A Nautical Knife Fight
In one of the more dramatic duels at sea during the Battle of the Atlantic, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Spencer attacked, boarded, and sank a convoy-stalking U-boat.
During World War II, the U.S. Coast Guard played a key role in the Battle of the Atlantic. In concert with the U.S. Navy and Allied forces including the British, Canadian, Free French, and Polish navies, Coast Guard cutters escorted thousands of merchant ships carrying war matériel crucial for victory in Europe. One of the Coast Guard’s most dramatic engagements during the long Atlantic struggle was the duel between the USCGC
Spencer (WPG-36) and German submarine
U-175 on 17 April 1943.
The Opponents
Service in a German U-boat was arduous. Conditions were extremely cramped; the sub was essentially a long tube containing torpedoes, engines, motors, bunks, radios, a control room, and a very small galley divided by watertight doors. No one showered for entire patrols. There was no refrigeration and food quickly spoiled; crewmen gave moldy loafs of bread nicknames like
Kaninchen because they looked furry, like rabbits. Submarines in World War II spent significant amounts of time on the surface, leaving the crews exposed to bad weather and air attack; the standard time for a U-boat emergency dive was 35 seconds. Even leaving aside the threat of enemy action, operating an undersea vessel was inherently hazardous, especially as crew and equipment quality diminished throughout the war.
U-175 was a Type IXC U-boat, with a length of 251 feet and about 50 crewmen. She was powered by a combination of diesel engines and electric batteries and armed with torpedoes, two deck guns, and smaller antiaircraft guns.
U-175 was commissioned in December 1941 under the command of
Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Bruns, a career officer who had previously enjoyed sailing on board the
Horst Wessel (now the training vessel USCGC
Eagle [WIX-327]) and been seriously wounded while serving in torpedo boats. (Those ranked
Kapitänleutnant—literally, “Captain-Lieutenant”—traditionally were addressed in the World War II era as
Herr Kaleun. The U.S. naval equivalent rank would be lieutenant.) Bruns’ crew regarded him as ambitious but fair; he normally operated with a requisite level of caution but on the hunt could be more daring than many of them would have preferred. In port he would deal with the extreme stress of commanding a wartime U-boat by getting very drunk with his engineer officer,
Oberleutnant Leopold Nowroth.
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