The Battle of the Caribbean lasted nine and a half months—from February 16, 1942, to November 30, 1942. In that comparatively brief time, German submarines torpedoed 263 ships in the Caribbean and its approaches, with a gross tonnage of 1,362,278.
It is a little known, or at least neglected, fact that the sinkings in the Caribbean during this period were greater than the losses incurred on the North Atlantic Convoy Routes, the Eastern Sea Frontier, and the Canadian Coastal Zone, all three combined.
This tremendously damaging blow coming as it did when the nation was struggling to get its teeth into the world conflict was achieved by the Germans with the loss of only four submarines from which there were 77 survivors. To say that it was a cheap price to pay is a classic of understatement.
This article will attempt to describe the battle from its dramatic, intense beginning through the hopelessly one-sided first six months of no escorts and insufficient escorts to the days when convoys made the 7,810 mile trip from Curacao to Swansea, Vales, and return without the loss of a ship.
The outbreak of war in Europe, September 1, 1939, caused scarcely a ripple in the broad expanse of the Caribbean. Slow, 7-knot, World War I vintage tankers plied the oil ports of Curacao-Aruba and Trinidad and set sail for England without thought of a submarine. The U-boats were concentrated in the North Atlantic, the English Channel, and the approaches to Great Britain.
This peaceful state of affairs continued until the German invasion of the Lowlands—May 10, 1940. Within twelve hours, all German and Italian residents of the Netherlands West Indies were on their way to an internment camp on the island of Bonaire, close to Curacao. With typical Dutch thoroughness, the wife of the Governor's secretary, an Austrian, was likewise interned.
The British, too, reacted with unusual speed to this threat. On the very next day, May 11—four days before the Dutch homeland capitulated—English troops landed in both Curacao and Aruba. The troops were prepared to seize the islands by force, if necessary; but no shots were fired. Terms of an agreement left civil control and administration of the island in the hands of the Dutch.
While the once cold war in Europe waxed hot, the Caribbean remained its beautiful, calm self. Life went on as usual. There were no blackouts—a dreadful thing in the tropics—no submarines and no war as far as the West Indies was concerned.
This state of affairs did not change even when the United States began to build the 99-year lease bases given in exchange for the fifty four-stack "over age" destroyers. In fact, it did not even change when Germany declared war on the United States four days after Pearl Harbor.
But while Admiral Doenitz was reshuffling his cards and planning to redeploy his submarines, a host of rumors emanated from South America and spread northward like wild-fire. These reports were to the effect that the "fix" was in—that some high-powered deal had been made whereby the highly sensitive refineries in Curacao and Aruba would not be damaged if the Krupp Works in Germany were not bombed.
In spite of the rumors, the United States landed troops in Curacao on February 11 from the transports Evangeline and Florida. The transports were escorted by the U.S.S. Blakely and U.S.S. Barney. These two destroyers constituted 95% of the Tenth Naval District's Navy.
In January, 1942, the Lago Refinery in Aruba, then the world's largest refinery, produced 7,100,000 barrels of aviation gas, motor gas, Diesel oil, lubricants, fuel oil, and kerosene. It was oil from Aruba that kept the British Navy at sea; it was oil from Aruba that kept General Montgomery's "desert rats" from backing into the lobby of Shepheard's hotel in Cairo; and it was oil from Aruba that kept the Royal Air Force in the air until American aid could make itself felt.
Here it was the middle of February, 1942, and not a ship had been torpedoed in the Caribbean since the outbreak of war in Europe, September 1, 1939. Small wonder that the "wisenheimers" thought the situation was passing strange, to say the least. The answer came on February 16. At 0130 German submarines appeared off Curacao, Aruba, and at the entrance to Lake Maracaibo. Before the sun rose, seven tankers had been torpedoed, 56 men had died a flaming death, the refinery at Aruba had been shelled—miraculously escaping any damaging hits—ten per cent of Aruba's lake tanker fleet had been destroyed, and the Battle of the Caribbean had begun.
The effects of this one-night-stand against the oil ports were infinitely greater than the Germans ever realized. One of the first results was mutiny of the Chinese crews of the lake tankers which every week-day start the 163 mile journey to Lake Maracaibo. Crossing the sand bar at the entrance of the harbor, the specially built, shallow draft, tub-like tankers, load Venezuelan crude oil, wait for the tide, and start back. The round trip takes two and a half days.
The Chinese refused to put to sea without the protection of non-existent escorts. Aruba's naval forces consisted of one motor launch. For seven days not a ship entered or left Aruba or Curacao. Production quickly stopped in Venezuela because of the lack of storage capacity at Lake Maracaibo. The refineries shut clown. They had no crude oil to refine. Every day's loss of production meant a loss of thousands of barrels of oil products vitally needed to help General Montgomery mount an offensive.
The Dutch jailed the mutinous crews, but that didn't get the ships sailing. By February 21 a few of the less timid souls among the Chinese were ready to put to sea again, but on that day a Norwegian tanker was torpedoed a few miles from Curacao and the Chinese again preferred jail.
In the meantime, Vice Admiral John H. Hoover, U.S. Navy (then Rear Admiral) Commander of the 10th Naval District and the newly established Caribbean Sea Frontier, flew to Curacao to take command of the situation. He ordered the destroyers Blakely and Barney back to Curacao-Aruba to serve as escorts for the lake tankers, together with the Dutch light cruiser H.M.N.S. Van Kingsbergen; and on March 1, Rear Admiral Jesse B. Olendorf, U. S. Navy, arrived in Curacao with the title Senior Naval Officer Present. Shortly thereafter, he became Commander All Forces, Aruba-Curacao (CAFAC) by proclamation of the Governor as ordered by Queen Wilhelmina.
The lake tankers began to sail again and the "fire" was out as far as the oil refineries in the Netherlands West Indies was concerned. Strangely enough, the Germans never repeated their tremendously successful attack against Curacao-Aruba. To this day, Admiral Hoover wonders why.
But the battle was now on in earnest and it spread throughout the Caribbean. In 1942, practically the entire bauxite output of the Western Hemisphere was centered in the British and Dutch Guianas. Here again sand bars prevented ships drawing more than seventeen feet from entering. As a result, small ships maintained a shuttle service up the Demerara and Surinam rivers and back to Port of Spain where they trans-shipped their ore to fleets of ships backed up waiting for this all-important cargo.
The Germans knew well that the bauxite pipe-line was almost as important as the oil pipe-line. Without this strategic material aluminum cannot be made, and without aluminum airplanes would be the crates of World War 1. The U-boats started in on this traffic on February 18-19, just two days after the attack on Aruba-Curacao. A U-boat entered the Gulf of Paris, entrance to Port of Spain, and torpedoed two merchant ships, both of which were salvaged. The sub steamed out on the surface, showing running lights.
Three weeks later—on March 9—another U-boat made a daring entrance on the surface into Castries, St. Lucia, and torpedoed the splendid passenger-cargo ship Lady Nelson and the merchant ship Umtata with the loss of 20 lives. An alert native fired a 30-caliber machine gun at the sub and raised a few sparks. Both ships were salvaged, but the Umtala was torpedoed for good while in tow back to the States.
In February and March, 23 critically needed tankers were torpedoed in the Caribbean. April was a "breathing" month with only eleven ships sunk; but this was due entirely to the fact that Germany did not have enough submarines at this time to maintain unceasing operations.
Commander, Caribbean Sea Frontier, was faced with the largest of all sea frontiers and the forces at his command were ridiculously small and spread pitifully thin. In addition Rear Admiral Hoover was responsible for the patrol off Fort de France, beautiful, spacious deep-water harbor of Martinique, where the sleek, fast French cruiser Emile Bertin, the slow, fat aircraft carrier Bearn, eight other French warships, and fifteen merchant ships, including six tankers, lay at anchor. The United States made repeated efforts to get France to sell the tankers, but Admiral Robert, while detesting Germans, took his orders from Laval and looked forward to his own early retirement.
Also, in Fort de France was 384 million dollars in gold and 106 U. S. built war planes. The planes were permanently out of commission, but the United States did not know this at the time. The United States was determined that Vichy France should not get the ships, the planes, or the gold. A daily PEY patrol operating out of next-door St. Lucia kept a watchful eye on Martinique.
In May, the U-boats were back with a vengeance. Thirty-eight ships nosed to the bottom in this single month and in June the figure hit the all-time high of 48 ships—a total of nearly half a million tons in these two months alone.
June marked the penetration of the Caribbean all the way up to the approaches to the Panama Canal by the U-159 and another unidentified submarine. Between them they disposed of a ship a day for two weeks without even being attacked, except from the air. The skipper of the U-159 dismissed these attacks with this laconic report to Admiral Doenitz: "Increased air activity, unpracticed."
The experience of one merchant seaman during this period was not altogether unusual. Torpedoed on June 14, he was rescued on June 15, and torpedoed again on June 16. He was taken aboard the U-boat where he remained for four days, undergoing two attacks from U. S. planes. He reports the food was terrible. On the third clay, the U-boat stopped a Venezuelan schooner and removed 700 oranges, 500 lemons, and eight live chickens. The prisoner was required to kill and skin the chickens, a job which it was generally agreed he did very badly. On the fourth day, he was delivered over to another schooner carrying as cargo two Venezuelan prostitutes.
In July, sinkings again dropped—down to seventeen—as the U-boats headed back for replenishing. In this month, the first U-boat to be sunk in the Caribbean met its fate. In a well coordinated air and sea attack, the U.S.S. Lansdowne sank the U-153 near the Panama Canal with no survivors. In July, too, the Germans made their only attempt in the Caribbean to sow mines. A U-boat dropped seven mines in the harbor of Castries, St. Lucia. First warning of the mine field came when three naval officers, enjoying a Sunday fishing party in a small motor launch, were blown about twenty feet in the air. They escaped with minor injuries and a mine sweeper brought down from San Juan exploded a total of six mines while thousands of St. Lucians watched the show and rushed out in small boats to pick up the dead fish.
The convoy system was started in July between Key West, Aruba, and Trinidad (WAT-TAW) and the Panama Canal and Guantanamo. Up until this time, the few escorts available had to spend most of their time bringing in survivors. At one time Barbados was so crowded with stranded seamen that the island couldn't clothe or feed them properly.
As a result of the large number of sinkings in the ocean approaches to Trinidad, the Navy also began to escort tankers and merchant ships 200 miles east of Trinidaa, but this proved costly, for the U-boats quickly formed the habit of collecting at the dispersal point and picking off ships as the escorts steamed over the horizon.
August, 1942, was disastrous. A total of 46 ships was sunk, second only to June's total of 48. The 500-ton boats were now joined by a bigger sister—the 700-tonner, which carried more torpedoes and had a much larger cruising range. But, despite the sad total of ships that went down in August, this month might be called the turning point. It is even possible to put a finger on a date—August 27—and say, "the tide turned here." For on that day a PBY and a Candian corvette, the H.M.C.S. Oakville, working as a team, made the first kill of a U-boat in the Caribbean with survivors. The U-boat was the U-94, commanded by one of Admiral Doenitz' most brilliant sub skippers.
The death of that submarine and the capture of 26 survivors marked the beginning of the end of the Caribbean paradise for U-boats. For that reason, the history of the U-94's last cruise and her 24-year old captain is an interesting one.
Captain Ites of the U-94 was one of the outstanding submarine commanders of 1942. After his third war cruise, in April 1942, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The citation gave him credit for eleven merchant sinkings, totaling 100,000 tons on this cruise. At 24 he was the youngest of Doenitz' brilliant U-boat commanders.
Ites was made skipper of the U-94, a 500-ton boat, on August 18, 1941, when the nerves of the previous captain gave way and he had to be given a shore job. Ites made three war cruises on the U-94 with indifferent success, before starting out on his final journey.
The U-94 was rewarded with a cruise to the submariner's paradise because on her previous cruise she had operated in the cold waters off Iceland. The U-94 departed from St. Nazaire on August 2, 1942, after most of the crew had been granted two weeks' shore leave. The U-94 cruised at slow speed during her crossing via the Azores. The crew took sun baths and even the technical men—who usually were not allowed beyond the conning tower when there was danger of air attack—were permitted to relax on deck. The U-94 made the trip without incident, sighting nothing and sinking nothing. Landfall in the Windward Passage was made on August 20.
One week later-on the last day of the U-94's life—Captain Ites suspected that he was in the path of a convoy when he sighted several PBY's which he guessed were supplying advance air cover. Ites spent the day dodging the PBY's. Evidently, his success made him careless.
At nightfall, Ites made contact with the convoy which consisted of twenty-one ships in seven columns (TAW-IS). The convoy was escorted by the U.S.S. Lea, three Canadian corvettes, a Dutch minelayer, one PC, and three SC's.
Ites maneuvered into position within the convoy screen, after trailing the convoy for nearly an hour on the surface under a full moon. As he prepared to fire a torpedo at one of the escorts, one of his lookouts reported sighting a plane. The executive officer who was watching another sector replied, "You're seeing a ghost."
The ghost was a PBY which dropped four 650 lb. depth charges from fifty feet and tossed out a flare. The U-94 was between thirty and sixty feet below the surface when the bombs exploded. Despite the frantic efforts of the crew to submerge, the U-boat nosed upward and surfaced. The Canadian corvette, H. M. C.S. Oakville, closed toward the flare and dropped five depth charges. She then made a quick turn and dropped more depth charges, one of which appeared to explode directly under the U-boat. The sturdy little Oakville maneuvered skillfully and proceeded to ram the submarine, passing squarely aft the conning tower. As men poured out of the conning tower, the Oakville opened up with machine guns to keep the crew away from the deck guns. The corvette then sent a boarding party to the stricken submarine, shot two Germans who acted ugly, and took 26 survivors aboard, including the wounded Ites, who had also suffered a broken leg. While the Oakville was battling the U-94, another submarine which had gone unnoticed sank two ships in the convoy and damaged two others.
During this stage of the war, Admiral Hoover, fighting desperately to stem the tide, was forced mainly to use the 110-foot subchasers; but they couldn't mount the new "hedge-hog" anti-sub device because of the severe recoil when it threw its pattern of 24 projectiles. The SC's operating efficiency was further reduced by the fact that they bounced around so much that no cooking could be done often for as long as five consecutive days and the fresh water supply allowed each man was only a quart a day.
September found most of the SC's being replaced by the 173-foot PC's, the latter proving a far more efficient escort vessel and subfighter. At this time also, the convoy system, which was proving its worth in every area, was reorganized into the highly efficient Interlocking System.
The Trinidad-Aruba-Key West route (TAW-WAT), which in sixty days had sailed 34 convoys, comprised of 746 ships, with the loss of only fifteen ships by enemy action, was changed to terminate at Guantanamo, leaving Key West for the Gulf traffic.
In the Caribbean, the big new convoy route was Trinidad-Aruba-Guantanamo (TAG-GAT). Here the convoys, moving like giant express trains, with precision timing, joined the Guantanamo-New York run (GNNG). Sin kings promptly dropped from 46 to 25 in September. In October, sub sinkings in the Caribbean reached their lowest point since April. Only fifteen ships were sunk.
In November, sin kings again rose, climbing to twenty-five; but the back of the submarine offensive in the Caribbean was broken. On November 8, the Allies made the North African landing and Admiral Doenitz recalled most of his subs to deploy them off the Straits of Gibraltar. Not a single ship was lost in the Caribbean area in the entire month of December.
Early in 1943, the Allies inaugurated direct ocean-going convoys of fast tankers from Curacao-Aruba to Swansea, Wales. Only 15-knot tankers were allowed in these convoys, each of which carried enough oil to send a thousand bombers over Germany every night for six months. The Germans smashed at some of these convoys in the Atlantic but with very indifferent success. To all intents and purposes, the Battle of the Caribbean was over.
It would be a rash statement, indeed, to call the Battle of the Caribbean a clear-cut victory for the Allies. Two hundred and sixty-three merchant ships were sunk in nine and a half months, with only four sub sinkings to show for it.
Victory it was, but it must be termed one of the costliest victories in the history of naval warfare.
Son of Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, head of the English Department at the U. S. Naval Academy, 1917-24, the author spent two and a half years in the British West Indies, French West Indies, and Netherlands West Indies during World War II. He attained the rank of Commander in May, 1945, while serving as Commanding Officer of the U. S. Naval Advanced Base, Fiji Islands. Commander Smith is at present in the Public Relations Department of the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation, builders of the nuclear powered submarines, Nautilus and Sea Wolf.