the Bismarck-class Tirpitz,[73] which was not only the largest battleship ever built by the German Navy, but the largest battleship ever built by any European navy. The Allies feared that the Tirpitz would be used in the Arctic Sea as a surface raider against convoys of merchant ships that brought war materials to the Soviet Union.[74] Further, they feared the Tirpitz might become a surface raider in the North Atlantic.[75] The only dock on the Atlantic coast of the whole continent of Europe that could accommodate the Tirpitz was the dry-dock at Saint-Nazaire which the British called the “Normandie dock,” because it had been built for the construction of the cruise ship Normandie, and could accommodate a ship twice the size of the Tirpitz, as far as 85,000 tons.[76] By depriving the Tirpitz of access to that dock, the British were able to assure the Tirpitz would not bother to enter the North Atlantic.[77] Usually U-boats commanders could depend on Admiral Dönitz to send out factual communiques, but rather than admit the order to return to Lorient had been given in a panic, once Admiral Dönitz, whom Hitler had promoted to four-star admiral only a few days beforehand, restored order, he sent out a communique that stated, “British attack driven off,” which had nothing to do with reality.[78]

Later on March 28^th, Löwe had to dive twice to escape aircraft, and a corvette that was escorting a steamship he shadowed for four hours attacked the U-505 with depth charges, but Löwe escaped with a deep dive to 600 feet beneath the surface, initially went slowly, and then went full speed for ten minutes.[79] Löwe noted, “Baptism of fire. Crew behaved excellently.”[80]

Mulligan observed, “Through the long patrols, Loewe maintained high morale through his command style, keeping the crew informed of his intentions, exercising a light touch in place of harshness to remedy crew lapses, and respecting maritime traditions and superstitions, including the traditional elaborate ceremony when the boat first crossed the Equator.”[81] On Tuesday, March 31, 1942, Löwe crossed the equator for thirty minutes for the benefit of his young crewmen who had never previously crossed the equator so they could go through a ritual on deck.[82] He wrote, “Appropriate ceremonies were observed modified to existing conditions.”[83] Gallery later explained, for the benefit of his readers, “Even in the midst of all-out-war, seafaring tradition required that proper deference be paid to [the Roman sea god] Neptune who is supposed to board every ship that crosses the equator ibn search of unfortunate landlubbers who have not previously made their number with him.”[84] Decker stated the “festivities” occurred on April 1^st.[85] Göbeler described the ludicrous hazing ceremony in repulsive detail. Each man who went through the ritual received a certificate from “Neptune.”[86] There is a picture of Neptune’s Equator-crossing certificate issued on the U-181 in U-boat Ace: The Story of Wolfgang Lüth by Jordan Vause.

On April 3^rd, the U-505 sank the West Irmo, and on the evening of April 4^th, she sank the SS Alphacca, both south of the Ivory Coast.[87] The West Irmo was an American steamship under escort.[88] According to Gallery, Löwe followed the West Irmo, an American cargo ship bound from New York City to Lagos, for twenty-nine hours before he struck and the first two torpedoes he fired harmlessly bypassed her without any notice by her crew or the corvettes.[89] He heard the explosion and later heard the unmistakable sound of the ship’s hull being crushed in the ocean depths.[90]

Göbeler gave a more complicated version of events. In this version, the U-505 started to chase a steamship with a single “escort vessel,” late on April 2, 1942 and fired two torpedoes after the steamer at a range of 1,000 meters which missed or failed to detonate and chased the ship for another ten hours but squalls limited visibility to 100 meters for much of that time.[91] Just as they required the target and submerged to attack, another steamship appeared with two escorts going in the opposite direction.[92] Löwe chose to break off the attack on the first ship to pursue the second one under the theory if it had double the number of escort warships, it must be more important, and, in any case, it was easier to hit the second ship.[93] He fired two torpedoes, the first of which missed and the second struck home.[94] The submariners intercepted an S-O-S message and thereby learnt they had sunk the West Irmo.[95] As the U-505 escaped from the two escorts, the submariners heard the telltale sound of the steamer’s boilers explode as she sank.[96]

All thirty-six crewmen and eight U.S. Navy gunners survived, but ten of the sixty-five African stevedores or longshoremen died.[97] According to Paterson, the Copinsay picked up the survivors.[98]

The Alphacca was an unescorted 6,000-ton Dutch merchantman that Löwe sank with one torpedo in a surface attack in the evening.[99] Afterwards, he spoke with the survivors in their lifeboats.[100] Fourteen of the seventy-two passengers and crew of the Alphacca died the day she sank and a fifteenth, a stoker, succumbed to wounds the next day.[101] Löwe noted in the U-505 War Diary, “Boats well equipped and provisioned. Crew spoke German. Upon parting we wish each other ‘good sailing.’ … Irony of war, we fight against men who speak our own language.”[102] All four lifeboats made landfall at a point east of Las Palmas and one week later two Free French corvettes brought them to Freetown.[103]

Löwe’s emblem on the Conning Tower was the idea of one of his men.[104] He suggested the emblem combine Löwe’s surname (lion) rampant holding an axe, with the axe being the symbol of Löwe’s Naval Academy class of 1928.[105] The crew also made four traditional pennants to hang from the periscope when they returned to port.[106]

Göbeler stated that on Saturday, April 18, 1942 a Sunderland dropped a bomb close enough to the U-505 to cause minor damage.[107] On Tuesday, April 21, 1942, Löwe announced they were heading home.[108] During the return voyage to Lorient, a two-engine, land-based bomber dropped twelve bombs around the U-505 over a couple of hours on Tuesday, May 5, 1942.[109] They did no real damage, although the Germans later found a fragment from the case of one of those bombs embedded in the Conning Tower.[110] Four hundred miles from Lorient, an aircraft again dropped bombs over the U-505, but this time, they did no damage whatsoever, and two hours later Löwe received a radio message that an inbound U-boat in his position had been attacked, which later indicated to Gallery that at that time the Germans were able to intercept reports from R.A.F. aircraft that flew over the Bay of Biscay.[111] The U-505 returned to Lorient, arriving on Thursday, May 7, 1942.[112]

She had sunk 26,000 tons of Allied shipping.[113] Of the fourteen torpedoes she had fired, eight struck home.[114] She had sunk four of the seven vessels Löwe had targeted.[115] To avoid aircraft, she had crash dove twenty-four times.[116] Twice, she had been bombed.[117] She had gone 13,253 nautical miles: 12,937 miles (97.6%) surfaced and 316 miles (2.4%) submerged.[118] The staff of Admiral – not yet Grand Admiral – Dönitz, commented on the War Diary of the U-505, “First mission of Commandant with new boat, well and thoughtfully carried out. Despite long time in operations area, lack of traffic did not permit greater success.”[119]

Göbeler recounted that “hundreds of spectators, all waiving and cheering” waited for them at the pier and a naval band played “martial music adding pomp to the festivities.”[120] After the mooring lines were secured, the crewmen received commands to stand at attention in parade ground formation on the Upper Deck.[121] The whole 2^nd U-boat Flotilla command staff came aboard the U-505 to shake hands with her officers.[122] Korvettenkapitän Schütz, Commander of the 2^nd U-boat Flotilla, winner of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, made a speech.[123] His was the most successful U-boat command in the whole Unterseebottswaffe.[124]

The men had to be debriefed by the U-boat intelligence service.[125] Decker recalled, “Perhaps the proudest moment came when we each received the official U-Boat badge. Now we were U-Boat veterans.” [126]

The crewmen wanted to bathe, eat, read mail from home, and slake their lust.[127] The first order of business was for them to receive three months’ worth of mail in the dining hall.[128] As a group, they experienced the full panoply of human emotions, as some crewmen received very good news, such as the birth of a baby, while others received very bad news, such as the death of a brother on the Eastern Front.[129] Then they went to the barracks, where they showered and slept in bunks before they enjoyed a banquet where they were served all manner of foods not available to most men in the Wehrmacht, as well as bottles of brand-name beer such as Beck’s and Falstaff and French wines.[130]

The crew went on leave while the U-505 was docked in Lorient to undergo repairs and be refitted from Thursday, May 7, 1942 to Saturday, June 6, 1942.[131] In the month before the U-505 set out on her next war cruise or patrol, she underwent minor repairs, her torpedoes were reloaded, she was refueled, and her food stores were replenished.[132] The officers and crewmen would have bragged about how many ships they sank to other submariners, listened to those submariners brag about how many ships they sank, and taken note of which U-boats were missing and presumed sunk.[133] The crewmen, who were mostly teenage boys or were very young men, would have visited the cafes, bars, and brothels of Lorient.[134]

Göbeler explained the men with wives or girlfriends in Germany scoffed at the rest who went to the brothels in Lorient’s “entertainment district.”[135] In Göbeler’s hometown of Bottendorf, girls did not want to get a bad reputation (for sexual promiscuity), but in the brothels of Lorient the submariners could get all the sex they could pay for, and the Kriesgsmarine inspected the prostitutes for diseases.[136] Göbeler developed an attachment to one girl named Jeanette who purchased a Saint Christopher medal for him before he had to go back out at sea.[137]

The day after the U-505 arrived in port, her crew performed hundreds of maintenance tasks before she moved into dry-dock, where shipyard workers overhauled her.[138] Then, Göbeler stated, half the men received train tickets to go home for a week on furlough while the other half stayed at the base to stay on watch and train and then, when they returned, the other half would go on furlough.[139] For the first two days, after the U-505 had moved into dry-dock, his group “changed the oils, overhauled the engines, tested the controls,” and performed “dozens of other tasks.”[140] They also trained during the day, but at night they generally had free time to visit the U-bootsheim (U-boat submariner’s home), where they could see German films, play cards, mail letters, and buy inexpensive snacks and beer.[141] [Note that Joseph Göbbles (1897-1945), Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich (1933-1945), had taken over the whole German film industry, so even films that were not propaganda films per se would have had elements of indoctrination in them.] Generally, at the beginning of a furlough, when submariners were flush with cash, they would buy drinks for men from other U-boats whose furloughs were about to end and were running low on funds, and then men from still other U-boats would return the favor when the men from the first U-boat began to run low on funds.[142]

Göbeler explained that despite the comradery submariners felt as a whole, U-boat crews often got into fistfights over whose skipper was best.[143] They also resented and would try to scare the “administrative troops who somehow managed to drape their uniforms with medals for doing nothing more than pushing paper all day.”[144]

The greatest object of our scorn, however, was the Feldgendarmerie, the military police. We called them ‘chain dogs’ because of the big metal police gorget they wore suspended around their necks on a chain. They usually looked the other way and allowed us to go about our business when we first returned from a patrol. But after a couple of days, they would lose their patience… It was a serious business to be arrested by the military police! If we saw the Chained Dogs coming, we would give a certain alarm whistle and our whole gang would split up into small groups and run in different directions…[145]

[Note that in the Third Reich, there were multiple military police services.[146]] In June of 1942, the crews of the U-505 and U-154 had off-duty men who were so drunk they would not seek shelter during an air raid, as a result of which they received denied shore leave for two days and banned from the canteen during that period.[147] Mulligan brought this to light and Göbeler made no mention of it in his memoirs.

Generally, the Kriegsmarine and Unterseebootswaffe were tolerant of crews blowing off steam, but individuals who violated rules and regulations could face harsh punishments.[148] One U-505 crewman who stole coffee was imprisoned for four months and subsequently returned to the U-505 with a demotion.[149] Another submariner who went A.W.O.L. for three days spent three months in prison and six months on the Russian Front in a Heer punishment battalion before he returned to the Unterseebootswaffe and joined the crew of the U-505.[150] They were comparatively lucky. The 2^nd U-boat Flotilla announced on Saturday, November 13, 1943, the execution of Johann Mainz, a seaman from the headquarters of another flotilla who had stolen property from a dead submariner and given it to his French girlfriend.[151] On Friday, January 21, 1944, Oberleutnant zur See Oskar-Heinz Kusch, Commanding Officer of the U-154, was arrested in Lorient, court-martialed, convicted, and executed by firing squad after his X.O. denounced him for “undermining military morale” with statements critical of Germany’s political and military leadership.[152] [In a police state, everyone can trust no-one, because anyone can be an informant.] The importance of producing pro-war propaganda and suppressing defeatist talk to sustaining the German war effort cannot be overestimated. Göbeler noted, “Perhaps I was just too young and idealistic to read the writing on the wall, but I believed – right up until the very end – Germany would triumph in the war.”[153] Approximately 30,000 members of the Wehrmacht were executed after being tried by military tribunals or other courts under the Nazi regime.[154]

Before the U-505 departed, Admiral Dönitz came aboard the U-505, spoke with Löwe, and wrote in the U-505 War Diary, “First mission of Captain with new boat, well and thoughtfully carried out. Despite long time in operations area, lack of traffic did not permit greater success.”[155] The U-505’s third operational cruise (and second war cruise) was from Sunday, June 7, 1942 to Tuesday, August 25, 1942.[156] This time around, the crew did not mind that their boat seemed overcrowded at the start of the cruise due to food storage and the men squirreled away chocolates, liquor, cigarettes, and booklets of “pictures of women in scandalous poses.”[157]

The U-505 was in her operational area from Tuesday, June 30, 1942 to Saturday, August 1, 1942.[158] A broken compass on this voyage caused navigational problems.[159] On Sunday, June 7, 1942, the U-505 left Lorient for the Caribbean.[160]

On this voyage, the crew gorged on frankfurters (hotdogs) for a week after a case of canned frankfurters that had been stored between one of the diesel engines and the pressure hull had exploded.[161] Göbeler recalled that as they transited the Atlantic Ocean one day they brought a table up to the Upper Deck to have lunch alfresco.[162] This war cruise would be the last time they were able to cross the Atlantic surfaced without being attacked by aircraft.[163]

Before arriving in her operational area, the U-505 sank two ships north of the Leeward Islands, the SS Sea Thrush on June 28^th and the SS Thomas McKean on the 29^th.[164] The Sea Thrush was a 6,900-ton American freighter that was bound from Philadelphia to Cape Town, the capital city of the Union of South Africa, via Trinidad, with U.S. Army supplies.[165] Löwe hit the Sea Thrush with two torpedoes, and an hour later, the crew evacuated, he finished off with a third torpedo.[166] All forty-one crewmen, fourteen U.S. Army passengers, and eleven U.S. Navy Armed Guard personnel survived.[167]

Löwe hit the 7,400-ton Thomas McKean, an American liberty ship that was bound from New York City for the Persian Gulf with a cargo of airplanes, tanks, and other war supplies for the Soviet Union, with two torpedoes and after the crew lowered lifeboats he finished the Thomas McKean off with seventy-two rounds from the U-505’s ten-and-a-half-centimeter (four-inch) gun., according to Admiral Gallery and Dr. Mulligan.[168] Admiral Gallery stated that Löwe took pictures of the burning ship and a lifeboat and gave the lifeboat medical supplies and directions to land 360 miles away.[169] Decker stated. “Two lifeboats full of men came close aboard. We asked if they needed water or provisions, gave them the course to the nearest land, and then cleared to the north.”[170] Göbeler more ambiguously stated, “It was quite a fireworks show, and someone snapped a picture of the burning ship.”[171]

According to Göbeler, some of the bombers the Thomas McKean had carried on her deck bobbed at the surface and Löwe personally shot them with the twenty-millimeter Flak gun. [172] “He explained that we needed to remove the evidence of her sinking so we couldn’t be located , but we suspected all the canon fire had given the old gunnery officer an itchy trigger finger.”[173] The crew spent the next day reloading torpedoes and Löwe avoided a cutter they assumed entered the area to rescue the survivors of the Thomas McKean.[174]

Thirty-eight crewmen and thirteen U.S. Navy Armed Guard personnel survived.[175] Four of the fifty-nine men – three U.S. Navy Armed Guard personnel and one crewman – died when the Thomas McKean sank, and, of the four lifeboats, two were picked up at sea within four-and-a-half days, one made it to shore after seven days, and the last made it to shore after nine days.[176] Captain Respess of the Thomas McKean survived the sinking of this ship only to drown when a second ship that was supposed to bring him back to the United States of America was sunk.[177] Gallery reprinted some of the statements of survivors of the Thomas McKean he found in the files of the Maritime Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce in Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea.[178]

Early in the morning on Wednesday, July 22, 1942, the U-505 sank the Roamar, a three-masted schooner, which had recently been renamed the Urios, by gunfire – twenty-two rounds from the ten-and-a-half-centimeter deck gun twelve miles from Callo Bolivar – east of the Isla de San Andreas.[179] [Decker stated this attack on a “windjammer” as he described the vessel, was on July 27^th, but every other source stated it occurred on July 22^nd.[180] He also identified the windjammer as the Roma.[181]] Löwe sank the Columbian-flagged vessel because she did not stop when he fired a warning shot and suspected she was a trap.[182]

According to Göbeler, Löwe ordered Second Watch Officer Gottfried Stolzenburg, whom Göbeler identified as “Gunnery Officer Stolzenburg,” to make a warning shot over the bow because she had no flag and moved in the zig-zag manner of a vessel that was trying to avoid torpedoes, but with the first shot the gunnery crew destroyed the mainmast.[183] “The handsome windjammer looked like a mess, with its mast and sails draping over her elegant decks like a giant tent.”[184] The schooner would not stop, so Löwe ordered another couple of warning shots, at which point the crew ran up the Colombian flag, but still would not stop.[185] Löwe maneuvered the U-505 to intercept the schooner, but instead of heaving-to she changed course as a result of which the men on watch could see the schooner’s name, Roamar, painted on the stern. [186] In Göbeler’s narrative, Löwe struggled with the decision, but ultimately ordered Stolzenburg to sink the Roamar.[187]

The first round into the ship’s hull was all the convincing the Spanish-speaking crew needed to abandon ship. We waited until the near-hysterical crew was well clear of the ship, then opened fire for effect. It took only a few minutes for our deck gun to make matchsticks out of the 400-ton schooner. It was great fun for our crew, but Löwe sensed this was a big mistake. We immediately departed the area, assuming the sailing ship had ample time to radio a report of our presence.[188]

However, according to Dr. Mulligan, all twenty-three crewmen and passengers, including four women, died.[189]

Göbeler insisted they were within their legal rights to sink the Roamar because she was within a declared war zone and would not stop when challenged, but regardless of the legality of their action, as a practical matter, once they had destroyed the Roamar’s mainmast, it was incumbent on the U-505 to sink the Roamar to remove (from the ocean’s surface) evidence of the U-505’s presence.[190]

Many U-505 crewmen attributed the U-505’s later misfortunes to this act, according to Mulligan.[191] Göbeler noted, “Löwe… could not shake the feeling that he had made a tremendous mistake. His physical condition worsened dramatically during the next few days and it began to affect his performance. He seemed to be literally worrying himself sick.”[192]

His X.O., Herbert Nollau, had informally taken command of the boat before returning to port.[193] On Friday, July 31, 1942, Löwe requested permission to break off his war cruise and return to port due to his illness, according to Mulligan.[194] According to Göbeler, it was on Saturday, August 1, 1942 that the U-505 radioed the BdU to relay it was necessary to return to port due to Löwe’s worsening health.[195]

East of the Antilles archipelago, the U-505 rendezvoused with the milchkuh (literally a milk-cow, a tanker submarine that refueled other U-boats at sea) U-463, commanded by First Great World War veteran Leo Wolfbauer, to receive twenty-five cubic meters of fuel on Saturday, August 8, 1942.[196] Subsequently, the inbound U-505 rendezvoused with the outbound U-214 north of the Azores and transferred surplus fuel and supplies to the U-214 on Thursday, August 20, 1942.[197] British airplane attacks on the U-505 increased as she approached the Bay of Biscay, as a result of which she transited the Bay of Biscay submerged except to surface to recharge the batteries and air compressors.[198]

After a rendezvous with escort boats, the U-505 arrived at Lorient Tuesday, August 25, 1942.[199] Once again, a naval band and 2^nd U-boat Flotilla Commander Schütz greeted the U-505.[200] After the reception ceremony, the crewmen received their mail, dined at a banquet, and slept in the barracks.[201] In the days to come, they prepared the U-505 to move into the armored bunker, stowed away their personal possessions, and discovered when they were free to leave the base that while the entertainment district was relatively untouched, British air raids had devastated the port and several neighborhoods.[202]

During operations in the Caribbean, the U-505 had dove thirty times to evade aircraft, but had only been bombed once.[203] She had sunk three of six targets.[204] The U-505 had struck targets four times with five torpedo shots and finished off two ships with gunfire.[205] She had traveled 13,340 nautical miles: 12,842 surfaced (96.3%) and 498 submerged (3.7%).[206] The U-505 was docked at Lorient for repairs and refitting from Tuesday, August 25, 1942 to Saturday, October 3, 1942.[207]

Two days after the U-505 returned to base, Löwe underwent an appendectomy.[208] Kapitän zur See – later Konteradmiral – Eberhardt Godt (1900-1995), Chef der Operationsabteilung des BdU (Chief of U-boat Operations), noted in the U-505 War Diary, “Mission prematurely ended because of sickness of Commandant. Took advantage of few chances of attack during time of almost total traffic stoppage. The sinking of the Columbian schooner had better been left undone. No further remarks.”[209]

Göbeler stated, “Prompt medical attention alleviated the threat to his life, but the physical pain he had endured was nothing compared to the emotional anguish he was to experience over the sinking of the damned three-masted schooner. Löwe’s instincts were correct, for the sinking was a colossal mistake.”[210]

We soon learned the 400-ton Roamar was the property of a Colombian diplomat. Its sinking, though technically-speaking perfectly legal, provided the political grounds for Colombia to declare war against Germany! … the effect on Löwe’s career was catastrophic: he was relieved of command of U-505 and assigned to shore duty. Admiral Dönitz however, recognized our skipper’s talents and arranged to have Löwe put on his staff. Löwe’s assignment to the Great Lion’s staff would have been the envy of most naval officers, but it broke our skipper’s heart to have to give up frontline sea duty.[211]

Mulligan argued, though, this incident was not what caused Colombia to declare war on Germany in November of 1943.[212]

Göbeler paid a heartfelt tribute to Löwe at this point in his narrative. “News of Löwe’s transfer was an occasion of great sadness for us all. We had tremendous affection for him and unbounded respect for the way he handled our boat… Most importantly, Löwe was a natural leader… It’s not an exaggeration to say that Axel Olaf Löwe was like a father to us. Quite a few of us were moved to tears during his farewell speech.”[213]

With a promotion to Korvettenkapitän, Löwe spent the rest of the war on dry land as part of the BdU staff of Admiral Dönitz.[214] According to Göbeler, when the U-505 was modified to increase fuel capacity before her fourth operational cruise, it was Löwe who designed the alteration.[215] Löwe evaluated weaponry and reports on tactics, and interviewed the commanding officers of U-boats when the returned from the war front.[216] In August of 1944, Löwe became a naval liaison to the Ministry of Armaments – headed by Albert Speer (1905-1981) – where he remained until the last month of the war, when he took command of a naval infantry unit in Schleswig-Holstein.[217]

Herbert Nollau was given command of his own boat, and would command the U-534 until the end of the war.[218] The U-534, which was sunk by a R.A.F. Liberator bomber on Saturday, May 5, 1945, in the Kattegat northwest of Helsingör, Denmark,[219] was raised by a Dutch-Danish team in 1993 and acquired by the Warship Preservation Trust, which placed her on display at the Nautilus Maritime Museum in Birkenhead, Wallasey outside Liverpool, England in May of 1996.[220] In other words, Nollau served on board two of the only four full-sized WWII U-boats to have been preserved.[221] He went on to work in the German Postal Service out of Frankfurt.[222] Unfortunately, the Nautilus Museum closed in 2006 because the Nautilus Maritime Museum was forced into liquidation.[223] However, the next year Merseyside Travel – Liverpool’s equivalent to Chicagoland’s Regional Transportation Authority (R.T.A.) – announced the U-534 would be moved to the Woodside Ferry Terminal, which is across the River Mersey from the Liverpool Pier Head (also known as George’s Pier Head). Today, the Merseyside Maritime Museum has the U-534 in four sections that are cross-sectioned. [The Merseyside Maritime Museum is part of the National Museums Liverpool (formerly National Museums and Galleries Merseyside).] The exhibit is called U-BOAT STORY.

ENDNOTES

[1] Hans Joachim Decker, “404 Days! The War Patrol Life of the German U-505,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings, March, 1960, Volume 86/3/865, p. 35

See also Timothy P. Mulligan, “Appendix B: U-505 Combat Chronology.” Hunt and Kill: U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic. Edited by Theodore P. Savas. New York City, New York: Savas Beatie, L.L.C. (2004), p. 225

[2] Daniel V. Gallery, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea: The Daring Capture of the U-505. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press (1956, 2001), p. 94