In light of all the hype and hoopla concerning the U-869 (alias Hitler’s Lost Sub), and the amount of irrelevant and misleading information that has been disseminated about its discovery and eventual identification (particularly in Shadow Divers), I thought that it would be appropriate to dedicate my first newsletter to the multiple tasks of separating the wheat from the chaff, of avoiding annoying irrelevancies, and of presenting a clear and concise chronology of events that will enable to reader to be truthfully informed on the topic.

In 1991, dive boat captain Bill Nagle, owner of the Seeker, obtained a set of loran coordinates from fishing boat captain Dennis Bogan. These numbers indicated a spot some sixty miles from shore. Bogan had fished the site for years, and thought that it might be the Corvallis (a wooden-hulled steamship that was burned and scuttled on film for the silent movie The Half-Way Girl, in 1925). A trip was organized to check out the site.

The wreck was located exactly where Bogan said it would be found. Divers quickly ascertained that the wreck was not the Corvallis, but a submarine. They soon decided that the submarine was a German U-boat.

In 1989, I published a book entitled Track of the Gray Wolf: the seminal work on the U-boat offensive off the U.S. eastern seaboard during World War Two. The book detailed all U-boat activity: merchant ship losses, warship losses, and U-boat losses. I used only primary archival documents as my source materials. I listed 120 vessels that were sunk by enemy action, others that were attacked but escaped, and all eleven U-boats that were presumed by the Allied Assessment Committee to have been lost in the area.

In none of those documents was there mention of a U-boat lost in the position where the mystery sub was found.

The closest - the U-521 - supposedly lay 110 miles from the site of the wreck. The next closest - the U-550 - lay 150 miles away. Their locations were established with a fair degree of accuracy, and were corroborated by survivors. Five other U-boats were lost with all hands in the Eastern Sea Frontier (which extended from the Canadian border to Florida). In each case, the evaluation committee in the Office of Naval Intelligence reviewed the antisubmarine action reports submitted by the participants. All five losses were assessed as “probably sunk.” These were the U-215, U-576, U-857, U-879, and U-548. Their locations ranged from the Gulf of Maine to the coast of North Carolina. The closest “probable” lay more than two hundred miles distant.

It was certainly conceivable that a U-boat damaged in action might continue its patrol, only to sink later in another location. But in the present case the severity of the damage precluded any such hypothesis, for the conning tower and its vicinity were almost totally demolished. The entire tower assembly had been blown off the pressure hull and deposited on the port side of the wreck. The pressure hull at that point had been smashed in severely and laid open to the sea. After nearly half a century of deterioration, these holes were large enough to swim through. Such devastation was clearly the result of a direct hit. This utter destruction had occurred so fast that the crew had not had time to close and dog the interior hatches before massive flooding occurred. The U-boat must have gone down like a stone.

If this were one of the five probables, the only way to account for its presence was to presume that it had survived an earlier attack in which the assessors determined it was sunk, when in fact it was lost in a subsequent attack that the assessors failed to credit.

No identification was made by the time the diving season ended - not even a tentative one. Speculation ran rampant but to no avail. Among the wreck-diving community, the mystery U-boat became known as the U-Who? (question mark included).

Some important information was gleaned by continued exploration of the wreck. One of the most telling was the recognition of the U-boat type. The two most common types of U-boats in the German war machine were Type VII and Type IX, each of which was produced with minor variations among the type. Deck plans provided the information needed to identify the type as a IX. The obvious characteristics that most distinguished the Type IX from the Type VII were two stern torpedo tubes (the Type VII had one), and the galley location forward of the control room (in the Type VII the galley was located aft of the control room).

Another clue to the U-boat’s identity was a stainless steel dinner knife with a wooden handle. Carved in the handle was the name “Horenburg.” The only Horenburg in the U-boat service was named Martin. He was a Funkmeister (Radioman 1st Class) who was serving aboard the U-869 under Kapitanleutnant Helmut Neuerburg when, according to the records, it was sunk with all hands off Casablanca, on February 28, 1945. So how did a knife with Horenburg’s name on it find its way onto the U-Who??

Despite the research efforts of John Chatterton, John Yurga, Richie Kohler, and this author, the U-Who? remained nameless (or numberless).

Continued exploration divulged new information piecemeal. An aluminum schematic of the trim and ballast system revealed the yard at which the U-boat was built: the Deschimag facility in Bremen. An escape lung had an aluminum oxygen cylinder that was stamped with a hydrostatic test date of April 15, 1944. The discovery of a snorkel placed the construction time toward the latter part of the war, when snorkels were added to the design. Each clue added a piece to the puzzle by eliminating contenders, and by narrowing the field of possibilities.

Enter the person who was unquestionably the most knowledgeable U-boat historian in the world: Robert Coppock. Coppock worked for the Ministry of Defence at Great Scotland Yard, in London. He was a specialist in the Foreign Documents Section of the Directorate of Naval Staff Duties. At his fingertips was an immense archive that covered every aspect of World War Two naval operations: printed Allied records as well as microfilms of captured German documents. Whenever possible, he took time from his official obligations to answer inquiries from the public. Correspondence with Coppock indulged in some interesting speculations, because the U-Who?’s very existence contradicted the known documentation.

Coppock investigated U-boat operational orders during the final stages of the war. He correlated U-boat transmission intercepts with sightings and reports of attacks. He plotted each U-boat’s track across the Atlantic Ocean, and he re-assessed the work that was done by the Assessment Committee after the war. The letter that Coppock wrote upon completing this monumental research project was the length of a short novel. He concluded from the new evidence available that the mystery U-boat must be either the U-857 or the U-879. He surmised that Horenburg must have served aboard one of them before being transferred to the U-869, and left the knife behind in the rush of transferring to a new assignment.

Next to enter the picture was Mark McKellar. He was not a diver, but an amateur historian researching the last days of the U-853 for a magazine article. The U-853 was credited with actions in the Gulf of Maine in 1945. During the course of his investigations, McKellar began to suspect that the assessors had erred, and that actions ascribed to the U-853 should properly be ascribed to the U-857. His suspicions were based upon newly discovered Ultra decrypts.

Ultra was the name of a super secret code-breaking system developed by the Allies during World War Two. It allowed Allied intelligence experts to read a large percentage of intercepted Axis radio transmissions, both army and navy. Thus, the Allies monitored transmissions from U-boat Control headquarters to the various U-boats at sea, as well as transmissions from individual U-boats to U-boat Control. This enabled the Allies to read operational orders, U-boat movements, attack reports, and so on. This wealth of information was collected, collated, and communicated to appropriate Allied commands. The position of every U-boat was plotted on a gigantic plotting board in the Submarine Tracking Rooms in Washington, DC and London. Constant updates permitted staff officers to track each U-boat’s course and to note its current position.

Adjacent to the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Tracking Room was a “Secret Room.” According to Clay Blair, author of the exhaustive two-volume Hitler’s U-boat War, this room was kept locked at all times. Only five people had keys to this room: the lieutenant in charge (John Parsons), his assistant John Boland, two yeomen, and “the Navy’s principal U-boat tracker, Kenneth Knowles.” The Secret Room was where all the U-boats’ positions were plotted from Ultra decrypts. Commander Knowles then transferred these positions to the Submarine Tracking Room “without revealing the source of his information.”

Ultra was such a closely guarded secret that even after the war ended, the Allies kept its existence in the strictest confidence. Nothing was written about it, and those who worked with Ultra were not permitted to so much as mention it. Not until thirty years after the end of the war was the Ultra secret declassified, and a new insight into the history of the war made available to the public.

McKellar came across declassified Ultra decrypts which turned the last few months of the American U-boat campaign completely upside down. According to the plotting room, another U-boat - the U-869 - was working its way across the Atlantic in 1945. McKellar mentioned this to his friend, Phil McGrath. McGrath was a U-boat aficionado and a long-time dive buddy of mine. After the U-Who? was discovered, he and I had many long discussions about which U-boat it could be. He told me that McKellar had unearthed some previously unaccessed intelligence records, but that McKellar would not say exactly what they contained, only that they referred to the existence of another U-boat off the American east coast. McKellar did not want his article pre-empted, so he kept the particulars to himself. He especially did not want me - an author and historian - to have access to his privileged information until after he published.

I felt strongly that McKellar possessed information that U-Who? researchers needed to have. With McGrath acting as our intermediary, I pleaded with McKellar to share his information with Chatterton, Yurga, and Kohler (who were not writers and, therefore, were not competitors), even if he would not share it with me. For the cause of history, I was willing to step out of the picture. After some urging, McKellar did so. He also wrote to Robert Coppock and informed him of the Ultra decrypts. Once the Ultra secret was revealed to me, I obtained the same information that McKellar had found.

McKellar already knew the answer to the mystery. An intelligence summary written on January 25, 1945 stated, “The intentions and location of U-869 (Neuerburg) who was ordered to the New York area 29 December are obscure since Control sent her a conflicting message 19 January saying that she was expected to arrive in U-870’s area, off Gibraltar, about 1 February. Based on signals she received it appears likely that U-869 is continuing toward her original heading off New York.”

At this point, there was little doubt that the mystery submarine was the U-869.

McKellar correctly came to the conclusion that the post-war assessors did not have access to Ultra. (This came as a shock to me. I always thought that the assessments were gospel.) Without this privilege, the Assessment Committee made assessments based upon partial information, and assigned locations and credits for losses accordingly. Ultra decrypts revealed a vastly different picture of U-boat activity than was previously held as truth. The overthrow of this accepted dogma cast very strong suspicions on which U-boat was where at a particular time, which U-boat attacked which vessel, which Allied command should receive credit for sinking which U-boat, and where and when each U-boat loss occurred. The ultimate chapter in the American U-boat campaign had to be completely rewritten.

In 1994, I invited Chatterton and Yurga to accompany me on an expedition to dive the Lusitania, off the south coast of Ireland. Our preliminary stay in London afforded the perfect opportunity to visit Coppock in person, in order to share information about the latest underwater discoveries as well as Coppock’s most recent historical research. As a result of this meeting, and despite the exigencies of Coppock’s official work load, he engaged the mystery of the mystery U-boat with new-found vigor, and promised to make the time to investigate its disappearance further, and to communicate his findings by mail.

A new picture of Germany’s last-ditch U-boat efforts emerged. Coppock summarized the U-869’s participation in possible events. The U-869 departed Kristiansand South on December 8, 1944, and proceeded toward the American continent. On December 25, U-boat Control allotted the U-869 a patrol area some 110 miles southeast of New York City. On January 8, 1945, U-869 transmitted a position report from mid-Atlantic. Based on the time it took the U-869 to reach that location, U-boat Control determined that Neuerburg might not have enough fuel remaining to conduct more than a truncated (and probably futile) patrol off the American coast.

Coppock wrote, the U-869 “was therefore requested to report her fuel state pending a decision on reallocation of patrol area. When no reply was received by Control, U 869 was on 8 January ordered to proceed to . . . the west of the Gibraltar Strait. On 9 January she was again requested to report her fuel state and responded early the following day from . . . some 200 miles south of her previously reported position. (U 869 had actually signaled her fuel state on both 8 and 9 January, but it would appear that neither signal had been received by Control. They were, however, intercepted by Allied listening stations.) No further signals were received from U 869.

“In view of atmospheric conditions in that area of the Atlantic adversely affecting wireless transmissions, it is certainly possible that Control’s signal ordering U 869 to the Gibraltar area was not received by the boat, although the principal difficulty seems to have been the receipt by Control of U 869’s signals rather than the reverse. Following U 869’s last signal on 10 January Control appeared convinced the boat was on passage to her new area . . .”

Ironically, Allied intelligence in Washington knew the position of the U-869 even if U-Boat Control in Germany did not. So confident was Knowles that the U-869 was still proceeding toward the eastern seaboard, that he convinced the Navy to dispatch a hunter-killer group to positions along the U-boat’s predicted track. The pocket flattop Core and her escort group made no contact. Naval intelligence then fell back on the assumption that the U-869 had altered course for Gibraltar, where it was sunk.

Coppock continued, “In the light, therefore, of the absence of any tangible proof that the U 869 had received Control’s signal ordering her to the Gibraltar area . . . the evidence of the knife and the proximity of the wreck’s position to the U 869’s original patrol area . . . I would concede that the possibility the wreck is U 869 cannot be ignored.”

This left unexplained which U-boat - if any - had been sunk by Allied forces off Casablanca on February 28, 1945. At the time, the plotting room staff reviewed three reports of anti-submarine attacks in the Gibraltar area. Since the staff believed from intercepted radio transmissions that the U-869 had been diverted to the area, and knew that no further radio transmissions had been sent by the U-869, they concluded that the U-boat must have been lost during one of these attacks. In order to reflect this conclusion, they upgraded one of the original recommendations from “non-submarine contact” to “probably sunk.”

The plotting room staff then added, “In event none of the above attacks is acceptable to the Committee, it follows that the loss of the U-869 must be attributed to ‘Cause Unknown.’” “Cause unknown” meant that no one would get credit for the sinking. The Allied Tactical Analysis Committee accepted the plotting room’s first recommendation, and gave credit for sinking the U-869 to the USS Fowler and the F.S. L’Indiscret. And history was made!

Could the U-Who? be the U-869? It now seemed likely, although a shadow of doubt remained. Yet this supposition begged the question: How was the U-869 lost, and when? Once a U-boat entered its operational area, it ceased transmitting messages to U-boat Control. The Germans feared that a U-boat’s transmission point could be triangulated by Allied listening stations. (True.) Thus the U-869’s silence that never ended.

Coppock calculated that the U-869 could not have reached its original operational area before March. Tenth Fleet reports of action in the Eastern Sea Frontier for the months of March, April, and May (when Germany capitulated) contained forty-two separate anti-submarine attacks. The four closest attack positions lay 16 to 20 miles from the wreck of the U-Who?. Five others ranged from 25 to 60 miles away. The rest were farther.

Of the four closest attacks, one was judged to have been made on a wreck, one was considered to have been a non-contact, one was annotated “sinking doubtful,” and one resulted in dead fish. (Many whales and dense schools of fish and shrimp were depth-charged during the war because they returned a sonar echo suspiciously similar to that of a submerged U-boat.) The attacks that occurred farther away were equally doubtful.

According to Coppock, “the most plausible explanation for the damage to the wreck off Point Pleasant is that it was caused by one of the boat’s own acoustic torpedoes reversing course, homing onto her and striking her amidships.” There is more than one incident on record of a submarine being sunk by its own torpedo - American as well as German. To prevent this, every torpedo is now fitted with a fail-safe device that automatically disarms the warhead if the torpedo turns more than 180º. During the war, German U-boat commanders were instructed to dive to 100 feet as soon as the “fish” was launched, in order to duck under a circling torpedo. A submarine that was struck by its own torpedo was sure to be sunk by the sudden and massive breach of its pressure hull. Furthermore, there was little likelihood of anyone escaping from a submarine that was struck while operating at or below its periscope depth, at a time when it was already submerged, had little reserve buoyancy, and time for blowing ballast was insufficient.

The control room damage to the U-Who? is consistent with Coppock’s scenario. The side of the pressure hull is intact for its entire length except for the area beneath the conning tower.

At that location, the port side of the pressure hull is blown completely open, permitting access to the interior forward and aft, while the starboard side is undamaged. The force of the explosion that peeled open the pressure hull was so violent that it blew the conning tower completely off its mounts. The conning tower now lies on its side along the port side of the wreck. The snorkel lies in the wreckage along with torn steel plates and associated debris. This is the way the U-boat would appear if a torpedo had struck the port side under the conning tower.

Furthermore, there are several authenticated cases of submarines being struck by their own torpedoes (American subs as well as German U-boats.) The most commonly accepted theory holds that some mechanical components in the hydraulic system attracted the acoustical homing device in the torpedo.

However, there is a large damage hole on top of the pressure abaft the after torpedo room. This damage hole is inconsistent with the circular run theory, and is left unexplained by proponents of that theory.

Despite this preponderance of evidence, Chatterton, Yurga, and Kohler continued their explorations of the U-boat’s interior, determined to recover something that would provide positive identification - the nail in the iron coffin, so to speak. The pay off came on August 31, 1997.

Chatterton, Yurga, Kohler, and Pat Rooney entered the pressure hull. Chatterton proceeded to the electric motor room, where he found a wooden spare-parts box to which was fastened a plastic tag. He handed the heavy box to Kohler, who then passed it along to Rooney. Rooney carried the box outside and sent it to the surface on a liftbag.

Marked on the plastic tag was “U 869.” 

ADDENDUM - 2005 December

Thanks to my subscribers for their interest in GGP. My readers are important to me. Without them, there would be no reason for me to write. So come back often. Tell your friends. And stay tuned for future newsletters. Remember: the exploration of shipwrecks is one of the greatest adventures in the underwater world.

Sincerely,