“The incident had all the elements of a great naval tale: a devastating air attack, the ramming of an enemy submarine by an Allied corvette, and a hostile boarding on the Spanish Main.”
By James Brun
THE SUMMER OF 1942 was one of the most intense periods of anti-submarine action for Allied navies in Second World War.
The Battle of the Atlantic was in full swing as supply convoys from the United States and Canada carrying desperately needed men and materiel across the ocean faced attacks by German U-boats.
Yet one of the most fascinating actions of the period didn’t take place in the cold grey north Atlantic, but rather the warm turquoise waters of the Caribbean. The incident had all the elements of a great naval tale: a devastating air attack, the ramming of an enemy submarine by an Allied corvette, and a hostile boarding on the Spanish Main. Although a widely celebrated event in Canadian naval circles, the dramatic tale remains largely forgotten outside of that country’s service.
Despite its vast and expansive territory, Canada’s war effort relied on crude oil shipments from Colombia, Venezuela, and Texas. The country’s considerable industrial might had been directed at wartime production and maritime supply lines, extending from South America to refineries in Montreal and Halifax helped quench Eastern Canada’s thirst for petroleum.[1]
However, wartime production caused an increased demand for oil at a time when merchant shipping losses from effective German U-boat patrols was increasing. Even as authorities imposed fuel rationing, Canadian industry was being starved of oil, while naval fuel stocks in the Maritimes decreased to 45,000 tons, a mere 15-day supply.[2] In an effort to restore the flow, Vice Admiral Percy Nelles ordered four RCN corvettes and two British destroyers under Canadian control to the Caribbean, where they would escort Canadian oil tankers through the U-boat infested waters.
In 1942, German submarines prowled the Caribbean with near impunity. Between May and July of 1942, German U-boat kills resulted in the loss of 48 merchant ships in the Caribbean and 21 merchant ships in the Gulf of Mexico.[3] To help safeguard the shipments, the Allies implemented a convoy system similar to those of the Atlantic. Convoy TAW 15 was one of them.
On Aug. 24, 1942, ships of TAW 15, gathered off the coast of Port of Spain, Trinidad. Named for the geographic region of her operation, Trinidad, Aruba, and Key West, the procession sailed under the command of Commander J.F. Walsh, USN, in the American destroyer USS Lea. Three smaller American patrol craft took up station around the tankers, along with the Dutch gunboat HNMS Jan Van Brakel, and three Canadian corvettes: HMC ships Halifax, Snowberry, and Oakville.[4] The group would make for Key West, Florida, corralling groups of tankers and merchant ships along the way at Aruba, the Jamaican Channel, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Off Key West, TAW 15 would merge with another convoy for a consolidated voyage to New York, and finally Halifax.
The first attack came the morning of the journey’s second day. U-558 sighted merchant ships in the vicinity of Jamaican Channel, prior to their scheduled rendezvous with TAW 15. The U-boat fired a single torpedo which sunk the British freighter Amakura, killing 13 members of her crew.[5] A Catalina PBY (Patrol Bomber Consolidated Aircraft) engaged the Axis unit, and forced the sub to dive in an evasive manoeuvre, allowing the other ships to escape.
Later that day, another U-boat, U-164, engaged a small group of ships from TAW 15, sinking the Dutch ship Stad Amsterdam. Once again, the arrival of patrol aircraft forced the U-boat to break off any further attacks. Neither U-164 nor U-558 were aware of the presence of a larger convoy.[6]
The next day, on Aug. 26, TAW 15 rendezvoused with a group of fast tankers off Aruba and altered north through Windward Passage, navigating between Cuba and Hispaniola. Unbeknownst to the convoy, U-94, a Type VIIC U-boat on her 10th wartime patrol, was prowling the area for Allied targets. United States Navy (USN) Catalina air patrols, launching from Guantanamo Bay, increased their air coverage in advance of the vulnerable tankers’ arrival. The volume of air activity around the chokepoint indicated to Oberleutnant (Lieutenant) Otto Ites, commander of U-94, that a convoy was approaching. At just after noon a lookout in U-94 sighted TAW 15. Ites relayed the convoy’s position, course, and speed to headquarters.[7] Other U-boats in the vicinity received the report, and, employing their typical wolfpack tactics, altered to intercept the convoy. U-94’s contact report was intercepted by Allied intelligence. Authorities ashore in Puerto Rico relayed the information back to the convoy commander in USS Lea, who arranged his escorts into defensive positions around the convoy in an attempt to thwart the attack.[8]
On the night of Aug. 27, U-511, commanded by Kapitanleutenant (Lieutenant Commander) Friedrich Steinhoff, reached the convoy, and together with U-94 positioned to attack.[9] U-94 penetrated the convoy’s screen between Oakville and Snowberry but was sighted by a USN Catalina PBY-5, from Patrol Squadron 92. U-94 crash dived as the Catalina’s pilot, Lieutenant Gordon Fiss engaged with his aircraft, dropping four well placed 650-pound depth charges that exploded around the submarine, blowing off both her bow hydroplanes.[10]
The Bridge team in Oakville heard the explosions, and watched four tall water columns surge into the moonlit sky. Oakville’s officer of the watch, Sub-Lieutenant E.G. Scott, called his captain, Lieutenant Commander Clarence Aubrey King, who ordered his ship to action stations. King was an experienced wartime ship driver, who had earned a Distinguished Service Cross for sinking a German U-boat while commanding a British Q-ship during the First World War. When the Second World War erupted, he had returned to the King’s service from his retirement as a gentleman farmer in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.
HMCS Oakville’s action alarm woke up Sub-Lieutenant Hal Lawrence, who had been asleep on the humid upper deck, wearing only his shorts.[11] He bolted to his station as the ASDIC officer and found Leading Seaman Hartman sweeping the anti-submarine beam in search of a contact. Donning his headphones, Lawrence heard a submarine blow her tanks, and the ASDIC operator picked up a faint contact.[12] Oakville dropped a pattern of five depth charges along the apparent course of the U-boat, then slowed to allow the ASDIC team to continue its search.
The ASDIC operator regained contact as the submarine surfaced one hundred yards ahead of Oakville. King manoeuvred his ship to ram the submarine, but U-94 evaded, and suffered a mere glancing blow. Oakville engaged the surfaced submarine with her 4-inch gun, scoring a hit on the sub’s conning tower. Oakville’s machine guns followed suit, firing broadside into the submarine and blowing U-94’s 88-mm deck gun into the sea. King altered to ram the submarine once more, but missed a second time, grazing her again. Oakville’s guns could not depress weapons sufficiently to fire into the submarine as she passed down the ship’s side at close range. But sailors are a resourceful lot, and a supply of empty Coke bottles that had been stowed on the upper decks were heaved over onto the deck of the submarine.[13] Following this second pass, Oakville fired a pattern of depth charges which exploded directly beneath U-94.
King wheeled his ship around for a third ramming attempt, finally catching U-94 squarely abaft the conning tower. The captain brought his corvette alongside the stricken submarine, ordering his boarding party away.
Oakville’s boarding team mustered on the forecastle and armed themselves for their duties. The party carried revolvers, grenades, flashlights, and steel helmets. Most men were shirtless, having been awoken on the hot Caribbean night, wearing only tropical shorts, or in some cases, boxer shorts.[14] Most men were barefoot, including Hal Lawrence, the boarding party officer.
While Lawrence and his team were preparing themselves, the corvette’s main gun jammed. In the heat of battle the gun crew rapidly cleared the round without concern for their surroundings. The gun was cleared, reloaded and fired. However, Oakville’s boarding party was only a few metres from the gun, and the blast blew the boarding party over the side and onto the deck below.[15] Lawrence awoke from the concussion with his ears and nose bleeding. The petty officer standing over him informed him that the submarine was alongside, and it was time to board. Lawrence staggered to the gunwale and jumped over the side, landing on the surging deck of the submarine 10 feet below.
His rough landing snapped the elastic in his shorts, which he shook off into the sea. With the exception of some boarding equipment and a life belt, Lawrence was naked. Stoker Petty Officer Art Powell followed Lawrence onto the submarine as Oakville lost power and began to drift away. The remaining members of the boarding team were stranded on their own ship, leaving Lawrence and Powell to conduct the boarding alone.
As the two Canadians made their way to the submarine’s conning tower, Lawrence was swept over the side by a wave and hauled back aboard by Powell. The brief delay was fortuitous, as Oakville unleashed her machine guns into the submarine, blasting the conning tower with lead. When Lawrence and Powell finally made it to the conning tower, they found that the hatch had been blown open, and covered in broken glass from smashed Coke bottles.
Two shaken German crewmen approached the Canadians. The boarding party directed them aft along the submarine’s fuselage. Both Germans jumped over the side. As the Canadians approached the entry hatch, two submariners emerged and were ordered back into the submarine. The Germans continued to advance and lunged towards the boarding team. Lawrence shot one man and Powell killed the other; their lifeless bodies fell into the sea.
Hal Lawrence gained access to the submarine, and ordered the reluctant German crew up top onto the deck, where Powell contained them. Lawrence searched the rapidly flooding submarine in the dark, his flashlight dimming. As the boat shifted in the seas, Lawrence at times found himself dog paddling to keep above the water. As U-94 began to settle in the sea, Powell called down that Lawrence had better get up top before it was too late. Lawrence complied, emerging from the submarine with only what he brought inside.
Lawrence ordered Powell and the prisoners over the side and into the water and monitored compliance from the conning tower, standing naked and bloody in the moonlight. Just then, torpedoes fired from U-511 slammed into two distant tankers from TAW 15. Hal Lawrence stepped off the submarine and into the water as U-94 slipped beneath the waves for the final time.
USS Lea recovered Powell and Lawrence from the shark infested waters, in addition to 21 German submariners. Otto Ites and one of his crew swam to Oakville. Her boat picked up five other POWs.
Lawrence returned to Oakville at 0100, and was greeted by the First Lieutenant, K.B. Culley who welcomed him back onboard. Culley reminded him that the ship was still at action stations, and that he should get back up to the Bridge and take his watch.[16]
Oakville was thoroughly damaged during the encounter. The ASDIC dome and oscillator were destroyed, and the ASDIC compartment and after boiler room were flooded. There was damage to the main bulkhead. Oakville was detached from her escort duties to affect emergency repairs in Guantanamo Bay.
U-511 sunk two ships from TAW 15 during Oakville’s action with U-94, and escaped undetected. TAW 15 arrived in Key West without further incident.
James Brun is an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy and regular contributor to MilitaryHistoryNow.com. For his daily tweets of rare and fascinating World War Two photos, follow him at @lebrunjames81
Footnotes
[1] Robert C. Fisher, “’We’ll Get Our Own’: Canada and the Oil Shipping Crisis of 1942,” The Northern Mariner 3/2 (1993), 33.
[2] W. A. B. Douglas et al, No Higher Purpose: the Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War, 1939-1943 Volume II, Part I. (St. Catharines, ON: Vanwell Pub., 2002), 407.
[3] Douglas et al, No higher purpose, 408.
[4] Douglas et al, No higher purpose, 421.
[5] Sean Livingston, Oakville’s Flower: The History of HMCS Oakville (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2014), 52.
[6] Livingston, Oakville’s Flower, 52.
[7] Marc Milner, “Bullets, Bombs and Coke Bottles: Battling a U-boat in the Caribbean”. Legion Magazine, December 15, 2014, https://legionmagazine.com/en/2014/12/bullets-bombs-and-coke-bottles-battling-a-u-boat-in-the-caribbean/ (Accessed September 9th, 2020).
[8] Livingston, Oakville’s Flower, 52.
[9] Livingston, Oakville’s Flower, 52.
[10] Milner, “Bullets, Bombs and Coke Bottles”.
[11] Hal Lawrence, Tales of the North Atlantic, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985), 152.
[12] Lawrence, Tales of the North Atlantic, 152.
[13] Milner, “Bullets, Bombs and Coke Bottles”.
[14] Lawrence, Tales of the North Atlantic, 155.
[15] Marc Milner, “Over the Side: The Courageous Boarding of U-94”, Legion Magazine, January 15, 2015, https://legionmagazine.com/en/2015/01/over-the-side-the-courageous-boarding-of-u-94/ (Accessed September 9th, 2020).
[16] Milner, “Over the Side”.
