U-900 by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 12 – AMERICA CRUISE

 

05:08 (Seattle Time)

Thursday, February 17, 1944

Control room of the U-900

Off Cape Flattery, northwest point of Washington State

Entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait, Pacific Ocean

 

‘’Yes, it is Cape Flattery! We are finally arriving in our assigned patrol zone after nearly two months at sea, men.’’

The crewmembers manning the control room of the U-900 nearly sighed at those words from their captain: two months at sea was a long time, even in a submarine as comfortable as the U-900. However, they also knew that their mission was only beginning and that they wouldn’t see Germany again for at least another four months…if they returned at all. Ulrich von Wittgenstein then went to the chart table located aft of the periscopes and marked down his new location before calling to his side his second in command, Bruno Barber.

‘’Here we are, Bruno. We will now go up the Juan de Fuca Strait while staying in the deep channel. Stay at schnorchel depth for the moment and recharge our batteries to the maximum during the next two hours, until sunrise. Then we will go down to a depth of 150 meters and will continue on batteries at ten knots. Stay silent and keep a defensive only posture for the moment. I am going to go rest in my cabin.’’

‘’Understood, Herr Kapitän.’’

Leaving the control room and going aft, Ulrich went through the sonar section and the circulation space beyond it, to finally enter his suite, situated on the same deck as the control room. Even though his ‘suite’ covered only a total floor space of nineteen square meters split into three compartments, it still was unimaginably spacious compared to the accommodations of the captains of the older TYPE IX and TYPE VII boats, or of those of any other class of submarine around the World. Pushing open the door of his suite, Ulrich crossed quickly his small work office and entered his bedroom, where he quickly undressed before walking into the small adjacent bathroom, stepping into the shower stall and pulling closed its curtain before turning the faucets of the shower head. The spray of warm water helped him relax after the long hours spent in the control room, checking his navigation and being on the lookout for any possible accidental encounter with an American warship or patrol aircraft. While the radar, sonar and radio passive detectors had signaled to him numerous surface ships around him, he had not become nervous on that account: the Juan de Fuca Strait was one of the most frequented waterways in the World, linking the Canadian ports of Victoria and Vancouver, plus the American ports along the Puget Sound, to the Pacific Ocean. It was thus a strategically important venue in this war, which was the main reason why Ulrich and the U-900 were here. Toweling himself dry, Ulrich then thankfully went to his bed and laid down on it with a grunt of satisfaction. It took him only seconds to find sleep, being truly tired.

 

Eight hours later, after shaving and after eating breakfast at the officers’ wardroom, he was back in the control room, wearing like his men a relaxed, informal dress of turtleneck sweater and trousers. There, he found Leutnant zur See Heinz Blischke, the third watch officer, his most junior and least experienced officer. However, that was very relative, as most of the crew of the U-900 was very experienced by common standards. Blischke, while young, already had two war patrols under his belt and was, in Ulrich’s opinion, an intelligent and decisive officer with a very good potential to become one day a submarine commander.

‘’So, Blischke, anything special to report?’’

‘’No, Herr Kapitän, except for the fact that the traffic along the Juan de Fuca Strait is quite dense, on both sides. If we wanted to sink ships, we would have plenty of choice.’’

‘’And tell me why we are not sinking ships yet?’’ asked Ulrich, testing him. The young officer answered without hesitation.

‘’To exploit surprise to the maximum and get at the most difficult targets first, still undetected, Herr Kapitän. Once those targets are hit, then we can do methodical strikes according to our list of priority targets.’’

‘’Excellent, Blischke! You will one day be Captain of this boat.’’

‘’Danke, Herr Kapitän. You are too kind.’’

‘’But I meant it. Show me our present position.’’

Going together to the chart table, Blischke then pointed a dot on the chart representing the strait and the sounds leading to Vancouver and Seattle.

‘’We are here, some fifteen nautical miles short of the entrance to the Admiralty Inlet, which itself connects to Puget Sound. We should arrive at Point Wilson in a bit less than two hours, Herr Kapitän.’’

‘’Good! Have a second helmsman go up to man the surface helm station inside our forward underwater observation dome and go up with him. We will slow down and rise to a depth of fifty meters, where we will wait for a big, noisy ship heading towards the Puget Sound. Once we will have found one, we will stick to its keel and follow closely underneath it. Then, I challenge any hydrophone operator to be able to pick us up over the screw and machinery noise of that surface ship.’’

‘’Is the area of Point Wilson well defended, Herr Kapitän?’’

‘’By the standards of 1910, yes. By today’s standards, not so much. However, our intelligence says that the Americans have added an underwater hydrophones listening station in Fort Worden, one of the three old coastal forts defending the entrance to the Admiralty Inlet. We have no information about possible underwater minefields or torpedo launch tubes there, but we will err on the side of caution. Call the second helmsman now.’’

‘’Right away, Herr Kapitän!’’ replied Blischke before walking to an intercom box. As he was doing his call, Ulrich went aft to the sonar section and looked over the shoulder of the duty sonar operator, examining his passive sonar display.

‘’Schneider, I need a big, noisy ship heading for the Puget Sound, so that we could stick under it while going down to Seattle.’’

‘’Well, I believe that I already have a good candidate for you, Herr Kapitän. We have nearby what sounds like a damaged warship heading east, probably going to the Bremerton Navy Yard for repairs: I evaluate it as a probable light cruiser and its machinery is sounding like a bag of broken bones. I can also hear the continuous noise of multiple pumps fighting some major leaks.’’

‘’A lame duck! Perfect! Connect with the helmsman and direct him towards that cruiser, so we can stick to its belly.’’

‘’Understood, Herr Kapitän!’’

Leaving the sonar section, Ulrich went to an intercom box near the attack periscope and grabbed its microphone, activating it.

‘’Attention all hands, this is your captain! We are approaching an enemy coastal defense point. Avoid all unnecessary noises and keep your voices down until further notice. That’s all!’’

Ulrich then followed his own directives and went to his cabin to put on over his boots felt slippers specially designed to minimize the noise of a person walking inside a submarine. With that done, he returned to the control room to see how his sonar man and helmsman were doing.

 

His men proved to be indeed true professionals and veterans of their trades and the U-900 was able to follow a mere thirty meters under the wounded American cruiser as the latter turned South, leaving the Juan de Fuca Strait to enter the Admiralty Inlet and continuing towards the Puget Sound and Seattle. Ulrich let himself relax a bit once they were well past the first group of American forts: the fox was now in the hen house, undetected. What helped him a lot now was the unusual depth of the waterway, with an average depth of over 140 meters and maximum depths that attained over 260 meters. By exploiting the deep-diving capabilities of his submarines and using its underwater observation domes and infrared scopes and projectors to visually navigate, Ulrich was going to be able to go deep to avoid both detection and enemy attacks. With the most danger now behind him, he ordered his submarine deeper and slower, letting the wounded cruiser plod ahead. He however kept the surface helm station manned, as he would soon need to get to shallower waters and check for the presence of anti-submarine nets, sea mines and other obstructions. His intelligence information package given to him in Lorient was fairly detailed, although a bit dated, and he had worked up from that package a list of targets arranged in order of priority and difficulty. The first targets were the ones needing maximum stealth, before he started the real ‘light and sound show’. The very first one on that list was the entrance of the Sinclair Inlet, which gave access to the Navy Yard Puget Sound, in Bremerton, just west of Seattle on the opposite side of the Puget Sound. Ulrich was planning to discretely lay a few sea mines there and thus block the access to the yard.

 

17:51 (Seattle Time)

Control room of U-900, at periscope depth in Rich Passage

Southern tip of Bainbridge Island, Puget Sound

 

‘’ALL STOP! ANTI-SUBMARINE NET AHEAD!’’

The warning by intercom from the surface helmsman station, at the top of the sail, made Ulrich climb quickly from the control room to the forward underwater dome. There, he effectively saw through the thick acrylic of the viewing dome the interlocked steel hoops of an anti-submarine net blocking the entrance to the Sinclair Inlet, which led to the Navy Yard in Bremerton. Looking at the depth sounder indicator, he grimaced at seeing that the bottom at the inlet entrance was too deep for his sea mines to be effective, them having to be sown at no lower a depth than 35 meters. His first intended objective was thus proving to be out of reach for him. He could of course wait for the net to be opened eventually to let pass a ship, but there was no way for him to know when that would happen, or how long he would have once inside the inlet until the net was opened again to let him get out of it. Mentally scratching off that target, Ulrich went back down to the control room, where he raised the search periscope in order to look at his surroundings above the surface. While he didn’t see any ship near him, he saw at once the nearby coast of Bainbridge Island, which formed the northwest side of the Rich Passage. Knowing through his intelligence package that the southwest tip of Bainbridge Island was the location of an old American coastal fort named Fort Ward, he concentrated his attention in that direction, using the last minutes of daylight before sunset. While he saw a few wooden buildings and some stone embankments on the island, he couldn’t see any coastal gun. However, something else prompted him into calling out loud his electronic warfare and intelligence officer, Leutnant zur See Werner Schultz, out of his transmissions and EW section.

‘’LEUTNANT SCHULTZ TO THE CONTROL ROOM AT THE DOUBLE!’’

Schultz promptly came to near the search periscope and came to attention.

‘’Yes, Herr Kapitän?’’

‘’Look through the periscope, which is now pointed at what is supposed to be Fort Ward. I cannot see any guns there, but I see numerous radio antennas and masts, some being of rather unusual design. Tell me what you think of them.’’

The young officer, who had a diploma in physics and in electronic engineering, grabbed the handles of the periscope and glued his eyes against the binocular lens eyepieces. Ulrich saw him tense up after a few seconds of observation, but Schultz kept observing for nearly a minute before looking back at Ulrich, his expression sober.

‘’Herr Kapitän, those antennas are part of a long range radio listening station, the kind that listens to enemy communications.’’

‘’Are you sure?’’ Asked Ulrich, his interest fired up at once. Schultz nodded his head once at that.

‘’Very sure, Herr Kapitän: I could distinguish a number of rhombic antenna masts typical of such listening stations, plus a long range reception tower. This could be a very significant enemy installation for us.’’

Ulrich thought that over for only a few seconds before grabbing the nearest intercom microphone and speaking into it.

‘’MAJOR MARGRAFF TO THE CONTROL ROOM! MAJOR MARGRAFF TO COME AT ONCE TO THE CONTROL ROOM!’’

Putting down the microphone, Ulrich then smiled to Schultz.

‘’I think that this Fort Ward could be worth a discrete visit by our good Major Margraff and his men.’’

Less than twenty seconds later, Hugo Margraff ran inside the control room and presented himself to Ulrich.

‘’You wanted to see me, Herr Kapitän?’’

‘’I certainly did, my dear Hugo. Look through the periscope and examine the antenna park and buildings of Fort Ward. We may have something there worth a ground reconnaissance by your men.’’

Margraff looked through the periscope’s lens for a good minute, embracing as much as possible what was visible of the installations of Fort Ward before looking at Ulrich.

‘’I concur, Herr Kapitän. Do we have a map of that place?’’

‘’I have a general map of the Puget Sound and of the Seattle area, but not a detailed map of that Fort Ward. Come with Leutnant Schultz to the chart table, so that I could show you.’’

The three men moved quickly to the nearby chart table and took positions around it, bending over it as Ulrich pointed a spot on the map laid side-by-side with the maritime chart of the Puget Sound.

‘’We are presently just off the southwest tip of Bainbridge Island, near the location of Fort Ward. The waters around the island are quite deep, with a steep gradient right at the coastline. There is however this small underwater plateau at the southern tip of the island, where I can rest my U-900 on the bottom and still be able to use my periscope and schnorchel. What I am thinking of doing is to go rest there, then have you and your men go out of our airlock in frogmen’s suits, to swim to the shore and infiltrate Fort Ward, in order to look around it. If it turns out to be indeed a radio listening station, then it may constitute a valuable target worthy of some silent but deadly action on our part. You would thus need to use silenced weapons for that reconnaissance. Will you want to bring all of your men with you for such a job, or do you prefer to keep your team small?’’

‘’If I may have to switch to direct action, then I will definitely want all my men to be available, Herr Kapitän: in this case, numbers may help to prevent the enemy from raising the alarm about our presence.’’

‘’Very well! Sunset is due in a few minutes only. By the time that I have put down our submarine on that small plateau, night will have fallen, something that will help you infiltrate Fort Ward. It is however imperative that our presence here near Seattle should stay unknown to the enemy for as long as possible: we have a number of other targets that I would like to hit tonight while still benefiting from the element of surprise. Don’t hesitate to be ruthless and do not allow anyone to raise the alarm during your reconnaissance. Other than that, you will have full liberty to act as you deem fit, Major. Of course, if you can capture documents of interest for our good Leutnant Schultz, don’t hesitate to do so.’’

‘’I will bring waterproof bags with me, Herr Kapitän.’’ assured Hugo Margraff. ‘’With your permission, I will now go get my men ready for this mission.’’

‘’By all means, Major.’’

 

Hugo quickly walked out of the control room and went aft, then down by one level, ending on the submarine’s upper deck. A few more steps aft brought him to the compartment reserved for the living accommodations of embarked passengers, which contained a total of ten bunks, with individual effects lockers and one communal table. Before entering that compartment, Hugo knocked on the doors of two petty officers’ cabins next to it, in which three of his men lived.

‘’EVERYBODY TO THE TEAM’S COMPARTMENT: MISSION BRIEFING!’’

He then entered the living compartment and shouted out.

‘’MISSION BRIEFING! ASSEMBLE AROUND THE TABLE!’’

Within a minute, he had all thirteen men of his embarked commando team around him, including his second-in-command, Feldwebel Franz Stein, a veteran of five submarine patrols. Smiling at his men, Hugo made an announcement in a jovial tone.

‘’Well, men, the tourist cruise is over! It is now time to get back to the good old looting, burning and killing routine. We are going to exit underwater in frogmen’s gear in order to go on an armed reconnaissance of a ground military installation that appears to be a sort of radio listening station. We are to stay discreet, but we will not hesitate to kill any witness we meet, in order to prevent them from raising the alarm. We may also get to sabotage some radio equipment and steal classified documents during that mission. We will bring silenced weapons, handheld radios and waterproof bags with us. I want all of you ready to exit the submarine in forty minutes. Let’s move, men!’’

 

19:07 (Seattle Time)

Forward airlock of U-900

 

Just before pushing the button that would make the airlock flood, Hugo pressed the intercom button linking it to the other airlock, in the aft part of the sail, and spoke briefly.

‘’Feldwebel Stein, you may now flood your airlock and go out with your men. I am flooding out my airlock now.’’

‘’Understood, Herr Major!’’ replied the senior NCO via the intercom. Closing the protective panel of the intercom set, Hugo then flooded his airlock. With six men at his back, he opened the heavy, spring-loaded outer access hatch of the airlock and swam out, trailing behind him at the end of a short rope a waterproof bag containing his weapons, ammunition and special equipment. Breathing through his rebreather apparatus, which did not let out telltale bubbles, he closed back the airlock’s hatch and led his commandos towards the nearby underwater cliff marking the southern shoreline of Bainbridge Island, swimming vigorously with his rubber fins. Climbing up the cliff with his hands, he soon let his head emerge slowly from the water and quickly looked around him, seeing only the grass and bushes of the shoreline. He hurried out of the water and crawled to the nearest set of bushes, where his men joined with him. Franz Stein and his own team also joined up with him there, allowing Hugo to give a few orders in a near whisper.

‘’Okay, time to get our weapons and gear out of our bags. We will leave our breathing apparatus, masks and fins here but will keep on our diving suits, in order to save time in case we have to dive back in a hurry. Remember: be ruthless and don’t let time to anyone to raise the alarm. Use as much as possible your knives and silenced pistols first but have your silenced StG44 assault rifles ready as well, just in case.’’

A couple of minutes were enough to get their weapons and gear out of their waterproof bags and to camouflage quickly their diving equipment before they started walking in single file towards the Northwest, Hugo in the lead.

 

      The fourteen Brandenburg Regiment men had only to walk for about 200 meters through a dense forest before arriving at the edge of a large clearing containing three sets of four giant radio masts linked by overhead wires. Further to the West, Hugo could see the lights of a number of buildings situated inside the fort’s perimeter. Looking with his binoculars for the presence of armed sentries, he saw only a total of two soldiers guarding the main entrances of two separate wooden buildings, but didn’t see any sign of roving patrols. Signaling Stein to approach him, he then whispered to him while pointing one of the guarded buildings.

‘’You and your men go to that guarded building at our ten o’clock and eliminate quietly the sentry at the entrance before entering and seeing what is inside. You will kill anyone that you meet. Once you will have explored that building, go to the next ones to its left, one after the other. I will do the same with the buildings to the right of the one I will approach first. Questions?’’

‘’No, Herr Major.’’

‘’Then, let’s split!’’

The two groups of seven men then separated, their diving suits making them dark silhouettes that were nearly impossible to see until a half-moon would rise in nearly six hours.

 

Still leading his group, Hugo cautiously approached his target building from one side of it, at an angle that would add some more difficulty for the sentry to see him. After twenty minutes of walking at a crouch or crawling, he finally came to touching distance of one side of the two-storey wooden building, on which four illuminated windows were. Taking out a small, folding periscope and extending it, he raised its upper lens to just past the sill of the nearest window to him and looked through the lower lens. He frowned on seeing that the room inside which he was now looking was occupied by a mix of men and women, all wearing American Navy uniforms and manning numerous radio sets: despite his years of experience at killing enemy soldiers, he still felt reluctance at having to kill women. However, the present circumstances would not let him any other choice but to be indiscriminate about his killing tonight. There was also the fact that these Americans wore navy uniforms. This was supposed to be an army fort. Thinking about it, he concluded that this fact only reinforced the suspicions about this place being a secret radio monitoring station. Looking to his left at his nearest man, he whispered to him.

‘’The personnel here includes women. They will have to be killed as well, without hesitation. Pass the word.’’

As Heinrich Bayerling himself turned around to pass his directive, Hugo activated the microphone switch of his headset, connected to the portable VHF radio hooked to his belt.

‘’Raider One to Raider Two: be advised that this fort is being manned by navy personnel, including women. My orders about killing anyone without hesitation stand.’’

‘’Copy that, Raider One!’’ Answered nearly at once Franz Stein. Moving in succession to the three other windows on this side of the building, Hugo used his periscope to have a look inside, each time finding the rooms occupied and active. Up to now, both the number of active radio operators on shift and the quantity of radio and electronic equipment he could see indicated a major radio installation inside Fort Ward. Walking slowly to the corner of the building near where the sentry stood, Hugo used again his periscope to see where he exactly stood. The American soldier was actually standing a few paces in front of the main entrance and was armed with a GARAND semi-automatic rifle. The American suddenly searched into a pocket of his overcoat and extracted from it a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Seeing a good opportunity presenting itself to him, Hugo took out his combat knife and quietly advanced on the American as the latter turned his back to him, trying to shield his lighter from the cold wind while lighting his cigarette. Hugo was on him before the soldier could light his cigarette and, covering his mouth with one hand while digging his knee in the small of the American’s back, planted deep in one jugular his knife before pulling it hard towards the opposite jugular, sectioning both jugulars and wind pipe in one quick motion. The unfortunate man jerked for a couple of seconds, his gurgles mostly smothered by Hugo’s hand while blood shot out of his cut arteries. He then became completely inert, at which point Hugo laid him down on the grass. A brief look at the soldier’s uniform then told him that his victim had been a U.S. Marine, something that tended to confirm the status of this fort as being presently a U.S. Navy installation. Dragging the dead man along the side of the building from where he had come, Hugo then handed the steel helmet and rifle of the Marine to his youngest soldier, Schutze Max Landau.

‘’Take these, along his overcoat, and play sentry in his place. Kill with your silenced pistol anyone approaching you.’’

‘’Yes, Herr Major!’’

Next, Hugo returned to the main entrance and took in his right hand his silenced Walther P 38 pistol, indicating to his men behind him to do the same. Once they were all ready, Hugo opened the door and walked in at a normal pace, as if he belonged here. The room he entered proved to be some kind of reception room cum administrative office, with three women in navy uniforms busy typing documents. All three twisted their heads to look at him as he walked in, quickly followed by his men. The women’s looks of curiosity instantly changed to that of horror and fear at the sight of their frogmen’s suits and silenced pistols, but none of them had the time to scream before being shot in the head with single bullets, with the noise of the firings about the same volume as that of Champagne bottles’ corks popping out. Hugo couldn’t help contemplate with bitterness for a short moment the young woman he had just killed. He however quickly shook himself back to mission mode and made signs to half of his men to follow him through the door giving in to the rest of the building, with his three other men climbing the stairs leading to the upper floor. Finding himself inside a corridor that ran the length of the building and which was lined up with a total of eight doors, Hugo went to the two nearest doors, situated opposite of each other, and read the plates fixed to them. One said ‘Radio Monitoring Room # One’, the other ‘Crypto Room # One’. Using hand signals only, he pointed the radio monitoring room to Hans Arnim and Johannes Schwälbe, then signaled Max Hohenbascher to follow him inside the crypto room. Acting in concert, the two pairs of German commandos opened their respective doors and quickly entered medium-sized rooms, each containing an impressive amount of electronic equipment and work stations. While the radio monitoring room was occupied by four women and three men, the crypto room contained five women and one man, the latter a navy officer. Shooting as quickly as accuracy allowed, Hugo and his three men coldly shot all the Americans in the head, helped in this by the fact that many of the Americans were wearing headsets and were concentrating on listening or writing, thus delaying their reflexes. However, despite the silencers fitted to their pistols, this still made quite some noise, enough to attract one male NCO out of one of the adjacent rooms. Hugo however shot him dead before he could make more than three steps in the hallway. Quickly changing his now empty magazine for a full one, Hugo hurried to the room from which the American had come out, where he could hear female voices expressing concerns and wondering what was going on. To his deep annoyance, his entrance into that room triggered a chorus of high-pitch panicked screams before he could even start shooting. Now realizing that discretion had just gone out the window, he emptied again his pistol, killing the three men and four woman, all unarmed, that had been working at a row of radio listening work stations. Holstering back his pistol, he then grabbed his StG44 assault rifle and gave a nod to Hohenbascher.

‘’Forget the discrete part from now on and use your rifle: those screams could have awakened even the dead.’’

‘’Yes, Herr Major!’’

When the duo returned into the hallway, it was confronted by three American navy men armed with pistols and running towards them. However, not knowing what was really going on, the Americans were too slow to react and were cut down in a hail of automatic fire that, even with the silencers fitted to the StG44s, resonated loudly along the hallway. Hugo then decided to forego any attempt at being ‘discreet’ and shouted an order in German to his men via his portable radio.

‘’Use your grenades to clear each room! No more pussyfooting!’’

 

Outside the main entrance of the radio monitoring building, young Max Landau became quite uncomfortable as the noise from gunfire and grenades exploding inside became loud enough to be heard clearly from the outside: this was liable to attract an armed reaction from the Americans, in which case he could hardly explain why, as the supposed sentry of the building, he had not rushed inside to investigate. Landau was still wondering how to handle that question when he saw seven armed men come towards him at a run. Six of the soldiers were running in double parallel files behind what looked like an officer holding a pistol. Holding firmly his GARAND rifle and taking two steps forward in order to be in a darker area away from the main door, he shouted in his best English as the newcomers were less than ten paces away from him.

‘’HALT! WHO GOES THERE?’’

The seven Americans slowed down to a quick walk on hearing him, with the officer answering Landau in an angry tone.

‘’It’s me, Captain Rickert, you nitwit! Why are you still here, doing nothing while all this firing is going on?’’

‘’The shooting is coming from the next building, sir, and I didn’t want to abandon my post.’’

The American captain seemed to gobble up his excuse then: by attenuating the loudness of the shots inside, the silencers used by the commandos made it difficult to judge correctly the distance and direction of the shots. Deciding that he had to prevent those Americans from taking his comrades in the back, the young Max then profited from the moment of hesitation by the American officer and leveled his rifle, shooting as fast as he could from near point blank range. The officer was the first to be shot, getting a .30 caliber bullet in the chest and collapsing nearly at once. The six other American Marines, caught by surprise, took a fraction of a second to start reacting, something which allowed Max to shoot as well two more soldiers before they started pointing their weapons at him. With adrenaline pumping furiously through his veins, Max kept firing, downing two more Americans before the remaining two Marines opened fire. The first bullet went through his guts, while the second bullet grazed his left hip. Ignoring the pain, Max continued firing, downing the last American as the now empty ammo clip of his GARAND was automatically ejected with a characteristic metallic noise. Throwing away the empty rifle, Max started to grab his StG44 assault rifle slung in his back but suddenly felt empty headed and started wobbling on his feet. Opening his stolen American overcoat and putting one hand on his belly, he felt liquid against his hand but could not tell in the darkness how much blood there was. Seeing that one of the Americans was still moving and trying to grab again his fallen rifle, Max, now in a daze, pointed his StG44 with difficulty and shot a burst that hit the Marine, killing him. That was the last thing he could do before collapsing on the grass, passing out from loss of blood.

 

Hugo Margraff found Max a couple of minutes later, inert on the grass in front of the main entrance, as he and his men ran out after killing all the American personnel on duty and starting fires inside with incendiary grenades. Crouching beside his youngest trooper, Hugo felt sadness when he found no pulse. Grabbing first the assault rifle lying nearby, he pointed his dead soldier to his men.

‘’Grab him and carry him back to our beaching point: I will cover you.’’

Four of his men took hold of Max’ arms and legs and lifted his limp body up from the grass before starting to run away towards the woods to the Southeast, with one man at the point, his rifle pointed. Hugo then followed them while watching their back. He had already alerted by radio Fritz Stein and his team to withdraw, so the commandos were not leaving anyone or anything behind, save dozens of empty brass cartridge casings. Hugo threw a bitter look at the now burning two buildings they had raided: this was the first raid on American soil where he had lost a soldier. What had soured things on this mission was the unpredictably high number of Americans on duty at such a late hour, something that had prolonged the shooting for much longer than anticipated. At least, he now knew what Fort Ward was used for and by whom and he had taken the time at the last moment to grab two important classified documents inside one of the crypto rooms before priming and throwing away a white phosphorous grenade. Thankfully, it seemed that young Max, in his last act, had taken out the Americans’ quick reaction force, as other Americans in the fort were apparently taking some time to organize a bigger response. That allowed Hugo and his team to reach unimpeded their beaching point, where they put on their masks, fins and rebreather systems. Two men dragged Max’ body behind them into the water, while a third man took hold of his waterproof equipment bag. By the time that a strong party of Marines and armed sailors started scouring the grounds of Fort Ward, searching for the saboteurs who had put fire to the two most important buildings in the fort, the German commandos were already swimming down to the waiting U-900. As soon as Hugo and his men were inside the airlocks of the submarine, Ulrich von Wittgenstein lifted his boat from the silt plateau he had been resting on and retracted his schnorchel before sailing towards the Southeast at periscope depth.

 

Hugo was still in his diving suit when he went to the control room to report to Ulrich on his mission. His grim expression put at once Ulrich in a guarded mood.

‘’Did you suffer casualties during your raid, Major?’’

‘’Yes, I did, Herr Kapitän: Schutze Max Landau was killed. Fort Ward is actually a U.S. Navy radio monitoring station that specializes in long range listening and deciphering of Japanese communications. We found over eighty American Navy personnel, both men and women, at work at this late hour, something that completely threw my action plan out of balance. We were however able to eliminate the Americans on evening duty shift and put fire to their radio monitoring and crypto-analysis buildings before withdrawing. I was also able to grab these two documents, Herr Kapitän.’’

Ulrich looked down at the two documents, one thick binder and a small hardcover book, reading aloud the titles on the covers.

‘’Decryption keys for Japanese Navy code, plus a U.S. Navy Codebook…’’

Ulrich then looked back at Hugo, his expression sober.

‘’You have my most sincere condolences for your dead trooper, Major. You however filled your mission well, as these two very important documents prove. Now, are you still ready for your next mission of the night?’’

To that, Hugo answered firmly at once.

‘’Yes, Herr Kapitän! I will need only twenty minutes to switch the equipment in our waterproof bags and to refill our breathing apparatus. I will still be going out with a total of only five men this time, as previously planned.’’

‘’Excellent! We should be able to let you out close to the predetermined shore location in about one hour. Once you will be on your way on foot, I will move north towards my next objective. Be in position and expect my radio call by nine tomorrow morning.’’

‘’We will be ready, Herr Kapitän.’’ promised Hugo, standing at attention.

 

21:34 (Seattle Time)

Shoreline of Burien District

South from Downtown Seattle

 

Running into the woods lining the shoreline of the Burien District, south of Downtown Seattle and its port, Hugo and his four men stopped among the trees at a point where they still could see the waters of the Puget Sound’s East Passage. A number of boats were searching along the shores of Bainbridge Island with the help of projectors, still looking for the infiltrators that had attacked Fort Ward. However, none of those boats were searching to the South of it: von Wittgenstein’s ruse of sailing southeast after the raid seemed to have worked. Putting their waterproof packs and weapons down, they quickly took off their diving gear and suits, then took both American Army uniforms and German field uniforms out of their packs. Putting on first their German uniforms, they then put American Army trousers and winter greatcoats over them, completing their disguises with American boots and steel helmets. Next out of their packs were a collection of American weapons and web gear, plus two backpack radios. There was still plenty of other equipment in their packs, but it stayed inside them for the moment, while their diving gear and suits got quickly camouflaged behind a bush. Hugo, now looking like a U.S. Army first lieutenant and armed with both a M2 .30 caliber selective-fire carbine and a Colt M1911 .45 caliber pistol, looked at the four men assembled around him, who were armed with GARAND rifles. Heinrich Bayerling, Michel Drücker, Karl Haussmann and Hellmuth Golding were among his most experienced and efficient soldiers and he knew that he could fully count on them for this mission.

‘’Alright, let’s get moving towards our objective. We will do our best not to attract attention, as stealth will be primordial in this mission. Put on your packs and follow me.’’

 

Looking very much like a U.S. Army foot patrol, the five men plodded eastward through the forest, reaching Ambaum Boulevard after about 400 meters of walking. Vehicle traffic was light at this hour, while there were only a few dispersed houses visible along the road. The five men crossed the boulevard at a run while no vehicles were in sight, then entered the woods again and continued east. After another two kilometers of cautious walking, the team arrived at the Pacific Way highway, which bordered the Duwamish River, which itself flowed down to the port area of Seattle. Staying inside the tree line, Hugo took long minutes to examine with his binoculars one of his objectives on this mission: the Boeing Plant # 2, which produced B-17 heavy bombers for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Situated on the opposite side of the Duwamish River, the plant itself was huge, with over 160,000 square meters of covered factory floor. Even larger was the open field next to it, in which rows and rows of brand new B-17 four-engine bombers were lined up, waiting to be shipped. Hugo smiled while examining the plant and the open field with his binoculars.

‘’Wow! Talk about a juicy target! Huge, immobile and with over fifty shiny new heavy bombers parked side by side in tight rows. We will take our time to carefully plot it on our maps and calculate the distances before continuing towards our main target. Haussmann, take out your rangefinder.’’

‘’Yes, Herr Major!’’ replied the soldier before taking his pack off and pulling out of it a portable artillery optical rangefinder with light tripod. He then set up his instrument and pointed it at the distant aircraft manufacturing plant, then let Hugo look through it. Using a detailed map of Seattle, a compass and the rangefinder, Hugo spent a good fifty minutes to carefully plot the various parts of the manufacturing hall, along with the exact perimeter of the parking field full of new bombers. Once he was satisfied with his work, Hugo had the rangefinder packed again, with his team then heading towards a nearby bridge crossing the Duwamish River. This time they walked openly in single file, following the side of the highway before crossing the bridge, Hugo leading. Their disguises worked well, the few drivers passing by them not making any case about them and not even slowing down at their sight.

 

The commando team walked another kilometer or so through a residential neighborhood before arriving at the edge of a wide open field. Seeing an apparently abandoned sort of garage or storage building nearby situated on the edge of the open field, Hugo decided to seek shelter and hide there. Breaking the lock on a flimsy side door of what turned out to be an abandoned garage, Hugo had his men install themselves inside and went to a window facing the field. Running north to south and occupying much of that open field was the Renton Airfield, with its sole main paved runway. Bordering its eastern limit was the Cedar River, which flowed into Lake Washington. On the other side of the river, Hugo was able to observe a huge factory, nearly as big as the Boeing Plant # 2. Next to it, facing the airfield, was a wide tarmac full of newly-built B-29 heavy bombers. Hugo immediately concentrated his attention on those bombers. While Germany knew about the existence of the B-29, it knew little about it and photos of it were rare, so Hugo took out a 35mm still camera equipped with a long zoom lens and a small tripod and, piling a few old crates under the window, solidly installing his camera and tripod on top of them. Using highly sensitive films and long exposure time, he took a number of pictures of the bombers, playing with the exposure time to make sure that at least some of his photos would be perfect. Once he was done with his camera, he replaced it with their optical rangefinder on top of the crates. However, before starting his observations and map plotting, he looked briefly at his men.

‘’I will stay up for another hour or two while plotting that manufacturing plant on my map. In the meantime, go to sleep. I will wake one of you up later to continue the watch.’’

‘’Understood, Herr Major!’’ replied in unison his four men, who then laid down as comfortably as they could before rapidly falling asleep, quite tired by their previous evening activities.

 

05:13 (Seattle Time)

Friday, February 18, 1944

Abandoned garage on the western edge of Renton Airfield

King County, Washington State

 

Hellmuth Golding jumped down the last two meters of the tall pole he had just climbed up and down and smiled in the darkness to Hugo while handing him a spool of thin metallic wire.

‘’Here you go, sir! With such a long wire antenna suspended from that height, we should have excellent communications with the U-900.’’

‘’I certainly hope so: if not, our mission will have been mostly wasted. Once this wire antenna is plugged to one of our backpack radios, we will be in business. You may go catch some extra zee time now, but make sure that you eat breakfast first.’’

‘’Yes, sir!’’

Hugo, the spool in one hand, then walked to the window of the garage facing the airfield and passed it to Michel Drücker, who was waiting on the other side of the window and who then quickly connected the wire to the antenna of their backpack HF radio.

 

At precisely six in the morning, Hugo powered their HF radio and did a very brief radio check with the U-900, speaking in English in order not to attract immediate attention from amateur radio operators and using coded words to minimize the amount of time spent on the air. After less than twelve seconds, he put down his headset and smiled to his four soldiers.

‘’Radio reception was perfect at both ends and the mission is still on as planned. We now only need to wait another three hours, then it will be show time.’’

That helped relieve some of the nervousness among his men, who well knew how near impossible it would be for them to return to the U-900 if they were ever discovered here, in Renton. On the other hand, they all understood how important their mission was at the strategic level and were more than ready to do their duty to the end. While none of them were what one would call Nazi fanatics, they were all proud Germans.

 

08:59 (Seattle Time)

Control room of the U-900

Navigating at three knots and a depth of sixty meters

Puget Sound Central Basin, facing Elliot Bay and Downtown Seattle

 

‘’REEL IN OUR TOWED FLOATING ANTENNA! GUN CREWS AND LOADERS TO BE READY TO MAN OUR DECK WEAPONS! SURFACE, SURFACE!’’

Primed up as he had rarely been before, Ulrich then hurried forward to the ladder leading up to the forward underwater observation dome, climbing the steel steps as fast as he could and leaving Bruno Barber in charge of the control room. When he arrived inside the observation dome, he found Leutnant Werner Wendt and three men already there, manning the three-meter high angle rangefinder and the indirect fire control station.

‘’Leutnant Wendt, point and elevate our main gun mount towards our primary target’s coordinates as soon as it will rise from its deck well.’’

‘’Yes, Herr Kapitän!’’ replied Wendt, who then quickly rechecked his indirect fire control map table, where the location of the Boeing’s Renton Plant was circled in red. The U-900 then burst through the surface, emerging like a monster of the deep in a halo of foam and bubbles, barely 150 meters from one of the ferries which linked the east and west shores of the Puget Sound. Ulrich could see numerous passengers lining the rail sidings of the ferry and looking at the U-900 with mouths opened ajar, obviously able to recognize the big swastika painted on the sail, alongside ‘U-900’. That made Ulrich smile, both proud and amused. As the old saying went: be famous or infamous, but be somebody! Today, he was definitely going to be infamous. As soon as the U-900 was fully on the surface and level, he keyed his intercom and spoke in it.

‘’RAISE ALL DECK MOUNTS! GUNNERS, TO YOUR WEAPONS!’’

Next, he looked at Wendt and at the men manning the big optical rangefinder.

‘’You may now confirm our exact position with the help of our rangefinder, Leutnant.’’

‘’Right away, Herr Kapitän!’’ said Wendt before looking at the rangefinder operators. ‘’Give me the exact heading and distance to the Smith Tower²⁰ in Downtown Seattle.’’

The rangefinder operators, already well briefed about their job for today, quickly lined up their big optical instrument on the old skyscraper, giving its azimuth and distance to Wendt, who promptly marked the location of the U-900 on his map, then calculated the azimuth and distance between it and the Boeing’s Renton plant. Next, he keyed his radio microphone as the gunners of the submarine came out at a run from both airlocks in the sail and manned the twin 12.7 centimeter gun mount and the two twin 3.7 centimeter anti-aircraft mounts.

‘’Turtle, this is Orca. Am ready to open fire.’’

Less than two seconds later, the voice of Hugo Margraff came into his headset.

‘’Turtle ready to direct your fire, Orca. Fire first ranging shot, over!’’

Wendt, using the remote control system of the big twin deck gun, made it rotate and elevate to the values he had just calculated, then spoke with the gun master.

‘’Twin 12.7 centimeter gun, one ranging round, fire!’’

 

On the forward weather deck of the U-900, the gun master of the twin heavy gun shouted a warning to his loaders, so that they wouldn’t be hurt when the gun would recoil, then pressed the gun trigger.

‘’FIRING NOW!... RELOAD!’’

The loud ‘BOOM’ and bright flash from the gun’s muzzle blast as it spat out its 26 kilo shell at a velocity of 880 meters per second made most people aboard the nearby ferry crouch or cower in fear. Fired at high elevation in indirect fire mode, the shell went up to past 10,000 meters of altitude before going down towards the Boeing Renton plant. Its point of impact, just at the southeast corner section of the big assembly hall, was observed by Hugo Margraff, who immediately reported it by radio to Wendt and gave him the necessary corrections. The second shell, fired 45 seconds after the first one, hit dead center the assembly hall. Using that point as a reference, Hugo then ordered more adjustments and started directing his fire plan against the giant aircraft plant, allowing Wendt to go to full rate of fire.

 

On the forward deck of the U-900, the big twin 12.7 centimeter mount was now firing at near its maximum rate, each of its barrels spitting a shell every five seconds, for a combined firing rate of 24 rounds per minute, with minute adjustments in azimuth called by Hugo between each salvo. Feeding the twin guns were a long lineup of sailors passing the big shells and their long brass casings up from the main gun magazine all the way to the gun mount. One of the sailors in the ammunition chain grinned to Otto Hannig, the graying submarine’s cook, as he got a fresh shell from him.

‘’Hey, Smutje²¹, I bet that you don’t feed that kind of menu too often to your customers!’’

‘’To you guys, never! To the guys on the other side, always!’’

 

The sight of the German submarine firing its big guns at an infernal rate while calmly sailing in front of Seattle soon proved too much to many of the occupants of the ferry, some of which started making obscene gestures and shaking their fists at the Germans visible on the decks of the U-900. Others ran up to the bridge of the ferry boat, shouting angry questions at the captain of the ferry.

‘’FOR GOD’S SAKE, WHERE IS OUR NAVY?’’

‘’WHERE ARE OUR AIRCRAFT? DON’T WE HAVE A MILITARY AIRFIELD NEARBY?’’

‘’DON’T WE HAVE COASTAL GUNS TO DEFEND THE PORT?’’

To which the poor ferry boat captain could only respond with a grimace.

‘’I ALREADY ALERTED THE COAST GUARD ABOUT THAT SUBMARINE. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE THAT I CAN DO APART FROM KEEPING YOU AWAY FROM THAT SUBMARINE.’’

‘’AND WHEN WILL THE COAST GUARD ARRIVE?’’

‘’I DON’T KNOW! LOOK, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE YOURSELVES USEFUL, HOW ABOUT TAKING DETAILED PICTURES OF THAT SUBMARINE WHILE IT IS STILL ON THE SURFACE?’’

That reply struck many of the ones who had come to the bridge. Those who had still cameras with them then dutifully started to film the U-900 in action. Ironically, those pictures would soon prove to be the best taken of a TYPE XXI submarine to ever reach U.S. Navy Intelligence.

 

In Renton, Hugo was as concentrated as he ever had been while directing the fire from the U-900 according to his fire plan. Each pair of shells was directed by him to hit forty meters to the left of the preceding one. Once the shells had hit one end of the assembly hall, Hugo had the intended points of impact elevated by forty meters, with firing progression switched to the right. With the 26 kilo high-explosive fragmentation shells hitting the plant at a rate of 24 to 25 per minute and with the impact zones changing constantly and methodically, the Boeing plant and the heavy bombers being built inside were reduced within four minutes into a field of blackened and twisted pieces of metal and broken machine tools. What Hugo Margraff could not see was the horrendous effect of the intense bombardment on the thousands of workers employed by the plant, a majority of which were women. Hundreds were killed outright, while hundreds more were wounded, often horribly, while the rest fled the plant in utter panic. When Hugo judged the plant itself to be effectively destroyed, he had the gunfire switched to the nearby tarmac where newly built B-29s were lined up. With shells with proximity fuses now being used, the naval gunfire soon proved devastating to the bombers, many of which had their fuel tanks filled. Shells exploding a few meters above the ground sent hundreds of red-hot steel fragments all around, piercing the aluminum skin of the bombers and ripping up engine mounts, hydraulic lines and electrical wiring, plus piercing fuel tanks. With the tarmac transformed into a sea of fire with only ten shells, Hugo then had the U-900 switch target again, this time aiming at the Boeing Plant # 2, which produced B-17 heavy bombers. That plant basically got the same treatment as the Reston plant but, being within direct line of sight of the U-900 and being much closer to it, that allowed Leutnant Wendt to use directly his optical rangefinder to point his twin big guns. Within seconds, shells started slamming and exploding into the aircraft plant, making the workers inside run out like ants coming out of their hill. Ulrich von Wittgenstein, who was constantly looking around his submarine, watching for the arrival of a warship or a military aircraft, suddenly caught up on something on the shore just north of Elliott Bay. Going to one of the C38 Night Directors installed inside the underwater viewing dome, he pointed the powerful optical instrument in that direction. He couldn’t help swearing softly to himself after a few seconds of observation.

‘’Mein Gott! I can’t believe this! A prisoner of war camp, here.’’

Using a nearby intercom, he nearly shouted in it.

‘’FELDWEBEL STEIN TO THE FORWARD OBSERVATION DOME, AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!’’

He then resumed his observation of the camp, which could be identified by its barbed wire perimeter fence and its wooden guard towers. He could also see now something quite unsettling. Fritz Stein thankfully arrived inside the dome in near record time, with Ulrich then making him look through the C38 unit.

‘’Look at this and tell me if the crowd I am seeing inside that camp is not a bunch of German prisoners cheering up as we bombard Seattle, Feldwebel Stein.’’

Stein soon looked up at him, utterly stunned.

‘’You’re right, Herr Kapitän! Those men must be Germans. What are we going to do about them?’’

‘’We will discuss that later, Feldwebel. For the moment, observe that camp and notice as many details about it as you can. We will have to submerge soon, though.’’

Leaving Stein at the C38 director, Ulrich resumed his panoramic watch, helped in this by two of his sailors armed with swivel-mounted heavy binoculars. After four minutes of firing at the Boeing Plant # 2 and with already nearly ten minutes spent on the surface, Ulrich decided to not force his luck much longer, shouting an order to Wendt.

‘’Leutnant, switch fire to the Todd Shipyards, at the mouth of the Duwamish River, but fire only a total of ten shells at it, then have our gunners get back inside and lower our gun mounts.’’

‘’Understood, Herr Kapitän!’’

‘’Captain to control room: be prepared to crash dive on my command. Accelerate to twelve knots and take Heading 006!’’

‘’Aye, Herr Kapitän!’’ was the answer through the intercom. Two minutes later, Ulrich gave the order to dive and the U-900 disappeared within twenty seconds under the surface, still watched by the shocked passengers of the ferry boat. The first Coast Guard boat to show up on the scene six minutes later, an armed tugboat, was nearly greeted with boos. In Renton, Hugo Margraff and his men, their job done in Renton, quickly packed up their equipment and left the garage, still disguised as American soldiers, and started marching back west.

 

16:40 (Seattle Time)

Intensive care department, Harborview Medical Center

325 Ninth Avenue, First Hill District, Seattle

 

Seattle Mayor William F. Devin was near tears as he toured with Governor Arthur B. Langlie the Boeing employees being treated at the Harborview Medical Center. The hospital was presently overflowing with nearly 500 wounded Boeing employees, with a clear majority of them being young women and with many having suffered horrible wounds, including many lost limbs. All the hospitals and medical facilities in Seattle were now equally filled with casualties from the brazen morning bombardment by a German submarine, with more wounded still arriving as they were discovered by rescue workers among the twisted ruins of the two Boeing plants. The mayor finally had to sit down on a chair near a nurses station, utterly broken by all the suffering and tragedy he had just seen.

‘’My God! What a horrible day! How could this have happened at all?’’

Governor Langlie, who had been the mayor of Seattle from 1938 to 1941 and who was as devastated as Devin was, looked severely at his military aide, a Navy lieutenant commander.

‘’A pertinent question indeed! Would you have an answer to that, Commander Nielsen?’’

The navy man shrank under Langlie’s and Devin’s hard stares, having little that he could tell them.

‘’The Navy is still looking into that, Mister Governor. The latest news are that our ships and planes are still looking for that German submarine, but they have found no traces of it yet. We presume that, after bombarding the Boeing plants, it fled the Puget Sound underwater and is now probably going down the Juan de Fuca Strait, heading for the open waters of the Pacific.’’

His answer only seemed to make the Governor angrier.

‘’The Navy presumes? How about it proves to the people of this state that it can do its job properly? We now have over a thousand dead civilians, plus over 1,700 wounded, victims of a German submarine the Navy let come through all the way to here. Be assured that the President and Secretary of Navy Knox will learn of the sordid details of this outrage. In the meantime, I want Admiral Browning, who supposedly commands the local navy district, to give me a detailed report on this attack, tonight at the latest! Now, go find a telephone and pass my request to him, Commander.’’

Next, Langlie looked at his chief political advisor, a very experienced and resourceful man who seemingly had contacts everywhere.

‘’Ed, would you know by chance something that Commander Nielsen didn’t know…or wouldn’t tell me?’’

‘’Not much, Mister Governor. I already told you about the yesterday evening attack by frogmen on Fort Ward, in which over eighty Navy men and women died. It is now evident that those frogmen came from the submarine that bombarded the Boeing plants this morning. What is disturbing about that is that submarine was able to loiter all night in the local waters, and this without being detected at all, despite the sweeps effected by the Navy. Something is definitely lacking in the Navy’s anti-submarine capabilities.’’

‘’That is certainly a point that I will emphasize to the President when I will call him after this visit. Anything else?’’

‘’Uh, sort of, Mister Governor. A number of passengers who were in the morning ferry boat that came close to the German submarine were able to snap many good quality pictures of that submarine, which reportedly is of a new type on which the Navy knows little about. Some of those passengers gave copies of their photos to the Navy Intelligence, while others offered their photos to a number of local newspapers. However, the censoring section of the Navy is now trying to block the publication of any newspaper article describing or referring to the morning’s submarine attack, including showing pictures of that submarine in newspapers.’’      

‘’WHAT?’’ nearly shouted Langlie, furious. ‘’On top of being incapable of protecting this city and state from a German submarine attack, the Navy would sweep under the carpet any news of that attack? Multiple local radio stations have already talked and even discussed that attack on the air with listeners. How stupid can these Navy officials be?’’

‘’A lot, sir!’’ replied the advisor in a sarcastic tone.

‘’That’s it! I am going back to my office to place a few phone calls. Go tell Commander Nielsen to move his ass if he doesn’t want to have to walk back to his office.’’

Langlie then turned to look at Mayor Devin.

‘’If you will excuse me, I have to go knock on a few heads. Pass my personal sympathies to the poor victims of this German attack.’’

‘’I will, Governor. Don’t hold your punches.’’

‘’Oh, I won’t, I promise you.’’

 

With the Governor then walking away with his advisor, the mayor continued his tour of the wards, doing his best to comfort the wounded from the bombardment, many of which were in critical shape. As Devin was coming out of an elevator on the third floor of the hospital, he saw near a nurses station Senator Homer T. Bone, who represented the State of Washington in the U.S. Senate, talking with Rear admiral Adams, the head of the local Coast Guard district. Both were sitting on chairs and, while Bone was questioning Adams in a low voice, the admiral looked like a broken man. As Devin approached the duo, he saw that Adams had been crying. Toning down his anger about the Navy’s shortcomings, Devin spoke to Bone, who also looked quite shaken.

‘’Senator! Admiral! I gather that you also came to visit the victims from this morning’s German bombardment?’’

Bone, a balding man in his early fifties, looked up at Devin and gave him a sad look.

‘’I was indeed visiting those poor men and women, Mayor Devin. I found Admiral Adams here: he just visited one of his nieces, who was critically wounded in the attack.’’

‘’Oh! Please accept my sincere condolences, Admiral. What is her medical prognosis, if I may ask?’’

‘’You may, Mayor Devin.’’ answered Adams in a weak voice. The doctors are giving her a fifty-fifty chance of surviving but, if she survives, she will still be left with major permanent disabilities. If only my boats could have found and sunk that damn German submarine last night, before it could fire its deck gun.’’

Devin gave a somber look at the Coast Guard man: Adams was visibly in deep emotional distress. Questioning him now felt wrong to Devin, but too many important things were involved in this.

‘’Admiral, could you tell me basically how a German submarine could pass by the forts defending the entrance to the Admiralty Inlet, then could evade your anti-submarine searches all night?’’

Devin expected Adams not to answer him but, probably because he was in near-shock, the old officer answered him in a weak voice.

‘’Because it is a TYPE XXI submarine. Both our sonar sensors and our anti-submarine weapons are nearly useless against such advanced submarines. They can even outrun most of my ships while underwater and can stay hidden at very deep depths for days before having to come up to recharge their batteries.’’

‘’What about its deck gun it used this morning? Every visual witness agreed that it had tremendous firepower. And how could it be so accurate in its shooting? The Boeing Reston plant is nearly fifteen miles away from where the submarine was.’’

Adams thought for a moment, apparently debating mentally about something before opening his briefcase at his side and extracting a large envelope, from which he took out a set of large black and white photo prints that he handed to Devin and Bone. The two politicians examined the prints, which showed the U-900 on the surface and firing its twin main guns, as Adams spoke.

‘’I am going to resign after this, as I can’t deny my responsibility in this disaster, so I might as well be open about the facts here. My ordnance experts told me that this submarine, which is by the way the U-900, one of our most feared enemies at sea to date, was armed with a new type of deck gun mount that we haven’t see up to now. It mounts what appears to be a variant of a German heavy anti-aircraft gun with twin five inch barrels. That kind of gun has a maximum range of about sixteen miles and is a very accurate and powerful weapon. However, to attain the kind of accuracy demonstrated against the Boeing’s Reston plant, my experts all agreed that the Germans had to have a forward observer near the plant, directing the fire by radio.’’

Both Devin’s and Bone’s eyes widened on understanding the implications of this, with Bone speaking next.

‘’You are saying that German infiltrators are roaming the Seattle area?’’

‘’They did, but they are probably back aboard the U-900 by now.’’

Devin and Bone exchanged concerned looks before the former asked another question to Adams.

‘’Admiral, you earlier said that this U-900 was especially feared. Why?’’

‘’Why? Because it was the submarine that landed a commando team near Boston last year, a team that then traveled all the way to the Canadian border to go break a number of German prisoners out of a Canadian prisoner of war camp. It also sank dozens of our warships as well as merchant ships and its captain holds the title of ‘Ace of aces’ among German submarine captains.’’

Bone couldn’t help make a disdainful gesture on hearing Adams’ last sentence.

‘’Yeah! A man who shells thousands of young women from miles away : some ace he makes!’’

Adams threw a strange look at Bone then and said something that shocked Devin.

‘’Senator, I hate to have to say this but, what the Germans did this morning was perfectly within the laws of war and cannot be called a war crime.’’

‘’What? How can you say that, Admiral?’’ asked Bone, scandalized.

‘’How? Simple : we and the British did much worse in the past and we still considered our acts as legitimate acts of war. My niece may presently be lying broken in this hospital, but she was working at a factory producing heavy bombers. Those bombers are meant to drop bombs on the enemy and, in the first years of this war, we and the British dropped a lot of bombs on Germany, targeting factories, plants, refineries and the like. The British even deliberately targeted city residential areas in an attempt to break the morale of the German population. In contrast, the captain of the U-900 targeted this morning with exquisite precision and accuracy two aircraft plants producing exclusively heavy bombers, with not a single shell falling on a residential area. In only ten minutes of shelling, he succeeded in destroying both plants, cutting our national production output of heavy bombers by nearly a third. As for the frogmen’s attack against Fort Ward last night, it was a completely legitimate one against a military installation. We may not like it but that is what war is about: death and destruction.’’

Devin was next to talk after a couple of seconds needed to swallow Adams’ words.

‘’And…what do you expect that this ‘submarine ace’ will do next, Admiral? Could he really be gone by now?’’

‘’If he wished so, yes! However Captain von Wittgenstein has the reputation of being a crafty, inventive and unpredictable man. So, I wouldn’t count him gone yet, Mister Devin.’’

 

04:01 (Seattle Time)

U.S. Army transit barracks, Fort Lawton

On waterfront of the Puget Sound’s Central Basin

Magnolia District, Seattle

 

Corporal George Murray was sleeping in his bunk when a nerve-twitching whistling noise, followed by an ear-splitting explosion, awoke him with a startle. His reflexive move to sit up in bed resulted in his head banging against the wooden board supporting the mattress of the top tier bunk of his double bunk bed. Swearing loudly while holding his head with both hands, he swung his legs out of his bed and sat up on the edge for a moment, waiting for the worst of the pain to pass. Barely a few seconds later, a powerful pair of explosions again shook the 400 two-storey wooden barracks of the pre-embarkation transit camp, presently occupied by over 18,000 men from Murray’s infantry division.

‘’WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’’ Shouted a young, very green private, near panic. A sergeant quickly answered him in a harsh tone.

‘’WE ARE BEING SHELLED, YOU DIMWIT! EVERYBODY OUT OF YOUR BEDS, NOW! GET DOWN TO THE GROUND FLOOR AND EVACUATE THE BARRACK! DISPERSE INTO THE NEARBY WOODS!’’

The soldiers bunking on the top floor then ran to the wooden staircase leading down to the ground floor, quickly clogging it with a panicked human mass. One of the next 12.7 centimeter shells from the U-900 then struck their barrack, piercing easily the wooden peaked roof and creating mass butchery when it flew down through the human mass before exploding at the foot of the staircase, blowing up over half of the barrack building and killing all but a very few of its 75 occupants.

 

Falling at a rate of two shells every five seconds and hitting with unnerving accuracy, the gunfire from the U-900 systematically destroyed rows after rows of wooden barracks, killing hundreds of American soldiers and sending thousands more fleeing in disorder through the cold outside rain, many wearing nothing more than their underwear. With their officers occupying separate quarters some distances from the enlisted men’s barracks, only a sprinkling of senior NCOs were present to try bringing order to the stampeding crowd, but with little success. Most of these NCOs in fact joined the fleeing soldiers, realizing that staying within the barracks lines could well result in their deaths.

 

The officers of that division were however not spared the bombardment, a series of shells falling within the officers’ lines of the camp after three minutes of gun fire, just as the first officers were running out of their quarters. That shellfire then started switching at interval between the enlisted barracks and the officers’ quarters area, with one shell in particular killing the commandant of Fort Lawton, Colonel Harry Branson, blowing his official residence to splinters.

 

The noise and flashes from that new bombardment in turn spread panic around the whole of Seattle, with families rushing to the basement of their homes or apartment buildings, seeking shelter there. Happening in the dark of the night, the shelling from the U-900 went on for longer than its bombardment of the Boeing plants the morning of the preceding day, as the chances of an American ship or plane intercepting the submarine and firing at it were much less than during daylight. One solitary armed tugboat belonging to the Coast Guard did bravely try to intervene but was quickly turned into Swiss cheese and sank under the murderous fire of the two twin 37mm automatic cannons of the U-900. The only reason that the shelling came eventually to a stop was that the U-900 was starting to run low on its stocks of 12.7 centimeter shells. Ulrich von Wittgenstein wanted to keep at least some medium shells in case he would need in the near future to save on his torpedoes by finishing enemy cargo ships with gunfire. However, all those shells expended in the course of two days had certainly proved most useful.

 

The shelling had stopped for some ten minutes when the surviving American soldiers started emerging from the woods where they had taken refuge, many of them in a state of shock and all of them shivering under the cold rain. What they found on returning to their barracks was a scene of utter carnage and destruction. The wooden barracks, meant to be temporary war structures, had provided next to no protection from the shells to their occupants, the wood splinters thrown around by the explosions actually having contributed to the casualty count. Mixed in with the male survivors were a hundred or so women from the Women’s Army Corps School whose barracks had not been spared by the shelling. A brigadier general who was part of the infantry division staging through Fort Lawton finally managed to restore some order into that mass chaos, getting the thousands of wounded to the hospitals that still had beds available in Seattle and organizing the intact men and women into rescue parties, in order to comb the ruins of the barracks and find any possible survivors there.

 

Daylight was finally coming for the shell-shocked, wet and freezing survivors when the brigadier general noticed that one of the buildings at the German prisoner of war camp, situated away from the transit camp, was burning. Intrigued by that, as he had not seen shells hitting that camp, he sent a squad of military policemen in three jeeps to go check the situation there. On arrival at the main gate of the POW camp, the MPs at first saw no one guarding it or standing in the guard towers surrounding the camp’s perimeter barbed wire fence. The MP sergeant in charge of the squad became immediately suspicious.

‘’Chamber rounds into your weapons, guys: I don’t like the smell of this. Jump out and spread out!’’

The nine MPs under him obeyed quickly, loading their M2 carbines and keeping them at the ready while advancing cautiously in extended line. One of the MPs who went to check the small guard hut on one side of the main gate of the camp suddenly shouted towards his sergeant.

‘’SARGE, I FOUND ONE OF OUR MEN IN THE HUT, KILLED BY A BULLET.’’

‘’DAMN! HERBERT, CONNELLY, RICKERTS, GO CHECK THE GUARD TOWERS AROUND THE PERIMETER FENCE, THE REST WILL COME WITH ME AND CHECK THE GARRISON’S BARRACKS.’’

Now fully alert and expecting the worst, the MPs split up, with most of them following their squad leader. Acting as if he was clearing out a house in enemy territory, the MP sergeant kicked open the door of one of the two wooden barracks used by the guards of the camp and jumped inside, his carbine at the ready. One quick look around him in the semi-obscure barrack and its double row of double bunk beds made him lower slowly his weapon while swearing softly to himself.

‘’Holy Mother of Christ!’’

Most of the beds were still occupied, but four of them were empty, their previous occupants having fallen out of them and now sprawling on the floor, inert. Going to the nearest man lying in bed, the sergeant was able to see that the unlucky soldier had been shot in the head, probably while he was still sleeping. His MPs soon confirmed the worst for him.

‘’They are all dead, Sarge. All of them were shot.’’

Now nearly sick to his stomach, the MP sergeant then noticed something that alarmed him further.

‘’I don’t see the weapon of the dead man near me, nor do I see his ammunition bandoleer. Can you see the weapons of the other guards, guys?’’

After a short wait, he got a number of negative answers that made him swear again.

‘’SHIT! This means that we have about forty weapons unaccounted for, along with their spare ammunition. If the German prisoners inside the camp now have those weapons…’’

He didn’t have to finish his sentence, as his men understood at once the implications of that. The soldiers who had gone to check the other guards barrack soon reported to him that they had found the same picture there. Then, the three MPs sent to check the guard towers came back with more bad news.

‘’All the guards in the towers were shot dead, Sergeant. Their weapons are missing. Also, we found a large cut that has been made in the perimeter fence, on the side facing the Puget Sound.’’

The sergeant then couldn’t contain anymore his fury and slammed a fist against the wooden frame of a double bunk bed.

‘’GOD DAMMIT! IT MUST BE THESE GERMAN SABOTEURS FROM THE SUBMARINE AGAIN! THEY PROBABLY CAME TO FREE THE PRISONERS UNDER THE COVER OF THEIR BOMBARDMENT. HERBERT, CONNELLY, RETURN TO THAT CUT IN THE FENCE AND WATCH IT WHILE WE GO SEE HOW MANY PRISONERS ARE MISSING.’’

‘’Uh, how are we going to check on that, Sarge?’’ asked his youngest MP, an inexperienced but very bright teenager. ‘’The administrative building, where the prisoners lists were kept, has been burned down to cinders.’’

‘’Hell, you’re right, Jenkins! Still, I want to go check inside the camp before reporting all this to our bosses. I will go inside the perimeter with two men. The rest will guard the main gate and the fence.’’

 

The MP sergeant and two other, very nervous MPs, soon walked through the main gate and headed to the nearest long wooden barrack. The barrack was strangely quiet when they got to the front door. Cautiously opening the door and slowly walking inside, his carbine leveled, the MP sergeant was disconcerted to find that all the prisoners were apparently present, either lying on their beds or sitting on the edge of their mattresses. However, the way the close to 180 Germans present looked at him with a mix of hostility and defiance shook him up badly. Tense as a bar and his right index finger on the trigger of his M2 carbine, the MP sergeant looked at the nearest prisoner, a blond young man with blue eyes.

‘’What happened here earlier this morning?’’

The young German replied in German, his tone showing arrogance.

‘’Nicht sprechen Engländer²²!’’

Containing his anger, the MP sergeant asked another prisoner.

‘’You, tell me what happened in the camp last night.’’

‘’Nicht sprechen Engländer!’’

Two more prisoners answered the same way, the last one doing it with an arrogant smirk that furiously tempted the MP NCO to smack his carbine’s but against his jaw. Realizing that he wasn’t going to get any answers here, he withdrew from the barrack with his two men and returned to the main gate, where he stepped out of the camp and went to his jeep to send a radio message. He was however already expecting his commanding officer to swear violently on hearing his report about the prisoners’ camp.

 

14:14 (Seattle Time)

Monday, February 21, 1944

Pier 91, Port of Seattle

 

There were a lot of somber faces around Rear admiral Adams as he and the visiting big brass from Washington D.C. looked at the wreck of the troopship that had sunk a mere 300 meters from the pier on which they stood. Pier 91 was reserved for troopships loading or unloading fresh or relieved units from the Pacific Theatre and was usually very busy. Now, it was next to empty, thanks to the U-900. Normally, the Navy District Commander for the region, Rear Admiral Browning, would have escorted these Washington V.I.P.s around Seattle, but Browning, already close to mandatory retirement age, had suffered a heart attack on understanding the extent of the damage caused around Seattle and the implications for his navy career. Browning was now in a hospital, but Adams could bet that Admiral King was not finished with the district commander. In truth, Admiral King, General Marshall and General Arnold were about equally incensed by the damage and casualties suffered around Seattle, but King was much more ready to express his fury openly than Marshall or Arnold were.

‘’And we haven’t heard anything more about this damn U-900 since that troopship blew up on a mine yesterday?’’ asked General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold, Commander of the Army Air Corps. Adams shook his head bitterly in response.

‘’Nothing, General! It is as if that U-900 is a ghost. As much as I hate saying this, the captain of the U-900 just served us a masterful lesson on how to use a submarine.’’

‘’I unfortunately have to agree with you, Admiral Adams.’’ said Ernest J. King, the Chief of Naval Operations and head of the U.S. Navy. ‘’In fact, this is not the first time that Captain von Wittgenstein serves us such a lesson. If we ever capture him alive, I may have to praise his tactical prowess before breaking his jaw. The strategic damage he did to us in just three days is unbelievable, and that mostly through old-fashioned gunnery. By the way, do we know if any German prisoners escaped with the help of the U-900 from their camp in Fort Lawton?’’

George Marshall answered him on that, having been given some information by his staff in Washington.

‘’My aides were able to compare the lists of German prisoners of war kept at the Pentagon with the muster of prisoners taken on Saturday. A total of 59 Germans are missing, most of them being submariners and the rest being combat pilots. However, these missing prisoners hurt a lot less than the casualties suffered in Fort Lawton: 3,870 dead and wounded! A number of the intact survivors also suffered severe nervous shock, something I can hardly blame them for. That whole division will in fact need to be reformed, reorganized and refitted before it could be sent overseas.’’

Marshall then looked critically at King.

‘’So, what is the Navy going to do to prevent further such mayhem by German submarines along our coasts, Admiral? I already have many reports of numerous and painful attacks on our coastlines by German submarines posted off Panama, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco.’’

That question seemed to frustrate to no end the irascible King. He however managed to answer Marshall in a measured tone of voice.

‘’In the past couple of years, we had quite a few successes against German submarines of the older types, by locating them via HF direction finding radio triangulation. The command style of Admiral Dönitz, who liked to tightly control his submarines, actually helped us in that aspect. Unfortunately, Dönitz changed his command methods and the volume of radio traffic between his submarines and his headquarters in France dropped off dramatically. We however still could triangulate German submarines when they sent radio messages, even though we stopped being able to decipher German codes two years ago and still can’t. Unfortunately, the Germans located along our coasts now use a new method of transmission that makes radio direction finding and triangulation impossible. My radio specialists call it ‘burst transmission’. Now, German submariners apparently pre-record their messages, then sent them out at a highly accelerated rate on the air. A typical message that would take minutes to send before is now sent in less than a second, way too short a time for us to be able to triangulate the signal. The couple of times when our radio operators could hear those messages, which are also encrypted by the way, it sounded like a short screeching noise. As for other methods to detect those new German submarines, we are working on better sonar sets, but that work will still take many months, maybe years, before we have new sonars. To sum it up, the new German submarines unfortunately have us by our balls right now.’’

Both Marshall and Arnold appeared both horrified and scandalized by King’s words, but they also understood that King was only being brutally honest with them, something they still preferred to white lies and empty promises.

‘’So, you are saying that we can do little to stop the depredations by those German submarines deployed along both of our coasts?’’ a      sked Marshall, getting a nod from King.

‘’Basically, yes. Our patrol planes still could get lucky and spot a submarine on the surface, if the captain of that submarine is not careful enough but, presently, we seem to be dealing with a team of highly experienced and professional submarine aces, like that von Wittgenstein, and those submarines aces are killing us literally, the way they killed the British.’’

Marshall and Arnold exchanged worried looks then, with Arnold letting out his discouragement in a few words.

‘’Damn! We just lost over a quarter of our production capacity for heavy bombers and rebuilding these plants will take nearly a year, possibly more. The worst is however the loss of trained aircraft construction workers: forming new workers properly takes time, lots of time.’’

‘’One thing is sure, though.’’ Added Marshall. ‘’These plants will have to be rebuilt in new locations away from any waterways communicating with the sea, in order to make a repeat of these bombardments impossible.’’

The three top commanders nodded their heads in unison at those words before getting back in their jeeps to go visit some of the victims of the U-900 in the overcrowded hospitals of the city.

 

At nearly the same moment, much further south along the West Coast, Korvettenkapitän Horst Degen smirked while observing with binoculars through the forward transparent dome of his U-916, as his boat was diving to periscope dept and accelerating towards deeper water in order to escape possible air attacks. His gunners had just fired over 180 12.7 centimeter shells at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo, near Long Beach and Los Angeles. The Chevron refinery, the biggest on the American West Coast, covered over four square kilometers, with over 150 large fuel storage tanks, and was situated a mere 400 meters from the California shoreline. It had thus been literally a target that was simply impossible to miss. Now, the huge refinery complex was little more than a sea of raging fires, with columns of thick black smoke rising high in the air.

‘’Well, if that doesn’t piss off the Americans, nothing will!’’

 

Prowling at periscope depth off San Francisco, Korvettenkapitän Klaus Bargsten and his U-915 were looking at a much tougher nut to crack. The first major problem was the wide, shallow underwater plateau running along this local section of the coast, which left little depth to play with and made his submarine easily visible from the air. The second problem was that the sole entrance to the San Francisco Bay was through the Golden Gate Strait, which was heavily guarded by guns and radar stations. Those defenses had in fact been further reinforced two years ago, after a daring Otto Kretschmer and his U-800 had managed to enter the strait and fired repeated torpedo salvoes at the pillars of the famous Golden Gate Bridge, succeeding in collapsing the whole giant structure in the water and blocking completely the entrance to San Francisco Bay for months. It had taken herculean efforts to cut away piece by piece the collapsed bridge and reopen the strait to ship traffic, but the decision then had been taken to not rebuild a bridge across the strait and use only ferry boats instead. With the reinforced and reviewed defenses of the strait making any attempt at entering San Francisco Bay nearly suicidal, Bargsten had kept to staying away from the Golden Gate Strait and to simply torpedoing the ships coming in and out of San Francisco. While he had been quite successful at that, he still wished to be able to use his new main deck gun mount, something von Wittgenstein had apparently been able to do with great success, according to the message received earlier from the U-900. After carefully studying the maps and charts of the San Francisco area, Bargsten had finally been able to mount a plan to use his big twin gun. He and his crew would however have to be both quick and accurate in both their firing and their boat handling.

‘’Helm, have us rise above the surface just enough to allow our optical rangefinders to have a direct view of the coast. Keep our speed at two knots. Gunners and loaders, be ready to man the main gun mount and sustain a top firing rate for a few minutes once we fully surface.’’

Bargsten then gave his position at the periscope to his second watch officer and went forward to climb up to the forward underwater observation dome, where a helmsman and rangefinder operators already were. The top of the transparent canopy covering the observation dome and open top bridge was bursting through the surface when Bargsten emerged from the internal access hatch of the dome.

‘’Rangefinder, give me a precise azimuth and distance for the lighthouse at the entrance of the Golden Gate Strait as soon as you can.’’

Bargsten quickly sat at the indirect fire control map table of the dome and plotted his precise position as soon as the rangefinder operator gave him the data he needed. Calculating the azimuth and range to his intended target inside San Francisco Bay was the matter of seconds for him, as he worked frantically against the clock and hoping that the American coastal gunners would not be top notch and quick to react today. This was literally going to be a hit and run job.

‘’SURFACE, SURFACE!... GUNNERS, MAN THE MAIN GUN MOUNT! BE READY TO FIRE ON MY COMMAND! SET SHELL FUSES TO SHORT DELAY DETONATION ON IMPACT!’’

With the twin 12.7 centimeter gun mount on remote-control mode, Bargsten made it slew in the direction and elevation he had just calculated to hit his target, then sent another order by intercom to the gun master.

‘’FIRE FOR EFFECT, MAXIMUM RATE, FIRE!’’

As the first two big shells burst out of the twin guns, Bargsten looked nervously at the coastal batteries located on each side of the Golden Gate Strait. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to have reacted to his presence yet. However, that would not stay like that for long. The trick for him was to cause the most damage possible in the least amount of time and then dive before the American gunners could fire their first shells.

 

14:31 (San Francisco Time)

Treasure Island, in the middle of San Francisco Bay

 

Treasure Island, in the middle of San Francisco Bay and in direct view of the Golden Gate Strait, was an artificial island built in 1936-37 by dumping thousands of tons of rocks, landfill and top soil over a shallow reef that had been until then nothing but a navigation hazard. The 200 hectares island thus formed had then been used to lodge the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. However, with the coming of the war, the Navy Department had simply confiscated the island from the city of San Francisco in 1942 and had turned it into a major naval installation and center named Naval Station Treasure Island. On top of quays and piers for warships, the island was the location for numerous barracks, repair shops, storage depots, ramps and hangars for seaplanes, a navy personnel processing center, a hospital and, most importantly, the headquarters of the 12^th Naval District. There were over 12,000 navy men and women present on the island, many being men waiting to be deployed to the Pacific Theatre, when the rain of shells fired at near maximum elevation by the U-915 started to fall. Most of the shells did impact on the island right from the start, as it was a well-charted feature on all existing maps of the time, and started immediately to cause damages, casualties and panic, most of the personnel on the island never having seen combat before. As the U-915 slowly drifted at two knots from South to North, its fire also slowly swept the island, hitting first the seaplane hangars and the naval district headquarters building, then the rows of multi-storey military barracks. With his gun loaders working like demons, Bargsten was able to fire a total of 68 shells in only a bit more than two minutes. That was when he decided that he had pushed his luck far enough and gave the order to clear the decks and dive. The top of his sail was already under water when the American coastal batteries belatedly fired their first shells, missing the submarine by a long shot. The planes that then took off from the nearby Alameda Naval Air Station tried in vain to find the pesky German submarine but failed to locate it despite patrolling until they had to land due to low fuel levels. Bargsten, having ‘parked’ his submarine on the bottom well away from the coast at a depth of 260 meters and then keeping a silent routine, let the storm pass before going back near the surface and sailing along a giant loop, returning to near the Golden Gate Strait’s entrance. Once there, he repeated his previous attack, but this time against Naval Air Station Alameda, nearly at the maximum range of his big guns. He fired a total of 42 shells on that pass by San Francisco before diving again out of sight, leaving hundreds of American coastal artillerymen swearing profusely at the U-915.

 

18:15 (San Francisco Time)

Friday, March 3, 1944

German disguised cargo ship S.S. BREMERHAVEN

Anchored inside Wafer Bay, Cocos Island

550 kilometers off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica

‘’You fired a total of 292 12.7 centimeter shells?’’ Exclaimed the captain of the S.S. BREMERHAVEN, presently disguised as the Portuguese cargo ship S.S. SANTO CRISTOBAL. Ulrich von Wittgenstein smiled at the surprise shown by his merchant navy comrade.

‘’Yes, and none of them were wasted, I can assure you. In fact, I intend to fill my boat to the roof with all the 12.7 centimeter shells I will be able to load aboard. Those big twin guns are simply marvelous.’’

‘’Hell, if the other four U-boote captains on this mission expend as much shells as you did, then I might run out of shells within a month or two.’’

‘’Well, if they do, fill their requests as best you can. Those shells are presently returning their weight in gold in terms of strategic damage done to the Americans. A few months of this and the Americans will be on their knees.’’

‘’And what about those 59 men you freed from a POW camp in Seattle? What do you want me to do with them?’’

Ulrich thought over his response to that for a moment before answering.

‘’On second thoughts, I will keep on my submarine 24 of them who are qualified submariners or warship crewmen, so that I can use them to man tanker or cargo ships captured by me and whose cargo I deem valuable enough to grab and bring back to Germany or use during this operation. The rest will stay with your ship until a prize ship starts its way back to Europe.’’

Ulrich then contemplated the nearby shore of the bay, with its high cliffs covered with thick tropical vegetation and its beaches. There was even a photo-worthy cliff-side waterfall nearby, plus a number of old huts from a long-abandoned settlement. The island, belonging to Costa Rica, was actually uninhabited and had been so for decades, which was one of the reasons it had been chosen as one of the clandestine resupply points for the submarines of Operation VISE GRIP.

‘’This place looks really nice. I think that I will let my crew profit from the beach and waterfall for a couple of days, while your men resupply my boat.’’

‘’You are most welcome to it.’’ replied the captain of the S.S. BREMERHAVEN. ‘’My own men have been going to the shore quite often while waiting for subs to show up. For your men, it will be a nice change from being stuck inside a steel coffin.’’

Ulrich smiled at the mild joke from his merchant navy colleague.

‘’Well, that coffin of mine certainly dealt a lot of death and destruction lately and I am far from finished, my friend.’’