Kindness in the Fog of War.

The Sinking of the Linda Blanche out of Liverpool by Willy Stöwer

My father told me of his closest  encounter with the enemy during WWII.  Dad was near forty years old when he was drafted into the Army. Due to being deaf in one year he was not sent to the combat zone. Instead the Army made him a military policeman, an MP stationed at Fort McClellan, AL. While there he was sent with other MPs to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to guard a German submarine that had washed ashore. I thought this would be a good subject for a blog post when I was searching for a topic last week. I began my research on the web since my primary resource had passed away quite a few years previously. 

The Gulf of Mexico was actually a hotbed of submarine warfare during WWII. Tankers carrying petroleum products from the oil refineries on the gulf coast as well as freighters carrying other products were very desirable targets for the German submarine navy.  During 1942 there were 23 enemy submarines patrolling the Gulf almost continuously. Specially designed “tanker” submarines replenished the subs in the Gulf. 

Unarmed tankers and freighters were easy targets for the U-boats. Almost daily debris from U-boat victims washed ashore in the Gulf states. The biggest concentrations of Nazi submarines were around England and in the Gulf of Mexico. The German U-boat Navy under Admiral Karl Donitz sank 225 merchant ships totaling more than 1.25 million tons of cargo in six months in 1942 in the Gulf. German losses were small, losing only eight submarines.

One of the most intriguing losses of American shipping was the sinking of the Alcoa Puritan. It was early May, 1942, when the freighter, loaded with 9,700 tons of bauxite ore, was sighted by the  U-507 commanded by Korvettenkapitan (Commander) Harro Schacht.The first torpedo fired from the submarine missed the ship but was close enough to be seen by a seaman on the freighter. The captain of the ore laden ship attempted to escape. The U-boat was slightly faster and soon caught the Alcoa Puritan. With its deck gun the German riddled the American vessel amidships with holes. The captain of the freighter ordered the crew and passengers to abandon ship. The submarine submerged and the commander wasted no time in firing a torpedo amidships into the freighter, sinking it immediately. Captain, crew and passengers were safe in lifeboats when the German U-boat surfaced close by.  The commander maneuvered his craft close to the captain’s lifeboat and ordered his crew to pass cigarettes, bread and water to the Americans in the lifeboats.  In clear English the German commander, Schacht, called out, “Sorry we can’t help you, hope you get ashore!” The account of this incident is well documented in the book, Slaughter In The Gulf .

This was very interesting research but I never found any reference to the incident my father had described.