Configuración Científica de la Investigación

On June 20, 1941, just two days before Germany went to war with Russia, there came an unexpected signal from Lieutenant Mützelburg in U 203, reporting that he had sighted the American battleship Texas in the blockade area. What did this mean? Why should an American capital ship be in an area which the Americans themselves had forbidden to their own ships? Was this a deliberate provocation? Within twenty-four hours an important signal was sent to all U-boats: "By order of the Führer all incidents with United States ships must be avoided in the coming weeks. Until further notice, attacks may not be made on battleships, cruisers and aircraft carriers unless definitely identified as hostile. Warships steaming at night without lights are not necessarily hostile."

This order meant the virtual cessation of all night attacks in the blockade area on convoy escorts or on A/S groups and destroyers sailing independently; for by night it was quite impossible to distinguish neutral from foe. The order remained in force even when, in July, President

Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Navy to attack all submarines. Nor was it canceled in October, when Knox, the Secretary of the Navy, spoke unequivocally at a press conference on the sinking of German U-boats by U.S. warships.

On September 4, U 652 (Fraatz) reported having been attacked with depth charges by U.S. destroyers 180 miles southwest of Reykjavik, and that he had fired two torpedoes in self-defense. This was known as the Greer incident. Hitler sanctioned the captain's action on the grounds that self-defense was permissible, but his ban on taking reprisals still stood. On the twentieth of September a U.S. escort vessel attacked a U-boat east of Greenland and some days later another U-boat sighted a patrolling aircraft with U.S. markings. On October 18 the U.S. destroyer

Kearney attacked a U-boat, and the Reuben James did the same on October 31. Thus there could

be no doubt whatever that the neutral United States was engaged in open hostilities against German U-boats, although war had not been declared between the two countries.

Five simultaneous search patrols were now dispatched to the less-protected areas of the Western Atlantic. The first blow was struck at the beginning of September, when the boats of the first wave encountered Convoy SC 42 close in to the coast of Greenland. Despite heavy air and surface escorts, they went straight into the attack and in an action lasting several days they sank no less than twenty ships.

[Sixteen ships totaling 68,000 tons were sunk out of this convoy of sixty-five ships on September 10 and 11, 1941.]

A few days later other boats attacked a second convoy, SC 44, and after a two-day action claimed to have sunk seven ships, of which the British admitted four; then the fog came down and contact was lost.

[SC 44 consisted of fifty-four ships of which four were sunk on the nineteenth and twentieth of September, 1941.]

Atmospheric conditions played havoc with radio communications at this point, so that only five of the boats managed to send the news of the action which was so anxiously awaited at Kernevel.

Soon after this episode the boats of the second wave located Convoy SC 48 and, despite strong opposition from the escorts, managed to sink nine ships.

[This occurred on the fifteenth and sixteenth of October, 1941.]

But as October turned into November the weather steadily deteriorated; it was as hard for the U- boats to attack as it was for the convoys to keep together. In November, owing to bad weather, one convoy had 26 stragglers out of 43 ships; and the sinking figures went steadily down. Against a loss of 53 ships— over 200,000 tons—in September, the British Admiralty listed only 32 ships lost in October, 13 in November and 25 in December, 1941.

At this point orders came from the naval staff to concentrate the U-boats for the time being on Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, because of the British offensive in Libya. Dönitz realized at once that this meant abandoning the Battle of the North Atlantic until further notice. His first attempt to send U-boats into the Mediterranean, in November 1939, had been a failure and since then he had not had sufficient forces available to repeat it. In April and again in June, 1941, he had managed to stave off Hitler's demand for U-boats in the Mediterranean, but despite his protests, six boats were dispatched in September, which had since been operating under the control of the Navy Group South at Salamis. Six boats was not many—yet they represented 25 per cent of the total number operating in the Atlantic in September and October. And now came this new order for the immediate dispatch of six more boats to the Western Mediterranean, where they were to be based on La Spezia and Pola. The entire U-boat force was to be concentrated against Gibraltar.

Only a few weeks earlier, on the eighth of November, Dönitz had visited Berlin to expound his views on the conduct of the U-boat war. Once again he had emphasized that everything

depended upon the destruction of Britain's shipping in the shortest time, and he voiced strong opposition to any plan which involved splitting the U-boat forces without comparable sinking figures being achieved. In particular he complained of the withdrawal of six U-boats for the purpose of escorting surface ships, four for reconnaissance duties in northern waters, four more in the Arctic Sea and the six already mentioned at Salamis. This policy, he pointed out, left him with only five to ten boats in the Atlantic, which was utterly inadequate, Raeder nodded

sympathetically as his subordinate developed this theme; but in the end he remarked that Dönitz was not in a position to appreciate the picture of the war as a whole, and that many other factors had to be taken into consideration by the Supreme Command.

The Naval Command's new directive in December for the transfer of more U-boats to the Mediterranean meant that within a few weeks the British would be bringing their supplies into England without any hindrance at all. Despite, or perhaps because of, the numerous

recommendations that Dönitz had sent to Berlin, he was evidently regarded there as a tiresome man who would let the whole of the rest of the Navy go to pieces if that would help his U-boats. Somewhat bitterly he contrasted this attitude with that of Todt, the Minister for Construction. A year had elapsed since Hitler had received Dönitz in the Command train at Creil, a small station to the east of Paris. On that occasion Hitler speculated whether the U-boats in the Western bases ought to have better protection against air attack; his experiences in the First World War, he said, when he had seen the U-boats at Ostend, had impressed upon him the need to protect them while in harbor. Dönitz gratefully accepted this suggestion and within a few days Todt arrived in Ker- nevel and immediately impressed Dönitz by the speed with which he got to work. The

responsibility for all naval construction still lay with the Admiralty, but by agreement with Dönitz, Todt swiftly drew up a plan for building bunkers—even though, in the case of La Pallice, this meant rebuilding half the harbor. Three days after the decision had been taken, Dönitz was

rung up by Dorsch, one of Todt's assistants. "When will you get authority to proceed with the work at La Pallice? I've got twenty thousand workmen here on the Channel coast and all my equipment ready; they are only waiting for the word to move." Dönitz smiled at the recollection of it. That was the way to get things done; those were the kind of men he liked to deal with. After that experience no one would ever convince him that a U-boat required a full twenty-one months to build. Todt would build them faster, for, like the Americans, he knew the value of time. Ah, the Americans—there it was again—that growing threat from the West.