U-boat Archives - Thomas C Sanger

U-boat vulnerability to air attack made blockading British ports very hazardous. Photo credit: artnet News

A Brief History of Submarines, Part 6

April 1, 2020 by Thomas Sanger • War History • Leave a Comment

In the first few months of World War II, Germany’s U-boats were tasked with blockading British ports. In carrying out this assignment, U-boat fleet commander Karl Doenitz faced two challenges. The first was a limited number of submarines – only 21 ocean-going boats were available – and the second was their vulnerability to land-based British airpower.

To meet the first challenge, production of Type VII U-boats became a priority in the fall of 1939. The boats were small and took less time to build than larger surface ships. Within a year, German industry developed a system of prefabricating U-boat parts in different locations, which sped up production. Even so, it would take more than a year to begin supplying Doenitz with the number of Type-VII’s he wanted.

To meet the second challenge, Doenitz shifted U-boat operations to the mid-Atlantic, beyond the reach of land-based aircraft.

Working in this “killing zone,” U-boats sank 300,000 tons of allied shipping during the first four months of 1940. But this success came at a grim price: 13 U-boats sunk from January through April.

British convoys, escorted by warships, made merchant shipping difficult for U-boats to attack. The Royal Navy escorts employed radar and an underwater sonic detection system known as ASDIC, to locate German submarines. The more audacious U-boat captains responded by attacking at night, surfacing their boats inside convoy formations. ASDIC could not locate a boat on the surface, and attacking from within the convoy neutralized radar detection because a U-boat was largely indistinguishable on radar screens from the ships it was attacking.

When France fell to Germany in the summer of 1940, Doenitz gained access to ports on the Bay of Biscay. This allowed his U-boats to reach the mid-Atlantic more quickly and stay on station for longer periods.

Up until this point in the war, U-boats had been operating largely on their own. Each boat patrolled a specific area, attacking merchant ships and convoys when they were detected in its combat zone. But this approach was about to change in a way that would dramatically alter the course of the war.

Why Don’t We Remember Athenia? Part 3

January 31, 2019January 31, 2019 by Thomas Sanger • Thomas C. Sanger • Leave a Comment

Throughout World War II, Germany’s Nazi government denied responsibility for sinking the British passenger ship Athenia on the first day of the war. Their denial initially hinged on the fact that no U-boat had reported any action at the time and place where Athenia had been sunk (see blog, Jan. 1, 2019).

Even after the commander of the U-boat that torpedoed Athenia, Fritz-Julius Lemp, returned two weeks later to his base in Germany and admitted his mistake, the denials continued. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler is reported to have made the decision to continue the lie rather than reverse the denials of the previous two weeks.

While few outside of Germany believed the Nazi position, the continued denials raised vague concerns in some people’s minds that perhaps their might have been some other reason for the sinking.

In 1946, as prosecutors prepared for the war crimes trials at Nuremberg following World War II, they discovered discrepancies in the war diary (logbook) of U-30, the German submarine whose combat patrol zone included the location where Athenia was attacked. The first two pages were a different quality paper than the rest of the book. On these pages the months were recorded in Arabic numerals, while Roman numerals were used for the months in the rest of the book. Also, Lemp’s signature was an obvious forgery. The new pages showed U-30 nearly 100 miles from the spot where Athenia was torpedoed Sept. 3, 1939. The alteration was part of an elaborate, if clumsy, subterfuge started within 24 hours of Athenia’s sinking to convince the world that Germany wasn’t at fault.

The suspicious war diary wasn’t the only damning evidence to come to light. A German sailor who was aboard U-30 on that fateful evening and saw the sinking Athenia, had been taken prisoner during the war. With the war now over, the sailor no longer felt bound to maintain the defeated Nazi’s subterfuge, and he testified to what he had seen.

During a deposition prior to trial proceedings, Karl Dӧnitz, the former German submarine fleet commander and later Grand Admiral of the Navy, was confronted with the evidence. He readily confirmed that U-30 had sunk Athenia on the first day of the war.

His admission was only a stepping stone for the prosecutors, who wanted to show Dӧnitz was an unrepentant Nazi, guilty of far worse crimes than covering up the sinking of a passenger ship. By then, the world was learning of the horrors of Nazi death camps and the cold-blooded execution of millions of Jews and others deemed undesirable by the self-proclaimed master race.

Against this ghastly backdrop, the Athenia dead became little more than a footnote to the Nazi’s unspeakable crimes.

In next month’s blog: Why American deaths did not bring the U.S. into the war.

U-30 commander Fritz-Julius Lemp Photo credit: Harry Turtledove Wicki

Lemp’s Fatal Decision

March 30, 2018 by Thomas Sanger • Thomas C. Sanger • Leave a Comment

When the German submarine, U-30, sank an unarmed British passenger ship on Sept. 3, 1939, a few hours after England had entered the war, the U-boat’s commander said he thought he was attacking a warship.

This was an important distinction because his operational orders forbade him to attack a passenger ship. The Grand Admiral of Germany’s navy at the time, Erich Raeder, believed a German U-boat attack on the British passenger ship Lusitania turned world opinion against Germany in World War I, and he wanted to avoid a similar situation in the coming conflict.

Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, U-30’s commander, was well aware of this caution as well as the general restrictions of the London Submarine Protocol, which Germany signed in 1936. The protocol required him to warn any un-armed, un-escorted merchant ship of his intent to attack unless the ship stopped and allowed a boarding party to inspect its cargo. If the cargo contained contraband, the ship could be sunk but only after its crew was evacuated.

To complicate matters, the British Admiralty in the summer of 1939 had begun to convert certain merchant ships into “armed merchant cruisers” by adding naval guns to their decks. These ships were intended to supplement the Royal Navy’s protection of the sea lanes that were critical to the British Isles’ existence.

Oberleutnant Lemp had been warned specifically of the threat posed by armed merchant ships, a concern undoubtedly on his mind as he weighed the decision whether to attack. An armed enemy ship would be a legitimate target that would not require him to give warning.

The protocol was problematic for submarine warfare. Advances in radio transmission, the advent of the aircraft carrier, and the increasing range of aircraft all added to the dangers a submarine faced while on the surface of the water when it was most vulnerable.

The British Admiralty could not be certain Germany would follow procedures set out by the submarine protocol. Days before war was declared, the Admiralty asked all British merchant ships to sail blacked out at night. In the event of war, ships were further advised to sail in a zigzag pattern to make it more difficult for U-boats to target them.

Indeed, the passenger ship Athenia was adhering to the Admiralty’s advice when she was torpedoed without warning by U-30 the evening of Sept. 3.

When Lemp discovered via Athenia’s distress signals that he had torpedoed a passenger ship, he is reported to have remarked, “What a mess,” and wondered aloud why the ship had been sailing blacked-out.

Were Lemp’s remarks self-servingly constructed after the fact, or had he really been shocked to learn of his mistake? And if it was a mistake, did the Admiralty’s directives to merchant shipping contribute to Lemp’s decision to attack?

We will never know the answers to these questions. Oberleutnant Lemp did not survive the war, and nearly all of the members of U-30’s crew who did survive have died in the seven decades since the war ended. While it seems possible the Admiralty’s actions weighed on Lemp’s decision, the British hardly can be faulted for taking such precautions.

In his short time as a U-boat commander (slightly more than ten months), Lemp had acquired a reputation for bravado. But it seems unlikely he would have ignored a standing order prohibiting attacks on passenger ships. We’re left with the most likely conclusion that his eagerness led him to see a legitimate target in his periscope’s cross-hairs on that long-ago September evening. His rash decision forever changed his life and the lives of 1,418 men, women, and children aboard Athenia.

My Personal Ties to Mac’s Web Log…

December 15, 2016 by Thomas Sanger • SS Athenia, Thomas C. Sanger • Leave a Comment

I spent several days exploring the fascinating SS Athenia pages on Ahoy – Mac’s Web Log.

My interest in this site, dedicated to “All who went down to the sea in ships” in World War 2, was a personal one.

My grandmother, Rhoda Thomas, was a survivor of the Athenia’s torpedoing by a German U-boat, and she left our family with a detailed account of her experiences that evening and beyond.

Rhoda Thomas was born in England, but immigrated to the United States with her husband and small family in 1914.

She had returned to England in August, 1939, to visit with friends and relatives but was advised by the American consulate toward the end of the month to return home as soon as possible.

Grandma boarded the Athenia in Liverpool. When the ship was attacked Sept. 3, 1939, she was on deck and, fortunately for her, wearing a heavy coat against the evening chill.

The lifeboat she entered was crowded and she had to stand for a good portion of the night. During this time, she was handed a baby to hold under her coat to keep warm. How I would love to know that child’s identity and what became of him or her!

Also in the lifeboat with by grandmother were Margaret Hayworth, a child who eventually died of wounds she received in the submarine attack, and her mother.

They were rescued by the Southern Cross and later transferred to the City of Flint and landed at Halifax.

While on the City of Flint, my grandmother met another survivor — a young man named John Garland. They struck up an acquaintance because they were both from Rochester, New York.

Over the years, I found that many people knew of the Lusitania, a passenger ship torpedoed by a German U-boat during World War I, but hardly anyone had ever heard of Athenia, even though 30 Americans died in that attack more than two years before Pearl Harbor. My fascination with this ship, my Grandmother’s personal account and a collection of newspaper articles encouraged me to write my debut historical novel, Without Warning.

In researching the book, I read many inspiring and harrowing accounts written by other survivors and I was able to speak to a handful of them who are still alive. What began as a project to remember my grandmother, became a personal effort to honor the memories of Athenia’s passengers, whose heroism and sacrifices have been overshadowed by the war’s greater conflagrations.