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00:00If you lived before our time, who would you be?
00:14What if you could choose from a thousand yesterdays when the past was today and the new took your
00:21breath away?
00:22Who would you be?
00:23How would you live?
00:24Who would you love?
00:25Living every generation before us, remembering for generations to come, the History Channel,
00:36where the past comes alive.
00:41Hello, I'm Roger Mudd.
00:42Welcome to the History Channel.
00:44Most Americans know about Pearl Harbor, but few know about the German submarine attacks
00:48off the United States' eastern seaboard less than a year later.
00:52Those attacks were the work of Wolfpacks, groups of German subs that terrorized U.S.
00:57and British shipping.
00:59Join us now as the History Channel presents Silent Service, Wolfpack, U-Boats of World
01:04War II.
01:07They were Hitler's most effective and most feared weapons, submarines that attacked in
01:14coordinated groups like wolves.
01:20We had to learn strategy, how to attack, how to defend yourself against attacks, how
01:25to wiggle out of a tricky situation.
01:29In the Second World War, these stealthy predators sank thousands of Allied merchant ships, choking
01:33Britain in an economic strike cold and devastating U.S. coastal shipping from New York Harbor
01:40to the Gulf of Mexico.
01:42All of a sudden, this tremendous explosion, a sheet of fire just shot skyward.
01:49Wolfpack, U-Boats of World War II, next on the Silent Service.
02:12In the quiet seaport of Wilhelmshaven, Germany, submarine sailors in the modern German Navy
02:23trained for combat exercises.
02:31By today's standards, the boats these sailors dip beneath the icy waters of the North Sea
02:35are quite small, and their air-dependent motors restrict the amount of time they can remain
02:40submerged.
02:46But despite their limitations, these tiny craft help defend the German coasts and carry
02:51out other vital functions.
02:57The submarines are mostly involved in reconnaissance exercises and participation in international
03:02maneuvers.
03:03They are also engaged in training with other NATO partners, how to use submarines against
03:09other submarines.
03:13In such training maneuvers, some German boats play the role of the enemy.
03:18They are mock targets for much larger British and American nuclear-powered attack submarines.
03:25The vessels work well in this role because they are similar in design to submarines deployed
03:29by enemies of NATO, such as Iran and North Korea.
03:37But while combating German submersibles is now merely a benign training exercise, this
03:43century past, for the British and the Americans, was a very real and very deadly challenge.
03:52In July 1935, German Navy Captain Karl Dönitz received word that he had been chosen to rebuild
03:58the German U-boat fleet in shambles for 20 years.
04:03He harbored mixed feelings about the assignment.
04:06Years earlier, Dönitz had commanded a U-boat in World War I.
04:11The mission for him and his fellow submarine captains was to wage war on British commercial
04:15shipping to crip England economically.
04:19The British worried mightily that the Germans would succeed in blockading their island and
04:24preventing the introduction of food, gasoline, raw materials, war materiel, to keep them
04:32in the battle.
04:35While Dönitz and his comrades enjoyed initial success, the British eventually defended themselves
04:40by forming their merchant ships into convoys protected by destroyers, fast-maneuvering
04:45gunships.
04:46This tactic finally proved insurmountable.
04:53Captain Dönitz lost his submarine to a destroyer attack and spent eight months in a British
04:58POW camp.
05:00Now in 1935, Dönitz skippered a cruiser, a surface vessel.
05:05With the high command's emphasis on the surface navy, the ambitious officer had no desire
05:10for a backwater assignment commanding a new U-boat arm.
05:14The notion still in the back of the heads of many of the leaders was that Germany could
05:20not do without at least a sizable surface fleet.
05:25The commander-in-chief at the time was Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, and he did not, in contrast
05:33to Dönitz, have a U-boat background.
05:36So it should not surprise that his emphasis would be on the surface navy.
05:44But Dönitz's enthusiasm for his task grew with his quick realization that submarines
05:49would play a much larger role in the impending struggle than most naval commanders currently
05:53recognized.
05:56Dönitz believed that Britain would inevitably join in on any fight.
06:00The only chance for victory over England's mighty fleet lay in the skillful deployment
06:05of Germany's most lethal weapon, the U-boat.
06:11Dönitz plunged himself into the job of constructing an effective U-boat force.
06:21He regarded him as a father.
06:23He was humane and he had a lot of understanding.
06:29Within months, he had developed a radical new approach to the deployment of submarines,
06:34the rudiments of the idea having first occurred to him twenty years before as he languished
06:39in a British prison.
06:41To Dönitz's thinking, the primary reason U-boats were no match for the British convoys
06:46in the last war was that each boat had hunted by itself and attacked at random.
06:53Once a U-boat fired on a convoy, it gave away its position and destroyers immediately counterattacked.
07:03In this scenario, a submarine might destroy a single ship, but it then had to scurry away
07:09to avoid being destroyed itself.
07:15A better approach would be to organize U-boats into attack groups directed from a central
07:18command headquarters.
07:21The one thing that made that possible for him was radio, that he could, from his headquarters
07:28ashore, have his boats on the long string so that the major decisions were made at U-boat
07:38headquarters and not out at sea.
07:44Dönitz's plan was to space his U-boats 15 to 20 miles apart and array them in the potential
07:50path of a convoy.
07:52And sooner or later, one of his boats, sometimes not, but sooner or later, chances were that
07:59one of his boats would pick up the convoy and this boat then would become the one that
08:06would stay with the convoy, radio often direction-finding signals as a beacon, basically, and guide the
08:15other boats to the convoy.
08:18The idea was that once the U-boats had gathered to form a group, they would remain submerged
08:23until nightfall and then rise to the surface and begin an assault.
08:28The attack groups quickly assumed the ominous name of Wolfpacks.
08:33The virtue of the Wolfpack was that by having a large number of U-boats attack a convoy
08:37simultaneously, you would throw the escort vessels into confusion.
08:42Those vessels would be destroyers, frigates, corvettes, whose duty it was to protect the
08:48freighters and tankers forming the convoy.
08:51When the escorts were confused, it was thought that these U-boats could move in and make
08:56very rapid launches of torpedoes, move back out to the perimeter of the attack area and
09:02return again in similar fashion.
09:06But in order for this new tactic to work, Dönitz needed large numbers of submarines
09:11at his disposal, as many as 300 to completely decimate British shipping.
09:18The Germans estimated that if they could sink 700,000 tons of British and Allied shipping
09:26a month, that that would exceed the ability of the Allies to replace those losses with
09:33new construction.
09:35And that would, in time, strangle and starve Great Britain into submission.
09:43Building 300 submarines would take several years.
09:47This didn't appear to be a problem, however, since no one in the German admiralty expected
09:51full-scale war before 1942.
09:57But in September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.
10:01The action goaded Britain and brought her into the war prematurely.
10:08Without adequate numbers of U-boats to form wolf packs, Dönitz had no choice but to send
10:13his few submarines out on patrol as lone wolves.
10:17These hunters would target both merchant men and warships.
10:24One lone wolf, U-47, skippered by Lieutenant Commander Gunter Preen, humbled the British
10:30Navy with one of the most spectacular exploits of the war.
10:35On the night of October 13, 1939, Preen crept into Scapa Flow, the British fleet's primary
10:41harbour in the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland.
10:48Two well-placed torpedoes sent the battleship Royal Oak, along with 800 British sailors,
10:53to the bottom of the harbour.
10:56Preen slipped away unscathed and undetected.
10:59He became an instant hero in Germany.
11:02In fact, they flew him to Berlin, there was a parade in Berlin, he was the man of the
11:09hour, they were all decorated, the new, real people were there, and the Germans had their
11:16first real U-boat ace of the Second World War.
11:21The success prompted Hitler to step up U-boat production.
11:25Karl Dönitz, now an admiral, would soon have enough boats to execute his master plan.
11:32Full-scale wolf pack attacks were about to begin.
11:37After the success of Lieutenant Commander Gunther Preen's lone wolf attack on the British
11:41battleship Royal Oak, the role of the submariner became romanticized in the eyes of the German
11:46public.
11:48Young men strove for acceptance into the elite and now glamorous U-boat service.
11:53But for many, glamour was not the only benefit of serving aboard a submarine.
11:58Gerd Kelbling entered the U-boat service at age 26.
12:02A skipper of U-593, he commanded a crew of over 40 men on 16 war patrols.
12:16I believed it was the greatest challenge a young officer at sea could have.
12:20His own boat and the chance to fight in the Atlantic Ocean or in the Mediterranean and
12:24to help win this war.
12:26This was our vision, of course, in the beginning of the war.
12:33Pete Peterson hailed from a seafaring community in northern Germany near the border of Denmark.
12:38He served for three years aboard U-518.
12:42I knew that I did not care to go to Russia in a foxhole at 30 below zero with nothing
12:50to eat and getting shot at.
12:52That I did not want to do and that's where most likely I would have wound up if I had
12:57joined the infantry or the army.
13:01Most U-boat volunteers were young men between the ages of 18 and 30, eager for adventure
13:06at sea, eager for a chance to prove themselves and return to the hero's welcome that awaited
13:12nearly every U-boat returning from patrol.
13:17But just the desire to serve aboard a U-boat was generally not qualification enough.
13:22Successful applicants usually brought a needed skill to the job.
13:27It generally came from backgrounds that were very technically oriented and they had already
13:31some experience with machinery work or metal working or plumbing or pipe fitting or something
13:37like that.
13:38These were skills that were highly valued in the Navy in particular, but especially
13:42in the submarine.
13:43You'd be out at sea for three, four months at a time and you had to be somewhat self-sufficient.
13:47Throughout the war, the Germans relied on two primary U-boat configurations, the Type
13:537 and the Type 9.
13:57The Type 7 was a smaller boat of roughly 500 tons.
14:00It was sort of the sports car of the submarines.
14:03It was an easier boat to control.
14:06It could get underwater quicker.
14:08It was used more often in the convoy battles in the Atlantic.
14:13Whereas the Type 9 was a larger boat.
14:14It was rated at about 750 tons.
14:17It was sort of the Boeing 747 of the submarines.
14:20It was just slower in its reaction time.
14:23It was heavier.
14:25So it was primarily sent off to patrol in open waters on its own as a lone wolf out
14:30at sea.
14:35Living conditions on either boat were anything but comfortable.
14:40At sea, an average of 50 men, usually four officers and over 40 crewmen, lived together
14:46for weeks at a time in a smelly, cramped space filled with pipes, cables, chains, valve wheels,
14:52and other hazardous obstacles.
14:55The interior of the U-boat was jammed with food, cans of food stacked in every corner,
15:05bread and other food supplies hanging overhead in hammocks, and torpedoes in the forward
15:12and stern torpedo rooms, taking up an enormous amount of space, preventing, for example,
15:19the bunks from being drawn down from the sides.
15:23Technically, there were separate living spaces or messes for officers, petty officers, and
15:29seamen.
15:30But limited space prevented any real privacy anywhere aboard the vessel.
15:35And yet there was a lot of camaraderie.
15:37You couldn't help it.
15:38If you had to go from here to the control room, you had to go through all these different
15:42messes.
15:43And you saw these people.
15:44Maybe they were standing there in their underwear, and the officers were shaving or whatever
15:48they did, or washing up, and you had to go through there.
15:52So there was a tremendous camaraderie.
15:58Much of this camaraderie grew out of mutual dependence on one another.
16:03They depended on me with their lives to do the right thing, do it properly, do it in
16:08time.
16:09And I depended with my life on my buddies doing their job well, doing it right, doing
16:15as they were told.
16:18A small mistake or lapse of judgment on the part of anyone on the boat could sacrifice
16:22the lives of the entire crew.
16:25As an example of how we relied on each other and depended on each other, at one time we
16:31were cruising underwater.
16:32And when you cruise underwater, everything is relatively quiet, there's a little humming
16:36of machinery, and there are some people talking, and so on and so on.
16:41I was on duty in the control room.
16:43That was my workstation in the control room.
16:45And above the control room is the tower where the helmsman sits and steers the ship.
16:51He was sitting there all by himself, and he had a watch of about four hours.
16:56Out of boredom, the helmsman reached for a flare pistol mounted next to his seat.
17:01Toring with it, he accidentally fired both barrels down into the control room.
17:07And there were these little red, blue, and yellow balls dancing around in the control
17:11room, and we were chasing them with fire extinguishers trying to get them out.
17:15Now, if one of those little balls had gone through the next bulkhead into the battery,
17:22it could have blown up the ship, and nobody, but nobody, would ever know what happened to us.
17:29I can't help but wondering sometimes how many went down by accident just like that.
17:39While such minor accidents were frequent throughout the war, the event that proved most damaging
17:44to the U-boat force overall occurred relatively early in the struggle.
17:49On May 9th, 1941, the British escort HMS Bulldog attacked and disabled Lieutenant Commander
17:55Fritz Julius Lemp's U-110.
18:00Confident that the British destroyer was intent on ramming and sinking his submarine, Lemp
18:05ordered his crew to abandon ship.
18:07He made no attempt to destroy any of the secret materials left aboard, as he was sure the
18:12boat would sink.
18:14Georg Hogle was the submarine's radioman.
18:18We kept yelling to the commander up in the tower because we wanted to find out what was
18:25supposed to happen with the secret matter, whether we were supposed to bring it out or not.
18:30But he just kept yelling, leave everything inside, get out, get out, leave everything
18:36as it is.
18:37For he saw the destroyer dashing toward us, intent on cutting us in half.
18:46In a brilliant move, seeing the German sailors already in the water, the Bulldog stopped
18:51short of ramming the submarine.
18:53And after taking the U-boatmen prisoner, the British scrambled aboard U-110 to seize property.
19:00Among the items taken was a top-secret Enigma machine and its code books.
19:05The Enigma machine was used to encrypt all message traffic between U-boats and U-boat
19:10headquarters in Paris.
19:12These materials were rushed back to Great Britain to Bletchley Park, northwest of London,
19:18where British cryptographers immediately made use of them in solving naval Enigma, which
19:24was the naval cipher in which all messages were transmitted.
19:28And all of a sudden, the British were looking over the shoulders of every radio operator
19:33in the German U-boat fleet, reading every message.
19:37It was a tremendous breakthrough.
19:40Back in France, Admiral Dönitz assumed U-110 was simply lost.
19:45He never learned of the security breach.
19:49It would prove to be a crippling setback for the Germans, but not before they brought the
19:54U-boat war to a new battleground, the waters right off the east coast of the United States.
20:00From the outset of Britain's mounting struggle against U-boat attacks,
20:06Winston Churchill had pleaded with President Roosevelt to provide warships to help escort
20:10British convoys across the Atlantic.
20:14By early 1941, Roosevelt relented, and U.S. destroyers joined the effort.
20:20Initially, German Admiral Karl Dönitz urged his U-boat captains to avoid sinking American ships.
20:27Hitler had no desire to provoke yet another powerful enemy.
20:32But in December 1941, with Hitler's declaration of war on the U.S. out of solidarity with his
20:38Japanese ally, American ships became fair game.
20:42Wolfpacks would now have free reign to roam the seas, attacking anything that moved.
20:50Dönitz immediately ordered three of his long-range submarines to the east coast of the
20:55United States to wage war on U.S. merchant shipping.
20:59These U-boats were told to attack on a certain day that would be transmitted to them while
21:06they were at sea, and the aim of the attack was a sudden explosive charge against
21:15Allied shipping that would humiliate the American people and frighten them.
21:22All of the boats were to attack at the same time on the same day, and so Dönitz gave the
21:29name Haukenschlag, German for beat on a kettle drum, to the operation.
21:36Haukenschlag would be translated in English as drumbeat.
21:42But with the capture of the Enigma machine, the British were able to warn the U.S.
21:47command that German U-boats were in transit, heading directly towards the Atlantic coast.
21:53However, few authorities in the U.S. believe that the small German U-boats had the capacity
21:58to transit the Atlantic Ocean and still have fuel to patrol and then return to their ports
22:03in occupied France.
22:06U.S. harbors were left virtually undefended.
22:10In late January 1942, the first three German U-boats arrived at the American coast,
22:16unopposed.
22:18U-123, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Reinhard Hartigan, arrived at the mouth of New York
22:23Harbor and then turned south.
22:27As they steamed south along the Jersey Shore, his second-in-command, Horst von Schroeder,
22:34told me, I could smell the trees and the bushes along the Jersey Shore.
22:40We marveled at the lights of the resorts and amusement parks.
22:45Back in Germany and all along the British coast, all the lights were blackened out.
22:51Everybody practiced total elimination of lighting.
22:54But here, along the American shore, it was as though the Americans didn't know a war was on.
23:01While the lights helped nighttime coastal shipping navigate, they also silhouetted each
23:06ship perfectly.
23:08They marked the ship's ideal targets for a submarine captain aiming a torpedo.
23:24Oil and dead bodies began washing up on shore from New York to Cape Hatteras.
23:31Within a three-month period, the U-boats sank so many ships along the coast, the U.S. Navy
23:36thought an entire fleet of submarines had arrived.
23:40The submarines would hide on the bottom of the ocean during the day and then rise to
23:44the surface at night to attack.
23:47On the evening of April 10, 1942, Captain Hartigan in U-123 surfaced and made his way
23:54stealthily within sight of Jacksonville Beach, Florida.
23:57Crowds of weekend fun-goers jammed the beachfront and pier.
24:02They were sailors from the Naval Air Station at Jacksonville.
24:05They were soldiers from nearby Camp Blanding.
24:08They were civilians, all taking part in the activities provided by a large amusement park
24:15where you had merry-go-rounds and other rides.
24:18You had all kinds of restaurants and bars.
24:25At approximately 10 p.m., Hartigan spotted the SS Gulf America, a fuel tanker on her
24:31maiden voyage up the coast from Port Arthur, Texas.
24:34He and his U-boat crew prepared to attack.
24:42When the people heard the explosion and saw the fire offshore, they poured down onto the
24:47beach to watch what was happening.
24:50William Gufford was just 13 as he sat on a bench next to the pier.
24:55All of a sudden, this tremendous explosion and a sheet of fire just shot skyward.
25:01And the explosion was great enough to where it vibrated the seat that I was on.
25:07And I'm told it could be felt as far away as Mayport, where it rattled cups and saucers
25:12on the shelf.
25:13And I had no idea what happened.
25:15I knew that an explosion had occurred, but I didn't connect it with a torpedo or a
25:19submarine at the time.
25:21That became evident in a short while because I could hear reports going off, like cannons
25:28being shot.
25:31Philip May was 17 and on a double date at the amusement park.
25:36The four of us, at that point, had ridden on several rides, and we were on the merry-go-round.
25:42And I can picture it so clearly, as I came around from the land side facing the ocean,
25:51I saw this enormous orange ball of flame out in the water.
25:58And my first reaction was, oh my gosh, it's been a terrible marine accident.
26:03Went on around, and the flame, that flame died down, but you could still see some sort
26:11of smaller flame out there.
26:13And we just didn't have any real concept as to what it was.
26:19Because fuel tankers were so compartmentalized, they did not always sink after one torpedo
26:24hit.
26:25So Captain Hardigan intended to use his deck gun to ventilate the hull of the ship.
26:30But Hardigan looked over the hulk of this tanker and saw all of the people on the beach,
26:38all the lights on.
26:39And people had cars, they had turned their cars around and were shining their headlights
26:44out to sea.
26:47He realized that if he fired an errant shot, it would go right into that crowd of people
26:53and kill them.
26:54So he made the decision to take his U-boat around the blazing tanker.
27:01He went around to the other, that is the shoreward side of the vessel, and pointed his gun out
27:07to sea and began firing.
27:10To the horror of the bystanders, the gun's muzzle flashes revealed the outline of the
27:15submarine.
27:16There was no longer any doubt as to the source of the initial explosion.
27:21The burning wreck drifted for several miles along the coast before it finally sank.
27:31On the following morning, which was a Saturday, our whole family went to Jacksonville.
27:37On the way in, a number of hearses passed us, taking the dead bodies to Jacksonville
27:43from Mayport.
27:46For the rest of the war, the city of Jacksonville Beach took measures to black out its beach
27:50front at night.
27:52Hardigan, after he shelled the craft, went on down towards St. Augustine, right off the
27:56entrance to St. Augustine.
27:59He submerged and was depth of charge by a patrol craft that literally sunk his vessel.
28:10He prepared to leave the vessel, but on the last run, the craft ran right over him and
28:16then disappeared up to the north.
28:20And he found that his ship wasn't in quite the condition that they thought.
28:25I mean, they were taking on quite a bit of water at the time.
28:28He was badly, I think he lost one propeller, one engine, one shaft, and proceeded back
28:35to Germany only on one propeller.
28:39Over the next several months, German U-boats would continue their rampage on Allied shipping.
28:45But the terrifying Wolfpacks were about to meet their match in the form of the Allied
28:49counterattack, the Hunter Killers.
28:53After the drumbeat U-boats wrought havoc on American shipping off the Atlantic coast in
28:591942, U.S. Coastal Defenders spurred into action.
29:05Beach communities up and down the coast adopted blackout measures and formed civilian patrols
29:09to help watch for enemy submarines.
29:13Aircraft, both planes and blimps, continually patrolled coastal waters.
29:19And the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard began forming merchant ships into convoys defended by destroyer
29:25escorts and patrol craft.
29:29These warships fended off frequent torpedo attacks.
29:33The first one that I encountered was on a convoy of high-test aviation tankers going
29:39to Newfoundland, where they were used for refueling aircraft up there.
29:46Well, that's a little frightening, because if something hits one of those things,
29:50everything goes. It's one big bomb.
29:53And we had a sub firing at us.
29:56In fact, it went right under our hull.
29:59We heard it, and we knew it because we had been trained in the Navy schools on these
30:05records of the actual torpedo going through the water.
30:08And you couldn't miss it, you know.
30:11Pretty scary.
30:13Harris Weinstock served aboard a patrol craft that encountered and killed a U-boat off the
30:18mid-Atlantic coast.
30:22Weinstock's vessel depth-charged the submarine as it attempted to surface.
30:28As the patrol craft came around for a second depth-charge run, they saw a man make his
30:34way out of the conning tower of the submarine and into the water.
30:38The second round of depth charges caused the U-boat to literally fold in on itself.
30:43It was pretty ugly, because there were pieces of people.
30:49I don't like, you know, it was very gory.
30:53A way over in the distance there, a man was swimming.
30:58So, I mean, common sense.
31:00It must have been the man that had come out of the conning tower.
31:05So we threw him a line, he came aboard, and identified himself as being the commanding
31:12officer.
31:13And he said, in effect, take me to your captain.
31:18The man pulled from the water was Lieutenant Commander Klaus Borgsten, the highly decorated
31:23commander of U-521.
31:25He was the only survivor.
31:29Defensive measures along the American coast gradually improved to the point that Admiral
31:33Dönitz ceased Operation Drumbeat and ordered his U-boats away from the U.S. shore.
31:38The Germans would venture back to the middle of the Atlantic, where Allied surface and
31:43air defenses were weakest.
31:45But with the increasing advancement in all aspects of anti-submarine warfare, the days
31:50of Karl Dönitz's wolfpacks were numbered.
31:53Throughout the war, Admiral Dönitz had been careful to keep command of the U-boat force
31:58centralized.
31:59He had the ability to think himself into our situation.
32:05Of course, U-boat warfare in World War II was completely different from the previous
32:09war, but he had a particular understanding because he was a U-boat commander himself.
32:14But Dönitz's close involvement with his boats contributed to both their success and
32:20their defeat.
32:22While centralized command was effective in coordinating wolfpacks, it required that the
32:27U-boats break radio silence to communicate with headquarters.
32:30Which meant that every time a German submarine went on the air, in order to communicate with
32:36Dönitz, they did that very, very often.
32:39Basically, they could be pinpointed by the use of triangulation, other techniques, by
32:46shore stations, and their location would be given away.
32:52This was just one of several anti-submarine measures the Allies were employing by late
32:57spring of 1943.
32:59From the start of the war, the British had used ASDIC sonar to locate submarines beneath
33:04the waves.
33:06It was an instrument that sent out sound pulses, and if those pulses found a submerged object
33:14such as a submarine, an echo would return, and a ping would identify the fact that there
33:21was a submerged object at this particular bearing and range.
33:25Not until late 1943 was it possible for the device to also tell you the depth of the object.
33:32Now, in addition to ASDIC sonar, British and American ships and planes were also equipped
33:37with radar.
33:38This now allowed them to detect objects on the surface of the ocean.
33:43Radar forced U-boats to remain submerged for a much higher percentage of the time, depriving
33:48them of their ability to scout for convoys.
33:51But the fatal blow to the U-boat force ultimately came from the use of anti-submarine hunter-killer
33:57groups.
33:58These were groups of Allied destroyers that accompanied small aircraft carriers.
34:03When planes from a carrier spotted a submarine, destroyers would give chase.
34:09The warships would then pinpoint the submerged U-boat with ASDIC sonar and launch death charges
34:14until the boat sank, even if it took several days.
34:19U-boat veteran Pete Peterson recalls one such episode that took place in the mid-Atlantic.
34:25We were caught by six destroyers, and they nailed us for 36 hours with run after run
34:34after run, and dropped death charges at us.
34:44We were sinking deeper and deeper.
34:48We took on water at that point.
34:50And the skipper said, get ready to abandon ship.
34:53We're going to blow it to the surface, and we go over the side.
34:56And we all stood there and got our life preservers on, put our life preservers on, and small
35:03little values, rings and wrist watches.
35:07We put them in condoms because they were watertight.
35:12We blew the ballast out, and we popped to the surface.
35:16And nothing happened.
35:18And the six destroyers were lined up.
35:21The bridge could see them laying there.
35:23And the captain said, start an engine.
35:26So we started the diesel and took off.
35:29Still nothing happened.
35:30The captain said, start the other diesel.
35:32We started the other diesel and took off.
35:35And by that time, we had our rear toward the destroyers.
35:39And we picked up speed as fast as we could go and got away.
35:44How we got away that time, I have no idea.
35:47We would never know.
35:49In the months and years to come, as hunter-killer groups refined their deadly tactics, fewer
35:55and fewer submarines would experience the good fortune of U-518.
35:59The luck of the once feared Wolfpacks was about to run out.
36:03By early 1944, allied hunter-killer groups had honed their strategy
36:09and carried out anti-submarine counterattacks with deadly accuracy.
36:22That summer, a hunter-killer group based around the aircraft carrier USS Guadalcanal
36:27spotted U-505 off West Africa and gave chase.
36:32And they made a hedgehog attack.
36:34And a hedgehog is a mortar.
36:36It's shot off the front of a surface ship in groups of 20 or 30 at a time.
36:41And these go forward of the attacking ship and they hit the water in a circular pattern
36:46and they sink down.
36:48And if they contact something, one of them will explode or two of them explode
36:51and then they set off all the other ones that are in the area.
36:56The hedgehog attack did not find its mark.
36:59But follow-up depth charges put the U-boat out of commission.
37:07They started going deep without any control of the boat.
37:11The rudder was jammed hard to the right.
37:13They had no steering control on the boat.
37:16And many of the gauges had been smashed and there was a report of water coming in
37:20in the rear.
37:21So the order was given to blow air in the tanks and come to the surface
37:25and abandon ship.
37:27Ships in the Hunter-Killer Group opened fire on the U-boat.
37:31Combat cameramen on the scene captured the actual event on film.
37:38When the submarine crew started abandoning ship,
37:41the Hunter-Killer Group captain ordered the firing ceased
37:44and sent a boarding party to attempt to capture the U-boat before it sank.
37:48After the firing stopped, it was merely about 8 minutes
37:52that was needed for the boarding party from USS Pillsbury
37:56to get to the submarine.
37:58The submarine was operating on its electric motors.
38:00It was turning in a circle hard to the right.
38:05Engine room operator Zenon Lukosius was one of the sailors in the boarding party.
38:11We're passing these submariners in the water
38:14and this one German says, save me comrade.
38:17And I spoke back to him in English, don't worry about a thing.
38:21I said, we got a couple other ships that are going to pick all you guys up.
38:25You're not going to, nobody's going to drown.
38:28We're going to pick you all up.
38:31Once inside, Lukosius headed for the engine room
38:34to try to shut down the electric motors.
38:37When I get around the periscope, I could see the water coming in.
38:41See, now we were not standing in water.
38:44Because all the water, the way the ship was tilted,
38:47the water was all in the bilges, but it was all back aft.
38:51So all it needed was a little more water to tilt it some more
38:54and then it would have slid down.
38:57Lukosius stopped the water flow by replacing the cover on a pipe
39:00that had been opened by the Germans to deliberately scuttle the submarine.
39:04As evident here in actual footage of the capture,
39:07the U-505 was nearly lost.
39:11So the boarding party managed to gain control of the boat
39:14and they started immediately gathering technical materials
39:17and documents and passing them topside.
39:20It was a huge haul of material that was captured from the U-505.
39:24Of course, they have a completely operating submarine,
39:27no Germans aboard, and here they are in complete control of this boat.
39:30They could gather everything they could possibly get their hands on
39:33and it was eventually nine mail bags that weighed 1,100 pounds
39:37of technical documents that were removed from U-505.
39:41The Navy towed the German submarine to Bermuda
39:44where it remained until after the war.
39:47With such disasters as the capture of U-505
39:50becoming more and more commonplace,
39:52Admiral Dönitz recognized that the glory days of his U-boat force were over.
39:58His wolf packs were no longer any match for Allied defensive measures.
40:03It was a lost cause, but Dönitz opted to keep sending crews out on patrol.
40:08If nothing else, his submarines could keep Allied warships and planes tied down.
40:13For every plane that flew over the Atlantic in search of submarines,
40:17it made for one less plane dropping bombs on German cities.
40:22The U-boat crews also recognized this fact.
40:25Serving on a submarine in the Atlantic was one way
40:28they could help defend their families at home.
40:31This realization helped keep crew morale at a reasonable level to the very end.
40:36April 1945
40:41British, Russian, and American ground forces overran Germany in April of 1945.
40:49On April 30th, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in Berlin.
40:56As his last official act, the Fuhrer appointed Admiral Dönitz head of State of Germany.
41:02Within a week of his appointment,
41:05Dönitz ordered his U-boat commanders to surface and surrender to the enemy.
41:11The Admiral himself was taken into custody on May 23rd
41:14and spent the next ten years in Spandau prison in Germany.
41:19He died quietly in a suburb of Berlin on December 24th, 1980.
41:24From 1939 to 1945, Admiral Dönitz lost some 785 U-boats
41:31and 28,000 of a total of 39,000 U-boat crewmen, 70% of the force, perished.
41:38It was the highest casualty rate of any military unit in the war.
41:44Today, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago
41:47is home to the captured German submarine U-505.
41:51It is one of a handful of U-boats that survived the war
41:54and serves as a tangible reminder of the epic struggle
41:57waged in the oceans of the world in the middle of the last century.
42:08Germany's modern U-boat service comprises some 14 vessels
42:12and just over 400 officers and men.
42:15While these submarine sailors of today respect the skill and dedication
42:19displayed by their World War II predecessors,
42:22they wish to separate themselves from the ruthless aspects of the Wolfpack legacy.
42:33There are certain traditions that are being maintained,
42:36but we do not look back on the World War.
42:38The memories of that are quite negative,
42:41and for that reason, one doesn't like to compare with that time any longer.
42:45To ensure their success, however,
42:49these U-boaters understand that one tradition handed down
42:52from the days of the Wolfpacks must always be preserved.
42:58You know that you have to stick together,
43:00and that you have to work together,
43:02and that you are one team.
43:04Each man in the crew has his own specific place.
43:10In six bloody years of fighting,
43:12German U-boats sent more than 3,000 British and American ships
43:15to the bottom of the sea
43:17and claimed the lives of several times as many Allied sailors.
43:21The Wolfpacks practiced a brutal attack strategy
43:24never before seen in modern warfare,
43:27perfecting a deadly combination of stealth and military precision
43:30beneath the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean
43:33almost 60 years ago.
43:35Explosion
43:40Among the charges brought at Nuremberg
43:42against the German Admiral Karl Dönitz
43:44was that he had ordered a stop
43:46to the rescue of crews from sinking ships.
43:49Dönitz' order followed the torpedoing
43:51of an armed British liner, the Laconia, in September 1942.
43:55Her crew and passengers were being rescued by a German U-boat
43:59when an American bomber attacked without warning.
44:03Dönitz was outraged and issued his Laconia order
44:06no more rescues.
44:08But when U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz
44:10confirmed that the U.S. Navy
44:12had a similar policy in the Pacific,
44:14Dönitz was acquitted of the Laconia charge.
44:33Explosion
44:43Explosion
44:49Explosion
44:59Explosion
45:03Explosion
45:06Explosion