sank thousands of Allied ships. U-boats were so successful. Many thought they could win the
war, until the allies launched an all-out effort
to destroy them. Two out of three
U-boats would perish. Four out of five U-boat
sailors were killed. Yet there was no shortage
of volunteers to go to war in the iron coffin. Meet the sailors who manned
the U-boats, next on Suicide Missions. [music playing] Unterseeboot, shortened
simply to U-boat, was the German
word for submarine. They had once ruled the seas. But by the middle of
the second World War, the men who sailed
the U-boats knew they were closer
to the ocean bottom than they were to
their home port. The ferocious Allied
offensive against a U-boat had made them obsolete
fighting machines. [explosions] For most U-boat sailors, 1,000
miles from shore inside a steel tube, it was just
a matter of time before their U-boats
were found and destroyed. VOLKMAR KONIG: At the
beginning of the war, you didn't have the feeling
that it really would get you. You said, uh, they won't
get me, they won't get us. Later on the war, you knew that
you were taking a terrible risk the minute you left port. HORST VON SCHROETER: The
number of my classmates was, at the beginning of
the war, around about 450. And around about 230 lost
their life in the war, and you can imagine
what it means. ERICH TOPP: I was
operating in the Atlantic when I heard that the
center of the submarines was asking for my best friend
and thus it didn't answer. Then I knew that-- well, that he was lost. And that was a great
loss to me personally. And so, I felt
absolutely alone now. NARRATOR: By 1943, the
U-boat had become the target of thousands of Allied
aircraft and warships, all set on the U-boat's destruction. VOLKMAR KONIG: When
you're hit, you're dead, boat is broken to pieces. But if depth shot is very close,
then many things about the boat happen. The lights go out,
the pipes break, and there's water
coming in here, and everyone is doing
something to repair damage. And this is a little
bit frightful situation. And when the boats goes on to
depths that normally is not your diving depths, the next
second, something happens and you are dead. NARRATOR: The fierceness
of the Allied campaign against the U-boat was the
result of the submarine's initial success. 1939 to 1942 were the
glory years for the U-boats and the elite force of
volunteers who sailed them. Brass bands played when
they departed for patrol. Pretty young women
welcomed them home. Stories of their successes were
broadcast to a proud German public. [non-english speech] NARRATOR: And in this case,
the propaganda was true. The U-boats were the most feared
fighting ships in the war. NORMAN POLMAR: Merchant sailors
lived in constant fear they were going to be torpedoed. And if you're in the
Atlantic, the North Atlantic, even in summer time, water
temperature is 50 degrees. A few hours in
that, you're dead. They slept with
their clothes on. The lifeboats were always rigged
and ready to go with food, flares, and water. It was a very difficult period. NARRATOR: The U-boats left
their heavily defended home ports in the
Mediterranean and North Seas, as well as the coast
of France, and prowl the ocean for their prey. Merchant ships carrying war
supplies to Germany's enemy, the English. The merchant ships came from
the United States, Canada, and South America. In an attempt to
protect themselves, the merchant ships
gathered and crossed the Atlantic in large groups,
known as convoys, which were escorted and
guarded by destroyers. But U-boats employed a tactic
called "the wolf pack," that was devastatingly effective. The U-boats spread out in
great lines across the ocean. When one U-boat spotted the
convoy, it held its fire and radioed the others. Once the others had gathered,
they attacked as a pack. HORST VON SCHROETER: My first
patrol as captain of support, they were positioned in
their line of 40 subs. I was on the northern
part of the line and the convoy was detected
by the southern part. I dived and get the bearing
of the convoy by sonar. I could sink two
ships in this convoy. I could see the part of the
boat thrown up into the air. NARRATOR: Initially, the
wolf packs were unstoppable. For the men inside the
U-boats, sinking British ships began to take on a routine. Each U-boat was identified,
not by a name like US subs, but by a number. Volkmar Konig was a
midshipman on U-99. With more ships, with
battleships, or submarines where you send torpedoes
to another target, it's completely impersonal. You think of the ship and you
think of the merchant ship you want to sink, and you don't
think of the poor people that perhaps have to jump into
the water from a burning tank into the burning oil. Yeah, you don't think of that. It's just something
you are trained for and you do, more or
less, as a routine work. To a sailor on a battleship,
it was a mean way of doing warfare. Had they sneak around here
somewhere underneath, and what they should come and stand
it, and we shoot it out. NARRATOR: Some convoy
battles were over in hours, some would take days. HARRY COOPER: Generally, they
would try to attack at night. Some of the U-boats would
scatter around the convoy and fire from outside. Some of the guys
would deliberately get inside the convoy
to where it was almost impossible to attack them. The method of attack depended
on the particular skipper. NARRATOR: The existence
of such deadly submarines in the early years of World
War II, 1939 and 1940, had caught the
British off guard. Two decades earlier at
the end of World War I, Germany had been forced to
sign the Treaty of Versailles. Among its many restrictions was
the outlawing of German U-boats because of their effectiveness
during the first World War. But the German Navy began
to violate the agreement just three years
after it was signed. They secretly purchased that
Dutch submarine building firm and began constructing
U-boats for other countries. The goal was to ensure
that the German Navy stayed on the cutting edge
of submarine design. By 1932, Germany
was openly building U-boats in direct
violation of the treaty. In September of
1935, Adolf Hitler tapped former World War I
U-boat Captain Karl Donitz to command his U-boat fleet. Donitz had reason Germany
could win a war against Britain if the enemy's food and
supplies could be cut off. It was Donitz who first declared
that proper target for a U-boat was not the warship,
but the merchant ship. Donitz knew that if his
U-boats could sink more ships than the British could build,
Germany would win the war. Once the war began
in 1939, Donitz' plan was more successful than
anyone could have imagined. [inaudible] NARRATOR: By 1940, the U-boats
and the men who sailed them had become the
sharks of the sea. But as the sharks
pressed their attack, the Allies were hard at work
planning their destruction. [explosions] the "Kriegsmarine," d commissioned nine
different types of U-boats, more than half
were what they called the "Type VII." This type sank more tonnage per
boat than any other submarine. It required a crew of 51
sailors, four officers, and 47 men. They coexisted 24 hours
a day, seven days a week, shoulder to shoulder
in a steel tube roughly the size of
two railroad cars. The men on a U-boat
lived and worked in a tight confined space packed
with weapons and machines. Each sailor's job was crucial. They literally held one
another's lives in their hands. It made for a camaraderie that
existed in few other places. NORMAN POLMAR: It did
exist in an aircraft where you had six, or
eight, or 10 people. If someone screwed
up on the airplane, you could lose the plane. But they were dependent upon
each other only for those two, four, six hours. When the plane landed,
they dispersed. In the submarine, that crew
was dependent upon one another for two or three months. That built a kind of camaraderie
that I don't believe existed in any other military service. HORST VON SCHROETER: The
fate of all men aboard depend on their
last young seamen. If as seaman onlooker
didn't see a destroyer, that is the fate for the
entire boat and crew. On patrol, we didn't
wear a uniform or ranks. We had just more or less
the same clothing aboard. We know each other and we
know who was the other one. NARRATOR: Gunther Heinrich
was the captain of U-960. We were over eight weeks
in the North Atlantic. And in this time, some
boys do not see fresh air. And if any man aboard passes
you, you could smell him. You did not look at
him, you smell him. NARRATOR: Kurt Diggins was just
27 years old when he captained U-458. KURT DIGGINS: I should say we
were some kind of a family. I was very proud of my crew and
it was for me very important that this crew always were
satisfied with the old man of 27 years, who was a captain. NARRATOR: The men working inside
the claustrophobic confines of a U-boat had some unusual
ways to relieve the stresses. Sailors crossing the
equator for the first time were baptized into
the new hemisphere. Old hands dressed as
Neptune, King of the sea, and Thetis, his queen. Inductees were shaved and
had the northern dirt washed from their skin. But the camaraderie onboard
never took away from the fact that the U-boat was a weapon
of attack and destruction. Before the war,
Admiral Karl Donitz had determined he would
need a fleet of 300 U-boats to cut the British supply
lines across the Atlantic. But when Adolf Hitler
launched his blitzkrieg in September of 1939, the
German Navy wasn't prepared. Donitz had just 57 U-boats. Yet in spite of
their modest number, the U-boats were a
lethal fighting machine. In their first year
of action, U-boats sank 438 merchant ships
and aircraft carrier, and 11 other warships. Buoyed by their early
success, the German Navy began building U-boats
at a furious pace. As the U-boat Navy
swelled in size, so did the number of young
German volunteers. In general, it was not
difficult to find people to sail U-boats. There was a certain romance,
a certain prestige almost, in serving in U-boats. Submarines also had an
appeal for people who wanted to take charge, be in command. Because to command a
destroyer or a cruiser, let alone a battleship, you had
to be a commander or a captain. But a lieutenant could command
a submarine, through only 50 people, but it was a warship and
it was an independent command. Rear Admiral Erich
Topp captained three different
U-boats during the war. Even after the
end of the war, we had always volunteers wanted to
participate in this struggle. Because, you know, some
men in us were an elite, and they considered themselves
to be members of an elite. And therefore, many wanted
to, even at that time, they wanted to participate. NARRATOR: Submariners were
an elite group because of the effectiveness
of their U-boats. And it was the torpedo that
gave the U-boat its teeth. In 1940, the German
torpedo could be set to travel at a
predetermined angle. But once fired, its course
couldn't be changed. U-boat captains work
to get as close as possible to their
targets before firing. There were four torpedo tubes
in the bow of a Type VII U-boat. Additional torpedoes
were stored here and could be loaded with
heavy pulleys and chains. Most of the crew
slept in bunks tucked between these massive weapons. Aft were two huge diesel engines
that could drive the U-boat at 19 knots on the surface. An electric motor could propel
it at only two to three knots when submerged. There was also another torpedo
tube in bunks for the remainder of the crew. The 50-ton battery that
powered the electric motor was below deck. Fuel and buoyancy
tanks were located throughout and
alongside the boat. On midship stood the conning
tower and the tiny captain's quarters. There was a galley and
two toilets, one of which was packed with food when
the boat left on patrol. Helmut Schmoeckel
captained U-802. HELMUT SCHMOECKEL: When
we left the harbor, the whole way along the
submarine was full of boxes. And we went all this
over cases with food. We were prepared to stay without
any support for four months or longer. NARRATOR: Jurgen Oesten
captained three U-boats and organized wolf pack attacks. In the crew's quarters, there
are torpedoes and potatoes, and whatever stuff is hanging
around in between these bunks. And there's no such
thing as private life. And there's nothing
you can keep secret. Everybody knows everybody. And all has bad men as always
and that's always particulars. NARRATOR: The lack
of private space meant officers and crewmen
lived and worked side by side. VOLKMAR KONIG: The
officers mess here. OK, they had a small table,
and they had their bunks there. It was not very comfortable. It was cramped and crowded. Well, you were in
a submarine and not in a hotel, four-star hotel. NARRATOR: Sleeping
arrangements for the crew were less than first class. HARRY COOPER: They
hot-bunked, which means there was one bunk
for every two sailors. One guy would be on
watch, and the other guy would be sleeping. And when the watch would change,
one guy would tumble out of bed and the other guy
would tumble in. The bed would still be warm,
and wet, and rather smelly. U-boat sailors didn't see the
sunlight because their job was down inside the submarine. Even when they were
running surfaced, the only ones to
see the sunlight would be the skipper,
the officer of the watch, and the lookouts. The torpedo mechanics
never saw the sun because they were
in the torpedo room. The engine mechanics were
back in the diesel room. Their job was inside the sub. So they would go weeks,
months at a time, without ever seeing the sun. NARRATOR: When
U-boats submerged, they were slow and
awkward to handle. Most new boats only dove
to escape enemy attack. Even when they wanted
to stay underwater, U-boats were forced to
surface two hours a day to run their diesel engines and
charge the enormous batteries that propelled the submarine
when it was submerged. Yet in spite of
their limitations, the wolf packs decimated
the British convoys. The men who sail the
U-boats became masters at their special
brand of warfare. JURGEN OESTEN: It's
like big game hunting. On the other hand, maybe
just seconds, and then you would turn from
hunter to hunted, you see. And you try to
trick the escorts, and the escorts
tried to catch you. That's caused a question of
second stage thinking, meaning, that you tried to do the
opposite of what your opponent thinks you will do. But of course, this takes
hours and days sometimes. And if the other bloke has
the experience as well, then it may come to second
stage and third stage thinking. It's just a matter of notes. NARRATOR: There
was one thing that could rattle the nerves of even
the most hardened submariner, the depth charge. Once submerged, a
submarine was basically blind and defenseless. U-boat sailors had
to wait out an attack and hope the destroyer
missed their position. But the depth charge didn't have
to actually hit the submarine. They were set to explode
at a predetermined depth. Their powerful blasts instantly
increase the water pressure around them, and crush
the U-boat if it was near. Gerd Thater was the
captain of U-466. GERD THATER: I have
had water bomb attacks in the Mediterranean
up to eight hours. And we were counting at
that time 180 water bombs, 181 to be correct. [laughs] NARRATOR: As the charges
exploded around them, the U-boat sailors
waited together to see if it was
their day to die. When a U-boat submerged,
sailors simply breathe the air locked inside
the boat when the hatch was sealed. After 24 hours, the
oxygen supply grew thin. Carbon dioxide filters
and oxygen gas canisters could help. But after 48 hours, the sailors
would have to resurface or die. Captains trapped in the
boat with their crew try to appear cool under fire. JURGEN OESTEN: You try to keep
your mind under control, which is not so easy. And of course, you have to
keep up a certain confidence and appearance for the crew
or members of the crew. There was a submarine
commander in the control room who tried to make this
appearance as well. And had a book he was reading,
but he had the book wrong, turned wrong. NARRATOR: Whether they were
reading a book upside down or simply waiting in
silence, U-boat sailors knew the stakes were high. Unlike a surface ship,
when a U-boat took a hit, it usually meant instant
death for all hands on board. HARRY COOPER: If they
were close to the surface, they would basically drown, any
submarine, when its hold almost invariably stands on one
end and begins to sink. So suddenly, you're
laying on the floor that used to be the bulkhead. It's dark, your bodies, your
tools, your spare parts, are all falling down in a pile. Eventually, the submarine
reaches its crushed depth and it's over. When they're running extremely
deep, it's instant death. Neither way is anything
to look forward to. NARRATOR: Still, U-boat
sailors accepted the dangers of their mission. Every month, they send
hundreds of thousands of tons of British supplies
to the bottom of the sea. By 1941, it looked as though
nothing could stop them. Life on a German
U-boat was hard, but it suited some
men extremely well. Like the German Air
Force, U-boat service had its own aces. Although there was no
set number of kills that put a man in this
select company, the U-boat sailors
knew who they were. Fearless skippers like Gunther
Prien, Joachim Schepke, and most famous of all,
Otto Kretschmer, who sank over 325,000 tons of
British cargo, more ships than most countries had
in their entire navies. Volkmar Konig was
just 20 years old when he was assigned to
Kretschmer's famed U-99. It was his first
patrol on a U-boat. VOLKMAR KONIG: My
first impression is it's a very
familiar atmosphere. Here, the light is low. And there are noises and
humming of some machines, and music is coming
off the radio. And it's not a sterile
atmosphere, it's familiar. It's cozy somehow. I was lucky to
come aboard a boat with a crew that had
a lot of experience. They were old hands, and the
captain was 38 years old. He was the old man. NARRATOR: The men who held
the title of U-boat Ace had a cold-blooded
confidence that defied the dangers around them. VOLKMAR KONIG:
Kretschmer became an ace because he was cold-blooded
and he was very intelligent. These two factors were the
main reason for his success. I don't know what Kretschmer
felt. He knew he was in a war and he was commanding
a little boat in the the wide open
spaces of the Atlantic, like a little Viking
boat in former times. And he knew what risks to take. And he knew he could
rely on his crew. NARRATOR: U-boat
Ace, Erich Topp, sank 38 ships, 185,000 tons, the
third highest total in the war. I never have had fear
onboard of a submarine even in very dangerous situations. And of course, that had
an effect on my crew and they were relying on me. You know, when I met the wife of
one of my men, she said to me, my husband says, when
it is very dangerous, then I go into the
pocket of my captain. [laughs] So you see, they were lying on
me and that is very important. NARRATOR: But it was a sign
of the dangers they all faced when three
of Germany's aces were lost in March of 1941. Gunther Prien and
his U-boat were sunk while approaching a convoy. Joachim Schepke was killed
when a British destroyer rammed his U-boat. And Otto Kretschmer's
U-99 was damaged by the British
destroyer, HMS Walker, and forced to the surface. VOLKMAR KONIG: We came
up to the surface. And we were lucky that the
destroyer was so near to us, that when he opened fired,
the shelves went over the boat because they couldn't turn down
their guns so low that it would hit us. NARRATOR: Kretschmer's
crew managed to abandon their crippled boat
and were plucked from the ocean by the crew of the destroyer. The lead engineer
stayed aboard the sub and flooded the tanks
to scuttle the U-99. But he couldn't escape
before the boat sank. Kretschmer and the
rest of his crew spent the remainder of the
war in a Canadian prisoner of war camp. Initially, when
the US went to war with Germany in
December 1941, it only made U-boats more effective. The American ships gave the
U-boaters more targets to sink. By January 1942, U-boats were
sinking American merchant ships along the United
States eastern seaboard and mining American harbors. By the beginning of
1943, Admiral Karl Donitz had the largest submarine
fleet ever assembled. The Germans were launching
five new U-boats a week. March 1943 was the
U-boats' peak of success. During that month alone,
U-boat sank 120 Allied ships. But even as U-boat sailors
enjoyed the victories of March, the British and American
forces were working furiously to tip the balance against them. In the spring of
1943, ominous reports began circulating
through the German fleet. It was becoming increasingly
difficult for U-boats to avoid detection. Just eight weeks after
the victories of March came the month referred
to by U-boaters simply as "Black May." HARRY COOPER: The tide
of the U-boat battle turned in Black May of '43. There's no doubt about that. The German Navy lost 44
boats that one month alone. It was an absolutely devastating
blow to Admiral Donitz. The Kriegsmarine had no
idea what had happened. They had suspicions
but they didn't know. NARRATOR: In May of 1943,
the Atlantic U-boats were overwhelmed. Wherever they went, Allied
warships and airplanes seemed to be waiting,
ready to attack. And the punishment
they rained down was more ferocious than anything
the submariners had seen before. After May 1943,
to a large degree, taking a U-boat to sea
was a suicide mission. The Germans never again achieved
superiority at sea the way they had up until May of '43. NARRATOR: Even as the
Kriegsmarine search for answers, their once-powerful
hunters were being slaughtered and the Allies were
increasing the pressure. For the men in the
German U-boats, it would only get worse. faced by the U-boat fleetrte in Black May of 1943 was the
result of several things. Admiral Karl Donitz had
insisted on daily communication with his U-boats. Message decoders, known
as enigma machines, were onboard every boat. The German codes had baffled
the allies for years. But by May of 1943,
British code breakers had finally cracked them. Now, the Allies knew everything
Donitz said to his captains and everything they said to him. It became one of the Allies'
most closely-guarded secrets. NORMAN POLMAR: Matter of fact,
their biggest problem became, how do you disguise the
fact that you were breaking their codes? You couldn't go
after every U-boat or pretty soon the
Germans would realize you were breaking the code. Ironically, on at
least two occasions, Donitz started to believe that
we had broken the U-boat codes. Both times, he had groups of
naval officers and scientists look at all of
the available data and determine if we were
breaking their codes. Both times, they said no. Their codes, their
enigma machine was too complex, too good. NARRATOR: But broken codes
were only part of the U-boaters problem. By Black May, the
Allies had also developed an airborne
radar that airplanes could use to locate
U-boats traveling on the surface of the ocean. Now, unless a U-boat
was submerged, it would be found and attacked. On the surface, lookouts
scanned the skies for enemy aircraft armed with
submarine-killing machine, guns, and bombs. Once one was spotted, the U-boat
made an immediate crash dive. HORST VON SCHROETER:
They were trained to disappear from the
surface within 30 seconds. And it took another 30 seconds
to get down to 60 meters depth. HARRY COOPER: 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. NARRATOR: For U-boats
spotted at nighttime, there was an additional
Allied weapon that proved brutally effective. HARRY COOPER: The Leigh light
was a 75,000 candlepower light hung under the wing of a bomber. When they would find
a U-boat on the radar, they would cut the engines,
glide down on them. 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. NARRATOR: By May of '43,
the Allies had perfected high-frequency direction
finders, nicknamed "huff-duff," that could pinpoint a U-boat
from the electronic signal emitted by its radio. Now, as soon as a U-boat radio
operator tapped out a message, the Allies triangulated
his signal, and within seconds knew
his exact location. Suddenly, the main tactical
advantage of a submarine, stealth, had been lost. By Black May, the Allies could
not only find the U-boats, they also had new
weapons to kill them. NORMAN POLMAR: By May of '43,
we had a significant number of B-24 Liberators. Liberator, in many
respects, was the best anti-submarine aircraft
in World War II. Liberator had tremendous
range, carried a big sonar, could carry a large
payload of depth charges. There were also some new
anti-submarine weapons becoming available, including
homing torpedoes. They dropped out of
an aircraft and it listened for the noise of
the submarine propellers, and then just track the
submarine, highly effective weapon. NARRATOR: The Allies also built
small aircraft carriers, known as jeep or pocket carriers,
to accompany the convoys. More ships were equipped with
Hedgehogs, mortar-like weapons that hurled two dozen bombs
off the bow of a ship. Hedgehogs weren't set for
a predetermined depth. They exploded on
contact with the U-boat. Since they didn't explode
unless they found their target, the Hedgehogs made it possible
to maintain sonar contact with the U-boat
throughout the attack. The Allies also created
special hunter-killer groups. Earlier in the war, destroyers
had to stay with their convoys. But as more destroyers
became available, hunter-killer groups were
tasked to go on the offensive. The destroyers didn't let up
until the U-boat was located and killed, something they knew
would happen when oil and air bubbles rose to the surface. And if it took two days,
three days, whatever, they would stay right with
it until they killed it. 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 them. NARRATOR: Suddenly,
by May of '43, Donitz was losing
a U-boat a day. Among the thousands
who died was Donitz' own son, killed
when U-954 was sunk. Donitz pulled his
U-boats from the Atlantic while they tried to regroup. NORMAN POLMAR: By May of '43,
the German U-boat was obsolete. The Allies, given time,
would always find it. The Allies just overwhelmed them
with technology and numbers. When you put the
technology and the numbers together with the code
breaking, the U-boats just did not have a chance. NARRATOR: Unaware the
Allies had broken his codes, Donitz feared that spies were
learning the U-boats' locations from men on the base. He began sending
submarines to sea at night under sealed orders,
not even the crew aboard knew where they were going. VOLKMAR KONIG: Until
the end of the war, and many years after
the war, no one really knew that the code, the
German Navy code, that was very complicated could be broken. NARRATOR: It became
increasingly difficult for the U-boat to survive,
much less launch an attack. On June 4th 1944, just
two days before the Allies would have stormed the
beaches of Normandy, the US carrier, Guadalcanal,
and five destroyers on patrol in the South Atlantic
captured U-505 and its crew. This rare navy film documents
the capture of U-505. It was a sad comment on
the fate of the U-boaters, that while the capture
was hailed as a victory to the public,
inside the US Navy was met with anger and regret. Captain Dan Gallery was in
command of the US Navy task group. HARRY COOPER: 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. NARRATOR: The submarine was
spotted on a Sunday morning just after church
services on the carrier. The ship closed in on
U-505 and bombarded it with depth charges. The subs shoot them off, but
was spotted again by aircraft. HARRY COOPER: 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 to chase them off the deck,
which is basically what they did. And they sent whaleboats
to capture the submarine. And Admiral gallery was yelling
"hi-yo silver" over the-- over the intercom. And they finally caught
up with the submarine. And they picked up
everybody out of the water. And they put the submarine
on the end of a tether and was bringing it back. Most people don't realize
Admiral Gallery almost got into a lot of
problems over that. 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
have been compromised, they would have
changed the codes and all the work would have
had to start over again. NARRATOR: But
Donitz never learned U-505 had been captured. The German Navy assumed it was
lost at sea with all hands. And they did not
change their codes. Two days later,
on June 6th 1944, the Allies invaded France. By this point in the war,
only one U-boat in 10 was returning from patrol. were fully aware that
their U-boat fleet had become obsolete. But they also knew thousands
of Allied war planes patrolled the Atlantic
looking for U-boats. If the U-boats stopped
going on patrol, those planes would begin
bombing German towns. So Donitz continued to send
the U-boat sailors into battle, where they faced a
superior enemy and often their own death. At sea, U-boats shared
the same radio frequency. They could hear when sunken
U-boats failed to answer calls from central U-boat command. There was a contact between
the center of submarines and the boats that
are operating outside. And of course,
they could listen. Men aboard wouldn't
give an answer. So they knew that there
was a lot of losses, but nevertheless
they did their duty. We, as captains, we're very
clearly and frankly informed about the situation. From that time on, we were
behind the development, and the hunters got hunted. NARRATOR: The U-boats came
out with a new device called the snorkel. As the sub was running just
beneath the water surface, the snorkel breathe in
fresh air through one vent and spewed exhaust out another. That way, the U-boat could
recharge its batteries and take on fresh air without
exposing itself to enemy radar and attack. With a snorkel, a U-boat
could stay underwater where it was safer, 24 hours a day. But Donitz couldn't
produce enough snorkels to equip every U-boat, and
eventually Allied radar could spot even the
snorkels' tiny profile. HARRY COOPER: It was
almost impossible to get two patrols out of a submarine
after Black May of '43. The Allies were just too
far ahead technologically in their detection and also in
their anti submarine attacks. The guys were still
standing in line to volunteer for
the U-boat force. I'm sure they didn't think
they were going out to die. It was always the other guy's
submarine that got lost. My submarine is
going to come home. I'm sure that was
their philosophy. NARRATOR: As casualties
mounted, U-boats were sent on patrol with
inexperienced captains and crews. Many were sunk on their
first and only mission. HARRY COOPER: 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
O's going on the chalkboard and then go back into the game. War is a lot more brutal when-- 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. NARRATOR: U-boat sailors remain
hesitant to criticize Admiral Donitz. HORST VON SCHROETER: I'm
convinced up until now that it was necessary
to go out with our boys even if it was very dangerous. It was war. But if it was, should
we go to the east front. It was as well dangerous. It was war. NARRATOR: In July of
1944, German shipyards finally delivered the first in
a new generation of U-boats, the Type XXI Submarine. It could dive deeper
and stay down longer than any U-boat before it. It could run faster
underwater than on the surface and had a fierce
array of new weapons. But the new generation of
U-boat had arrived two years behind schedule. And even then, there
were mechanical defects. For the U-boat sailors,
the Type XXI came too late. By 1945, the ocean
floor was littered with U-boats and their victims. The U-boat fleet had sunk 2,882
Allied merchant ships and 175 warships. Of the 842 U-boats that saw
combat, 793 had been sunk. Until the final days of
the war, U-boat sailors continued to go into battle. JURGEN OESTEN: Well, I knew
that the war was lost anyhow. And of course, I'm very sorry
that some people still lost their lives because
I sank their ships. Because if you know that
the thing is lost anyhow and you still run around sinking
ships, it's a bad feeling. GUNTHER HEINRICH:
In my last patrol, I met an American convoy,
there's six big troopships and I saw the GI's onboard
and were laughing and smoking only 200 to 300 meters away,
but I could not torpedo a ship. And because I could not
torpedo those troopship, maybe some 100 men
had their lives still. NARRATOR: Even in
the face of defeat, Admiral Karl Donitz
remained loyal to Hitler and the Nazi cause. Upon Hitler's suicide
on April 30th 1945, Donitz became the second
Fuhrer of the Third Reich. On May 7th 1945, Donitz
surrendered the German forces to the Allies. Donitz was tried at
Nuremberg and sentenced to 10 years in prison. It was the lightest
punishment handed out to any of the top Nazi leaders. In part, the light sentence was
a result of the Allied Navy's conviction that Donitz
had fought a hard war, but that he had
fought it cleanly. British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill later confessed that Donitz' U-boats
were the only threat that had really frightened them. HARRY COOPER: If the
U-boat war had gotten off to the kind of a start
that Admiral Donitz wanted, it probably would have
been a very short war. If he had had 50 more U-boats
to put around Great Britain in late '39, early
'40, it probably would have 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. NARRATOR: The German U-boats
suffered the highest casualty rate in the German military. 39,000 men volunteered to
go to sea in German U-boats, 28,900 of them
never returned home. The U-boat force
never wavered. The U-boat people at
the submarine bases knew what was happening. The boats weren't coming back. Never once did they waver. They kept going out. VOLKMAR KONIG: I'm proud
that they did this job. And it's easy
nowadays to say, how come they were idiots, and
doesn't know they knew what risk they were taking,
but they were taking it for their country, and for their
families, and for the cause, for the cause they
were fighting for. You're proud of this time
because you were in it and you survived, and you
know you were very very lucky. NARRATOR: For those
who did survive, their lives would
forever be altered. I'm not afraid to be
dead, or to die, or to-- I have a good relationship
as a friend of man. NARRATOR: No other force saw the
casualties witnessed by the men in the German U-boat. It left them linked by a
commitment to one another that the years have
not and will not erase. [music playing] <font color="#FFFF00"> [Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by <font color="#FF0000"> The Caption Center</font> WGBH Educational Foundation]
