“The resulting shockwave rocked every ship in around the convoy.”

By Alexander Zakrzewski

ON THE AFTERNOON of Oct. 30, 1942, the Liverpool-bound convoy SC-107 was about 50 miles southeast of Newfoundland – barely out of Canadian waters – when it was spotted by the German submarine U-522.

It had been a difficult year for the Allied merchant mariners. The first half of 1942 had been dubbed the “Second Happy Time” by the U-boat crews because of the ease with which they were able to raid Allied shipping along America’s poorly defended east coast.

By the late summer, stiffening U.S. defenses, along with the implementation of a convoy system, had once again brought the good times to an end. Determined to maintain the initiative, Admiral Karl Doenitz, commander of the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat fleet, instead refocused his attention on the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. Particularly treacherous was the “Black Pit,” the 700-mile gap of ocean in the middle of the Atlantic that shore-based Allied aircraft could not reach.

SC-107 consisted of 38 freighters laden with an assortment of weapons and munitions needed for Operation Torch, the coming Allied invasion of North Africa. Among the ships was the British freighter Hatimura, which carried as part of its 8,200-ton cargo, large amounts of high explosives, including 200 tons of TNT, 250 tons of gunpowder and 300 tons of incendiary bombs.

In preparing for Torch, the Allies had been forced to withdraw escort vessels from other theatres, including the North Atlantic. As a result, SC-107 was protected by just one destroyer, the HMCS Restigouche, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Desmond W. Piers of the Royal Canadian Navy, along with six corvettes.

While U-522 shadowed SC-107, Doenitz deployed the 13 submarines of Wolfpack Veilchen “Violet” in a long patrol line right across the convoy’s path at the edge of the Black Pit. Aboard the Restigouche, Piers detected a number of radio transmissions coming from the gathering U-boats using his ship’s high-frequency direction finding equipment (HF/DF). It was clear that SC-107 was heading straight into the jaws of a hungry wolfpack.

The U-boats waited for the onset of darkness on Nov. 1 before unleashing hell. U-402 was the first to strike, torpedoing the Empire Sunrise at about 11 p.m. At the same time on the opposite side of the convoy, U-522 fired a spread of torpedoes, one of which hit the Hartington. Alarm bells rang and the sky ignited with a shower of star shells and flares as Piers and his escort ships desperately tried to keep the U-boats at bay. By dawn, eight freighters had been sunk, and Restigouche had narrowly survived a torpedo attack by U-381.

Bad weather the next day brought a brief respite until the evening of Nov. 3 when the U-boats struck again in force. At about 9 p.m., U-89 sank the Jeypore, whose crew included the convoy commodore, retired Royal Navy Vice-Admiral B.C. Watson. An hour later, U-132, under the command of Kapitänleutnant Ernst Vogelsang, crept up on the convoy from the south, and finding the escorts engaged elsewhere, managed to hit three ships: the Hobbema, the Empire Lynx and the Hatimura.

Earlier that day, Hatimura had narrowly evaded a spread of torpedoes that passed so close the ship’s crew could hear them whistle past. This time they were not so lucky as two torpedoes smashed into the ship’s starboard side, spilling hundreds of tons of war materials into the ocean and flooding the hold. The vessel sank slowly and almost all of the crew managed to make it to the lifeboats just as fires began to breakout, no doubt thankful that their cargo of high explosives had not been struck.

The carnage wrought by Vogelsang attracted U-442 under the command of Korvettenkapitän Hans-Joachim Hesse. U-442 had been at sea unsuccessfully chasing convoys in atrocious weather since September and Hesse was eager to finally claim a sinking. When he spotted Hatimura’s burning wreck, he immediately loosed a spread of torpedoes, unaware that Vogelsang had brought U-132 to within a few hundred feet of the stricken vessel, presumably to inspect his crippled prey.

Hesse’s torpedoes did what Vogelsang’s had miraculously failed to achieve: detonate the 750 tons of high explosives. The blast instantly vaporized the ship and caused what’s believed to be one of the largest pre-nuclear, man-made explosions on record.

The resulting shockwave rocked every ship in around the convoy, and even managed to stop the engines of the rescue tug Uncas as it searched for survivors six miles away. The blast was so enormous, many aboard the convoy’s other freighters and escorts assumed their own ships had been torpedoed and instinctively inflated their lifebelts.

The crew of the Dutch ship Titus went into such a panic that they actually lowered lifeboats and abandoned ship altogether, leaving their embarrassed captain behind.

U-boats submerged as deep as 200 feet reported being violently thrown about as if they had been depth charged.

Vogelsang and U-132, the closest to the Hatimura were never heard from again. It is assumed that the U-boat was either also vaporized or torn apart by the storm of lethal debris. Why exactly Vogelsang got so close to the sinking ship will never be known.

The spectacular destruction of the Hatimura brought an end to what had been another night of ferocious fighting and proved to be the climax of the battle. The next day passed without incident and Piers made the difficult decision to detach the freighter Stockport and his rescue tugs, altogether packed with 590 survivors, and send them to Reykjavik under the protection of a few of his desperately needed corvettes. That night only the Dalesby was sunk by U-89, bringing SC-107’s total tally of losses to 15 ships and 150 Allied seamen.

The next day, Nov. 5, a group of American destroyers arrived and were met with boisterous cheers from the surviving crews, who lined the rails of their ships to greet them. An hour later, RAF Liberators appeared overhead, one severely damaging U-89 in a depth charge attack that finally brought to an end what would unquestionably prove to be one of the war’s most violent convoy battles.

Alexander Zakrzewski is a Toronto-based freelance writer with a passion for military history. Follow him @AlexZed85 or reach out to him on LinkedIn. He loves sharing ideas with fellow military history enthusiasts.