It’s mid morning, Wednesday September 16 1942 and
in the middle of the vast Atlantic ocean there is a strange sight - probably one of the most bizarre
sights you could see during wartime. While the rest of the world is fighting in a desperate
struggle here, in this empty patch of ocean, is a German U-Boat - the most feared weapon
in the Nazi German arsenal - but instead of hunting Allied ships it is towing four lifeboats
and flying the red cross flag. The submarine’s captain is trying something desperate - he
is attempting to save the passengers of a ship he sank a few days earlier. From above
he, and hundreds of beleaguered survivors, can hear the droning of a bomber - an American.
The German captain tries to signal for assistance and the bomber flies away - but then it starts
to come back. What is about to happen will become one of the most controversial actions of the
Second World War because the American crew are acting under strict orders; engage and sink German
submarines with extreme prejudice. As survivors wave from their lifeboats the aircraft’s bomb
bay doors open - and all hell breaks loose.
How did an American bomber come to attack
a humanitarian rescue mission? Who was the brave German captain and why did he try to save
the lives of those he had just attacked? Ladies and gentlemen I’m your friend Mike Brady
from Oceanliner Designs and this is the true story of the sinking of RMS Laconia.
The story of the Laconia begins all the way back in the roaring twenties. The second Cunard
passenger liner of her name, RMS Laconia had just been brought into service by the Cunard line. This
company was responsible for creating some of the most famous ships in history; the largest and the
fastest, but Laconia wasn’t designed to compete with that class of passenger liner. She was a
slightly smaller, more utilitarian vessel at just over 600 ft long. She was no lightweight, boasting
a gross tonnage of 20,000. She had no fewer than six steam engines, a single tall funnel, and seven
decks. Despite the fact she wasn’t Cunard’s star ship, she was still beautifully appointed,
boasting lavish dining rooms, a library, plunge pool, and gym, among many other luxuries
that made her popular among her traveling clientele. Laconia was a unique ship; instead of
just running a regular passenger service across the Atlantic, Cunard line decided to employ
her in an entirely new and exciting capacity; cruising. Laconia would ultimately pave
the way for cruising as we know it today, at first just offering trips between Liverpool
and New York. But in 1922, she would make some serious headlines, becoming the first ever
passenger liner to complete a round-the-world cruise. Over the course of 130 days, Laconia on
her inaugural world voyage stopped at 22 ports; with some 450 passengers cruising in comfort to
exotic places like Havana, Panama, San Francisco, The Philippines, India, Egypt and Europe. In many
of these ports, Laconia was the largest vessel to ever anchor there. In fact, in several ports,
she was twice the size of the largest vessel previously to have used them. Passengers were
understandably enamored with all the sights and the ship that brought them there. Laconia, being
on the cutting edge of the increasingly popular cruising industry, helped lay the foundations
for Cunard’s legacy which endures even today.
Fast forward 20 years though, and Laconia was
in a different world. With the outbreak of WWII, the once-grand luxury liner was drafted into
service to be used as a troopship. Liners were quite effective for wartime use, since they
could successfully transport large numbers of troops over vast stretches of ocean at speed, and
like hundreds like her, Laconia was called up for service. Painted over in her drab wartime colors
and fitted with eight defensive 6 inch guns, Laconia went from transporting happy travelers to
and from exotic destinations, to carrying British troops bound for duty on the African continent
and escorting convoys of merchant ships. She entered service in 1940 and her 6 inch guns made
her a well-defended adversary for any German surface warships, but submarines were a different
story. In those early days of submarine warfare in the first world war rules had been set that
forbade the sinking of enemy passenger ships. It was a different time; German U-Boat crews
would surface their submarines and demand the enemy ship heave-to and be abandoned. But then
they began to experience unexpected resistance; some intended targets turned around and tried to
ram their attackers. Even worst, the British began to deploy Q-ships; from the outside they looked
like defenseless merchant ships but, in truth, they concealed hidden heavy cannons that could
knock out a surfaced U-Boat with a single shot. The German navy learned quickly; they began to
attack without warning and the era of unrestricted submarine warfare had begun. By the Second World
War the admiralty knew that their ships would not be approached by a surfaced German submarine.
They could expect an attack out of nowhere and at any time. Laconia’s silhouette was that of a
passenger liner, that was unmistakable; but her deck guns transformed her into a well-armed
auxiliary cruiser. She would be a legitimate target of war. Her guns would be useless against
submarines; she would have to rely on her good turn of speed to get out of trouble.
On Saturday, September 12th, 1942 Laconia was steaming across the Atlantic, off the coast
of West Africa, completing the final leg of a six-week voyage to bring provisions and passengers
back to England. On board were 463 officers and crew, approximately 80 civilians, including
women and children, 286 British soldiers, 103 Polish guards and around 1,793 Italian prisoners
who were bound for war camps in rural England, locked below in the ship’s holds. Many of the
civilian women and children aboard were family members of the British soldiers, accompanying
them on their journey home. Others were nurses en route to their new postings in England.
The Italian prisoners however would be without question the most unfortunate characters in this
story, even before the disaster occurred. Many of the prisoners had been captured in Libya,
and were told they were to be shipped off to England to work on the land. In the memoir of
one survivor, an Italian POW named Peter Lombari, he states that some of his fellow prisoners
stepped onto the gangway with relief and hope in their eyes at the thought that maybe they would
be headed for a fresh start. While aboard Laconia however, they endured harsh conditions locked in
damp cages below deck, cut off completely from sunlight. They were offered only 2 slices
of bread, jam, and a cup of tea per day, and to bathe, they were taken above deck where
guards would douse them with buckets of cold sea water - and that’s if they were allowed to bathe
at all. The Polish soldiers, who acted as guards on board the ship, were said to be merciless
toward the prisoners. These de facto prison guards subjected the Italians below decks to harsh group
punishment even for the most minor of infractions, such as being caught smoking in their quarters.
British officer, Lieutenant Colonel AJ Baldwin, however, found the prisoners’ conditions and
treatment to be unacceptable. He described the bedding provided to be filthy, with dirty
food containers scattered about the holds. The prisoners were crowded so close together, their
hammocks could not stretch without touching one another. Even the air was compromised, with the
portholes in the lower holds having been screwed shut, so there was no air circulation among the
many, many cramped bodies. The environment itself felt damp, humid, and oppressive. Aghast at the
state of these living conditions, Baldwin took action to improve the prisoners’ situation. Their
living quarters were cleaned and sanitized, they were given extended time for exercise on the upper
decks, and they were offered more substantial and nutritious meals. Baldwin also made it a point
to do away with the harsh collective punishments the Italians had been suffering at the hands of
their guards. Morale among the prisoners began to greatly improve under Baldwin’s directives.
Meanwhile, the ship’s captain, Rudolph Sharp, was keeping a close eye on a rather precarious
situation of his own. He was a veteran captain and descended from a line of seafarers; his father
before him had been a captain too. Sharp knew his enemy well. Two years earlier he had been the
skipper of the heavily-laden Cunarder Lancastria when she was attacked by German aircraft and
mortally wounded; with his ship sinking out from underneath him, Sharp had tried to coordinate
an effective evacuation but time was against him. The steamer was gone in just 20 minutes and
between 4 and 6 thousand people had died.
Sharp had survived and been put in command of
Lancatria’s running-mate, Laconia; his mind must have turned to the path ahead of him. Some
1,162 U-boats were constructed by Nazi Germany in World War II, and Britain was ill-prepared for
the unrestricted submarine warfare that would result. The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest
continuous military campaign in World War II, saw these German U-boats pitted against Allied
warships, troopships, and merchant ships, vying for control of Transatlantic shipping routes.
U-boats were notorious for their ability to easily cut off British shipping and supply routes
through the Atlantic, especially in areas farther out to sea where Allied air support would be
impossible. Realizing the urgent need to defend against these U-boats, the British would implement
technologies to protect their shipping routes and keep their much-needed supplies transported across
the ocean. Quite possibly the most significant of these technological developments would be
radar, in what would become truly the silver bullet of the U-boat. During this time however,
the German U-boats were reaching farther into the Atlantic than ever before, and once word spread of
Britain’s new underwater detection capabilities, they began working together in groups known as
“wolf packs”. Traveling in these packs would drastically increase the likelihood of sinking a
target, even if the U-boat was sighted on radar, because now the attacks could be carefully
coordinated amongst multiple U-boats. There were enough U-boats in the Atlantic during this time
to allow big groups of U-Boats to work together, targeting multiple different shipping and
convoy routes. Once targeted by a wolf pack, there was virtually no escape. Uboatswere
notoriously lethal, having sunk a staggering 3,000 Allied merchant ships and warships
during the War. They were almost impossible to spot visually; there was no telling when
a U-boat, or a wolf pack, would strike.
On top of this, Laconia was traveling alone,
leaving her vulnerable and open to attack. Typically, slower ships like Laconia would
be escorted by destroyers or cruisers when crossing dangerous waters. The crews of
these escort vessels were highly skilled in detecting and defending from enemy attacks
from below. On this particular passage however, the Navy was simply short handed - most of their
warships were needed desperately to support the war effort in Africa. Laconia would have to cross
unprotected. This dire situation was mistaken for an act of confidence; one survivor, Lieutenant
Geoffrey Greet, remembered, “We assumed, if we’re not going to be escorted and we can sail
alone, that their log ships must think that we’re pretty safe.” Laconia’s crew were still well aware
of the danger, and took every precaution. Guards were stationed as lookouts on deck, keeping an
eye out for the smooth gray hull of a U-boat appearing at the water’s surface or the telltale
streak of a torpedo’s wake. Captain Sharp kept the ship farther offshore than he believed the
U-boats would venture and heavily restricted radio transmissions to avoid detection. He also
hoped by keeping the ship steered on a zigzag course, it would thwart an enemy’s ability to
track them. However, the ship itself had one fatal flaw that would ultimately be her undoing.
By this time, Laconia was over 20 years old, and while she was still a reliable ship, her
boilers were desperately in need of repair and were burning low-quality fuel. Both of these
taken together meant that the ship produced thick, black smoke which billowed from her single tall
funnel. No amount of clever defensive measures could make up for the fact that Laconia was a
floating smoke signal, communicating her position to any vessel close enough to see the smoke.
That Saturday in 1942 Laconia was not alone.
Werner Hartenstein, commander of the U-156,
was a decorated and adept naval officer. Having completed over 60 patrols at the helm of torpedo
boats since the outbreak of the war, Hartenstein was not known to make reckless decisions. U-156
was on her 4th war patrol - these would typically last for months. The boat’s previous patrol took
77 days to complete and was a roaring success; Hartenstein and his men had sunk over 50,000
tons of enemy shipping. Remarkably, the boat had successfully torpedoed and badly damaged the
destroyer USS Blakely; the ship survived but 60 feet of her bows were blown off. Hartenstein was
evidently a keen hunter and that Saturday he must have been frustrated. They’d been at sea for the
better part of a month but had so far only sunk one enemy ship, the 5,900 ton merchant freighter
Clan Macwhirter. That had been off the western approaches to Gibraltar and the Mediterranean
but after slim pickings, Hartenstein turned his attention further south. U-56 was patrolling
off the coast of West Africa when there appeared, on the horizon, a telltale smudge of black smoke.
It was likely an enemy merchant ship; the hunt was on. But despite the excitement at finally
spotting an enemy target, Hartenstein and his crew would not strike yet. A daytime attack would
be far too risky, leaving open the possibility of being sighted by the enemy’s lookouts. They would
have to wait until nightfall, stalking their prey to maneuver into an ideal firing position
and strike under the cover of darkness.
That same evening, passengers aboard Laconia
were enjoying a dance for the Royal Air Force members traveling on board. It was just after
10pm; Josephine Pratchett recalled watching her parents enjoy the dance while she and her
younger brother were getting into their bunk beds and playing a game of Draughts. 5 month old Helen
Charles, was in her cabin with her mother Violet; she’d been ironing her dress for the dance,
and was sitting down to have a cup of tea. The mood aboard was cheerful; there was a war
on but for those few halcyon days at sea the passengers could put it to the back of their
minds. They were, after all, sailing aboard Cunard’s darling cruise ship, the first vessel
to carry travelers on a round the world pleasure voyage. She was grayed out, rusted and covered
in guns; but she was still a beauty. But just a few hundred meters away a predator lurked.
Hartenstein had identified his target and he knew it was a British steamer.. Her silhouette was
unmistakable, even in the dark. He calculated his firing solution and waited for the perfect
moment; but he’d made a mistake. In the dark, he figured this to be a 140 meter long
steamer; but in reality, it was Laconia, a bigger, 20,000 ton liner. Her sinking would be
a feather in any German submarine commander’s cap at a time when captains competed to sink
the most enemy tonnage. The biggest ship he and his men had sunk so far was only 8,000
tons. Laconia loomed large in his periscope; she was only 1,500 meters or 5,000 feet away at
a perfect 90 degree angle making only moderate speed, around 14 knots. His eyes keenly pinned
to his target, Hartenstein whispered his orders; Torpedoes away! The predator had pounced.
Aboard Laconia, all was well. The music played; people chatted happily - but then. A deep boom
sounded and the big ship shook violently as the torpedoes found their target. At 10:22pm,
an entry in the U-156’s logbook recorded simply: “LACONIA torpedoed.”
5 month old Helen Charles’ father, a young RAF ambulance driver from Wales,
knew immediately what the sound was. He wasted no time grabbing a few necessary items
and escorting his wife and baby daughter to a lifeboat station. Lieutenant Geoffrey Greet
remembered having a similar reaction. He said “I knew very well what a torpedo sounded
like and I knew we would sink because, if not, the U-boat would have fired some more. I had spent
three years constantly waiting on being hit and I didn't panic. I showed the soldiers how to put
on lifejackets and I was the last one out."
Not many others were so calm and composed
however, and panic quickly began to spread on board the ship. A distress call was hurriedly
tapped out; SSSS, SSSS - the standard call for help for vessels under attack from submarines.
It was really just a formality; there was nobody nearby to help. Laconia had no escort; she was all
alone. Aboard ship the scene was pure chaos, as the torpedoes had hit right at the water line of
the ship, where the Italian prisoners were being held. While most were killed on impact, those
who survived the initial blast attempted to fight their way to the upper decks in hope of escape.
The Italians’ attempts to break free and board lifeboats were prevented by the Polish guards who
held them back with bayonets, and the watertight compartments to the prisoners’ quarters below
decks were closed and sealed with no escape. A.J. Baldwin, the British Army Officer who had been in
charge of the Italian prisoners and had previously been working with the prisoners to improve their
conditions on board the ship, now had to enforce the rules handed down from his superiors: none
of the prisoners were allowed out of the holds until British civilians, officers, soldiers, and
sailors had boarded the lifeboats. The prisoners fought back, straining and bending the bars to
their holds and overwhelming the officers. In a blind panic, they fought desperately to escape
the makeshift prison they were trapped in, as the ship’s list became more and more severe.
Once the prisoners broke free of their cages, all hell broke loose. People were trampled and killed
in the panic, and the guards below deck fell back, afraid for their own lives. Their rifles had
bayonets fixed but they had no ammunition; in the skirmishes, as prisoners rushed lifeboats
that were being lowered, very few were shot; they were simply bayoneted to death. Many had their
hands hacked at with axes by the ship’s officers if they attempted to board a lifeboat. This was a
blind, furious fight for survival and became clear that there was little time left. Laconia began
to list heavily, severely limiting the amount of lifeboats which could be practically filled
and launched. In the confusion and the panic, some boats were overfilled or not rigged properly;
they broke free of their lines and plummeted to the sea below, spilling dozens of terrified
passengers into the water and the darkness. People treading water below tried desperately
to climb into lifeboats as sharks circled around them. Survivor Tony Large, a Royal Naval
Able Seaman at the time, recalled, “Those lucky enough to find a spot in one of the lifeboats were
unlikely to have space to sit as the boats were dangerously overcrowded at twice their capacity.
Anyone injured trying to escape the ship was in peril of a shark attack due to blood in the water.
And many of the lifeboats capsized, spilling their human cargo into the dark sea.” An Italian POW,
Corporal Dino Monte, later wrote that "sharks darted among us. Grabbing an arm, biting a leg.
Other larger beasts swallowed entire bodies."
Laconia burned brightly, her fuel oil ignited;
her survivors staring on dazed as their ship, their refuge - one of the the darlings
of Cunard’s fleet, became a twisted, scorched wreck before their very eyes. By
midnight, amidst explosions, fire, and panic, Laconia had slipped beneath the waves. Hundreds
were dead; left behind were hundreds more scared, astonished people who now bobbed alone in
a very large, remote stretch of ocean.
It was not a calm scene. People desperately
tried to pull themselves into already-overcrowded lifeboats and cried out for their friends and
family members. Italians, Poles, and British alike screamed and clamored for rescue, hanging on for
dear life to the sides of the few lifeboats that remained, or any floating debris they could get
their hands on. Writer James P. Duffy set the grim scene: “Imagine this: Several torpedoes have hit
a cargo ship. The vessel is ablaze, lighting the warm night sky with blistering red and orange
flames that climb high into the darkness… As suddenly as the first explosion broke the quiet
night, the silence resumes. With the ship gone, the fuel fires burn themselves out. The stillness
is broken only by the sounds of voices. Some call for help while others call out the names
of shipmates and friends. Who has survived, and who has been lost?” Geoffrey Greet, who
previously expressed confidence at the safety of the ship’s voyage even without an escort,
remembered that, "The sea was absolutely dark with dead bodies. We were looking for people who
might be alive, but we had 64 in a boat designed for 32. We fixed up a rope some could hang on
to, but they were not there in the morning. That was the longest night of my life.”
Hartenstein had watched the whole drama unfold through his observation periscope. From sinking
Laconia his tally had risen to over 100,000 tons of enemy shipping; this would make him one
of the German navy’s most elite submarine commanders. With his hopes high, he directed
his U-boat closer to the wreckage of Laconia, with intent to take the ship’s officers and
captain prisoner for information. Laconia’s surviving complement watched from the water
as the submarine slowly made its way through the minefield of smoldering debris, panicked
survivors, and dead bodies. A searchlight pierced the darkness, scoping out the aftermath of the
sinking. Many survivors looked on in fear, having heard tales of German U-boat men slaughtering
survivors of the ships they had sunk with machine gun fire. As the U-boat began to sift through
survivors, looking for her officers and crew they started to find terrified civilians and dozens of
barely clothed Italian prisoners of war - their allies - screaming and clamoring for rescue. It
must have been a terrible moment of realisation for Hartenstein and his men; Laconia was a
legitimate target of war and yet here, scattered among the bodies, the oil and the debris, were
hundreds of innocent civilians. He knew there was no hope for them; they are about 709 miles or over
1,000 kilometers from the nearest mainland. If they aren’t swamped and drowned in monstrous seas
they will suffer from exposure. As he gazes at the faces of petrified women, children and beleaguered
men Hartenstein realizes he is their only hope. He is the man who sank their ship; now he will be the
man who tries to save their lives. He orders his boat stopped and crew to come on deck to prepare
to take on survivors. U-156 is about to undertake a humanitarian rescue mission.
Disregarding war, creed, nationality, and politics, Hartenstein and his
crew began plucking the injured, exhausted, and traumatized survivors from the water. The
crew draped a Red Cross flag over the U-boat, and they were ordered to help distribute
food, water, and first aid to survivors. Some 200 refugees were crammed on board the tiny
U-boat’s decks; the boat itself could barely fit its own 52 man crew. Lines were rigged astern and
the four surviving lifeboats, badly overloaded, were rigged for towing; all up another 200
would be kept in those boats. Hartenstein fired off an urgent message to the Befehlshaber der
Unterseeboote or BdU; the Supreme Command center of the German Navy’s U-boat Arm. It said “Sunk by
Hartenstein, British Laconia. Unfortunately with 1,500 Italian POWs; 90 fished out of the water so
far. Request orders.” He suggested a diplomatic neutralization of the area to affect a rescue.
Hartenstein neglected to mention the civilians but it might have been a tactic; by focusing
on the Italian prisoners, Germany’s allies, he was banking on a more likely rescue effort; and
the gamble seemed to pay off. Admiral Karl Dönitz ordered seven U-Boats to abandon their patrol and
rush to the location - an incredible move because those U-Boats were just about to engage in a
surprise attack on shipping at Cape Town.
But things are about to take a sour turn. While
Hartenstein and his men are taking stock of the situation and Dönitz’s U-Boats are en route,
Hitler finds out what is going on - and he’s furious. For his warships to abandon their posts
and rush out on a humanitarian mission contrary to standing orders - and without his approval -
is an affront. The rescue mission is canceled; Dönitz is ordered to disengage all U-Boats
involved in the situation, including Hartenstein and the U-156. To rescue whoever they can, U-507
and an Italian submarine are ordered to intercept Hartenstein’s boat - the Vichy French send out
warships to collect the Italian survivors too. Hartenstein decides to do something drastic;
he broadcasts a distress call, not in code, and in English. He is calling out to his enemies
for help.At 6am, September 13 U-156 sent out a poignant message; “If any ship will assist the
ship-wrecked LACONIA crew, I will not attack her, providing I am not attacked by ship or air force.
I picked up 193 men.” Then he gave his position. This was actually a dangerous gamble. Allied ships
and planes could easily decide to disregard the plea for assistance, and instead move on the
U-boat’s position, where they were now open and vulnerable to attack. Hartenstein accepted the
risk though, hoping that countries would come together to assure diplomatic neutralization of
the area and carry out a joint rescue mission. The message was intercepted by a British station in
South Africa - but it was disregarded. It seemed like a ruse of war; Laconia had not yet been
reported missing. There was no response made.
For Hartenstein, U-156 and the survivors of
Laconia, now it was time to wait. While it was not the easiest of circumstances, Laconia’s
survivors and the crew of the German U-boat held an uneasy but necessary truce in the aftermath
of the sinking. Hartenstein in particular was well-liked by the survivors. Geoffrey Greet
recalls: "Hartenstein spoke very good English. He assured me there were boats coming from Dakar.
It became obvious he was a much better man than we had thought." The days following Laconia’s
sinking were harrowing, with Hartenstein and his crew working constantly to feed and look after the
survivors. Crew members offered articles of their own clothing to the freezing cold refugees, and
the cook worked around the clock to keep food and coffee available. Leaky lifeboats were repaired,
injuries were tended to, children were cared for and soothed. It was a monumental undertaking the
likes of which had never been attempted before by any submarine crew, but nerves were beginning to
fray under the pressure of caring for the hundreds of wounded and needy passengers. Two days later
however, the tides would turn. Help was finally at hand. At 11:30am September 15th, two more U-boats
and the Italian submarine Comandante Cappellini, all draped in Red Cross flags, arrived to assist
with the rescue. The four boats together collected as many survivors as possible between them, and
a rendezvous was set up with Vichy French ships for eventual transfer of the passengers
from the cramped U-boat to more spacious ships. They struck out slowly for the West
African coast with the lifeboats in tow.
By the 15th it had been three days since Laconia
had last been heard from and at last the German signals were given some credence. The British
ships HMS Corinthian and Empire Haven, were dispatched to seek them out and provide aid. While
the survivors were still not quite out of the woods, it looked as though rescue was not far off.
Maybe things would work alright after all.
If only that was how the story ended; a mid-ocean
rescue for the passengers and crew plucked from their lifeboats by friendly ships. The suffering
of the Italian POWs ended at last as they board Vichy French ships and return home to loved ones
and comrades. It wasn’t to be. No - one more cruel twist of fate was still in store for the survivors
of Laconia. Four days after their ship’s sinking, at 9:30 on the 16th of September, the men and
women in the lifeboats had clung together for support and morale - they had been
through horrible conditions and in the night the submarines, each with their
portion of survivors, had been separated. U-156 was all alone in a vast ocean - but
then, from overhead, there came a droning sound - four massive engines. An aircraft.
spotted a lone aircraft overhead. It was a B-24 Liberator bomber, an American craft, and it began
to circle. Hartenstein signaled to the pilot for assistance; maybe the American could coordinate a
more effective rescue with the approaching Allied ships. This was a strange, tense situation. The
U-Boat men feared American and British aircraft more than anything else. A U-Boat caught on the
surface was a sitting duck with almost no defense, but U-156’s men were confident their unmistakable
red cross flag coupled with the repeated radio messages and lifeboats in tow would protect
them from attack. As a symbolic gesture, Hartenstein had his U-Boat’s forward deck
gun covered by the red cross flag.
Up above the B-24’s pilot, Lieutenant James
D. Harden looked down at the strange scene. He wasn’t being fired upon and he could see a
red cross flag. How Harden and his B-24 came to even be there that day is a story typical of
the fog and confusion of war. The bomber had come all the way from remote, windswept Ascension
Island. Tiny and isolated, it had an American airbase built on it in secret in August 1942.
It was almost perfectly located halfway between South America and Africa, smack dab in the middle
of the South Atlantic. As a base for long-range anti-shipping and submarine aircraft it couldn’t
have been more perfect. But its isolation and the secrecy of its operations came with drawbacks. For
one, communications were scant. The base’s radio station, WYUC, was not in touch with South America
or the British at South Africa; it’s range did not extend anywhere near that far. Instead they relied
on a British system including a cable link to Africa and a British-operated radio station on the
island called ZBI; it was up to a British liaison officer to then pass submarine and ship sightings
between the British and Americans. Neither WYUC, the American station or ZBI, the British one,
picked up Laconia’s distress call on the 12th, the night she was attacked; not only that, they never
heard Hartenstein’s plea for help either. Finally days later, on the 15th, the British liaison
officer handed the Americans a signal; it told of Laconia’s sinking but it was badly garbled.
It said Laconia had sunk just minutes earlier. Not only that, but there was no mention of German
submarines helping in any kind of rescue effort. To make matters worse, the base’s small force of
aircraft, the 1st Composite Squadron, were on high alert; two of their aircraft had been shot at by
a U-Boat’s anti aircraft gun the day prior.
On the night of the 15th of September a request
came through via the British liaison officer; with rescue ships en route, the British requested
that an American bomber from Ascension attend the scene to provide air support and keep an eye out
for any enemy submarines in the area that could intercept the rescue force. The 1st composite
squadron maintained a fleet of A-20 and B-25 bombers and none of them could make it to the
location with enough fuel to spare to supervise a rescue; but as luck would have it a single
long range B-24 bomber had been in transit with its squadron en route to the middle east. From
the 343rd Bombardment Squadron, the Liberator bomber had suffered a mechanical breakdown
and it and its crew were stuck on Ascension. With the issues fixed, the bomber was quickly
pressed into service; Lieutenant James Harden and his small crew would now fly their first ever
combat mission. The bomber was loaded up with bombs and depth charges and sent on its way.
So it was that Harden, who had no idea of any kind of rescue effort, had accidentally
stumbled across the strange scene below him. He’d been told to engage and sink enemy
submarines that could interrupt a rescue effort, but to him the craft below must have looked
like they WERE the rescue effort. Attempts at communication with morse lamps between sub and
aircraft broke down; Harden radioed back to base for instructions and flew off to the South.
Back at Ascension the squadron’s commander, Captain Robert C Richardson, was faced with a
stark decision. Here, caught out in the open, was his sworn enemy. His instruction was clear;
provide cover for the incoming British merchant ships as they tried to rescue survivors. What
if the U-Boat beneath Harden’s B-24 was laying in wait to attack? A group of British merchant
ships caught offguard, stopped to assist survivors by a German U-Boat could be destroyed in minutes
with a huge loss of life. Blood would be on his hands. Not only that but the U-Boat might discover
the secret base on Ascension; a coordinated attack on the island would be a serious strategic loss to
the Allies who relied on it as a critical resupply station for forces in Egypt and Russia. Whatever
decision Richardson made, he had to make it soon; the B-24 only had limited fuel after flying so
far and minutes counted; otherwise Harden and his boys wouldn’t be making it home. The strain must
have been great and Richardson made the call. He had no idea what the U-Boat was up to; the red
cross flag could be some kind of ploy. Friendly ships were inbound and had to be protected. He
fired back a simple message; “sink sub”.
Hartenstein, the U-Boat men and the nervous
passengers watched as the B-24 turned back around and flew, low, back towards them.
It roared in at speed and Hartenstein and the others must have noticed something
chilling; its bomb bay doors were open. In a panic the crew and passengers tried to
get the lifeboats cast off from the U-Boat, struggling with the ropes and lines to get
free. Above their heads, at just about 250 feet high the huge Liberator roared and two bombs
dropped from its payload, 3 seconds apart. They slammed into the ocean with a terrific boom each
that sent up great spouts of water high into the sky. U-156 was under attack; Hartenstein’s
attempts to signal peace had fallen on deaf ears and now he had to prioritise his own men.
U-156 would have to crash dive to get away.
The boats were at last separated from U-156
and began to drift apart but the B-24 had come around for another attack run. Harden’s
first attack had missed but his crew were keen to make a good show of it on their first
combat mission; the bombardier lined the aircraft up for a second sweep and dropped
a single bomb over the dazed U-Boat. It flew through the air a few seconds and crashed into
the sea; only it didn’t land on U-156. It landed amidst the panicked lifeboats. With a roar, it
detonated and knocked two lifeboats clear out of the water. One survivors later wrote; “We saw
the bombs come down…Two lifeboats that were at the front of the towed were blown up. He killed at
least one hundred people.” On board the submarine, sailors and passengers alike were tossed against
the walls of the vessel by the bomb’s concussion. People in lifeboats were sent airborne, landing
in the ocean and then frantically swimming in search of an intact boat to climb into, if they
survived at all. Dozens who had survived the Laconia’s sinking and the strange days afterward
were now dead and dying in the water; but the B-24 was coming around for a third pass.
Hartenstein’s men had sprung into action. It took time to get a U-Boat ready for diving, especially
since the crew had been relaxed and hardly at action stations. Now the shock of this sudden
attack had worn off and they got to work. The B-24 roared overhead again and this time the bombing
was accurate; two straddled U-156 and detonated, shaking the submarine almost apart; one exploded
directly beneath the submarine, it’s a miracle it didn’t sink it then and there. With a crack
water began to surge into the control room and bow compartment; Hartenstein couldn’t wait
any longer, his boat was being bombed out from under him. He ordered his crew to put on their
lifejackets; U-156 would still have to submerge, even in its stricken state. From the damaged
conning tower he called out to any British survivors still on the deck of his submarine; they
would have to get off and into the ocean. With that, he climbed down, shut the hatch and slowly
U-156 disappeared beneath the waves. Up above, Harden and his men in the B-24 mistook U-156’s
dive for a sinking and celebrated; they thought they had just killed a U-Boat when really they had
just destroyed two lifeboats full of people.
Remarkably shortly after the attack,at about 11
am when the coast was clear, Laconi’s survivors were surprised to see U-156 surface again.
Hartenstein had dived so suddenly he still had survivors aboard his sub; he transferred them into
the lifeboats and left for good. As far as he was concerned, the rescue operation was over. Those
that had miraculously survived both the sinking of Laconia, and now the bombing of U-156,
were left alone in a wide, open ocean.
Life in the boats had been tough. Survivor Helen
Charles would later reflect on the situation, she said; “Just imagine how my mother must have felt
- a woman in her early 20s, with a five-month-old baby, in the middle of sea, wondering what was
going to happen.” Uncomfortable silence overtook the survivors, a consequence of dehydration, as
according to survivor Ron Croxton, “We didn’t talk a lot…your mouth dries up, your tongue swells.”
Those drifting in the lifeboats had to heavily ration water, down to as little as a tablespoon
or two per day. The sun beat relentlessly on their skin, causing increasingly painful sunburn.
To add to the indignities, sharks circling in the water made toileting out the side of the
boats difficult and dangerous. Some passengers that were wounded ultimately succumbed to their
injuries while waiting for help in the boats, and their fellow survivors had no choice but to throw
the bodies overboard, burying them at sea.
To say that morale among the survivors was low
would be an understatement. Another survivor, Jim McLoughlin, recounts spending his 21st
birthday crammed beside fellow passengers, adrift in a lifeboat in the open sea, their
clothes tattered and encrusted in salt, their lips grotesquely swollen and
split. That year, for his birthday, McLoughlin would receive a double ration of water.
He recalls, “No one sings Happy Birthday. No one suggests I’m a jolly good fellow. No one has
the strength.” Many of the abandoned survivors, left adrift, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted
after weathering two massive disasters, simply felt they lacked the fortitude to carry
on. Hours ticked by - there was nothing to do, nowhere to go; all they could do was wait
and hope somebody would come for them.
In the end, it was the German submarine
force, assisted by the Italian submarine Comandante Cappellin that once again came to
the aid of survivors. U-506 and U-507 sought them out and began to offer assistance to
refugees, particularly women, children, and the Italian prisoners of war. U-507, commanded
by Harro Schact, provided relief to survivors much in the same way as U-156, with crewmen offering
their own dry socks to freezing passengers and cooking a large breakfast for all aboard. All
this despite the fact U-507 had been attacked by American aircraft while loaded with survivors in
the previous days. The German sailors reportedly doted on the children in particular, offering them
chocolate and keeping them nestled on their laps for comfort and safety. After some time, the Vichy
French cruiser Gloire finally arrived; passengers began to be transferred from the decks of U-507
and the tiny lifeboats to the relative safety and comfort of the massive French ship. In the end,
Gloire would return to Dakar with over a thousand beleaguered survivors who had spent about a week
bobbing in open-topped lifeboats on the ocean.
But not all lifeboats had been successfully
located by the vessels which came to rescue them. In the time since Laconia’s sinking and U-156’s
bombing, the boats had drifted further and further out to sea, propelled by rough waves and currents.
Most of these drifting boats were so overcrowded, most passengers had to stand on weary legs
shoulder to shoulder in order to accommodate everyone. One boat was adrift for over two weeks
without rescue; finally someone spotted sticks appearing out of the horizon. Some said the sticks
were masts of a ship, arriving to rescue them. But as they drew closer, they realized the sticks
were no masts. They were trees. 27 days spent drifting in a rickety lifeboat, suffering from
dehydration, delirium, injuries, and sickness, and the end was finally in sight. Where the
lifeboat started out carrying 68 survivors, only 16 souls stepped out onto the sandy beach,
700 miles from Laconia’s final resting place on the Liberian coast. Helen Charles, just
five months old at the time of the sinking, owed her life to the tenacity of her parents,
who fought to save their child’s life during the ordeal. As an older woman she reflected on the
Laconia disaster; “My family's experience can be used to illustrate something bigger than us,
that there is a common thread of humanity holding us all together, however bad things get.”
So what had happened? In the eyes of German Admiral Karl Dönitz, the most important takeaway
from the incident was that German submariners could not under any circumstances be put
in danger to rescue survivors. After all, U-156 and all those aboard could have very
easily been lost in the bombing by the American warplanes. On September 17th, 1942,
as a direct response to the Incident, Dönitz, the Supreme Commander of the Kriegsmarine’s
U-boat forces, issued what became known as the Laconia Order. The Order stated that rescue
attempts could not be undertaken unless there were valuable members of crew, like captains, officers
or engineers, who could offer intelligence; civilians, if they were caught up in an incident,
had to be ignored and left to their fate. To press this message home, Donitz reminded his men
of a stark truth; Allied bombers had started attacking German cities and the U-Boat men’s very
homes were being flattened day and night.
Three years later after the War, the Laconia
incident would come back haunt the Allies and prove a major embarrassment. At the Nuremberg
Trials, Dönitz was on the stands indicted for war crimes. The Laconia Order was at the center of
the case against him, and the prosecution stated that by creating this decree, he was in violation
of the 1930 Second London Naval Treaty. But then, to the shock of all, Donitz outlined the reason he
issued the order in the first place; that a rescue mission had been attacked. Two U-Boats had nearly
been sunk as they attempted to save survivors, with Harden’s B-24 ignoring U-156’s red cross
flag. That at least a hundred survivors had been killed. The prosection’s case backfired;
nobody had even heard of an attempted rescue effort by German U-Boats and the revelation
was a shock. In the end, it was found that the Allied submarine fleet had used many of the
same tactics throughout the war, and as a result, Donitz would receive a comparatively lenient
sentence. He would spend ten years in prison.
But what of the American bomber crew and their
commander? Harden and his men had seen U-156 slowly submerged and reported a confirmed kill,
mistaking the controlled dive for a sinking. They were awarded the Air Medal for this when
of course, in reality, they had only destroyed a pair of lifeboats. Robert C. Richardson, the
base’s commander who had ordered the attack, was never indicted for his decision. He would go on
to become a Brigadier General and advise on NATO planning, nuclear weapons, US defense policy and
space-based missile defense schemes. Richardson and his men had no doubt acted under extreme
stress and with little time to make a decision but modern assessments are not too kind on their
actions. In 1993 a US Naval War College law series examined the Laconia incident and came to
a scathing conclusion. It said that Richardson and Harden, the bomber’s commander, were both guilty
of a war crime and that the fact no investigation was ever carried out was a serious indictment
on the entire chain of military command.
But what would become of Commander Hartenstein?
Just days after he was forced to cut away Laconia’s lifeboats, U-156 received a radio
message that Hartenstein was to be recognized with Germany’s highest military honor, the
Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. Not one to eschew humility, Hartenstein celebrated by
passing around beer to his men, declaring that he was dedicating the award to them and wearing
the decoration in their honor. The Laconia order came through loud and clear ; but Hartenstein
ignored. Two days after receiving his award, Hartenstein and the U-156 sank a British freighter
but again, Hartenstein was reported to quickly rush to the aid of the survivors, passing around
provisions to those in lifeboats and broadcasting their position to nearby shipping. Just a
few months later, in their very next patrol, the end came for Hartenstein, his men and
the U-156.. On March 8 1943 she caught on the surface by an American bomber and
attacked with depth charges. Blown in half, she sank and left 11 survivors in the water; the
Americans dropped rafts and radioed their position but an attending destroyer could not find the
men. They were lost and never seen again.
Survivor Geoffrey Greet remembered the
commander fondly, despite the terrible circumstances under which they met, saying, "No
U-boat captain who would sit on the surface all that time and risk his own life is a bad man. I
didn't think much of him at first – after all, he had killed 2,000 of my fellow
passengers. But by the end, I admired him."
