This is the report of one of the U-boats in question, written entirely by PAUL LAWTON. Here are his words:

"The U-233 was a 295 foot long 1,763 ton (2,177 ton submerged displacement) steel hull German W.W.II era diesel/electric Type XB mine-laying/supply U-boat designed to re-supply Type VII Uboats at sea. She was built by Germania Werft at Kiel, Germany where her keel was laid on August 15, 1941, She was launched on May 8, 1943 and commissioned on September 22, 1943. She had a range of 21,000 miles, was capable of 16.4 knots surfaced, or 7 knots submerged, and had a standard compliment of 52 officers and crewmen. She was armed with two (533mm) 21 inch stern (no bow) torpedo tubes for which she carried l 1 torpedoes, 30 mine chutes capable of carrying up to 66 anchored SMA mines, one 10.5cm deck gun mounted on the fore deck, one 37mm anti-aircraft gun mounted on the aft deck and one 20mm anti-aircraft gun mounted on the wintergarten.

On May 27, 1944 she departed Kiel under command of Kapitanleutnant Hans Steen, with 61 officers and crewmen on her first, and last operational patrol, to lay her mines in the shipping lanes off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Allied code-breakers tracked the U-233 by decrypted Enigma radio transmissions, and a U.S. Navy Tenth Fleet hunter-killer group was formed and directed to the approaching U-boat. On July 5, 1944 a U.S. Navy aircraft from the escort carrier U.S.S. Card (CV-11), spotted the U-233 running on the surface approximately 100 miles south of Sable Island, Nova Scotia.

The aircraft directed warships from the hunter-killed Task Group 22.10 to the scene, and the U-233 was located on sonar and came under depth charge and Hedgehog attack by the destroyer escorts U.S.S. Baker (DE-190) under command of Norman C. Hoffrnan, and U.S.S. Thomas (DE-102), assisted by a screening force of the DEs U.S.S. Bostwick (DE-103), U.S.S. Breeman and Lt S.S. Bronstein (DE-189).

EDITOR’S NOTE - the destroyer escort USS BRONSTEIN was commanded by SHELDON KINNEY (5152-1997), RADM retired.

The damaged U-233 was forced to surface and her crew manned her guns and engaged the superior firepower of the circling destroyer escorts, as they straddled the crippled U-boat with a barrage of depth-charges and peppered her with deck gun and small arms and cannon fire, decapitating the chief engineer, Wilhelm Bartling. Crewmen attempting to abandon the U-233 through her conning tower hatch were cut down in the withering gunfire, as a few crewmen managed to escape through the forward deck hatch, before the U. S. S. Thomas, under Lieutenant Commander David M. Kellog, rammed the U-boat approximately 20' aft of the conning tower, sending her to the bottom at approximately 7:30 in the evening at Lat. 42 degrees 16' North/Long. 59 degrees 49 west. Kapitanleutnant Steen, and 29 officers and crewmen were rescued by the U.S.S. Thomas and U.S.S. Baker, though after being transferred to the U. S. S. Card, Steen died the next day from wounds sustained in the attack and was buried at sea with full military honors. The other 32 officers and crewmen went down with the wreck of the U-233.

In August of 1996 a character in Maine named Greg Brooks claimed to have found the wreck of the U-233 in Casco Bay, hundreds of miles from the actual location of the sinking. Brooks erroneously claimed the U-233 was sunk by the U.S. Navy blimp K-14 off Portland in 120 to 170 feet of water on July 2, 1944, and that the K-14 itself was shot down in the attack.

The K-14 actually crashed (due to pilot error and/or mechanical malfunction), off Bar Harbor, Maine, a considerable distance from Casco Bay, three days before the sinking of the U-233 Additionally, Operational Intelligence Reports and the Court of Inquiry into the loss of the K-14 including statements taken from the K-14's survivors mention nothing about a U-boat, or enemy action. In fact, at the exact moment of the crash the surviving crewmen testified that they were involved in non-combat activities such as taking naps and brewing hot coffee and cocoa in the galley. Subsequent dives on the alleged U-boat in Casco Bay failed to produce any such wreckage. The wreck of at least one submarine, the 219 foot long 854 ton U.S. Navy submarine 5-21 (SS-126) does lie on the bottom of Casco Bay, intentionally sunk by the U.S. Navy in an experimental torpedo exploder assembly test on March 23, 1945. her wreck lies in 160 feet of water approximately 3 miles Southeast of Halfway Rocks at Lat. 43 degrees 36._53' North/Long. 69 degrees {9.24' West."

EDITOR’S NOTE - we had extensive communication with Greg Brooks some years ago and told him all the above details, and assured him that his scenario was absolutely impossible. His reply was pretty much that we should not bother him with facts because he believed (or wanted others to believe) there really was a `secret' German U-boat, U-233. To think that a submarine full of healthy men on the bottom of a bay in water shallow enough to escape the boat but just lay down and die in the boat without trying to escape is just ludicrous and we told him so. His mind was closed - or at least, he didn't want to acknowledge the fact that his story had absolutely no merit at all. If there is a submarine in water that shallow, SCUBA divers can certain dive to it - if it exists, which in this case, U-233 is NOT in Casco Bay.