It was one of those humid August days that you never get used to in south Louisiana. A twin-engine Grumman Widgeon picked up speed on the runway in Houma and then began forcing its way up through the hot air. Henry White was at the controls of the Coast Guard patrol plane. George Boggs was the co-pilot and had the added responsibility of operating the depth charge bolted under the aircraft's right wing. It was their only weapon in the unlikely event they spotted a German submarine. Their search pattern began over the open waters of the gulf, far enough from the coast that the usually murky waters had turned a brilliant cobalt blue. They found their starting point, a buoy that marked a sunken ship, the American merchant ship SS Heredia. As the plane circled to the east, Boggs remembers, "We saw something on the surface, and Henry and I took the glasses and looked. And sure enough, it was a submarine." It was also clear that the crew of the German U-boat had spotted the airplane. Boggs' voice takes on a higher pitch as he relates his conversation with his pilot. "I kept telling him that if he stays on the surface," Boggs' voice cracks, "he's gonna shoot us out of the air. Henry said, 'Don't worry about it.' " But the submarine tried to run. Its captain decided to seek protection underwater. There was no time to lose as the patrol plane plunged into a diving attack. Boggs says his pilot kept working the throttle, pushing it back and forth, pointing the nose of their plane toward the water. "When we got to 250 feet, he said, 'Now,' and I reached out and pulled the bomb release." That happened just as the U-boat was sinking below the surface. Boggs remembers leaning out of his window and watching the depth charge fall toward the submarine. "It should have rolled up right next to his hull. And when it hit 25 feet, it exploded. We figured we either damaged him heavily or completely destroyed him." A military report on the incident says the bomb hit within 10 feet of the submarine and exploded. It appeared to be a direct hit, but Boggs and his pilot only saw an oil slick on the surface. There was no debris. U-166 Commander Hans-Gunther KuhlmannRadio logs from the German navy show the U-166 was operating in the area of Southwest Pass. Its last radio report was July 28, 1942, when the sub's captain, Hans-Gunther Kuhlmann, reported setting nine mines off near the southwest jetty of the Mississippi River. That was just four days before Boggs' patrol plane attacked the German submarine a short distance to the west, 30 miles south of Last Island. The U-166 was never heard from again. Its captain and 52 crewmen were lost at sea. The fate of the U-166 remains a mystery. The only record of its sinking comes from the brief report filed by the patrol plane's two-man crew. The loss of the U-166 was a small victory in a very one-sided battle. PAUKENSCHLAG It was 1967 when C. J. Christ of Houma first heard that a German U-boat had sunk in the gulf not far from shore. A fellow diver claimed to know where it was, and Christ joined him for the search, "but we never found a damn thing." That first unsuccessful dive sparked an interest for Christ that has led to years of researching U.S. and German naval records. He's joined the German U-boat Veterans Association and interviewed the German commander of U-boat operations. He's learned enough about the Nazi attack plans to state emphatically that no German submarine ever cruised up the Mississippi River. And contrary to local legend, U-boats did not prowl the shallow waters of Lake Pontchartrain. Christ doesn't believe rumors that Cajun fishermen sold fuel and other supplies to the enemy submarines. Christ has learned that the U-166 was part of a ruthless wolfpack of 26 German submarines that during a seven-month period in 1942, brought the war to America's back door. By reviewing military records, Christ has verified 93 U-boat attacks in the gulf, an offensive that peaked in May 1942. "In that one month, the score was 41 to nothing. That was the deadliest month." The German name for their operation in U.S. waters was Paukenschlag, which means "drumbeat." And American merchant ships took a severe pounding. "No protection, no convoys, no air support, no destroyers. Nothing," Christ says. "The German subs were free to sink all the ships they wanted." The submarine activity is very real to Capt. George Peterson, a river pilot for more than 50 years at Southwest Pass. He was new to the job of guiding ships in and out of the river in 1942 when he was jolted out of his bunk. "The torpedo hit the seawall," Peterson remembers. "The concussion was so great that it knocked us right out of bed." Peterson and his co workers were stunned: "And it was a shock like I'll never get over, believe you me." The coastal waters of Louisiana were fertile hunting ground for the Germans because most Allied ships passed near the mouth of the Mississippi River. And the merchant seamen aboard freighters and tankers were well aware of this danger as they left the safe confines of the Mississippi River for the deeper, unprotected shipping lanes of the gulf. Peterson would spend a few hours aboard these ships, guiding them out of Southwest Pass. "Most of them were fearful, naturally, but they were a determined bunch. To go out there with no protection other than a revolver or something like that. They really deserve more credit than what anybody has given them." The German strategy was simple: Attack the supply lines for America's war effort. From the east coast of New York, around the outer banks of the Carolinas, through the straits of Florida and the ports of the Gulf Coast, the U-boats prowled the shipping lanes. U.S. merchant ships, often without naval escorts and with only a small contingent of Navy gunners, were easy prey. The attack subs would lay low during daylight hours to avoid detection by patrol boats and spotter planes and then find their targets late at night. "During a thick fog, right outside the east wall over here" - Peterson points across the river to the rock jetty - "we could hear the German U-boats charging up their batteries. And we were wondering what was going to happen the following day. Who was going to be the unlucky ship to get a torpedo?" One of those unlucky ships was the SS Robert E. Lee. Barton Holmes vividly recalls the torpedo that struck his ship when it was about 40 miles from Southwest Pass. "I had just finished a bucket bath when she was torpedoed. I went one way, the bucket went another, and my watch went someplace else." That was the second time in three weeks that a German U-boat had sent Holmes to a lifeboat. Fifty years cannot erase the horror of seeing one's friends and shipmates wounded or killed in the explosive sneak attack. His eyes fill with tears as he chokes back the emotion. "Why was I spared?" Holmes doesn't expect an answer. "I had a man standing right alongside of me on one ship who had half his face shot away. Why did it hit him and not me? You wonder." | | Ten crew members and 15 passengers aboard the Robert E. Lee were killed. This ship, the last victim of the U-166, was torpedoed July 30, 1942, just two days before the U-boat would meet its own demise. New Orleanian Emmanuel Zammit is also a survivor. He was the purser on a United Fruit Co. ship, the Sixaola, when it was torpedoed near Guatemala in June 1942. "It was terrifying, with all this debris flying all over from the blast in the bow of the ship." It was a blast that killed 28 crewmen. And those who made it to the lifeboats soon heard the diesel engines of the U-boat. Zammit says, "We were scared to death. The engines got louder as it came towards us." Then the U-boat's captain shouted for the survivors to row closer. The Germans were trying to collect information on the ship they had just destroyed. The intensity and success of the German attacks in the gulf went largely unreported in the local press. Peterson's pilot boat was nearly hit during one incident. "Torpedoes went directly under our boat and hit the ship. And then for a mile or two around, it was nothing but a sea of flames." The pilot boat's crew pulled bodies from the water and brought them to the undertaker in Venice. Peterson says he and other river pilots were told by the FBI to keep quiet about the carnage along the Louisiana coast. And shrimpers such as Ira Pete of Chauvin suddenly found themselves on the front lines of war. Twice, Pete's fishing trip turned into a rescue mission as he pulled survivors from the Gulf of Mexico. "I realize now how awful it must have been for me, being only 24 years old and seeing something like this." Pete stares at the ground as he recalls, "Some of them had the bones sticking out of their hands." But on Grand Isle, there was no hiding the German attacks. It was near midnight when two torpedoes ripped through the hull of the Benjamin Brewster, a Standard Oil Co. tanker loaded with more than 70,000 barrels of aviation gasoline and oil. The ship was anchored 2 1/2 miles off the beach. Edna Roussel was 18 years old and enjoying the attention of the young military men stationed at Grand Isle in 1942. "We were all dancing, having a few drinks, enjoying ourselves with the servicemen when we heard the blast," Roussel says. "We knew something dreadful had happened." She and her friends ran to the beach and watched the Brewster sink in a sea of flames. They were later told by the Coast Guard commander that parts of bodies were found ashore; 25 crew members were lost. The wreck burned for nine days as its cargo of fuel and oil leaked to the surface and fed the intense flames. Ironically, it was at this same spot, just two months earlier, that the crew of the Benjamin Brewster had rescued 17 survivors from a U boat attack on another tanker, the Gulfoil. The U.S. military, with its resources stretched thin in the Atlantic and Pacific, was slow to respond to the U-boat attacks in the gulf. In 1943, the Navy constructed a blimp base in Houma. They built a massive 1,000-foot-long hangar. The immense, cone-shaped hangar doors rolled open on a series of rails. Inside, the Navy could house up to six airships, each one larger than the Goodyear blimp. But the German U-boats were gone by the time the blimps began their air patrols. Today, two rows of cement pylons, the foundations of the hangar walls, are all that remain of the blimp base at the Houma-Terrebonne airport. AREAS OF PROBABILITY On a cloudless day in June 1996, with the temperature hovering near 90 degrees, Christ continued his 30-year search for the U-166. Christ, his son Bob and several friends have located the sunken hull of the SS Heredia. This is where the search began, at the same point that Boggs and his pilot turned their patrol plane moments before they spotted the German sub a half century earlier. Christ watched a color monitor as his son dove to a depth of 90 feet and came face to face with history. First you saw the ship's huge propeller. Then the camera moved along the hull until it found the point where the torpedo struck. Bob Christ is impressed: "It was a gaping hole on the port side, midship, that the torpedo entered. And it just blew a 50-foot hole on both sides of it. It was just devastating." When the Heredia sank, 35 of its crewmen perished. The searchers plotted a grid on a computerized map that identifies areas of high probability. It is based on information from the U.S. and German navies, data from offshore oil exploration, and fishermen who have reported underwater hangs on their nets. For the next several days, Christ and his friends towed a state of-the-art magnetometer, looking for any anomalies that would be caused by a huge metal object. But detecting a 1,200-ton submarine will still require that they pass within a football field's length of their target. Christ says, "We know about where it is. But it is a small boat in a very big ocean." The 1996 expedition turned up no trace of the U-166. Neither did a return trip a couple of years later. But this summer, Christ is trying to organize another trip. He and his partners are coordinating their vacations, trying to borrow as much equipment as they can. The rest they will pay for out of their pockets. So far, they've eliminated about half of the high probability points from their search map. On their next trip, they hope to use a side-scanning sonar unit. It is newer technology that should improve their chances of success. But the 7-square-mile area they intend to search is only their best guess. There is no guarantee the U-166 sank to the bottom at the point where it was attacked. All that is certain is the submarine never made it back to Germany. Christ admits, "It could have crept off and sunk in 8,000 feet of water a mile from where we're looking." Finding the U-166 would complete a small piece of World War II history and satisfy a 30-year-old curiosity. If he's successful, Christ says he has no intention of trying to salvage anything from the submarine. Wherever it is, the missing U-boat has become a tomb for its 53-man crew. "As long as we have new information, we have a new reason to go out, we'll keep looking." Then Christ says with a laugh, "If I don't run out of friends first." Editor's Note: On June 8, 2001, two international oil companies, BP Amoco and Shell, announced that they had discovered the U-166 at a depth of about 1525 meters/5,000 feet. Go to CDNN news report |
