How wonderful technology is.
Pretty sad when you think about it.
A recent show on PBS about it said that the way the bow was split from the rest of the sub the torpedoes must have detonated in the sub. They suspected, but didn't prove, that one of the depth charges must have dropped right on top of the sub.
Well considering the captain lived under a cloud regarding the incident, this revelation did come too late.
I am glad it did come.
If Captain Claudius and his crew were successful in hitting and sinking the sub was it another sub spotted 140 miles away am I missing a point?
Thanks, for any clarification!
The story notes the German submarine was dispatched to U.S. waters as part of Operation Drumbeat in 1942. The book of the same name, by Michael Gannon, is a good read on that operation. The numbers of German U-Boats in U.S. waters were very small early in the war, but they still wreaked havoc due to a lack of coordinated action by the U.S. Navy.
Used copies of ‘Operation Drumbeat’ are available for a few cents on Amazon and for anyone interested in WWII military history will provide hours of good reading.
At this time in the war, American anti-sub warfare was very primitive. Not sure if they even had sonar yet. Which makes the sinking of this sub by Captain Claudius and crew even more a great accomplishment. The article says they apparently didn’t just drop a depth charge somewhere near the sub to do it in either, they dropped it right on it! A rare thing - even later on in the war when they had much improved ASW gear. A needle in a haystack thing.
I read a book years ago about U-124, the “Edelweiss” boat.
I recall the captain’s favorite hunting grounds was the Gulf of Mexico between New Orleans and Panama City. I wonder if his was the other boat sighted?
And how many years was he vilified?
You have to wonder if Capt. Claudius ever got another ship command after he finished at the naval college.
Historically, it is very difficult for us in the present day to put ourselves in the times and mindsets of 1942. The losses in the Pacific just kept rolling on and our British ally looked to be losing the Mediterranean while Russia was equally pressed from Moscow to Stalingrad.
Leaning the lessons of light-discipline took months and the German U-Boats used that time very well on both the Gulf and East Coasts. Small town house lights were enough to betray a ship’s distance and speed to a lurking sub. Off-shore oil wells with their gas flares were of great assist as well. In the early years of any war, the aggressor has the field advantage until the defenders can get up to speed.
A friend of mine is a marine archeologist, and was one of the first involved in the discovery of the U-166. It was discovered in 2001 during a sonar sweep which is required before any operations are performed which affect the bottom of the Gulf, such as the laying of a new pipeline, etc. An image showed up which appeared to be the correct size and shape for a type IX-C U-boat, except that the bow was blown off. The company doing the bottom survey brought their findings to my friend, who works for the government agency who oversees all this, and he agreed that it could be a long lost U-166. The first of many followup missions was done using an ROV, and they indeed found the submarine. According to my friend, for a single depth charge to strike a fatal blow against this type of U-boat, it had to detonate within just a few feet of the hull. He brought over some of the original ROV footage to my house. Just forward of the conning tower, the metal deck was distorted into an unmistakable crater. They speculate that Captain Claudius may have actually landed a depth charge directly on the deck, and it detonated as the sub dove through weapon’s activation depth. My friend said that chances are the torpedoes indeed did explode, as all of the hatches on the submarine were blown outward. The bow section broke off at the forward torpedo loading hatch.
As I mentioned, there were many followup expeditions, and not all of them underwater. A news team either from Germany or Britain tracked down the families of the deceased crew members. It turned out that the captain’s widow had remarried, and though she had passed away, they spoke to her surviving children. One of them brought forth a treasure trove of memorabilia she had, which included letters from her husband, commendations, etc. Incredibly, there was also some undeveloped still and movie film from 1942. They processed the film, and it turned out to be stills and footage of the newly commissioned U-166 touring around the harbor! You can see some of the still photographs here:
http://128.146.17.149/previous-programs/U166/U-166.htm
For many years, the presumed fate of the U-166 was that it was sunk in less than 200’ of water by a depth charge dropped from a Coast Guard patrol plane off of Fourchon, LA, which is west of the Mississippi River. The actual aircraft which made that attack is on display in the Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum.
Link: http://128.146.17.149/previous-programs/U166/WhiteandBoggs.htm
The U-166 gave rise to an incredible number of wild stories, barroom tales, and even at least one book! As a native of New Orleans and a longtime diver, I heard MANY such tales! All of them had a similar plot: “Well, I know a guy that my dad dove with who actually found the U-166, but when he went back to the spot, he couldn’t locate it again! But, he REALLY found it! His camera was broken though.” Stories like this ran rampant in the dive community, from Texas to Florida. I myself heard one directly from my wife’s uncle, who claimed that while in the Coast Guard, they saw a spooky image on sonar of WWII German submarine, drifting along completely silent, like a ghost ship. He said that the U-166 was undoubtedly still partly full of air, and was drifting all over the Gulf! I had to bite my lip in order to suppress my laughter. Supposedly some Rambo wannabe actually published a book describing his amazing secret adventures. They included the nail-biting tale of how he alone discovered the U-166, and actually entered the submarine. He told how the bodies of the crew were still there, preserved by the diesel fuel. Of course, he could not divulge the location of the submarine, “because the government will not allow him to do so”.
The discovery of the actual wreck site in 2001, located east of the Mississippi in over 5000 feet of water put all of this nonsense to rest. However, it also did raise the question of what submarine was spotted and attacked by the Coast Guard airplane. I asked my archaeologist friend about that, and he had the answer, at least with as much a degree of certainty as is possible.
At the same time as the U-166 was on patrol in the Gulf, the U-171 was also. She survived her wartime cruise, but while returning to port, struck a mine off the coast of France. The boat was lost along with much of her crew, as well as the ship’s log. The captain survived and was court martialed. During his trial, he was asked to reproduce the log from memory, to the best of his ability. My friend is fluent in German, and actually read the transcript of his trial. One of the incidents described by the captain was being attacked off the coast of Louisiana by an airplane which dropped a single bomb as they were diving to escape. His testimony noted that no damage was done. The details, location, and time all matched very closely to the Coast Guard pilots’ report, so it is extremely likely that they attacked the U-171.
Be sure to take a look at http://uboat.net:8080/boats/u166.htm