Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

From America itself, the radio reported preparations for a huge military parade through the streets of New York on June 13, the very day the saboteurs were likely to arrive in the city. But the big news was the institution of gasoline rationing along the eastern seaboard, a move that could seriously complicate the logistics of Operation Pastorius. 32The V-men had been ordered to hide their bomb-making equipment as soon as they came ashore. Once established in America, they were to buy a car or van, return to the landing spot, dig up their sabotage gear, and take it to a safe place. If it was difficult to get gasoline, this plan would have to be reconsidered.

The principal reason for gasoline rationing was a shortage not of oil but of rubber. On June 12, President Roosevelt explained in one of his fireside chats that 92 percent of America’s normal rubber supply was now under the control of the Japanese. 33Since modern wars could not be won without rubber, every ounce of the nation’s precious rubber stockpile would have to go to the military. By using their cars less, Americans would buy fewer tires, which would reduce civilian consumption of rubber. The government authorized gas stations to pay a penny a pound for old rubber products. Within days, Americans had responded to Roosevelt’s appeal by flooding government collection centers with old tires, rubber shoes, and garden hose.

During one of his trips to the control room, Dasch observed the operations of the top-secret Enigma machine. 34To his untrained eye, it looked like a cash register attached to a typewriter. The radioman received coded messages in Morse, wrote them down, and then typed them into the machine. Whenever he typed a coded letter, a different letter would appear in a panel on the top of the machine, spelling out the secret message. When the operator wanted to send a coded message to another U-boat or back to headquarters, the process was reversed.

In a neighboring cubbyhole, another crew member was glued to headphones, listening obsessively to the sounds of the sea, which were magnified as they traveled underwater. An experienced operator could tell a fishing boat from a destroyer by listening to the sound of its engine and counting the number of revolutions. He was also able to tell precisely where the sound was coming from with the help of a locator device shaped like a round disk.

One day near the end of their trip a coded distress signal arrived from another U-boat in American waters. The crew reported they had been “shot to hell” and were unable to pump any more water out of the leaking vessel. 35There was a silence on board U-202: they all felt for their fellow submariners but were too far away to be of any assistance.

“Another gang gone,” murmured the radio operator. 36

“We die like rats and have to fight like snakes,” said the torpedo mate. “I wouldn’t mind dying with a gun in my hand if it meant I could at least come face to face with the enemy.”

AS THEY sailed around Newfoundland, a medical crisis erupted that typified the challenges facing a U-boat captain. A technician named Zimmermann developed violent abdominal pains and a high fever combined with chills and nausea. Soon he was unable even to walk and could only lie down. In the absence of a doctor, one of the radiomen was serving as a medic. He diagnosed acute appendicitis. 37

Eventually, it might be possible to transfer the stricken crew member to one of the large supply submarines that cruised around the Atlantic with full medical facilities and refueling capabilities for smaller U-boats. But none of the supply boats was in the vicinity, so Linder had to improvise and treat the patient with opium and ice compresses, which did little to reduce his agony. If Zimmermann came close to death, Linder was prepared to remove the appendix himself using crude kitchen utensils—there was no scalpel on board—but he wanted to postpone that decision for as long as possible.

As U-202 worked its way down the coast, the fine weather gave way to heavy fog, and Linder was forced to order lengthy dives for fear of running into American patrol boats. As he explained to Dasch, American destroyers and subchasers had better sonic monitoring equipment than German U-boats: above water, they would hear a submarine sooner than a submarine could hear them. 38Traveling underwater threatened to delay their arrival in Long Island beyond June 11, the first night of the new moon, the best time for landing the saboteurs on the beach. 39The U-boat High Command expressed irritation with Linder, criticizing him in a coded message for failing to adopt “the most efficient course.”

Linder may have been making slower progress than his superiors would have wished, but he was doing better than the commander of the second U-boat, Kapitänleutnant Joachim Deecke. Submarine U-584 had been following a more southerly route than U-202. Linder received a message from Deecke informing him that he would not be able to land his saboteurs in Florida until around June 17, four or five days after the U-202 group.

Aboard U-202, the saboteurs’ nerves were getting frayed. Burger noticed that Quirin and Heinck kept to themselves, talked in a low voice, and shut up whenever he or Dasch approached. Heinck, in particular, seemed more and more apprehensive the closer they came to America. 40

Burger was also nervous, and worried about his wife back in Germany. During the trip, he had made friends with a crew member who had previously served with the storm troopers, like Burger himself. He bribed the former storm trooper to ignore the strict instructions of the captain and deliver a letter to his wife, assuring her he was fine. 41

Burger also made friends with the ship’s cook, Otto Wagner, a fellow Swabian. Before he left the boat, he wanted to eat something that reminded him of home, so he asked Wagner to prepare a meal of Swabian noodles, or spaetzle, with sauce. Decades later, Wagner would still remember Burger’s explanation for his special request:

“I have a feeling that our expedition is going to go wrong.” 42

THE AMERICAN system for tracking U-boats was still very primitive in June 1942, when U-202 appeared off the Long Island shore. The commander of the U.S. Navy, Admiral Ernest King, was a notorious Anglophobe, unwilling to accept advice, much less direction, from the British, despite their long experience in combating the U-boat menace. A sailor of the old school, King believed that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to predict U-boat movements, and that the gains were not commensurate with the effort.

American attitudes began to change in the spring as a result of the carnage inflicted by the German shooting spree along the East Coast. Allied losses in this sector alone in March, April, and May totaled 142 ships, or 818,000 tons. In May, King finally agreed to set up a U-boat tracking room in Washington, modeled on the British submarine tracking room in the Admiralty in London. 43Even though Allied code breakers were still unable to break the four-rotor Enigma system used by the U-boats, other intelligence flowed into the room from the British, the U.S. Coast Guard, and a network of wireless direction finders along the eastern seaboard.

The Allies had lost track of U-202 after it left Lorient on the first stage of its trip across the Atlantic. As it surfaced off Long Island, on the afternoon of Friday, June 12, the boat emitted a burst of radio signals clearly audible to American monitors. By plotting the source of the signals from several points along the coast, the monitors were able to fix the location of the U-boat: roughly twenty-eight miles south of the fishing village of Amagansett in the Hamptons.

ABOARD U-202, Linder was trying to chart a course through the fog, much like a blind man tapping his way along a street. 44The only way to determine his exact position was the traditional one—by using a sextant to fix the position of the boat relative to the sun and the planets—but the heavens had been invisible for the past two days because of the fog. He believed he was off East Hampton, the agreed-upon landing point for the saboteurs, a few miles down the coast from Amagansett. But it was impossible to be sure.