Robertson - The Golden Horseshoe: The Wartime Career of Otto Kretschmer, U-Boat Ace

Otto Kretschmer at U-boat Command Headquarters, Lorient.

by Admiral Sir George Creasy, G.C.B., C.B.E., D.S.O., M.V.O.

THIS book deals primarily with the exploits of one U-boat commander, Captain Kretschmer, from the outbreak of the war until U-99 was sunk in March 1941. I believe that he was the most efficient and the most competent U-boat Commanding Officer that Germany produced; he flourished at the time when our defences were slowly building up and were as yet woefully weak; certainly he inflicted heavier and more painful losses on Allied shipping than did any other one man, and the destruction of his U-boat and his own capture, well-nigh simultaneously with the loss of Prien and Schepke, must have been a severe blow to the U-boat Command. To us it formed one of the bright gleams of hope at a time when few such gleams lit the sombre story of the Battle of the Atlantic.

I well remember piecing together the evidence of one of his early attacks on a convoy. It was at a time when most people were thinking in terms of the orthodox submerged attack at periscope depth. I had already made up my mind that we were dealing with attacks made with the U-boat on the surface, relying on her small silhouette to give her a cloak of invisibility. And the times at which torpedoes had hit, and the position of his targets in the various columns of the convoy, convinced me that not only was Kretschmers U-boat on the surface, but that he must have passed diagonally right through the convoy.

This was something new. But I remember, too, that I considered that the manoeuvre was so risky that he had done it by mistake. This book shows that it was a deliberate tactic, carefully thought out and brilliantly executed.

Happily, in this he had few imitators. Nevertheless the work of Kretschmer, Prien and Schepke lived on, unfortunately for us, long after their active part in the Battle of the Atlantic was over. They and a few of their contemporaries had shown the way, and their tactics led to the night surface attacks by wolf-packs of U-boats in numbers which increased steadily as U-boat war production mounted. Heavy indeed were the losses in ships and the loss in life inflicted on the gallant Merchant Navies of the Allies by these attacks.

These losses began to mount at an alarming speed, far exceeding the rate at which we could build new ships, to a dangerous total. On our ability to bring material and men by sea into this country depended our ability to prosecute the war.

But there was another side to the picture. Our countermeasures were also steadily building up. The number of our escort vessels was increasing slowly at first, but later more rapidly. The numbers of aircraft available to Coastal Command were swelling. New tactics were being planned. And, perhaps most important of all, time was being found to train sailors and airmen to use this increasing strength to maximum purposes.

Moreover, the submersible tactics of the enemy had their weak point, if it could be exploited. To achieve the high mobility given by surface speed, the U-boat accepted the vulnerability inherent in surface operations once the problem of location had been solved. Aircraft in sufficient numbers could cover wide areas of sea and would have a maximum chance of locating and then attacking a surfaced U-boat. Ships with efficient radar could offset the U-boats advantage of a small silhouette, and what the human eye could not see would be visible to the radar eye in the darkness.

The Battle of the Atlantic indeed became a race. Could we turn the tables and start to inflict unbearable losses on the U-boats before the enemy had imposed unbearable losses in merchant shipping, ships and men on us?

The Allied victory is now a matter of history, but we went through times of deep anxiety before that victory was achieved. However, by the end of 1943 we had inflicted heavy losses on the U-boats, and by this time American ship production was in full stride and new merchant shipping was coming forward at a rate which put defeat out of the question.

But here I must emphasise that the victory which was won was the defeat of Doenitzs U-boat submersible tactics which had proved so dangerous to the Allied cause. The U-boat as a submarine was by no means defeated and, indeed, it was not long before the enemy had fitted their U-boats with the Snort to enable them to use their diesel engines whilst submerged, and, thus equipped, then resumed the battle. But they had lost more than half their power of mobility and they had been severely shaken by appalling losses, and never again did they cause us any real anxiety.

Nevertheless, German ingenuity had not been idle, and new forms of U-boat were under construction with high submerged speed and the ability to remain permanently under water. These new types never became fully operational before the war ended. Undoubtedly they would have set us fresh problems and, though I have no doubt we should have mastered them, we might have faced another period of losses in shipping before we had achieved this mastery.

In conclusion, I feel I should write some word of explanation of my interview with Kretschmer after his capture, which is described in this book. I did not expect to get any intelligence from him. I felt sure that any officer who could handle his ship with such efficiency would guard his tongue with equal efficiency. Nor was I wrong; he gave away nothing. But I saw him because I was anxious to judge for myself what manner of man a successful U-boat captain might be; to see for myself, if I could, the state of his nerves; to measure his judgment; gauge his reactions to his seniors and to his juniors, the expected and the unexpected. In simple words, to size him up .