Finally, recognition for Arctic convoy crews

By the beginning of winter 1941 the future of Europe looked bleak. The Swastika flew triumphantly from flagpoles across the continent and the sound of marching jackboots resonated in many streets. The Wehrmacht had rolled through all opposition only being turned back at the English channel. Now they had encircled Leningrad, sat poised at Orel as Denikin had some twenty years previously and forward detachments were in the suburbs of Moscow itself.

Russian industry in the Ukraine and Belarus had been destroyed or overrun and the Luftwaffe roamed with impunity looking for fresh targets. New factories were being set up quickly in the Ural region to resupply a new Russian army to replace the one that was marched back to Germany as prisoners, but this would take time, something the Russians did not have.

Quick to get Stalin onside, Churchill promised convoys of lend lease equipment to sail by the quickest route from Iceland to Arkangel and Murmansk. The journey was a slow perilous one though. The water was freezing, so cold that if you were to fall in you would need rescuing in 30 seconds to survive. Ice formed around superstructures on vessels , winds were biting cold and with icy teeth and to touch metal with bare hands was to leave your hand behind and frostbite was a common problem.

Hidden Nemesis; Tirpitz

Then, of course there was the German Navy and Luftwaffe operating from Norway trying to stop you. In the first two years the Condors and Heinkel's mercilessly attacked the poorly defended convoys but with the advent of the fleet carriers they fell back to the spotter role for the U-boats and surface vessels. Although she only twice ventured from her lair KMS Tirpitz was a constant threat, the smaller vessels like Hipper were repulsed in the battle of the Barents sea and Scharnhorst sunk on boxing-day 1943. Had she got in range of the convoy it would have been over quickly.

As it was the lessons learnt in the Atlantic were used to great effect and the tide was turned against the German forces as Hurricane and Spitfires were gifted to the Russian airforce to replace their obsolete aircraft, trucks, rifles, clothing, fuel, raw materials came like a vital blood transfusion to a beleaguered USSR until May 1945. 85 merchant ships and 18 warships were lost in the conflict to the German's 4 warships (including Scharnhorst who took 1932 of her crew down to the depths) and 30 U-boats.

What reward or recognition was gifted by a grateful nation?

Nothing.

That was until yesterday's announcement at Prime minister's questions that a Star medal will be issued to veterans. This is far too late in the coming as many veterans are long dead or in their 80s or 90s. It is, however welcome that the brave souls who faced the elements and the business end of the German war machine in lightly armed and armoured merchant ships like their already decorated Atlantic comrades.

Captured U-boat sails up the Medway?

U-570 as HMS Graph undergoing sea trials

I was reading on the Medway Memories website the other day about the possibility of a German U-boat being captured in August 1941 and being escorted by a Short Sunderland up the Medway to Chatham dockyard. This immediatly caught my attention and I went beavering away to Wikipedia and Uboat.net to look into the possibility and to follow up on the lead that the site gave me U-570.

Eureka, I have an answer.

The short answer to whether a captured German U-boat came up the Medway (namely U-570) is no.... The long answer is Yes she did....

Now bear with me on this one as I prepare to weave you a narrative about the ill fated U-570.

On April 15th 1941 the type VIIC U-boat U 570 was launched and commissioned at the Blohm and Voss ship yards in Hamburg where she immediatly began her shake down cruises and tests before reassignment to Norway where she took on her new crew and began training excercises with her inexperienced crew. She was then assigned to Trondheimsfjord and the Lofjord Naval base where she was part of the 3rd Flotilla.

Her Commanding officer Kapitanleutnant Hans-Jurgen Rahmlow was a seasoned naval officer with a history of commanding Coastal batteries and had only recently transferred to U-boats (although having briefly commanded the training vessel U-58), her First officer Bernhard Brandt had only been serving on U-boats for a few months, the Second watch officer had only just been commissioned and most of the crew were new recruits. The only man onboard who really had any experience was the Chief Engineer and three of the Petty officers!

German Naval intelligence picked up a sypher that there was a large convoy of Allied vessels passing to the South of Iceland and the Third Flotilla were assigned to attack them. U-570 slipped out of base on 24th August with orders to patrol the area South of Iceland before turning towards La Pallice base in France with provision for four weeks.

By the 27th August, her Captain ordered her to surface to give the crew some restbite as many were suffering from accute seasickness and a couple had become incapacitated. They were immediatly picked up on radar by an RAF Hudson of 269 sqdn flown by Sqdn ldr Thompson. Rahmlow heard the approaching bomber from the observation deck and immediatly orderred a crash dive. It was too late as four depth charges were quickly dropped and one exploded a mere ten yards from the U-boat.
The resulting explosion nearly rolled the vessel, shattered her instruments, she lost all power and sprang several leaks. The smell that was generated made the inexperienced crew think that water was getting on the batteries and filling the hull with noxious Chlorine gas. The order was given to surface and ten crew raced onto the deck, under machine gun fire, unable to man the Flak guns because of the rough seas they quickly hoisted the white flag of surrender.

The officers quickly reported what had happened to Navy command and calmly destroyed their radio equipment and code books. Donitz orderred U-82 to the area to assist but was kept at bay by Allied air patrols.

The crew were kept onboard, save for the wounded (from the first attack and the subsequent attacks mistakenly made by the Royal Navy warning shots and an aircraft of 330 sqdn) so that the Germans wouldn't sink her on purpose. She was taken to Iceland and beached.

By the 31st August Lieutenant Colvin RN and his team of engineers had restored power and bouyancy and the boat was sailed to Hvalfjorour where she spent three weeks under repair. It was discovered that the damage was not critical and that a more experienced crew would have been able to repair the damage and evade the attack - further compounded by the fact that the Hudson bomber had used all its depth charges in the attack and so would have lost the U-boat had she stayed submerged.

Along with her escorts HMS Saladin and HMS Kingston Agate sailed for Barrow-Foreness and arrived on the 3rd October 1941. There she was renamed and ceased to be U-570. She was rechristened HMS Graph.

HMS Graph went under extensive tests in Scotland to test her capabilities and also for training for boarding crews so that they could become acclimatised to finding their way around U-boats looking for enigma machines and reversing any scuttling damage.

On 25th April 1942 she sailed South to Portsmouth before departing for Sheerness. Then from there she sailed up the River Medway. Whether she sailed under the escort of a Sunderland or other aircraft for her own protection in case any errant gunner feared a U-boat was repeating Prien's attack on Scappa flow, is open to conjecture.

She finished her refit in Chatham on 14th August 1942 and is taken over by Lieutenant Marriot RN before sailing for Sheerness, Portsmouth (under escort of HMS Vesper) and on to Holy loch for training.

On 8th October 1942 she left Holy loch for her first war patrol to the bay of Biscay and on 21st she sighted the German U-boat U-333 and fired four torpedoes. Four explosions were heard and "breaking up noises"
According to the U-333's log she didn't even see Graph only a torpedo track go past her and she dived to avoid any further attack but remained unscathed.

Graph's other two patrols were fairly uneventful, though she was ordered on 29th November to intercept the Italian blockade runner Cortellazzo along with HMS Sealion and HMS Clyde and all three failed to sight her. On her final patrol she fired at a German destroyer and explosions were heard. This destroyer was part of the escort of the Cruisers Hipper and Lutzow however none of the vessels were sunk by Graph, and I've not so far been able to see if they were damaged.

After her final patrol she returned to Scotland. She sailed south once more to Chatham and arrived on 13th June 1943 before finally being handed over to Dockyard control on 21st June and used for training duties.

Sadly, with a lack of parts available (seeing as they were produced in Germany), the short life of the engines and the need to replace the batteries annually the Graph was no longer sustainable and in 1944 she was used for target practise and for tests to see what damage depth charges do, having survived all of this she was assigned for breaking up, towed by HMS Allegiance to Clyde for breaking up. The tow rope broke and the vessel beached near Coul Point. She has been partially scrapped in 1947 but parts were still visible in 1977 at low tide.

Thus ends the tale of HMS Graph/ U-570 and here brief tour up the Medway.

There is, however one last footnote that, personally I find interesting so will bore you all with now. After her capture Officers was taken to Grizedale Hall, a POW camp for German U-boat officers, where they were put on trial in an Honour court by the senior Germans present, including Otto Kretschnerr the U-boat ace. They were charged with cowardice in the face of the enemy and Rahmlow (en absentia) and Berndt were found guilty of cowardice. On the 18th October 1941 Berndt escaped the camp and was supposedly making his way towards Barrow (22 miles away) to destroy U-570 to redeem himself. He was caught by the Homeguard but refused to be taken, even ignoring warning shots and was unfortunately shot dead.
The British then put Rahmlow into a camp with Airmen and Soldiers for his own protection.

First World War wrecks to be salvaged - disturbing graves

At 6.20 AM on the 21st of September 1914 Leutnant Weddigen of the Kaiser's Imperial Navy gave the order to fire the first torpedo from U-boat U9.

HMS Cressy

The torpedo struck HMS Aboukir and she came full stop and began her 35 minute futile struggle to stay afloat, the order was given to abandon ship as her sister ships HMS Cressy and HMS Hogue, the other two vessels in the patrol fleet, moved to assist and launched boats believing the flagship (under the command of Captain Drummond. Rear Admiral Christian who had commanded the flotilla had been force to take his flag ship HMS Euryalus back to Harwich to recoal).

At 6.55 Hogue was struck by a further two torpedoes and began to sink as well finally disappearing at 7.10am. U9 quickly submerged into the darkness but fired again at 7.20. The crew of Cressy spotted torpedo trails and the order "All ahead full!" was passed but to no avail. The blast from the torpedoes impact was so hard that it lifted her high enough in the water for a second torpedo to pass under her!
A third struck at 7.30 rupturing tanks in the boiler rooms and sending white hot steam out onto the men working in the engine rooms. She began to slide into the water before rolling onto her back where she remained for twenty minutes before slipping beneath the waves.

U9 post war in Dover

In under two hours the German Navy had cost the Royal Navy three Cruisers and 1397 officers and men with 837 saved by Dutch fishing vessels and Royal Navy destroyers who arrived late to the scene - more than the British losses at the battle of Trafalgar! Of those lost 85 were from the Medway Towns.

These vessels lay undisturbed for some forty years resting twenty two miles from the Dutch coast until Winston Churchill's Conservative government of 1954 sold the salvage rights to a German company however a Dutch company has now applied to search the wrecks for Copper, Bronze and other rare or precious metals and this has angered Naval Associations.

Mr Murray of the Chatham branch of the RNA has stated;

They are war graves and should remain so. They have been down there for damn near 100 years. Why do they want the scrap metal? Somebody's trying to make money. It is nothing to do with the families of the people who fought for their country.

Also, in October of last year Navy associations from Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Begium, Britain and Austria wrote to a national Newspaper to decry the salvage;
[We] suggest that no such desecration would take place in graves on land.
We urge that our sailors should be allowed to rest in peace.

I agree. I know that, by law, you can remove a grave stone from a church yard or Grave yard after 100 years as it is considered that no one in living memory is alive - though I am sure that with current life spans that can be contested, and I'm sure salvagers would argue that case now but it does not remove the fact that those hulks are in fact tombs.

As the Association states, should a German army grave be found deep in the woods of France, or a Spitfire found in a laying in a bay it would be left be, so why should the a sunken vessel be any different?

The same goes for the wrecks of Titanic and Lusitania. As interesting as the artifacts brought up by they should remain taking things from the "Debris field" that lies between the two halves of Titanic and leave the actual wreck alone.

When a vessel is lost at sea and the crew and passengers hit the water they are often sucked down by the vessel, die of exposure, drowning, injuries sustained or even to Shark attack well before recovery. In rare occasions there will be recovery operations for the dead but that is usually in peace time, the Navy cannot put other vessels into danger to collect the dead and know the dead who was ashore will be buried properly but to those that don't have no memorial to mark their loss except for the vessel itself.

When HMS Bulwark exploded (killing 736 officers and men) in Sheerness, 26th November 1914,some of her dead were buried in Woodlands Cemetery in Gillingham where vast lines of white graves marked HMS Bulwark and even sadly "Crewman unknown" HMS Bulwark, but the wreck remains untouched as it is a grave and is protected by the "Protection of Military remains act"

Unfortunatly Cressy, Hogue and Aboukir are out of British controlled waters and have already had salvage carried out upon them so are exempt from the act.

The disturbance of these vessels is a violation of the last resting place and memorial to those 1400 odd men who died early one September morning and are all but forgotten. They should be allowed to continue to rest in peace.


Sources:

Salvage firm urged to leave Sailors' war graves alone Medway Messenger, 2nd December 2011, A McGuinness

Wikipedia entries for HMS Cressy, Hogue, Aboukir, Bulwark and Protection of Military remains act.