Month: December 2024

Diary of the War – December 1944

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

The archaeology of Allied convoy attacks by U-322

A historic black & white photograph of a man in duffel coat on deck looking out at the convoy with plumes of smoke in the distance, against a swelling sea.
Leaning against a Thornycroft Depth Charge Thrower Mark II, the quarterdeck lookout on board HMS Viscount is searching the sea for submarines, with other ships in the convoy in the distance. (A 13362) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205186129

By Tanja Watson, Historic England

U-322, a German Type VIIC/41 U-boat, departed Horten Naval Base, south of Oslo, Norway, for her second combat patrol on 15 November 1944. Embarking on a less trafficked route around northern Scotland and western Ireland, she entered, nearly six weeks later, the heavily patrolled and mined waters of the western English Channel.

This is an account of the archaeological evidence left when she came across two Allied convoys within the space of six days.

The Type VIIC/41 submarine, one of ninety-one made, was built in 1943 by the Flender Werke yard at Lübeck, and was commissioned on 5 February 1944 under the command of twenty-four-year-old Oberleutnant zur See Gerhard Wysk. After completed training, she began her operational career with the 11th Flotilla on 1 November, departing from Kiel to Horten Naval Base the following day with the standard 52 men onboard. [1]

The 11th U-boat Flotilla was stationed in Bergen (Norway) and mainly operated in the North Sea and against the Russian convoys in the Arctic Sea. The U-322, however, was ordered to Britain and departed nine days after arriving at Horten.

At this late stage in the war, new Allied convoy tactics and technology, using high-frequency direction finding and the Hedgehog anti-submarine system, made any patrol a high risk, but particularly in the confined waters of the heavily protected English Channel a strong possibility.

The first convoy she encountered, MKS 71G (Mediterranean to the UK Slow), was an Allied convoy going from North Africa via Gibraltar to Liverpool. It was made up of 24 merchant vessels (the majority British) and seven escorts which had departed from Gibraltar on 16 December, was due to arrive in Liverpool on 24 December. [2] At 11.50 hours on 23 December 1944, the British-built but Polish-owned steam merchant SS Dumfries carrying 8,258 tons of iron ore from Bona, Algeria to the Tyne, was torpedoed and sunk by U-322 south of St. Catherine’s Point, Isle of Wight. [3]

The crew onboard the vessel, which was owned by Gdynia America Shipping Lines Ltd, Gdansk [4] were rescued by HMS Balsam, a Flower-class corvette who picked up the master (Robert Blackey) and seven crew members, landing them at Portsmouth; and HMS Pearl, an anti-submarine trawler, who picked up the remaining 41 crew members, eight gunners and two passengers, taking them to Southampton. [5]

The sinking of Dumfries was for many years attributed to U-722, but its involvement was disproved after its wreck was discovered elsewhere. [6]

The Dumfries wreck was most recently recorded by the UK Hydrographic Office [UKHO] in 2007 and noted it was sitting upright on a bed of gravel at a depth of 37 metres, largely intact. The remains are 11-12m high, 120m long, and 18m wide with a starboard lean and showing signs of breaking up. [7]

The second convoy encounter occurred seven miles southeast of Portland Bill Lighthouse on the 29 December 1944. This convoy was TBC-21, the Thames Estuary to the Bristol Channel route, bound from Southend in Essex to Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire, Wales. [8]

No longer equipped with her full torpedo load (14), after the attack on Dumfries, U-322 launched at least two torpedoes at the convoy which struck two large US Liberty ships within minutes of each other.

The first to be hit was the SS Arthur Sewell, the fourth ship in the port column. Travelling from Southampton for Mumbles, Wales, she had joined the convoy part of the way for protection. The 7,176-ton American cargo vessel was severely damaged, but the ship held and a tug, HMS Pilot (W 03), towed her to Weymouth. Five men were injured, and one killed out of a crew of sixty-nine. An injured sailor died the next day.

Built in March 1944 by the New England Shipbuilding Corporation, Portland, Maine, she was under the command of the US Maritime Commission at the time.

After the war she was first towed to Portland, temporarily repaired, and then to Bremerhaven where she was loaded with chemical ammunition, towed to sea and scuttled in the North Sea on 26 Oct 1946. [9] Her remains have yet to be located.

Historic black & white aerial photograph of large ship at centre towed by three smaller vessels to the right
Salvaged Liberty Ship, wrecked off Deal in July 1945, towed by three tugs en route to the salvage and repair yards. (CH 15583) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205454706

The second Liberty ship to be struck was the SS Black Hawk, the last vessel in the starboard column, travelling in ballast from Cherbourg via the Isle of Wight to Fowey on behalf of the US Army Transport Service. [10]

Four of the ship´s 41 crew were injured, one later died. There were no casualties among the 27-man armed guard. [11] The men were picked up by HMS Dahlia and landed at Brixham at 20.30 hours. [12] There is a photograph of the ship sinking.

The torpedo struck the ship on the port side, and the engines were immediately secured as the ship started to sink by the stern. A crack appeared at the #3 hatch and only the two forward compartments kept the ship afloat.

The vessel broke into two large sections, with the aft or stern end sinking into the sea off the Bill of Portland, while the bow or fore section stayed afloat. [13] This section was towed to Worbarrow Bay where it was beached on 30 December 1944. The site was marked by a can buoy until the Worbarrow Bay pipeline was laid and the large section had to be dispersed, using explosives, in 1968. Today the bow lies at a depth of 13-15m, surrounded by 50m of debris. It can be identified by the heavy anchor chain that runs almost 75m south to a 3-ton anchor. [14]

The large stern end (30 feet) which had sunk off Portland Bill, was discovered in 1963, lying in two sections, on its starboard side with a gun still bolted to its platform, at a depth of 31-45m. Dispersal operations were carried out in November that year. At some point a bronze propeller was salvaged, possibly in the 1970s, according to an image published in Diver Magazine, October 1999. The remains were not identified as potentially a Liberty ship until 1975, with the Black Hawk attribution only confirmed in 1987.

Modern colour photograph: elevated aerial view of a long stretch of green landscape with the lines of the hillfort on the left, and a sandy coastline with a bay on the right-hand side
View of Flower’s Barrow coastal hillfort looking east towards Worbarrow Bay and Worbarrow Tout.
DP 438558 © Historic England Archive

The final wreck that day is that of U-322. Having fatally damaged the two cargo vessels, she was not long after sunk by one of the convoy escorts, HMCS Calgary, a Canadian Flower-class corvette, using depth charges. She went down on 29 December 1944 in the English Channel south of Weymouth. Fifty-two men died; there were no survivors.

The wreck was identified as U-322 by Axel Niestlé after it had been initially thought that it was U-772. [15] She is recorded by UKHO as intact with extended mast, 59m long x 18m wide at a depth of approximately 42m. [16]

The wreck of the U-322 is part of a distribution of archaeological remains telling the story of one series of attacks by a submarine in WW2.

It illustrates the complications of recording and interpreting the submerged remains with a story of partial sinking, conflicting records, misidentification, salvage, clearance for navigational safety and erasure by development.

Footnotes

[1] uboat.net https://uboat.net/boats/u322.htm

[2] MKS Convoy Series, Arnold Hague Convoy Database, http://convoyweb.org.uk/mks/index.html

[3] Uboat.net, SS Dumfries, https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3396.html 

[4] Historic England, NMHR Ref No. 1246514 – record accessed via the Heritage Gateway

[5] Wrecksite, SS Dumfries, https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?4651

[6] See note [3]

[7] UKHO Wreck Record 18917 (Dumfries)

[8] Convoy route TBC, https://uboat.net/ops/convoys/routes.php?route=TBC; TBC-21 http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/hague/index.html

[9] Arthur Sewall, https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3405.html 

[10] https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3405.html and https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3406.html; https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?78432

[11] Skindeepdiving, Black Hawk

[12] https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3406.html

[13] UKHO Wreck Report No. 18557 [stern]; UKHO Wreck Report No. 18677 [bow]

[14] See note [11]

[15] https://uboat.net/boats/u322.htm

[16] UKHO Wreck Report 18541

Diary of the War – November 1944

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

HMS Grethe Mortensen

A light blue vessel is seen in broadside view berthed alongside a quay, with her small wooden cabin on deck. A white oil tanker lies behind, and behind the tanker coastal dunes are visible against a blue sky.
The 1931-built Esbjerg cutter E1 Claus Sørensen, now in preservation, gives an idea of what Grethe Mortensen might have looked like as a two-masted motor fishing vessel.
Photographed in 2019 by Thomas Dahlstrøm Nielsen Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-4.0

‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ So spoke Winston Churchill during a radio broadcast in October 1939, focusing on what the main actors would do next following the invasion of Poland. One of the key, and much-repeated, phrases that have come down to us from the Second World War, it could have been applied to many of the war’s subsequent events.

Prize of war

One of those events was the loss of HMS Grethe Mortensen, whose name suggests origins outside the Royal Navy. The first we hear of her in English records is as as the MFV Grethe Mortensen in prize case TS 13/1429 [1] taken by the King’s Proctor, a legal official acting for the Crown in the High Court of Admiralty (now HM Procurator-General and Treasury Solicitor). However, as the record has not yet been digitised, more details are only accessible by visiting the National Archives in person.

So little is known about her that one standard secondary wreck work states: ‘built as a large private steam yacht, this vessel was completed as a special service vessel in 1943. Was abandoned in a sinking condition after detonating a German-laid mine’, extrapolated from the bare-bones details available and accessible at the time of compilation, primarily from secondary sources. [1]

Nevertheless what we do learn from a brief glance at the Prize Court catalogue entry is that the three letters MFV demonstrate that she was a motor fishing vessel, so she was neither a private yacht nor steam-powered.

Prize cases are redolent of an earlier era, of privateering and sea battles during the Age of Sail in fact, but they occurred in both World Wars. When a ship is captured she becomes a prize of war: the capturing nation will interrogate the case according to prize rules, distribute any bounty to the capturing crew for the capture, and reassign the vessel in either their merchant navy or naval forces.

The key is that to all intents and purposes the Grethe Mortensen was an enemy vessel, and her name is distinctive enough for us to be sure we have the right vessel when we trace her in records. Names such as Two Sisters or Friends (in any language) are as difficult as Smith or Jones in genealogy!

A Danish ship

We can track her down in a Danish shipping register for 1944, wherein we can confirm that she was a 2-masted fishing vessel built of oak, beech and fir at Nordby in 1943, fitted with an engine developing 77HP, with a draught of 7.5ft, 40 tons gross, 14 tons net, and owned by H Mortensen of Esbjerg, Denmark. These details are confirmed by an official record of Danish losses in 1946, which include a retrospective record for Danish vessels lost during the war: according to that source, the loss was apparently not reported at Esbjerg until 16 January 1946. There was a war on, after all, and she was in a foreign service.

What we can now see is that she was small, and new, and we can also now confirm that she was definitely a motor fishing vessel, her original Danish nationality, and her service under the British flag. The official shipping statistics state her tonnage as 38 tons – close enough.

Why would Britain have regarded her as an enemy vessel? – because Denmark was under occupation by Nazi German forces from 1940. Grethe Mortensen was built in Denmark during the occupation years and thus was not a pre-existing vessel which had, for example, made her way to an Allied or neutral port on the fall of Denmark. Without sight of the prize case, which would no doubt shed light on the matter, we can only surmise that she was captured while out fishing, perhaps during a raid or after straying into English waters.

Transformation to Special Service Vessel

We turn now to British sources to see if we can discover a little more. We find out from an officially published list that Special Service Vessel, the requisitioned Grethe Mortensen, of 35 tons, built in 1943, was abandoned on 7 November 1944 in a sinking condition off North Foreland, Kent. [3] We know it is the right vessel – the name, the year of build, and the slightly variant tonnage again, this time 35, and it reconfirms her service under the British flag.

We can now see that she is classified among Royal Naval vessels and is a somewhat obscure ‘Special Service Vessel’, so she was on some form of war duty when she was lost. She is very small, and constructed of wood, so her role in that guise remains unclear.

What we can understand is that ‘Special Service Vessels’ is a label for ships that did not fit easily into any regular category of naval forces, and that during the Second World War a variety of ships of all shapes and sizes played a variety of roles.

We don’t really know exactly what she was doing, but from her position of loss – not in harbour in the role of harbour defence, like many small vessels, but offshore, located between the gateway to the English Channel at the Downs and the approaches to the Thames Estuary – we can surmise that she was probably in some sort of patrol role.

Danish sources shed very little light on the matter: ‘G.M. sailed in the British navy, and was lost in October 1944.’ is the terse one-liner in official loss records. [4]

Danish fishermen in Britain in WWII

She is mentioned again in passing in a 1961 article on Danish fishermen in Britain during the war, including the efforts of Danes living in Britain to raise money to build Spitfires. [5] Like the Belgians in Brixham (February 1943) Danes plied their fishing trade under the British flag at Fleetwood and Blackpool, fishing the cod-rich grounds off Iceland, and were ‘welcomed with open arms’.

It is said that four fishermen came over – their vessel sadly not named – in ‘quite an unusual way’: they rescued the crew of an American bomber which had crashed ‘into the drink’ (the English phrase is used!). The fishermen, with limited petrol for their engine, were going to make for home in Vestjylland (West Jutland) with the rescued crew. Instead the Americans persuaded them to set sail for England, helped along by a fair wind, and on arrival they were permitted to make use of British Danish-language radio channels to let their families know they were alive and in good health.

According to the article, two cutters from that Danish-British fleet were lost ‘during the war’, one being Grethe Mortensen of Esbjerg, 38 tons. It goes on to relate that she was taken over by the Royal Navy, and there were no Danes aboard when she was lost in October 1944.

It would appear from this article that Grethe Mortensen was part of the fishing fleet that had escaped and made its home in Britain, but voluntary action like this seems inconsistent with a Prize Court action. Curiouser and curiouser.

A July 1945 edition of the same source [6] has another virtually throwaway comment. It tells us that there is ‘sad news from England’ with a number of Danes drowned on a British-flagged fishing vessel on 21 April 1945, including a man from Esbjerg. He and that wreck form the focus of the article: we learn that he came over as first mate on either the Erling or Grethe Mortensen, both of Esbjerg, ‘which were taken over by the English on 14 May 1943’, which sounds both forcible and as if Grethe Mortensen had not spent very long at sea before this happened, given that 1943 was her year of build.

Her ‘circumstances’

Thus both British and Danish official and informal sources alike suggest that Grethe Mortensen was compulsorily taken over by the British under some obscure circumstance: she was more than requisitioned, she was the subject of a Prize Court action. So was the Erling. So there was definitely something about their ‘circumstances’. [7]

I have written frequently about wartime censorship, but it struck me that this might have made a newsworthy story even if published some time after the event (weeks or months). It had all the right ingredients for a snippet that contained a modicum of good news after four years of war.

We read on 11 September 1943 that: ‘Six Danish fishing vessels arrived last week in a British port, having been intercepted in the North Sea by British naval units . . . The boats set out from Esbjerg when Denmark was in a state of extreme tension . . . Each ship had a good catch of prime North Sea plaice, which was landed and sold.’

The article ends: ‘Approximately one third of the boats [two, then!] will be available again for fishing, and the older men, including the skippers, will man them. The younger men will go into the forces here . . . ‘ [8]

This does sound like a ‘capture’ and it hints that the fate of the other four boats was intended to be in some other capacity to be assigned but not publicised. Further, like the Erling and the Grethe Mortensen, they came from Esbjerg. We lack any confirmatory detail, as we would expect under the conditions of wartime journalism, but this seems that this might refer to the incident that led to the portals of the Prize Court.

What was her fate?

What happened to Grethe Mortensen on the day she was lost in November 1944, however, is less clear. As we have been able to demolish any assertion in a key secondary source that she was originally a steam-powered private yacht that was completed at the builder’s as a ‘special service vessel’, and as none of the other sources mention loss to war causes, any suggestion originating from the same secondary source that she was lost to a mine may also be unlikely.

Looking at the weather for 7 November 1944 in Met Office records [9], there does not seem to be anything particularly unusual about the meteorological conditions that day either: predominantly westerly, wind forces approximately 3-6. As we have shown before, however, vessels can be lost in similar conditions if they are unlucky enough, and the one clue we may have is that observations at 6-hourly intervals show the wind alternately veering and backing a couple of points either way. Perhaps that was enough for a small vessel to spring a leak or take on water and be overwhelmed by the sea.

It’s also interesting that Danish sources consistently report the vessel as lost in October, rather than November, but that information appears to be second-hand. On the other hand, dates in British Vessels Lost at Sea tend to be reliable, so I suspect that 7 November at least is accurate. It is difficult to know whether the date of capture in early September 1943 is reliable (‘last week’ could hide a multitude of sins if you wanted to be vague and escape the censor’s pencil) but I suspect it is, because reference is made to the Danish general strike or ‘August Uprising’ of August 1943. It would also seem more plausible for the date of capture than 14 May 1943 for a vessel recorded as newly built that same year.

At the moment we appear to be no further forward with the wreck event beyond this sparse detail, but at least we have been able to put some flesh on the bare bones of the vessel herself, and understand better what she actually was – even if the mechanism by which she became a Special Service Vessel, what she was doing at the time of loss, and the circumstances of the loss itself, all combine to form ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’ that is only partially unravelled.

Footnotes

[1] Larn R & Larn B, 1995 Shipwreck Index of the British Isles: Vol 2, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Sussex, Kent (Mainland), Kent (Downs), Kent (Goodwin Sands), Thames (London: Lloyds of London)

[2] Prize Case for the MFV Grethe Mortensen, TS 13/1429, 1943-1946, The National Archives, Kew

[3] HMSO, 1947 British Vessels Lost at Sea 1939-1945 [London: HMSO]

[4] Ministeriet for Handel, Industri og Søfart, 1948 Dansk Søulykke-Statistik 1946 (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Søkort-Arkiv) (in Danish)

[5] Tidsskrift for Redningsvæsen: Medlemsblad for Foreningen af danske Redningsmænd (Journal of the Rescue Services: Members’ magazine for the Association of Danish Lifeboatmen), Vol. 28, No.1, January 1961 (in Danish)

[6] Tidsskrift for Redningsvæsen: Medlemsblad for Foreningen af danske Redningsmænd (Journal of the Rescue Services: Members’ magazine for the Association of Danish Lifeboatmen), Vol. 12, No.7, July 1945 (in Danish)

[7] Prize Case for the MFV Erling, TS 13/1293, 1943-1946, The National Archives, Kew

[8] Hull Daily Mail, Saturday 11 September, 1943, No.18,048, p1 (British Newspaper Archive online)

[9] Meteorological Office, 1944, Daily Weather Report 7 November 1944 DWR 1944.11 Met Office Digital Library and Archive

Diary of the War – October 1944

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

Another Landing Craft Tragedy off the West Coast

October 1944 was a relatively quiet month in terms of shipping losses with 10 vessels reported lost during that month, none to war causes (e.g. torpedo, mine). In fact it was the weather that seems to have been the major factor for most of them, although the loss of LCP(L) 52, a Landing Craft Personnel (Large), was attributed to foundering following a fire in the Solent on 11 October.

Barge Norman sank off the Kent coast on 7 October, and another barge, Congo, is reported as having similarly sunk off the Essex coast on 13 October. LCT(A) 2454 (Landing Craft Tank, Armoured) was forced ashore in wind conditions SW 4, freshening to force 5, on Chesil Beach, Dorset, on the latter date. [1]

Things were not looking good for vessels of shallow draught in high seas in autumn gales.

In a previous edition for November 1943 we looked at the collective loss of several landing craft from a single convoy off the Isles of Scilly. Almost a year later, a similar tragedy occurred with convoy KMS 66 (UK–Mediterranean Slow), which set out from the Clyde on 14 October 1944, with some LCTs under tow by the merchants in the convoy, a mixture of British, Belgian and Norwegian vessels. Further vessels joined convoy from Belfast the next day, and Liverpool and Milford Haven the day after, as the convoy steamed south out of the Irish Sea.

On 18 October 1944 KMS 66 ran into trouble off Land’s End in wind conditions reported at 6am that morning as WSW force 7 at the Lizard, W x S force 6 off the Isles of Scilly. [2] At 10.50 Nairnbank, which was towing LCT 494 and LCT 7014, reported that contact had been lost with the former. [3]

By 12 the conditions had worsened to WSW force 8 at the Lizard, SW x W force 7 at the Isles of Scilly.

All hell subsequently broke loose over the next 24 hours. Calls for assistance were made from the foundering LCTs, towing merchants reported on the status of their ‘children’ and issued commands, orders were issued to escorts and merchants to search for the LCTs and assist in rescue, widening beyond the immediate convoy to other convoys in the area, and contact repeatedly made with the Admiralty and Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches. It was a frantic period. [4]

At 6pm conditions were force 8 from both the Lizard and the Isles of Scilly but it is also stated elsewhere that conditions were force 9. [5] Conditions remained similar at midnight and 6am the next day (19 October) abating somewhat towards the Isles of Scilly. The weather abated further over the course of the evening but by midnight of 19/20 October LCTs 480, 488, 491, and 7014 had either foundered or been sunk following rescue efforts, and LCTs 494 and 7015 remained unaccounted for. There were men lost from all of these vessels, from other LCTs which, however, survived the incident, and from rescuing vessels.

History has a nasty habit of repeating itself and never more so than on this occasion, which was almost a carbon copy of the events of November 1943.

It seems that one of the LCTs lost in this incident may have been discovered, as reported by Royal Navy News in 2023, while LCT 7074 survives in preservation and is open to the public.

Broadside view of LCT 7074 in preservatiion at the museum, painted in camouflage battleship grey colours, set under an exterior canopy with steps leading up to her open bow doors.
LCT 7074, the last surviving LCT from D-Day, at the D-Day Story, Portsmouth.
Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Footnotes

[1] Data recorded at Portland Bill for 00.00, 06.00, 12.00 and 18.00 on 13 October 1944, Meteorological Office Daily Weather Report, October 1944, Met Office Digital Library and Archive

[2] Data recorded at the Lizard and the Isles of Scilly for 18, 19 and 20 October 1944, Meteorological Office Daily Weather Report, October 1944, Met Office Digital Library and Archive

[3] Chapman T, and Shipston, B, nd “9th LCT Flotilla – A Tragedy at Sea: the lost flotilla” Combined Operations online

[4] ibid.

[5] Data recorded at the Lizard and the Isles of Scilly for 18, 19 and 20 October 1944, Meteorological Office Daily Weather Report, October 1944, Met Office Digital Library and Archive

Diary of the War – September 1944

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment
Historic sepia photograph of Wolf Rock lighthouse seen at a distance over mildly choppy seas and foam swirling around its base.
Image of Wolf Rock Lighthouse in 1943.https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3045319
© George Baker, CC-BY-SA 2.0

U-247 lost off Wolf Rock, Land’s End

For this month’s entry we turn to my colleague and fellow Maritime Research Specialist Tanja Watson. Thank you, Tanja, for putting this together! Tanja writes:

Over 1,500 British and foreign vessels are known to have been lost along the English coast during the Second World War. Some forty-five of these losses were German U-boats – not all located, or identities confirmed, but nearly all of them went down on the Bristol Channel and English Channel coasts. [1]

One of the identified wrecks is the U-247, a German Type VIIC patrol submarine.[2] Over 600 Type VIIs were built and represented the workhorses of the Kriegsmarines submarine fleet during World War II.

The U-247 was built in 1943 at the Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft yard at Kiel. She was fitted with a Schnorchel underwater-breathing apparatus in April 1944, which allowed U-boats to stay under water for longer to avoid enemy detection. [3]  

Modern colour photograph of a propped submarine with visitor access steps, sitting on a beach, with passing vessels in the background. In the foreground are trees.
A surviving Type VIIC/41 submarine, the U-995, displayed at the Laboe Naval Memorial near Kiel (2004), CC BY-SA 2.0 By File:U995 2004 1.jpg: Darkonederivative work: Georgfotoart – This file was derived from: U995 2004 1.jpg: CC BY-SA 2.0.

The U-247 was part of the 1st U-boat flotilla, also known as the Weddigen flotilla – the first operational U-boat unit in Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine. This combat flotilla was stationed first in Kiel (1935-41) and then Brest from June 1941 until it was disbanded in September 1944, and its remaining boats were distributed to other flotillas. [4]    

The U-boat was sunk by two Canadian war frigates, the HMCS Swansea and Saint John, on 1 September 1944, while out on her second and final patrol. She had left Brest a few days earlier, on 26 August, with 52 crew on board under the command of 24-year-old Oberleutnant zur See Gerhard Matschulat who had been in post for one year. [5]

Historic black & white photograph of a warship in starboard broadside view.
River class frigate HMCS Saint John that served with the Royal Canadian Navy, by unknown creator – Naval Museum of Manitoba, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31838456
Historic black and white photograph of man in full naval uniform.
Lt Cdr W.R. Stacey, Commanding Officer of HMCS Saint John, holding a small cupboard door panel recovered from U-247. Credit: Lt F. Roy Kemp / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-190440

She was just entering the English Channel, near Wolf Rock – a rock located 9 miles (15 km) southwest of Land’s End, Cornwall, when six Canadian frigates from the 9th Escort Group, sweeping the convoy route between Land’s End and Hartland Point, picked up a strong signal at 6:45pm, 15 miles east of the Wolf Rock Light on Thursday 31 August 1944.

Monnow, Stormont, and Meon of Escort Group 9 (EG9) were ordered north to pursue the search, while Saint John, Swansea and Port Colborne were ordered to remain to pursue the contact. However, ‘tide conditions made the contact difficult to hold, and after a number of depth-charge and Hedgehog attacks contact was lost’ just after 11pm.

Contact was re-established at 1.55am by Saint John three miles from Wolf Rock, on the bottom at 77 metres. Two depth charge attacks from the frigate brought up oil and explosions from the target. A search was conducted of the area, but nothing was found other than the oil slick. Saint John’s echo sounder trace indicated the U-boat was heavily damaged, and directed by this, Saint John dropped five more depth charges on the target at 2pm, which completely destroyed U-247. [6]  

Eventually rising debris, including a scrap of paper from the engine log (a certificate for the 10 millionth revolution of U-247‘s diesel engines); a door panel; clothing and other paperwork, confirmed the identity and the sinking. There were no survivors. [7]

Both depth-charges and Hedgehog had been used. A naval intelligence record (AUD Assessment) of the attack shows U-247 was detected by Asdic (sonar) but due to a lack of records, it was not possible to determine when or exactly how the U-boat was destroyed. [8]

Originally developed during World War I, at a time when the technology to locate submarines was very primitive, depth charges did not have to be direct hits. Once detonated the explosion created a fast-expanding gas bubble, generating a high-pressure shock wave that multiplied through the water, and could cause fatal damage to a submarine’s hull, even if the depth charge exploded some distance away. [9]

Historic black & white photograph of four young men hoisting a depth charge onto a depth charger.
A Mk VII depth charge being loaded onto a Mk IV depth charge thrower on board HMS Dianthus. (A11948) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194536

Developed in the years just before 1944, the Hedgehog antisubmarine mortar fired a spread of smaller explosive charges (eventually as many as 24 projectiles) ahead of the firing vessel. [10] The device proved to have a much higher kill to use ratio than depth charges, which a U-boat could survive hundreds of over a period of several hours, [11] but the Hedgehog relied on a direct hit. On average, one in every five attacks made by a Hedgehog resulted in a kill – compared with fewer than one in 80 with depth charges. [12]

Historic black & white photograph of men operating the mortar with officers looking on to the left.
The Hedgehog, a 24 barrelled anti-submarine mortar mounted on the forecastle of HMS Westcott. (A 31000) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194539

The general wreck position was recorded as 49.54N, 05.49W, [13] where it lies at a general depth of circa 68-73 metres (sources vary). When located in the 1960s, it was still giving off oil. [14]

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) recorded a more precise position in 2002 (49°53,933’N, 05°49,916’W); and observed that the hull had blown open in front of the conning tower and was lying on its starboard side with bows facing south-east. [15]

The U-247 was of the same U boat type featured in the West German film Das Boot (1981). [16] This film gives a good impression of the experience working on a U-boat and of being under attack from depth charges.

Footnotes

[1] Statistics derived from Historic England’s National Marine Heritage Record (NMHR), currently accessed via the Heritage Gateway

[2] U247: Historic England, NMHR Ref No. 919799

[3] U-247, https://uboat.net/boats/u247.htm

[4] 1st U-boat flotilla, https://www.uboat.net/flotillas/1flo.htm

[5] Gerhard Matschulat (1920-1944), career record: http://www.ubootarchiv.de/ubootwiki/index.php/Gerhard_Matschulat

[6] Kemp, Paul (1997), U-Boats Destroyed: German Submarine Losses in the World Wars, p. 216

[7] See note [6]

[8] National Archives ADM 199/1786, AUD1561/44

[9] https://navalhistoria.com/depth-charges-the-underwater-weapons-of-war/

[10] https://naval-museum.mb.ca/people/sir-charles-goodeve/

[11] “The Hedgehog — Meet the Allies’ Devastatingly Effective U-Boat Killer”, www.militaryhistorynow.com

[12] “Britain ASW Weapons”, http://www.navweaps.com

[13] https://uboat.net/boats/u247.htm,

[14] McCartney, Innes (2002), Lost Patrols: Submarine wrecks of the English Channel, p. 22

[15] UKHO Wreck Report 22440, https://www.wrecksite.eu/ukhoDetails.aspx?22440

[16] Das Boot, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_VII_submarine

Diary of the War – August 1944

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment
Modern colour photograph using time-lapse photography of a concrete hard standing with side features as a mock-up of the open ramp of a landing craft. It is set in grassy dunes with grass growing in the crevices between the concrete slabs. The concrete 'landing craft' is shown at twilight with the time-lapse photography showing the movement of stars in the sky, to illustrate the time that has elapsed since it was built and had a function.
Replica landing craft in concrete in the dunes at Braunton Burrows, North Devon, seen at twilight, 2019. These features were used as training facilities for embarkation and disembarkation practice in preparation for the Normandy landings, and are listed as a group of eight at Grade II.
DP248202 © Historic England Archive

The Ongoing Support of the Normandy Invasion

D-Day was one day in history. It finally marked the day that the war turned, in Churchill’s famous phrase, from the ‘end of the beginning’ to the ‘beginning of the end.’ [1] As an equally famous saying has it, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, and it would take some months before the Allies were able to encircle the Germans at the Falaise Pocket [12 to 21 August 1944] south of Caen and the Normandy landing beaches, to clear the way to Paris, liberated shortly after [19 August to 25 August 1944]. It would take until the end of the war to fully drive the occupiers out of France.

The ongoing invasion effort required ongoing logistical support. Resistance came not only from land forces but also from seaborne forces, so for this entry we take a look at a number of ships wrecked while supporting operations in France, the common theme of the wrecks this month.

It is a tale of landing craft, Liberty ships, and ‘Government stores’.

The first of this group were lost on 8 August when convoy EBC 66 [Bristol Channel to France] was attacked while bound from Barry for Seine Bay. EBC 66 was a multinational convoy comprising British, American, Norwegian and Dutch ships, and escorted by three Flower-class corvettes from different forces: HMS Petunia; ex-HMS Lotus loaned to the Free French as Commandant d’Estienne d’Orves, named after a French naval officer executed by the Nazis in 1941, and HMCS Regina of the Royal Canadian Navy.

Simple modern colour digital photograph of the land silhouetted in black to foreground (rocks) and right (cliffs) of image, with the white lighthouse and its light appearing to right background. The blue sea comes in from the left background to right foreground, and dark clouds are visible in the dark blue sky.
View looking north across Stinking Cove towards Trevose Head lighthouse at midnight, 2023.
DP 437442 © Historic England Archive

Off Trevose Head, north Cornwall, U-667 struck among the convoy. First to be attacked was the American Liberty Ship Ezra Weston, laden with ‘Government’ and general cargo, specified as 20mm guns, acid and military vehicles, from Avonmouth for Falmouth and the invasion beaches, which was torpedoed below the waterline at around 7.30 in the evening. This attack was initially attributed to a mine. Her captain attempted to beach her but she was in a sinking condition and beginning to break up. She broke in two at 9.45pm and had to be abandoned, fortunately without loss of life. LCT 644 took off the majority of the crew, 4 officers later leaving the vessel in a lifeboat. [2]

HMCS Regina stayed nearby to ‘become a sitting duck for the next torpedo’, as survivors put it. [3] She was struck at 10.48pm, and though 30 men were lost in the engine and boiler room, the survivors owed their lives two factors: to the Ezra Weston, as most were on deck watching over the stricken merchant in their care, and to the crewman on watch who had had the foresight to order her depth charges to be made safe. The survivors were picked up by LCT 644 and the Admiralty Trawler Jacques Morgand (formerly a Dieppe trawler and seized at Falmouth in July 1940). [4]

The two ships lie virtually side by side off the coast of Cornwall, within a few hundred metres of each other, and Regina showing evidence of an implosion on the seabed after her rapid sinking in less than half a minute, with a debris trail of unexploded depth charges. The Ezra Weston is split in two.

Historic colour photo of ship in starboard bow view, painted white, green and blue in dazzle camouflage, with spray at the bows as she cuts through the water under a blue sky with multiple white clouds on a fair day at sea. The paint is battered in places illustrating her hard work at sea in wartime.
Photo: Corvette HMCS Regina pennant number K234
© Government of Canada. Reproduced with the permission of Library and Archives Canada (2024).
Source: Library and Archives Canada/Department of National Defence fonds/e010777224

On the same day Fort Yale, a vessel on Lend-Lease to the UK from the US, was mined and damaged onthe other side of the Channel at Arromanches while on convoy ETM 56 (Southend to Seine Bay, motor transport to France) having been on ‘Special Services’ shuttling between the Thames and the Seine since the early days of the Normandy invasion. She was released from service on 12 August with engine damage, but apparently still afloat. On 15 August any further service was deferred pending repairs, but she was able to proceed back to Southend from the Seine under tow of two tugs, one British and one American, on 19 August. [5]

On 23 August she was torpedoed in mid-Channel SE of the Isle of Wight, with the majority of the crew being picked up and landed at Portsmouth.

On 14 August a near carbon-copy of the attack on Ezra Weston and HMCS Regina in roughly the same area, off Hartland Point this time, dispatched the American LST 921 and British LCI(L) 99, respectively a Landing Ship Tank and a Landing Craft Infantry (Large). They too were on an EBC convoy, EBC 72, and that number shows the frequency of convoys bound for Normandy: daily increments since EBC 66 on 8 August. [6] Their attacker was also U-667, which would herself not last much longer: her last known radio contact was on 25 August, but she failed to arrive at the rendezvous point the following day, having been lost in a British minefield off La Rochelle. [7]

Historic black & white photo of LCI(L) seen in starboard view on the water against a backdrop of hills. Seagulls circle the ship while a barrage balloon flies overhead.
LCI(L) 98 (OPS 41), seen while underway in home waters. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205200182

We return now to another Southend to Seine Bay convoy, this time ETC 72, a coastal convoy. On 19 August they were in mid-Channel when U-413 torpedoed Saint Enogat SE of St. Catherine’s Point, Isle of Wight. Most of the personnel survived to be picked up and landed at Juno Beach. In a strange way, her place of loss reflects her service career. Built as part of War Standard tonnage in 1918 as War Clarion, she was sold post-war to one of the French railway companies: her new name Saint Enogat reflected the Breton area served by her new owner, the Chemins de fer de l’État, but she passed in 1920 to the Société Maritime Nationale. [8]

Historic colour poster in mid-century style showing a black and white ferry crossing Dieppe harbour dotted with fishing craft seen against a backdrop of cliffs with a church on top. There are strong colours of blue (sea and sky) and orange (cliffs, reflections on the sea) to evoke warm sunny days. The text below advertises the ferry service in French.
Poster by René Péan for the Chemins de fer de l’État linking Paris & London via Newhaven & Dieppe
© The Board of Trustees of The Science Museum, London / National Railway Museum York
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co229706/chemins-de-fer-de-letat-et-de-brighton CC-BY-SA-4.0

After the fall of France in 1940, Saint Enogat was seized at Plymouth and was transferred to the Ministry of War Transport (MOWT). She would return to France on the ‘Store Transport Service’ following the Normandy invasion, regularly shuttling between Southend and the invasion beaches, until her loss. Her sinking was initially attributed to a mine, but a later note adds: ‘Considered vessel more probably torpedoed by s/m.’ [9]

Our final and most famous wreck of the vessels bound for Normandy during August 1944 is undoubtedly the Liberty Ship Richard Montgomery, wrecked the following day on 20 August and regularly making headlines since.

Unlike the others, however, she was not lost to war causes. She crossed the Atlantic as part of convoy HX 301 from New York for Liverpool, arriving in Oban on 8 August, thence joining convoy ‘northabout’ round Scotland, after which she fed into a southbound convoy bound for the Thames. She then anchored in the Thames Estuary on Sheerness Middle Sand to await yet another convoy for her final destination of Cherbourg to support the invasion with her cargo of munitions.

There she broke her back and started to settle into the sand, with only half her cargo salvageable. She is designated under Section 2 of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 as a dangerous wreck, administered by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency through the Receiver of Wreck. [11] She lies within a well-demarcated exclusion zone and it has often been said that no other ship can now run onto Sheerness Middle Sand because of her, a most unusual case of one maritime hazard replacing the previous hazard at that location. [12]

Her story, from her background to her modern-day management, can be read in full in a dedicated article on GOV.UK

Wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, off Sheerness, showing her upperworks and looking towards the resort of Southend-on-Sea across the Thames.
The superstructure of Richard Montgomery on Sheerness Middle Sand, Thames Estuary, seen here attracting numerous cormorants in 2014.
© Christine Matthews CC-BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4194776

Famous in her own right, the Richard Montgomery is nevertheless part of a wider story, a bigger picture, and a maritime landscape of war that fed into the continuing battle to liberate France after D-Day.

Footnotes

[1] Winston Churchill, Prime Minister’s Address to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Mansion House, 10 November 1942

[2] Ezra Weston, Historic England, National Marine Heritage Record (NMHR) record 766919

[3] Quoted from Deep Wreck Mysteries: Fatal Decision, broadcast ITV West, 25 January 2007, 7.30pm

[4] HMCS Regina, Historic England, NMHR record 1102944; Jacques Morgand, photograph and details online

[5] Fort Yale, Historic England, NMHR record 766513; Shipping Movement Record card, BT 389/13/246, The National Archives, Kew; Report of Total Loss, Casualty &c. No.75,092 Fort Yale, Lloyd’s Register Foundation Archive & Library, LRF-PUN-W244-0106-W,

[6] LST 921 Historic England, NMHR record 1534459; LCI(L) 99, NMHR record 1534460; convoyweb

[7] U-667, uboat.net

[8] Saint Enogat Historic England, NMHR record 1246470; uboat.net

[9] Shipping Movement record card, St Enogat [sic] BT 389/28/120, The National Archives, Kew

[10] Richard Montgomery Historic England, NMHR record, 904735; convoyweb

[11] Statutory Instrument 1973 No.1690 Protection of Wrecks (Designation No.2) Order 1973

[12] Cant, S 2013 England’s Shipwreck Heritage: from logboats to U-boats (Swindon: English Heritage)

Diary of the War – July 1944

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment
Contemporary oil painting depicting Tower Bridge at night with white streaks representing searchlights all heading towards the rocket flying over Tower Bridge. In the background red flames can be seen in various locations representing buildings on file.
A Flying-bomb over Tower Bridge (Art.IWM ART LD 4719) Frederick T W Cook
Searchlights track a V1 or V2 over Tower Bridge.
© IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/5500

Naja

Following the launch of the D-Day invasion on 6 June 1944, the citizens of Britain knew that reprisals would come. On 13 June the first of the V1 rockets, known as the ‘Doodlebugs’, struck London, and it was London and the Home Counties which would bear the brunt of the damage.

Despite this life carried on. My mother never forgot her own encounter with a doodlebug in Chelmsford, Essex, scrambling for shelter with her little brother. According to a bomb map in Essex Archives, it was probably the V1 attacks on either 18 June or 9 July 1944. [1]

Only a few days after the 9 July incident in Chelmsford, on 12 July another V1 struck near Tower Bridge. The 2-ton steam tug Naja, built in 1924 and owned by Gaselee & Son, was destroyed and sunk in the Upper Pool, east of Tower Bridge, with the loss of six men during a crew changeover.

She is the only wreck in our records known to have been destroyed by a V1.

We do know, however, that the wreck was raised immediately by PLA Wreck Lighter No.2 as shown in an image taken by City of London Police, now in the London Museum. She is badly damaged aft but the idea that has gained traction in commentary on the Naja that she suffered a direct hit cannot be correct otherwise there would have been, at best, only debris left.

It is quite understandable that she was raised instantly in a busy waterway where wreck remains would pose both a navigational hazard and a risk of accretion and siltation if not dealt with immediately.

It is a reminder that destruction and death do not always equate to archaeological remains, although the vessel was definitively written off and her register closed. [2]

Historic black and white photo of very small tug in the river against a line of much larger ships berthed on the left with the tall masts of the loading infrastructure of cranes and derricks beyond.
The tug Plaboy heading for a line of ships moored in the London Docks, July 1965. One of the Port of London Authority (PLA) tugs which at this period had punning names beginning PLA-. The 1957-built Plaboy was sold out of service in 1970.
AA064981 John Gay Collection © Historic England Archive

Footnotes

[1] D/2 65/1 Essex Record Office

[2] Appropriation Books, official No. 148526, Crew List Index Project; catalogue entry for the Registers of Shipping and Seamen, Naja, BT 110/1261/13, The National Archives, Kew

Diary of the War – May 1944

~ Serena ~ Leave a comment

MMS 227 – Hr. Ms. Marken

The focus this month is on motor minesweeper MMS 227 and to recognise the contribution of the Free Dutch forces.. After the fall of the Netherlands, Dutch vessels contributed to the Dunkirk evacuation and to the British trooping and convoy effort, including the liner Johan de Witt, which became a troopship and convoyed many British troops around the world, including my own late father in 1944. [1] Dutch ships also served in other theatres of war such as the Italian campaign of 1943 and at D-Day. [2]

A number of small motor minesweepers were built during the war by small contractors in sheltered coastal waters around the country. As always, production was dispersed for security and to take advantage of the specialist skills of the smaller boat-builders.

These builders, like Curtis of Par, Cornwall, who built MMS 227/Marken, specialised in the manufacture of wooden ships. Wood was ideal for motor minesweepers for several reasons: to take pressure off raw materials for steel ship production and because, unlike steel, it would not set off magnetic mines.

It remained a dangerous job: over the course of both World Wars this blog has highlighted how frequently minesweepers fell victim to the very danger they were working to save others from, and small wooden craft were extremely fragile in such an explosion.

Nevertheless over 400 of these vessels were built in two classes, one slightly larger than the other, either 105ft or 127ft long. [3] In an official Admiralty photograph campaign showcasing the work of the motor minesweepers and their crews from all walks of civilian life, they were labelled as ‘The Little Ship with a Big Job.’ [4]

Several of the smaller class of minesweepers were then cascaded to Free Dutch forces operating in the 139th Minesweeping Flotilla out of Great Yarmouth and Harwich. They were all renamed after locations in the Netherlands, rather than merely numbered, as they had been in the Royal Navy.

Thus it was that MMS 227 became Hr. Ms. Marken, after the island on the IJsselmeer. (Hr. Ms. or Harer Majesteits is the prefix of ships of the Koninklijke Marine or Royal Netherlands Navy, which is conventionally translated into English as HNLMS or His/Her Netherlands Majesty’s ship.) Several would survive the war and be incorporated into the peacetime Dutch Navy to continue the postwar work of mine clearance in the North Sea.

On 18 April 1944 Queen Wilhelmina visited Dutch minesweepers at Harwich, an event that would not be reported in the press until 9 May, and even then in only the briefest of terms: ‘Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands recently visited men of the Dutch fighting forces and Dutch minesweepers whose crews were originally trawler fishermen.’ [4]

Historic black & white photograph of a dockside scene. Queen Wilhelmina, in a coat and hat and accompanied by 3 men in navy uniform, clutches a large bouquet of flowers in her arm. She walks along the quay with shipping beside her on the right, and dockside infrastructure, such as cranes, to the left and in the background.
Queen Wilhelmina inspects Dutch minesweepers at Harwich in the company of Dutch and British officers. To the right the name Putten can be seen, another of the motor minesweepers lent to Dutch forces. (A 22874) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205155024

On 20 May 1944 Marken was clearing the War Channels when she struck an acoustic mine near the Sunk Lightvessel in the Thames Estuary, and was blown in half with the loss of 16 out of her 17 crew, including her captain Gerardus Albertus Smits of the VRH (Vrijwillige Reserve Hulpschepen, approximately equivalent to the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve). [6]

The wreck was clearly visible as broken in two until around 1981, but by 1990 had shown signs of further deterioration and beginning to be covered by sand and buried by the following year. [7] MMS 113, of similar type, lies on the western foreshore of Portsmouth Harbour, another relic of the era of the ‘little ship with the big job’.

Footnotes

[1] Oral history reminiscence, Corporal R F Cant RAF, recorded in unpublished family notes

[2] Karremann, J, 2019 “D-Day en de Koninklijke Marine”, marineschepen.nl [in Dutch]

[3] Nautical Archaeology Society, nd “Minesweeper MMS 113” nauticalarchaeologysociety.org

[4] See, for example, IWM (A 15539) et seq. in the collections of the Imperial War Museum

[5] Press release widely published in e.g. Evening Dispatch, 9 May 1944, p4, Gloucestershire Echo, 9 May 1944, p3, etc.

[6] Visser J nd “105 feet class – minesweepers” Royal Netherlands Navy Warships of World War II; Hr. Ms. Marken Wikipedia

[7] United Kingdom Hydrographic Office record No.14566; Historic England National Marine Heritage Record no. 908141