This is a brand new monthly column from DICK GAY, who was a spook with well, we aren't sure we are supposed to reveal what agency he was with, but it was American. Hope you like it.

Here in his first column, he reveals some stuff about U-1230 and the landing of German agents in Maine in November 1944 that nobody -- well, almost nobody -- knew before.

A former Maine spy affair revisited by a former Maine spy

At about 9:30 in the evening the dark conning tower of U-1230 broke water a few yards off Sunset Ledge. It was snowing lightly on Frenchman Bay as the huge submarine quietly surfaced. A rubber boat was pulled through the hatch and inflated on deck. Two crewmen manned the oars and made for the nearby beach carrying two others in street clothes. The snow provided good cover and dampened sounds, but as they approached the shore a dog started to bark. The boat was rowed back to the submarine and returned armed with sausages from the galley. One can only imagine sausage links hanging from their coat pockets as two German spies made their way past summer estates through a woods to the town road leading to Hancock, Maine.

On November 29, 1944 sometime after 10:30pm Mrs. Mary Forni was driving home and saw two men in city duds walking along the road. It was the last week of hunting season and summer estates along the shore had been closed up for months. Curiosity aroused, she drove along observing their tracks in the fresh-snow until they vanished into the woods leading to the shore. It's a tenet, no pun intended, of spy tradecraft is language-area expertise the two interlopers spoke English fine, but suit clothes was not the dress code in rural Maine during hunting season! With hunting jackets and German boots they would have made it past Mary. In response to my question she. asserts that if they had been carrying rifles, German rifles even, she would not have given a second glance. Topcoats and German Mausers would have worked, but topcoats and German sausages was bad tradecraft. Mr. Forni did not share his wife's concern about the strange visitors. Little could anyone imagine that a submarine 250 feet in length and drawing over 20 feet of water was at that moment parked a few hundred yards from their home with a crew of more than 50 uniformed Germans.

Next morning Mary phoned her neighbor Mrs. Hodgkins, whose husband was the local deputy sheriff. Not until after his return days later from an out of town hunting trip was the local Bangor FBI office notified. Meanwhile the tide rose and fell, and the snow turned to rain, washing away all traces.

During World War II Nazi U-Boats on the Maine coast were not uncommon. They routinely surfaced inside U.S. patrols and early radar to recharge their batteries at night. In fact U-1230 had arrived off Mount Desert Island more than a week before, and after receiving radio communications from Germany, waited for the right time and tide. Thanks to the National Security Agency (NSA) policy of declassifying aged information, codeword ULTRA intelligence is no longer top secret. The German Enigma cipher machine had been broken, now that the truth can be told, by Polish cryptanalysts, and both Britain and the U. S. were able to decrypt and read German messages. Prior to the Hancock Point landing local defenses were told to be on extra alert for a submarine. In retrospect we no doubt had intercepted their last transmissions and knew the U-Boat had arrived offshore. But during the night of Nov. 28 the daring U-Boat skipper slipped into Frenchman Bay east of Egg Rock light, scant yards from the Navy Radio and Direction Finding Station at Schoodic Point. The sub spent all day the 29th resting on the bottom a few hundred yards off Bar Harbor!

I remember the month, having just turned 12 and bagged my first deer with a single-shot 30-30 given my dad by the Secretary of the Treasury. Father was a Maine guide, one-fourth Passamaquoddy, and served summers as companion (read: bodyguard) to Henry Morgenthau at his Bar Harbor estate. He was often called to sit as a fourth at bridge, and FDR might slip over from Campobello Island, but that's another story.

On December 30, 1944 an FBI news release to the national press reported the spies 'capture'. No small amount of myth has been generated since the Hancock Point landing, but here are several noteworthy facts:

1) The spies were backtracked from New York City to Hancock Point, but they were never 'captured'.

2) Their mission, while reported otherwise, was in fact to sabotage the US Manhattan Project.

3) Contrary to accounts that both were incompetent amateurs, Erich Gimpel (ERICH GIMPEL 884-1988) was a seasoned professional. William Colepaugh was an amateur, a defector from Connecticut whose selection for the mission could only have been because he was once a student at MIT. My uncle, Dr. Karl Larson of Bangor, was a scientist on the Manhattan Project at MIT, working on the spectrum of heavy water. By coincidence an earlier assigment of Gimpel was a CI counterintelligence mission against British attempts to sabotage the Nazi heavy water facility in Norway. Spies get around! William Colby, my boss in the covert operations directorate at CIA, had led an American OSS team into Germanoccupied Norway to blow railroad bridges and halt troop movements. Indeed my first boss at CIA 'Des' Fitzgerald summered on Mount Desert Island! Both allied missions in Norway were successful but Gimpel, while perhaps well qualified for his mission against the Manhattan Project, was not so lucky.

4) As part of their 'spy kit', he and Colepaugh were provided a bag of diamonds and $60,000 in US cash. The cash is what led to the mission's failure. Colepaugh tried to make off with the loot in New York but Gimpel soon tracked him down. The defector panicked, turned himself in to the FBI on December 26th, and led them to Gimpel whom they picked up four days later.

5) Immediately the FBI called a news conference. There was urgent need to protect the ULTRA source, known only to a handful of top officials. The story of a sharp-eyed Maine boy scout, the son of the deputy sheriff, being responsible for the capture of two German spies was exploited in the press. A good example of tradecraft disinformation to screen the enemy away from the fact we knew their U-Boat activity from Enigma decrypts. Fact or fiction, young Harvard Hodgkins remained steadfast to the FBI story.

6) We have it straight from Gimpel that only two cars were encountered that night and the 2d took them to Bangor. A stroke of luck taxi driver Forest Polley was returning to Ellsworth from another fare. No reason to suspect Colepaugh & his friend whose "car had broken down and they needed a ride to see a friend in Bangor for help."

7) After the spies were landed, the sub's radioman Horst Haslau (167-+-1986) remained on watch. Does this mean there were 5th column agents ashore? Four days after its mission the sub was still in the immediate area. Was it delayed due to a diving accident as was later contended? Possibly so, but on December 3rd it sank the Canadian merchant vessel Cornwallis at 43-59N/68-20W in full view of Acadia National Park. Was the passage of this unlucky freighter signaled to U-1230 from shore?

8) You may wonder if Colepaugh was in effect an American agent provocateur dispatched on a highly successful CI mission. Unlikely! Had he been a double agent a book by him would have made the New York Times bestseller list. Sentenced to death by secret tribunal, his post-trial fate is of no real interest to this writer. In spite of press reports, one must assume his cooperation carried some small weight with the FBI. Gimpel apparently refused offers from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) the forerunner of CIA.

9) U-1230's skipper and radio operator could hardly be expected to elaborate on secret issues, but at the risk of impropriety I have asked if Gimpel knew of any 'radio contacts' on shore. During the sub's Atlantic crossing he stowed his gear in the radio room. What do you do if you learn that dear old Mrs. Wafgnertz, down on the harbor, is a mole? Le Carre hadn't even invented the word yet!

More Creative CI Operation?

Not to detract from World War II sources and methods but a more creative CI operation might have gone as follows. After ULTRA disclosed the U-Boat's arrival, in lieu of sending a vague warning to local defenses, a Morse code message in German is transmitted on U-1230's radio frequency. To wit:

From: US Navy Station, Bar Harbor 28 Nov. 44
To: CMDR. U-1230, Frenchman Bay.
Subject Lobster cookout.

Dear Commander,

You were detected entering Frenchman Bay (lying is good tradecraft). The bloodshed in Europe is almost over. To celebrate this, you and your crew are invited to a lobster cookout tomorrow at the Bar Harbor municipal pier. Please come at high tide. Our depth-charge laden Coast Guard cutter from Southwest Harbor will escort you in, and our 1000-pound bomb carrying Navy dive bombers from Trenton Airport will do a fly-by in your honor. Please leave all your weapons on board, but if you'd like to bring something we would really appreciate a few cases of your Becks beer rations.

Sincerely, Lt. Ima Espion (for 'Bill' Donovan, OSS)"

Had it gone this way U-1230 might now be a tourist attraction at Bar Harbor, Maine. As it turned out, all the crew survived the war, but U-1230 was scuttled and lies on the bottom off Loch Ryan, Scotland. Erich Gimpel is still alive, as is the skipper HANS HILBIG (186-1986), and many of the crew including Fritz Pfluger who helped row the boat ashore, one of two active duty Germans in uniform to set foot on U.S. soil during World War II. The radio operator, Horst Haslau, who visited with Mrs. Mary Forni a few years ago, passed away in 1999.

Postscript

Dick Gay is an ex-CIA and NSA operations officer. He is a parttime college language instructor, musician, pilot, sailor, inn- and bee-keeper.

Well, how did you like this new column by DICK, like so many other spooks from the war years, have access to so much real information that tears away the curtain of deceit we know as propaganda, disinformation, misinformation etc.

DICK joins our elite group of Spooks who contribute regularly to our KTB Magazine. He joins great writers and tremendously helpful Members like PETER HANSEN (251-LIFE-1987), DON ANGEL ALCAZAR de VELASCO (158-1985), Captain ROBERT THEW (333-+-1987), ERICH-GIMPEL (984-1988) and many others who do not wish to be revealed, including our S.E.I.G. Agent Be 520 who has recently gone silent and we are trying very hard to locate him.

More U-1230 Spies

U-1230 SPIES – Part I KTB 160
U-1230 SPIES – Part II KTB 161
U-1230 SPIES – Part III KTB 166