On the way, Wilk was constantly harassed by German A/S vessels and it was obvious that she was leaving a trail of oil from leaking tanks. Krawczyk decided it was better to lose his boat fighting than fleeing and prepared to surface. By the time Wilk broke surface, though, the sea was empty. Undoubtedly relieved, he continued northwards, cleaning the leaking tanks to stop leaving a trail. Two days later, on the 11th, the cruiser Hipper was sighted and Krawczyk prepared for an attack. Before he could get into position, however, the cruiser turned away. Later the same day, orders were received from the Polish Naval Command for all submarines to head for Britain. Krawczyk waited until a convoy appeared on a westerly course near the Swedish coast and, surfacing, positioned his submarine close by. Approaching Öresund at dusk on the 14th, the German destroyer Richard Beitzen and the torpedo boat T107 were sighted, but, as Krawczyk had hoped, they believed Wilk was a Swedish submarine escorting the convoy and did nothing. The same day, Krawczyk took his boat through the Kattegat and, on the 20th, Wilk arrived in Rosyth.26
At Oksywie, Orzeł was ordered to slip anchor and head for her pre-ordained sector in the Bay of Puck immediately after the first air raids on 1 September. Over the radio from Hela, Lieutenant Commander Henryk Kloczkowski, received orders to look out for and attack Schleswig-Holstein should she leave Danzig. German aircraft and A/S vessels kept the submarine below most of the time, though, except for a few hours every night. Learning the fate of the surface ships, Kloczkowski decided on the 4th to head for the Baltic.27 On the way, Orzeł was subjected to a particularly violent attack by the minesweepers M4 and M3. One depth-charge exploded just above the boat, sending it crashing into the sea-bed. All lights went out and water started leaking through the diesel exhaust valve. The attack lasted all day, but eventually Orzeł managed to get away under cover of darkness. An oil leak had developed, which could not be repaired at sea, and Kloczkowski decided that the best thing would be to enter Tallinn in neutral Estonia to seek assistance. Anchoring there on the night of the 13th, Kloczkowski – who had been sick for several days – left his boat and was hospitalised.28
At first the Estonians accepted the reference to the Hague Convention, and measures were taken to facilitate repairs. Pressure from Germany was instant and, a few hours later, an armed detachment boarded the boat, informing the crew that they had been interned, confiscating maps and navigation aids. During the night, removal of the ammunition for the deck gun and the torpedoes commenced. By midday on the 14th, all forward torpedoes had been landed, but Kapitan Marynarki Jan Grudzinski, first officer and in command while Kloczkowski was in hospital, managed to sabotage the torpedo hoist and the six torpedoes aft were left on board. Instead, Grudzinski and the new first officer, Lieutenant Andzej Piasecki, worked out a plan to escape. Dismantling work on the engine and radio were delayed under all kinds of pretexts and, a few nights later, the Estonian guards were overpowered, the mooring wires cut, and Orzeł got under way.29
The alarm was immediately raised and some light guns of the harbour defences opened fire. Fortunately for the Poles, the larger guns held back, allegedly from fear of hitting their own ships moored around the port. In reality, most of the Estonian military probably cheered the Poles as they raced for the open sea. Orzeł touched a sandbank near the exit of the harbour, but Grudzinski managed to get her off and the submarine slipped away into the Baltic.
With no charts on board, Grudzinski intended to board the first German merchant vessel he met and take her maps. No German civilians were encountered, though; only warships looking for them. After three weeks of fruitless searching for something on which to use her remaining aft torpedoes, Grudzinski finally decided it was time to leave the Baltic, heading for Britain. The entrances to the Belts were closely guarded by German A/S ships, but Orzeł managed to crawl through during two days of high tension, with the help of a map drawn from memory by the navigating officer, and a list of Swedish lighthouses. On 14 October, some fifty days after she sailed from Oksywie, Orzeł made landfall off the east coast of Scotland. A signal was sent in plain English and a British destroyer came out to escort her into port, much to the surprise of the Admiralty, who had thought her long since sunk. After a refit, Orzeł was assigned to the 2nd Flotilla, deployed in the North Sea and Skagerrak.30
Orzeł’s sister boat Sęp had been rushed home from the Dutch yard a few months earlier and was yet not fully tested by her crew when she took to sea. On 2 September, Sęp fired a single torpedo at the German destroyer Friedrich Ihn. The speed of the destroyer was underestimated, and the torpedo missed, in spite of the submarine being only 400 yards away. Ihn counterattacked with a vengeance and the submarine crawled away with severe oil leakages as well as other damage, water seeping into the boat. On the 3rd, Sęp was at the receiving end of a torpedo from U14, but the torpedo exploded prematurely and she escaped again.31 On 13 September, orders were received to sail to Britain if possible or, if not, to a neutral Swedish port for internment. By now conditions on board the boat were severe due to the extensive damage and leaks and, when Hela confirmed it would not be possible to return there, Commander Salamon was in a predicament. Considering all options for another day and finding it would take half an hour to dive safely, he finally decided the best he could do would be to seek refuge inside Swedish territorial waters. On 17 September, Sęp appeared off Stockholm, requesting permission to enter the harbour for repairs, knowing that this would mean internment.
Ryś had also been damaged through repeated attacks from German A/S forces and aircraft and her captain decided to head for Sweden on the 18th. Both submarines were interned for the duration of the war and taken to Vaxholm, north-east of Stockholm. On the 25th, they were joined by Żbik, her captain also having concluded that his boat was not in a condition to break out for Britain.32
Except for M85, which foundered on a mine laid by Żbik, no German ships were sunk by the Polish submarines during the campaign, nor were any of the submarines sunk.33
— 5 —
To Die with Dignity
AT 21:30 ON 1 September 1939, the British ambassador to Berlin, Nevile Henderson, delivered a memorandum to Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, stating, ‘unless His Majesty’s Government received satisfactory assurances that the German Government had suspended all aggressive action and would be prepared to withdraw its forces from Polish territory’, Britain would fulfil its obligations to Poland. Half an hour later, a similar message was delivered by the French ambassador.
Nothing was heard from Berlin, and in the morning of 3 September, a final ultimatum came from London, setting the deadline for an answer to 11:00 British time that same day. Henderson hastened to the German Foreign Office with the note, giving it to chief-interpreter Paul Schmidt, the only one there, who brought it to the Chancellery, where most ministers and party leaders were assembled in Hitler’s office.1 According to Schmidt, Hitler, when he received the document, sat as if petrified, before he turned to Ribbentrop with a wild stare, asking, ‘Was nun?’ – ‘What now?’ Shortly after the deadline, Ribbentrop informed Henderson that Germany refused any demands and, fifteen minutes later, a disappointed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the British people on the radio, sounding drained, that:
This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin handed