Part 1

This is the continuation of the interview conducted by MIKE MATHIS (6063-2000) and produced by ROB LIHANI’s Digital Ranch (5989-2000) in 2000 when their cameras went to Germany with HARRY. Here are his thoughts on the war at sea.

SHARKHUNTERS: What happened in 1943?

COOPER: The tide of the U-boat battle turned in Black May of ’43, there’s no doubt about that. The United States Navy lost 52 boats in the entire war, about 47 of them through combat. The German navy lost 44 boats that one month alone. It was an absolutely devastating blow to Admiral Dönitz. The Kriegsmarine had no idea what had happened. They had suspicions, but they didn’t know. Basically, it was a combination of several things. The radar got extremely good, the codes were broken and the Allies knew exactly where each submarine was. Huff Duff, which was the high frequency directional finder, was perfected and as soon as the U-boat radio operator would hit his key, there was a triangulation, and the Allies knew exactly where the submarine was. Further, they had dossiers on almost all of the skippers, and knew what type of decisions they would make under what type of stressful conditions. So from Black May of ’43 onwards, it was next to suicide to put to sea with a U-boat.

SHARKHUNTERS: How much work did the Allies put into the U-boat problem?

COOPER: The U-boat threat was probably the biggest threat the Allies faced. As a matter of fact, Winston Churchill, after the war was over, said that the U-boat threat was the only thing that really worried them. He said the Germans should’ve staked everything on it. So there was a very high priority on defeating the U-boats. The Brits had about 10,000 people working at Bletchley Park, at code breaking, and the U-boat code was a top priority.

SHARKHUNTERS: What were the counter attacks against the U-boats?

COOPER: In the later years of the war, the antisubmarine tactics were completely different and incredibly enhanced. They knew where the submarines where because of the Huff Duff and because of the broken codes, and the American production had increased to the point where we had plenty of destroyers and the baby flattops, otherwise known as jeep carriers, the CVL’s and CVE’s. They would have a hunter killer group with a small aircraft carrier and three or four or five destroyer escorts, and they would just go to the places where the Allies knew a German U-boat was, thanks to the Huff Duff and the intercepts. They would find the U-boat and they would just keep after them, and keep after them, until they killed them. Generally, they would just keep them down until the air ran out and he had to come to the surface. Once he came to the surface, then surface gun attacks would finish the submarine. If he didn’t come to the surface, if they had a chance to run a submerged attack on them, they would drop depth charges and they would have two or three destroyer escorts triangulate the sub with their sonar to where there was no doubt where the sub was.

Later on they came up with the forward throwing, what they call the hedgehogs. They would fire twenty-four missiles forward of the destroyer and, rather than exploding at a preset depth like a depth charge, they only exploded on contact. And so when a hedgehog went off, they knew exactly where the submarine was, and then they passed over, and dropped more depth charges, and that was the end.

SHARKHUNTERS: How long could the depth charge attacks go on?

COOPER: A depth charge attack could go on for five minutes or three days depending. If the attacking destroyers lost the contact quickly, the attack was over quickly. But if they maintained a good contact, as they did later in the war when technology caught up with the U-boats, the attack would just go on and on and on endlessly. When the destroyers would be running low on depth charges, they would rotate other destroyers in, and just keep raining depth charges on the U-boat until either they sank the U-boat or ran outta’ depth charges. But basically, they sank the U-boat.

There were other times also, where the U-boats would come under air attack. And I think the attack from the air was probably the biggest fear they had, because they had so little time to really react. When they saw an aircraft, it was coming at them very quickly, and they had to get down. There they face another problem. If they couldn’t get down fast enough, they would be halfway submerged with absolutely no defense, and the aircraft would finish them off easily.

The Leigh Light was another attacking device. That was a 75,000 candle power light hung under the wing of a bomber, and they would hunt the U-boats at night with radar. When they would find a U-boat on the radar, they would cut the engines, glide down on ‘em, and at the very last moment, they would turn the engines on and turn on this Leigh Light and suddenly, the black of night turned into a floodlight right in their face. Their night vision was gone, they had no time to react, and it was generally over in a few seconds for the sub.

SHARKHUNTERS: How did the U-boats defend themselves?

COOPER: Toward the end of the war, well from Black May ’43 onward, the U-boats really didn’t have a lot of defense against the Allies. They did not know that their codes had been broken, they did not know that their radio transmissions could pinpoint their location although, some of the skippers had a feeling, and some of them stayed off the radio a little bit, which probably saved their lives. They still had no clear cut knowledge of these things. And Admiral Dönitz insisted on daily reports back to headquarters. They were very short, they called them Kurtz signal, which means a short radio signal, just a couple of letters compressed into a short burst. And the letters were a coded message indicating how many torpedoes they had left, what was their state of food, how many metric tons of fuel on board, their position, etc. They didn’t realize that just hitting the key once would triangulate exactly where they were. So they really didn’t know that they were vulnerable. They didn’t know that radar had come into such a state that they could actually pinpoint the head of a snorkel stick up out of the water. They could pinpoint a periscope coming up. So they lost the primary weapon of a submarine, and that is stealth. If a submarine is spotted, he has very little defense. They hadn’t many anti-aircraft guns, but the airplanes were generally more successful because they were a lot smaller than the submarine, had a lot more guns and flew a lot faster.

SHARKHUNTERS: What is a snorkel?

COOPER: The snorkel is basically accepted as a Dutch invention, although somebody has come up with the idea it was actually invented by the Italians. Snorkel is basically a long air pipe, an air mast that comes up out of the submarine, and it’s got a check ball valve on the top. It allows the diesel engines to run under water, because the head of the snorkel is out of the water. It’s sucking in fresh air and it’s allowing the diesel exhaust to vent back out this way. It’s not very big, maybe one meter wide by about two meters long. But it was still spotted by the radar. This allowed the diesel engines to run under water.

SHARKHUNTERS: What’s the advantage of the engines running under water?

COOPER: The snorkel allowed the submarines to run under water, which saved their battery. They ran under diesel, saved their battery in case they got pressed down by antisubmarine forces. Then they had the full battery to rely on, rather than using up their battery to run at periscope depth. The snorkel in its conceptual design was a very clever device. In practical use, it had its drawbacks. It worked fine as long as you had a fairly calm sea, but when the seas were running rather high, it was not uncommon for a wave to wash over the top of the snorkel, shut the valve, and the diesels were still running, sucking air out of the boats. It was not uncommon for the guys to lose their eardrums, and have blood running out of their ears, and they felt like their eyeballs were gonna’ pop, until the wave passed, and the valve opened. Where do you sign up for this outfit?

SHARKHUNTERS: Why did they continue to send out U-boats?

COOPER: After the U-boat losses were mounting so drastically; I don’t think I’d call it a suicide mission, but it was incredibly dangerous. One boat out of ten came back from its first patrol. It was almost impossible to get two patrols out of the submarine after Black May of ’43. The Allies were just too far ahead technologically in their detection and also in their antisubmarine tactics. The guys were standing in line to volunteer for the U-boat force. At the end of the war, it was the only oversubscribed part of the German military forces. I have never heard of a single guy deserting and saying he wasn’t going.

SHARKHUNTERS: Why did they continue to send out subs?

COOPER: The High Command, under Admiral Dönitz, realized that they were having horrendous losses. They sent them out because it tied up a lot of Allied bomber planes that would not be bombing the homes, while they were out trying to find the U-boats. A lot of destroyers, a lot of aircraft carriers were tied up, a lot of men were tied up in hunting U-boats. If the U-boats weren’t out there, all these men, all these planes, all these bombs would be into Germany.

War is not like a football game. When you suddenly start losing, you cannot call time out, and look at the Polaroid pictures of the other team. You can’t get the X’s and the O’s going on the chalkboard, and then go back into the game. War, unfortunately, is a lot more brutal. The whole concept of war is to put the other guy into a negative position, and keep shooting and stabbing and bombing until he’s dead. That’s the unfortunate reality of war. Admiral Dönitz really didn’t have much choice; he had to keep sending his men out because it was tying up a tremendous amount of Allied manpower and material. I’m sure it bothered him heavily. But any admiral, any general, has the responsibility of the lives of millions of men, and when they lose their men, I’m sure it affects them.

SHARKHUNTERS: How dangerous were these missions at the end of the war?

COOPER: Toward the end of the war the missions were incredibly dangerous. They were almost certain to be fatal. Towards the end of the war, one U-boat out of ten came home from its first mission. The Allies had just perfected their antisubmarine tactics too well. German technology had not kept up. Most of them had no idea that radar was picking them up. They had no idea that their radio transmissions were identifying exactly where they were, so it was incredibly dangerous. I wouldn’t call it a suicide mission because everybody thought it was the other nine boats that were going get sunk. Their boat was going come home alive. So, you couldn’t call it a suicide mission like a kamikaze, who knew he was not coming home. Every one of these guys still bundled up their personal possessions, with a final note to mom and dad, and they went out. They went to do their duty. And they didn’t come home.

SHARKHUNTERS: How much denial was necessary to be a U-boat sailor?

COOPER: Toward the end of the war when the losses were so high, I’m not sure we’d call it denial in the minds of these guys. Remember these were all young guys, and when you’re twenty years old, nineteen years old, you’re indestructible. Nothing’s going hurt you. It’s always the other guy that’s going to pay the price. And they were very patriotic to their country. They were very proud of their abilities, very proud of their service, and proud of their own abilities to survive. Unfortunately, for most of them, it wasn’t enough.

SHARKHUNTERS: What happens when these guys get killed in a U-boat?

COOPER: Death came to U-boat sailors in various different ways. If they were on deck as an antiaircraft gunner or as a lookout and an airplane was strafing them, they died by the bullets. If their U-boat got sunk, and if they were close to the surface, they would basically drown. Because the U-boat like any submarine, when it’s holed, almost invariably stands on one end, which is the heavy end where the hole is, stands on one end, and begins to sink. So suddenly you’re lying on the floor, which used to be the bulkhead. It’s dark. Your buddies, your tools, your spare parts, are all falling down in a pile with oil and bilge water, it’s dark, and eventually the submarine reaches it’s crush death and, it’s over. If they’re holed when they’re running extremely deep, basic thoughts are that the inrush of the pressure is so great that it’s instant death. Neither way is anything to look forward to.

Another reason a lot of submarine sailors didn’t come home, Germans, Americans, etc. was that even if they survived the initial attack and wound up in the water, submarines generally operated alone, they had no friends around them. Unlike a surface ship that would be in a convoy, where if one ship gets sunk, the other guys pick them up. A submarine in enemy waters has no friends, and if they didn’t die in the attack, they would probably wind up dying of exposure some days later in their life rafts. Which is why they, the submariners always had such high attrition rate. German U-boaters had the highest mortality rate of any military service, probably ever in history. The American submarine service had the highest mortality rate of any American force, as one man out of seven didn’t come home. That’s partly because, when a submarine sank thousands of miles from home, even the survivors were out in the middle of the ocean.

SHARKHUNTERS: Tell me about the capture of U-505.

COOPER: The German U-505 was captured on the 4th of June, 1944 by the American task group under the carrier USS GUADALCANAL. They had five destroyer escorts, the POPE, JENKS, CHATELAIN, FLAHERTY and the PILSBURY. It’s an interesting comparison of what was known and what wasn’t known by the commanders on the scene. Admiral Gallery, he was a captain then, was directed to the spot where U-505 was because of the intercepts, because of the broken codes, and because of the directional finding of the high frequency directional finders of Huff Duff, but he didn’t know this.

He had determined he wanted to capture a German submarine. I think a lot of it had to do with ego, but he also claimed that he would get the codes. Well, he didn’t realize we already had the codes. The submarine was spotted just after church services on that Sunday morning. It was the destroyer escort CHATELAIN that originally picked up the contact. So naturally the carrier swung away for safety, and CHATELAIN stayed over them, and they evaluated the contact as a submarine. They started dropping depth charges, and then the sub doubled back on itself, shook off the destroyers, and contact was lost for a minute. But they had two AVENGERS flying from the carrier, and they spotted the sub about sixty feet below the water, and started firing their machine guns into the water by the sub, to let the destroyer escorts know exactly where the sub was. And they feel this is probably the first time ever that a surface force was directed over a submarine by the aircraft firing the guns into the water.

Two or three of the destroyer escorts joined in, and ultimately, they damaged the submarine so badly it had to surface. Because Admiral Gallery decided to capture the submarine, he had already had the guns loaded with anti personnel, rather than armor piercing ammunition, and they just fired to either kill the German crew, or chase them off the deck, which is basically what they did. The sub was still making about six knots, the rudder jammed ten degrees to the right, and they sent whaleboats to capture the submarine.

“Hi Yo, Silver!”

Admiral Gallery was yelling ‘Hi Yo Silver!’ over the 1MC intercom, and they finally caught up with the submarine. And now these American sailors, they didn’t know if they were booby traps, they didn’t know if they were fuses on bombs, they didn’t know if they were people waiting down below. So they dropped down into the submarine, ready to fight it out with anybody left, and found out that everybody had gone off the submarine. They secured the open valves, and captured the sub. Then they picked up everybody out of the water and they put the submarine on the end of a tether and were bringing it back.

Most people don’t realize Admiral Gallery almost got into a lot of problems over that. First off, he wasn’t supposed to capture the submarine, he was supposed to sink it. If the Germans had found out that the submarine had been captured and the codes had been compromised, they’d have changed the codes and all the work would’ve had to start over again. D-Day was only two days away.

Secondly, Admiral Gallery left his flagship, the GUADALCANAL and went on board U-505. Most people think it was because he wanted to look over his new trophy - but the commander of a task group is not supposed to leave his command ship and go aboard an enemy ship. He got out of that by saying that he was ordnance trained and he wanted to make sure there were no booby traps aboard. So Admiral Gallery basically, was a hero.

All those guys that went on board that submarine were heroes; they had no idea what reception they were going to get. Most of the guys in the first boarding party got the Silver Star. Lt. Albert David, the leader of the group, got the Congressional Medal.

The actual consequences against the Germans or for the Allies, was minimal actually, because the codes had all been broken, they did seize the Enigma machine off the U-505 which helped enhance some of the code breaking.

They did get a lot of the ‘officer only’ code keys and the day codes. In other words, you had to have the day code in order to transcribe your coded message, and they did get a lot of that. So there was some value to it. But it is not the Rosetta Stone of breaking the entire German code, the US already had that.

SHARKHUNTERS: How did Hitler see the U-boats?

COOPER: Actually, I don’t think Hitler really cared as much about the navy as he probably could have. The Z Plan, of course, was to have a huge surface fleet plus three hundred U-boats, but that wasn’t supposed to be ready until, I think, 1945. The war obviously started a lot sooner than anyone was ready. Quite honestly, from my research, Hitler really doesn’t get into the picture very much at all with the navy. He, from what I understand, saw the war as a great land battle in Europe, and the navy was basically, sort of helping everything else, by interdicting the supplies to Russia and to Great Britain.

I don’t think he really had a grasp of how to run a naval war. If he had known how to run a naval war, I suspect more priorities would’ve been given to the U-boats, and it would’ve been a very difficult time for the Allies. They also had problems with the torpedoes just like the United States submarines had early during the 1940 April Norway invasion. There were so many hits by torpedoes from German U-boats against British capital ships that didn’t explode, that if they had exploded and sunk those ships like RODNEY, KING GEORGE V, etc. - all the big British battleships took hits by dud torpedoes. Had they detonated and sunk some of those ships, Britain and Germany could very well have negotiated a peace, so some experts think.

SHARKHUNTERS: Could the U-boats have turned the war?

COOPER: If the U-boat war had gotten off to the kind of a start that Admiral Dönitz wanted, it probably would’ve been a very short war. If he’d had fifty more U-boats to put around Great Britain in late ’39, early ’40, it probably would’ve forced a very quick end to what was then only a regional war.

For a long time, England was down to about two weeks worth of fuel. Their food supplies were very short, so had Admiral Dönitz been able to put enough U-boats up against the convoys, all those hundreds of millions of tons of American supplies would’ve been interdicted. So, Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, but if Dönitz would’ve had the U-boats he wanted in the early stages of the war, it would’ve been over, I think, very quickly.

EDITOR NOTE

It was during one of the taping sessions in Germany for this program when one of the old Kriegsmarine veterans suffered a heart attack and fell on the floor, quite blue in the face. Trained in CPR by the US Coast Guard, HARRY COOPER (1-LIFE-1983) and SUSAN BURLEIGH (5885-1999), a nurse, worked on him and ultimately saved his life.