John Schettler - Men of War

“It’s hard enough to hit anything when you can face it full on and fire from the bow,” said the Captain. “Every time we see anything worth sinking our teeth into we have to turn our backside to them first and fart at them. And we haven’t hit a goddamned thing in sixty days.”

“I tell you that’s not what they built these boats for, Kapitan. And you know it as well as I do. What do you think we have all those mine racks on board for? That’s our real job, laying mines in enemy ship lanes. They put those torpedo tubes on our ass so we could fire at anything they send out to chase us. You want to fight like a cat, and stalk and pounce on your enemy like the others, but this boat is not up to the task. No. We must fight like a spider. We lay our web of little mines and then we wait to see who comes along and gets hit. There’s a nice big 105 millimeter gun on the deck, and if a steamer runs afoul of our handiwork, we can also surface and give them a little more with the deck gun. But not in the Atlantic! You don’t drop mines out there in the middle of nowhere. We need to get down to the Straits of Gibraltar and lay our eggs in the western approaches. That’s where the ship traffic is, and that’s where you get your kills and tonnage.”

The Captain took a good long swig of his beer, brushing the foam from his upper lip when he finished. “Right again, Brammer. I’m going to make a special request for our next patrol. I want those damn cargo containers off the mine racks and a full load of mines this time. Then we’ll do exactly what you suggest, my friend. Let’s drink on it!” He raised his mug and the two men threw back some good dark ale, sealing a pact that was to have the most dramatic consequences imaginable, though neither man would ever know or realize what they had just done.

Time, life and the subtle contours and convoluted twists of history would take care of the rest. The Captain with the impossible last name, Czygan, was going to have more success with his mine laying tactic than many other U-boat commanders in Lorient that night, too proud to stoop to such devices as they fancied themselves members of Hitler’s undersea elite, the silent wolves of the sea.

Czygan took U-118 south on the 25th of August, 1942 excited to spot the long fast lines of battleships and cruisers from Admiral Tovey’s Home Fleet sailing north for Scapa Flow. His orders had been to observe and not engage, and the tall ships soon disappeared over his horizon. After cruising south for a little over a week, and trying to line up on an errant freighter, he forsook his aft torpedoes and began laying his mines in the western approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar.

This was the same place that the Royal Navy would often stage large convoys and military task forces before they entered the Med. The five aircraft carriers that had been assigned to Operation Pedestal had staged there that summer, and the ships he had just observed apparently conducted a major fleet exercise there. Perhaps one of his mines would find a nice warship sometime soon in these busy waters, and if not, there was always plenty of shipping in the area that might stumble upon his web. Yes, he would fight like a spider, just as his XO had advised him, and it paid off good dividends in short order.

U-118 laid all sixty-six SMA type mines off Cape Espartel in the western approaches, and then sailed southwest to look for errant traffic and a possible use for the twelve torpedoes they also brought along. A few days later they got some very good news.

On a dark night in early September, convoy MKS-7B out of Algiers and bound for Liverpool, transited the Straits of Gibraltar. It was a nice fat convoy too, with just over sixty merchantmen steaming in twelve columns abreast, and it ran right over U-118’s web of freshly laid mines. Czygan would claim three kills that night, the small 2000 tonner Baltonia , the much bigger Empire Mordred at just over 7000 tons, and another respectable kill with the sinking of the Mary Slessor at a little over 5000 tons. He was elated—three kills in one night, and without a single torpedo fired! He had quickly racked up 14,064 tons, and was well on the way to earning his Iron Cross of the 1st Class with his new tactics. He was finally fighting his boat the way it was meant to be fought.

The minefield U-118 had laid was to be a nuisance and threat to shipping for some time thereafter. Three more steamers would happen across those mines and die, adding another 12,870 tons to Czygan’s tally. It was ship number four, however, that was to really put a feather in Czygan’s cap, a lowly steamer out of Cadiz, christened as the Monassir. The ship was renamed Switzerland for a time, before being loaned to the Spanish Republicans during the civil war when it was flagged Italian and called the Urbi to keep a low profile while carrying contraband and other unsavory cargos along the Spanish coast. After the civil war concluded, the ship was returned to its owner, who favored it with the name Duero , after the flat, rocky wine region of north central Spain centered on the town Aranda de Duero.

It was always considered bad luck to rename a ship, though the practice was common. But to rename a ship four times was uncommonly bad. And so it happened that the ship with four names was also the fourth to happen upon a mine in U-118’s stealthy web on the night of the 10th of September, 1942, exactly 5 months sooner than it should have suffered that same fate.

It seemed like a small thing, a lowly tramp steamer hitting a mine laid by a hungry, frustrated U-boat captain, but it was the night that changed the entire course of history—not only of the war, but for every day that followed. For a very special passenger was aboard the ship that night, a drifter, indigent laborer, and a virtual nobody that had been taken on as cheap labor in the fire room a few weeks earlier.

His name was Gennadi Orlov.

At only2000 tons, Duero had no armor to speak of, and damage from the mine explosion that shook them all awake that night was enough to hole the hull and ship a good deal of seawater. It was only the steamer’s good fortune that a British destroyer was close by, and able to respond quickly to take the ship under tow and drag Duero back to Gibraltar. With many compartments flooded and sealed off, the ship’s captain accepted an offer to send a good number of his crew over to the British destroyer on a lifeboat, and Orlov and Rybakov were among them.

“Now don’t say anything, Orlov,” Rybakov had warned him. “Remember, we’re neutral non-combatants. I’ve been aboard several British ships in my day, and never had much to worry about, but you need to keep a good head on your shoulders, and keep your mouth shut too.”

Orlov was only too happy to get off the rusty old steamer, thinking he could just as easily disappear and jump onto any other ship in the harbor once they made landfall, and continue on his merry way. But they had not counted on fate and time having their say in the matter, for the British ship that had come to their aid that night was the destroyer HMS Intrepid , out on routine channel patrol and captained by one Lieutenant Commander Colin Douglas Maud.

That same boat had made a wild run at a strange phantom ship in the Med some months ago, as Maud desperately charged in to fire his torpedoes. He would not score a hit that night against Kirov , but now he unknowingly had a piece of the ship right in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t long before Orlov came under his watchful eye, for there was something about the man that belied his being a simple and common laborer on an old Spanish steamer.