Meanwhile the destroyers sliced the surrounding sea at top speed, trembling and nervously trying to scent out U-Boats. Swarms of various types of planes started from the aircraft carrier and battled bravely with our onslaught. Meantime the nervous convoy took its course through Spitzbergen. Flotsam was all over - rafts, lifebelts, drums and all sorts of debris and many a dead seaman. There were stretches of thick oil on the icy waters. No way that anybody could survive such conditions for long.

Next day, in the early morning, we detected the silhouettes of a floating plane, badly damaged and half sunk. There were rafts with survivors, German fliers, whom we took on board. They told us they had tried to save some other pilots and had crash landed. Soon we saw the other raft with two men hanging badly hurt, over the side. In the rough sea, we had problems to get close and I jumped overboard, tied to several heaving lines, swam the fifty yards, grabbed them and was pulled back.

We had to hurry; get them down below deck because of constant surprises by the enemy. There were two who were still alive, with broken bones and crushed skull. We administered intramuscular cardiosol and lurilene injections. They realized they had been saved on German soil. They talked about their families and home before they died. It happened very quietly.

We ran ahead of the convoy towards Murmansk and were soon enwrapped by peasoup thick fog; visibility a few hundred yards. Constant detonations of depth charges around us. Everybody was on edge naturally because of the eternal ALARM maneuvers.

There, about 1700 hours, we saw a fat destroyer of the ACHILLES or EPHRITY class coming full speed towards us. Before we went into the cellar, we fired two torpedoes at him and heard underwater two hard metallic detonations. We surfaced. We had hardly our binoculars at our eyes when Kapitän Hopmann yelled ALARM for destroyers. Damn! They sure were close. Head over neck we slid into the Central Control Room, falling on top of each other. One guy had hit the copper combing of the hatch with his head and the skin of his head was completely pushed backwards; he was nearly scalped.

The boat went down at an ever increasing angle and everything that wasn’t secured slid forward. Everybody held onto something. Hopmann ordered the Chief Engineer to go down to two hundred meters fast. Our “Sparks” had reported that the destroyers had stopped. They listened and got our bearings. We knew there were three of them. We heard the clear pinging of their sonars and then there was knocking and tapping on the hull when their reflex was positive. All that Hopmann said was: “Okay boys, now they come.”

First faint, but fast growing sharp and loud, as if cutting through our hull were their prop noises and with it opened up and inferno-like a thousand thunders and strikes of lightening in one. There is no comparable noise in battles ashore. No bombing or booming of guns of heaviest caliber. There is no description by words; you just have to hear it yourself. It can strike pure terror into the timid hearts. Then again it was as if some mighty fist threw pebbles and sand over our hull and new detonations close by.

What in the heck was going on up there with those fellows? I can’t believe that they want to kill us like rats in a cage. Paint was cracking off the walls; there was a sinister noise of high tension in the frame of the boat the deeper we went. Laminated glasses had broken apart; the light began to flicker and emergency lights came on. Water had come into the boat as they had been unable to close the torpedo tubes doors in time and a shrill hissing came from the direction of bow torpedo room, which made one man lose his self-control, and we had to silence him.

Looking at the men, I noticed that many held onto something firm to steady themselves. There was utmost tension in the faces when looking at the depth manometers or up above as if they tried to watch the destroyers in order anticipate their next moves. I admired especially one man, “Old Joke”’, the comedian with his usually big mouth he stood there calmly and chalked each detonation on the curtain around the ladder leading to the conning tower. One. Two. Three. Four. Slant. Were there forty? Or fifty? Or more - I forgot.

Of course under attack in this case, there was only the least movement of the crew possible. Everybody had to stay on station in order not to upset the trim of the boat. If somebody had to urgently relieve himself, he was handed a bucket filled with water and oil. Such an act usually gave reason to much teasing, and humor was soon back and acted as sort of relaxant of the strained nerves. However only whispers naturally were allowed.

Later at Narvik I asked one of the pilots whom we had fished out of the soup what he preferred -- attacks with his plane through artillery and shrapnel fire or a depth charge attack on a U-Boat. He only laughed and patted my shoulder.

“If my plane is disabled,” he said, “I still can bail out with my parachute. If your sub is disabled and your engines sputter, and your last compressed air is used up - you’ve had it and you die like a damn rat.”

This was my last trip on U-405. There were endless celebrations, good food, a real bed and much camaraderie. When we started on a new trip and passed the breakwaters with roaring diesels, we waved to each other for a last time. It was November 1942; exactly a year later nearly on the day, that proud and brave U-405 met her fate with all hands lost.

She had been depth charged by the US destroyer BORIE and had to surface. Both boats battled each other in a gunfire and a torpedo duel. Both boats tried to ram each other and got locked after several engagements. The ensuing battle at short distance was grueling as there was no pardon seemingly acceptable. Finally one four-inch shell from the BORIE blew Hopmann and his bridge crew overboard. The two vessels pounded and rolled in the heavy seas and there was a terrific noise of steel grinding against steel mixed with constant gunfire.

Finally, about seventy two minutes after the first contact, U-405 plunged stem first and exploded underwater. The BORIE was so badly damaged that her crew abandoned ship, which had to be destroyed thereafter by bombs from an AVENGER plane.

More U-181

U-181: Part I [KTB154]

U-181: Part II [KTB155]

U-181: Part III [KTB156]

Convoy Aftermath
1943 and 1944
Beyond Cape of Good Hope