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Despite these difficulties, Karl Doenitz succeeded in making his first transatlantic raid yield several rashers of bacon. By comparison the Japs lone hit-&-run, shoot-&-miss submarine appearance off the Pacific Coast (which sank only two ships out of a score of attacks) was totally ineffective. By the end of last week the U.S. Navy had admitted the loss of seven ships totaling 49,350 tons in the Atlantic. From Karl Doenitz' office came a counterclaim of 18 merchantmen totaling 125,000 tons, including "three tankers in the immediate vicinity of New York harbor."
Some, though by no means all, of Germany's sub commanders in the last war were dashing, romantic figures, ruthless in their destruction of merchant tonnage but usually solicitous over welfare of survivors. But Doenitz has not trained his men for gallantry. His victories are in Davy Jones's locker.
The crew of the Norness (torpedoed off Long Island) asserted they were strafed by machine guns as they tossed in lifeboats. U-boats that sank ships frequently stood by and watched helpless sailors drowning in the water. Doenitz' U-boat campaign is fought for keeps and one of its objects is to put terror into the sailors of the U.S. Merchant Marine. The reactions of American seamen should give few signs that this policy would be successful. Survivors of the sunken City of Atlanta, struggling in the water, shouted threats and curses at the U-boat playing its searchlight on them. Boatswain Rolf Claussen of the tanker Allan Jackson, telling how his men launched a lifeboat in roiling water said: "We were strong, with the strength of knowing certain death if we failed." Chief Engineer Thomas B. Hutchins, injured, looked glumly at his lifeboat's hardtack supply—he'd left his false teeth aboard.
But most survivors wanted to ship out again as soon as possible. Rudolph Musts, radio operator of the sunk Latvian freighter Ciltvaira, expressed the view of the overwhelming majority when he said: "We couldn't fight back this time, but probably our next ship will be armed. It will be different then. You will see what we can do when the devils attack."
Under-Seaman. The German master of undersea warfare came from a family of landholders and shipowners in Mecklenburg Province on the Baltic. It was almost out of the question for him to consider any career save the Navy.
In 1913 at 21, an ensign, he was assigned to the light cruiser Breslau with the Mediterranean Fleet. At the outbreak of World War I he took part in the dramatic escape of the Breslau and the battleship Goeben to Constantinople, where they were turned over to the Turks. Doenitz saw action in the Black Sea during the German efforts to incite Turkey to war on Russia. Opportunities for sunbathing were not sufficiently attractive and he chafed at the lazy life on the surface, and in 1916 obtained transfer to the risky submarine service.
Raised to Oberleutnant, he commanded first the U-25, then the UB-68 in the Mediterranean. In October 1918, he attacked a convoy off Malta, was engaged by a British sloop trawler and steamer. Brought to the surface by depth charges and attacked by gunfire, he calmly scuttled his boat, was packed off with his crew for brief internment in a British prison camp.