Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War Off America's East Coast, 1942 [1989, 1996, 2014] by Homer Hickam Jr

Author:Homer Hickam Jr. [Hickam, Homer H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612515786
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 1989-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

15

PROUD DAY, BITTER DAY

On the morning of 4 April 1942, Kapitänleutnant Hellmut Rathke signaled his crew to cast off all lines. Obediently, they sprang to their stations and the U-352 edged into St. Nazaire harbor. No band disturbed the misty quiet of the French port city. There had been a time when no U-boat crew could leave on a cruise without a German oom-pah band to send them on their way. But those days were gone forever. The less attention given their departures the better. All too many in the U-boat force were dead, victims of British aircraft and destroyers that always seemed to know when a U-boat took to sea. Rathke was glad to get away from the city. The entire German occupation force in St. Nazaire was edgy. Only a week before, a British commando raid had thrown the port into confusion, and much of the city’s carefree charm had disappeared.

As the U-352 cleared the small St. Nazaire lock, Rathke’s thoughts focused on his submarine. He had, according to Admiral Doenitz’s orders, followed his Unterseeboot 352, a Type VIIC, from the moment her keel was laid. On the first war cruise, Rathke had taken his boat to sea for five weeks, nearing Iceland at one point. Twice he had attacked, once sending a spread of four torpedoes at a British destroyer. But he had not managed to hit anything. Or maybe his torpedoes had been duds or had been sabotaged in some way. Whatever the truth, he did not trust the fourteen “fish” his U-boat carried.

An observer on shore would have noticed that there was a blotch of black paint on the conning tower of the U-352. Rathke had ordered it to cover the Flensburg coat of arms that had once been displayed there. The German coastal city where his wife and small daughter lived had adopted his U-boat. He could not help but wonder when and if he would see them again. All the other U-boat skippers Rathke had known were aggressively self-confident. Even the ideology of the National Socialist party and all of its propaganda, much of which the thirty-two-year-old Rathke believed, could not help take away his worries. He had orders to proceed to America, take up a position off the North Carolina coast, and disrupt as much shipping as possible. He knew how enormously successful other U-boats had been in American coastal waters and that it was imperative that he also succeed for both the glory of the Fatherland and for his career as well. But would he be up to it? He had never felt so much pressure.

After reaching the open sea safely, Rathke kept the U-352 on the surface and ordered “langsame Fahrt,” slow speed, for the trip across the Atlantic. He would try to conserve as much fuel as possible on the crossing. Rathke believed he would need every drop of it once the U-352 went into action against the Americans.1

On the other side of the Atlantic from the U-352, the

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