Peter A. Ruckledge was 3rd Mate on SS FORT LaMAUNE and he was no stranger to being torpedoed, as he was aboard LOWTHER CASTLE during the debacle of Convoy PQ.16 and had that ship shot out from under him. Norman Gibson was apprentice seaman aboard SS FORT BUCKINGHAM when she was sunk. Here are their memories of those days adrift at sea.

At right: Tower emblem of U-188

During March 1943, SS FORT LaMAUNE, commanded by Captain Binns, departed the UK for Alexandria, then on to Syracuse to load supplies for the British troops in Bari, Italy. On 30 June, U-188 sailed from her base at Lorient with twenty-two torpedoes ready for action. Their paths would cross in history.

There was great activity by both sides over the Bay of Biscay, but both ships made it to the open though U-188 twice spotted aircraft. She was traveling with U-155 until 12 July 1943, when they each headed for their assigned patrol area. U-188 was ordered to take on fuel from the Type XIV ‘milch kuh’ U-487 some 400 miles west of Teneriffe but U-155 headed to the south for her patrol area.

U-487 would not make this meeting as, on 13 July 1943, aircraft from Squadron VC-13 flying off the carrier USS CORE caught her on the surface. Apparently the crew of U-487 had picked up a bale of something that was adrift and when the planes caught her, the bale burst into flames in the control room and the smoke was so dense that the Skipper and some of the crew had to make their way through very thick smoke to reach the bridge. The surprise was so great and the sinking so quick that 31 men did not make it out, and no signal was sent. U-188 spent almost a week on site waiting for U-487 until BdU told them to assume U-487 was lost and to go on.

Indian Ocean

On 18 July, U-188 was ordered to rejoin U-155, which was already 500 miles south of U-188. The rendezvoused finally, and U-188 took on sufficient fuel and supplies from U-155 to continue around the Cape of Good Hope and meet with the German tanker BRAKE southeast of Madagascar. Six submarines were to take part in this operation, five German and the Italian submarine CAGNI. After waiting for some time on the CAGNI, the news came of the Italian surrender. The rendezvous was now considered to be too dangerous and a possible trap, so it was abandoned.

U-188 now headed for the southeast part of Arabia and passed the harbor of Port Louis. Lüdden looked for some targets there, but found nothing so he headed out again. This time he took U-188 between the Admiralty Islands and the Seychelles, to the eastward of Mogadishu and there, on 21 September, he spotted the Liberty Ship CORNELIA P. SPENCER. He surfaced amid a hail of gunfire from the Armed Guard contingent aboard, but he successfully attacked and sank the ship. Lüdden wrote in his KTB that he had seen a flying boat some time later, which he assumed would be looking for survivors.

Some days later, after being out of Lorient for three months already U-188 reached her patrol area. This was not a good area. The mist obscured the horizon, making it difficult if not impossible to tell the sea from the sky and the phosphorescence and flat, calm sea made him fearful of detection every time he fired a torpedo. Even though they had been at sea for three months, the crew were still not acclimatized to the hot, sticky atmosphere of the tropics and they were affected badly. The machinery was as badly affected as the men - diesel engines were running much hotter than normal and so, they used much more lubricating oil than anticipated. The diesels required constant work to just keep them running. The torpedoes they had taken aboard at Lorient ran erratically and the torpedomen could not correct the problem.

Next day, U-188 found another convoy heading up the Arabian coast and she found herself in a good attack position. Six torpedoes were fired - six went wrong! None hit their mark and all detonated harmlessly at the end of their run. They had to dive for an airplane before reloading, and this convoy also escaped.

Lüdden then decided to head into the Gulf of Oman where he figured he would find many tankers plying those waters.

In the next six days, he attacked four ships - sank none! On the first attack, he wrote in his KTB ‘Electric torpedo exploded after eight minutes twenty-six seconds - attacking distance 800 meters!’ The next two KTB entries mention the appearance of ASW ships and planes, so he was pressed down for days again.

Late in the day of 5 October, he attacked SS BRITANNIA and claimed her sunk. However, she was sailing in ballast and even though she was hit squarely amidships, she made it safely to Bandar Abbas for repairs. There were other missed opportunities.

8 Oct., Lüdden was ordered to head for Penang for repairs. One of the boats with U-188 at the rendezvous with BRAKE, U-533, took over his patrol area. Fate was even more cruel to U-533 as she was destroyed just ten days later by Royal Air Force aircraft of 244 Squadron. There was one survivor of U-533, and he was so fearful of sharks that he swam 20 miles in 28 hours to Khor-Fakkam on the Muskat Coast!

En route to Penang, U-188 launched an unsuccessful attack on an escort vessel and on 30 October 1943, she arrived this Japanese submarine base. This patrol thus far, had consumed 121 days and covered 19,000 miles - 925 miles were submerged. Repairs took some time, and it was finally on 12 December 1943 when U-188 departed Penang headed for Singapore. In his KTB, Lüdden called it ‘Shonan’, the Japanese name for Singapore.

In Singapore, U-188 took aboard another twenty-two torpedoes and a cargo for Germany. They loaded 100 tons of tin, 12 tons of rubber, half a ton of quinine, four chests of opium and about 1,500 sacks (20 tons) of Wolfram packed in rubber. This was consigned to a Berlin company, and the manifest was dated 29 December.

After a stopover at Penang, U-188 departed on the next leg of her patrol on 9 January 1944. The crew and the machinery were much more acclimatized to the tropics and this portion of the patrol was far more successful than the outward bound portion. In part, they had the British Admiralty to thank for future successes as they had determined that German U-boat activity in the Gulf of Aden and the nearby areas was minimal - and they suspended the convoy system!

U-188 had just cleared the Laccadive Islands Channel at dawn of 20 January, and spotted smoke dead ahead on the horizon bearing 310º on the same course. Fifteen minutes later, lookouts could see topmasts coming over the horizon. By 1000 hours, U-188 had dived and headed for the target on the reciprocal course. As the two vessels approached head-on, Lüdden observed that the ship was heavily armed so he would have to be careful.

The two ships were 2,500 yards apart and closing when Lüdden fired three torpedoes - they missed. The distance was too great. FORT BUCKINGHAM was sailing in ballast from Bombay to Buenos Aires with a stop at Durban to top off the fuel bunkers. The crew of the steamer was totally unaware of the attack, even with doubled lookouts. They continued to steam directly at U-188.

FORT BUCKINGHAM had departed Bombay on the evening of Monday, 17 January under command of Captain McLeod DSC, himself a veteran of the Russian convoys. He was ordered to keep his speed at or below 10 knots so that scheduled daily rendezvous positions could be maintained. The ship carried 89 men aboard which included British officers, Lascar crew and British D.E.M.S. and M.A.A. gunners. She mounted a high angle 12 pounder, one four-inch, one Bofors, six Oerlikons as well as rockets - a lot of armament for a merchant ship.

Lüdden was disappointed at this latest failure and with FORT BUCKINGHAM steaming away from him now; he could not keep pace on the electric motors underwater. He had to surface, kick in the diesels and chase his prey that way - but the diesels were acting up again and he was just barely able to inch closer and closer to the steamer. When darkness fell, U-188 was astern, about two miles off the port quarter of the target. The exhaust temperature of the diesels continued to climb and the L.I. (Chief Engineer) informed Lüdden that he could not maintain speed any longer and the chase would have to be abandoned. Lüdden would have to swallow it.

Patrol U-188 Continued: Fortunes of War