Brad Harmer-Barnes - North Sea Hunters

At the start of the Second World War in September of 1939, the German Kriegsmarine was in possession of forty-six operational U-Boats.

A U-Boat commander’s primary mission was to operate against merchant ships, with the intent to cut off supplies to Great Britain. By the end of 1939, one hundred and fourteen merchant ships had been sunk by U-Boats.

The U-Boats were not invulnerable, however, and one in five U-Boats and their crews had also been lost. While excellent at hiding and striking from underwater, submarines were extremely susceptible to depth charges, and bombing or strafing runs from aeroplanes.

Then there is the case of the U-Boat known only as “U-616”.

Names of personnel and ships have been changed, as requested by their nation’s respective governments.

“Alarm!”

The men who had – until now – been relaxing atop the deck of U-616 practically fell down the ladder into the darkened control room, in their haste to fulfil their allocated task. Bells rang and klaxons sounded as the crew of the Type VIIB U-Boat quickly began preparations to submerge. The crew span cranks, yanked levers and fastened bulkheads as the ballast tanks of the submarine began to fill with the sea water that would give them the necessary weight to sink below the waves.

Kapitänleutnant August Krauser had been in command of the U-616 ever since the war had started, though of his crew of forty-four, only twenty or so of the original members remained. Some had died in action, of course, but some had been transferred to other boats, or since promoted to command of their own vessels. They had been replaced by fresh, new faces, some of whom seemed barely old enough to grow a beard during the course of the two week long patrol. Nevertheless, regardless of their individual experience levels, the crew around him worked in unison, adjusting the levers and controls necessary for the boat to dive.

Krauser swept his gaze across the control room, where his second-in-command, Johann Hertz, was already in position. Slightly below average height, Hertz ran a hand through his dark blonde hair and flashed a smile to the captain, the grime and sweat on his face causing Krauser’s stomach to turn. Of course , he thought to himself, absently rubbing at the week’s-worth of growth on his face, you’re looking no better. Appearances were of no importance while at sea.

“Well, gentlemen… what do we have?” he asked, approaching the periscope.

“It’s a freighter,” replied Kleiner, his chief engineer. “We only just spotted it on the horizon when we called the alarm; but I’d hazard a guess that it’s four – perhaps even five – thousand tonnes.”

Krauser tried his best not to let his surprise (and perhaps a little excitement) show on his face. Kleiner had served with the U-616 since the beginning, and it was not uncommon for the man to get a little excitable as “The Hunt” approached. “Five thousand tonnes would be rather a large target, and a large victory for us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hertz, periscope.”

Hertz span down the periscope, and moved it into the correct position, before standing aside to offer control to the captain.

Krauser peered through the lenses. It took him a couple of minutes to find Kleiner’s freighter. Attempting to spot a small grey spot against a grey-blue sky and a blue-grey sea was hard enough without the distraction of the waves lapping against the upper lens of the periscope. After a little panning back and forth, he managed to focus on what Kleiner had seen. It was indeed a freighter; there was no mistaking that. The engineer had somewhat overestimated its size, but it was at least three thousand tonnes. Not exactly the trophy he had been secretly hoping for, but still a worthwhile target.

“Slow down,” he said. “Let’s keep low and attempt to engage when it turns dark. I can’t make out if it has an escort, and I don’t want to run the risk of coming across a destroyer in full daylight.”

“Yes, sir.” said Hertz.

“It doesn’t seem to be travelling very fast, so I think we can keep it in sight until then. What do you think, Mr Hertz?”

“I agree, sir.”

Krauser suppressed a sigh. “But you have another suggestion, don’t you?”

His second in command feigned confusion. “Sir?”

Krauser straightened up and raised an eyebrow. At thirty, he was at least five years younger than Hertz, and he knew that this bothered the man. Although, in theory, rank and experience counted for everything; he knew that in actuality men still judged age to be a factor. You were taught from a young age to respect your elders, but respecting a younger man in a higher position than you was hard. “I know you well enough to know that you have an alternative suggestion. I would like to hear it.”

Hertz swallowed, before replying. “Sir, the torpedoes are unreliable at best. I’d estimate there’s possibly as high as a one in four failure rate. I would prefer to rely on the deck gun, if possible.”

Klauser gave the idea some consideration. There was an eighty-eight millimetre cannon mounted to the deck of the boat, but he was sceptical of its uses. You needed to be close and – perhaps more significantly – you needed to be surfaced. The deck gun may be less susceptible to dud rounds than the electric or even steam driven torpedoes, but it was nowhere near as explosive when it did strike a target.

“We will approach the ship as per my orders. Once we are closer, I will reassess the risk and consider using the deck gun. I hope this is satisfactory to you, Mr Hertz?”

“Your orders, sir.”

Krauser turned from the command room, and toward the rear of the boat, squeezing past shifting, stinking sailors in the painfully cramped corridor. Food and supplies were stuffed into every nook and cranny in a desperate attempt to save on space. When they had first set out, one of the toilets had been turned into a larder, and wasn’t usable until the crew had managed to eat their way through it.

Finally squeezing between a semi-naked gunner and a crate of cured ham, he reached his bunk. Most of the crew had to share a bed. When your shift was finished, you threw out the man sleeping in your allocated space, and replaced him until, several hours later, it was once again his turn to replace you. Being Captain had certain privileges, though, and a bunk of his own was the one that he took the greatest pleasure in. Far from being an opulent, wood panelled cabin, such as he might have been given on a surface ship, it was a bunk like any other on board the boat. It did have two luxuries, however. Firstly, there was a curtain that he could draw for a little privacy. Secondly, he didn’t have to share it with anyone. It was his and his alone.

The U-616 was a Type VIIB class U-Boat. Active since 1936, the Type VIIs were the backbone of the German navy – the Kriegsmarine. They were attack boats built to withstand depths of up to two hundred and fifty metres, and had – so far – been the most successful submarines of the war. A capacity of fourteen torpedoes, complemented by Hertz’s much loved eighty-eight millimetre deck gun and an anti-aircraft gun placed it head and shoulders above its predecessor, the Type VIIA.

It was obvious to all that even Winston Churchill was rattled by how successful their raids on the North Atlantic and North Sea around the British Mainland had been. Several thousand tonnes of supplies – both civilian and military – had been lost to the “wolfpacks” of submarines operating in unison, or even to lone hunters, such as the position in which the U-616 was now operating.