— 7 —
‘What a Mess’
IN THE EARLY MORNING of 22 August 1939, the twenty-six-year-old Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp took his Type VIIA U-boat U30 to sea. His orders were to proceed to a waiting location west of Ireland and stay out of sight until further orders arrived. U30 was one of eighteen U-boats in the Atlantic with similar instructions. As soon as the Beginn-signal arrived from the SKL on 3 September, Lemp opened a sealed envelope given to him on departure and set course for his designated operational area. In the envelope was also a reminder to operate in strict accordance with the German Prize Regulations and there is no doubt that he knew what was expected of him. Lemp had been in command of U30 for almost a year and had obtained the respect of his crew and his superiors.1 On this first day of the conflict, though, his fervour, fuelled by the adrenalin of war, would tarnish his name forever.
Moving into the patrol area, Lemp found it, somewhat to his surprise, barren. As the sun started to go down, a freshening wind could be felt. U30 had reached the southern edge of her zone and was turning north when finally an approaching ship was sighted on the horizon to starboard. Unknown to Lemp, he had stumbled across the 13,581-ton Donaldson & Black’s Atlantic liner Athenia, heading for Montreal and Quebec.2 She had 1,417 people on board, 1,102 passengers and 315 crew. Of the passengers, 469 were Canadian, 311 American, some 150 European and the rest British or Irish. Most of the European passengers were refugees from the war, counting themselves lucky to be aboard. Among them thirty-four German nationals, mostly Jewish. A high proportion of the passengers were women and children.
U30 loading torpedoes before heading into the Atlantic in August 1939. (Author’s collection)
Athenia. (Author’s collection)
Numerous cancellations and delays of ships scheduled to depart Britain in late August resulted in a rush of passengers to those ships actually leaving, and Athenia was filled to capacity. Every berth in every cabin was occupied and makeshift bunks had been set up in the gangways on B deck, the gymnasium and the third-class smoking room. Still, Athenia was well equipped to handle an emergency. The twenty-six lifeboats had a capacity of over 1,800 people and there were some 1,600 lifejackets on board.3
Athenia left Glasgow at noon on 1 September and after calling at Belfast and Liverpool headed into the Atlantic in the evening of the 2nd. Captain James Cook had been ashore in Liverpool to meet with the Naval Control Service and receive the latest instructions from the Admiralty regarding the tense situation. When returning to his ship at 16:00, he brought with him new signal codes, a long list of actions to take if war was declared and specific instructions as to the route he was to follow across the Atlantic, some 30 miles further south than usual.
In the late afternoon of 3 September, Athenia was about 250 miles north-west of Inishtrahull island and about 60 miles south of Rockall, doing 15 knots. The Radio Office had disseminated the news of war having been declared and there was an uneasy mood on board. The sea was relatively smooth with only a moderate swell, and most passengers were getting ready for dinner. Captain Cook did not wish to alarm his passengers unduly, but to be on the safe side the lifeboats had quietly been made ready: canvas covers taken off, davits connected and provisions packed.
For reasons not fully explained, as she was a passenger liner and immune according to the Prize Regulations, the ship was also blacked out and zigzagging. Wooden shields covered the windows of the public spaces, curtains and canvas sheets covered doors and openings, the portholes had all been painted out and all deadlights were closed.
Onboard U30, Oberleutnant Lemp’s hunting instinct had undoubtedly been whetted by the recent Beginn-signal, but he was seriously in doubt. The approaching ship was certainly a passenger liner, but she was darkened and well outside any passenger routes. Her high, black freeboard looked sinister and Dönitz had warned him about Q-ships and armed merchant cruisers operated by the Royal Navy: a fair game under the Prize Regulations. He called his first officer, Hans-Peter Hinsch, for a second opinion, but he had little to add. Convincing himself that the approaching ship was trying to avoid his attention, Lemp decided to attack. The battle for the Atlantic was about to be opened in a dramatic way.
Submerged, Lemp took U30 across the bow of the oncoming ship and turned around for a clean shot from ahead. Eventually, U30 was in a perfect location, around 1,600 metres away from the course of the liner. Orders for two torpedoes were given, followed by ‘Torpedo Los’ – ‘Torpedoes Away’. Only one torpedo left its tube, though. The second made a jolt but remained stuck with its engine running – a potentially dangerous situation. Lemp took U30 down to get rid of it as soon as possible. Onboard Athenia several people later claimed to have seen the U-boat on the surface, some holding that shots had been fired at the liner.4
The firing of the torpedoes would have lightened the boat and it is not impossible that she broke surface for a while before the tanks were filled, taking her down. That shots were fired from U30 is virtually unthinkable, though. Manning the gun and bringing up ammunition was a deliberate procedure not easily undertaken and highly unlikely, all the more so with a stuck torpedo in one of the tubes.
The torpedo came loose through pumping compressed air into the tube and it exploded at some distance from the boat.5 About half an hour later, U30 surfaced. The moon was up and a brisk wind rippled the sea. Athenia could be sighted at a distance, mast lights on and listing with her stern low in the water.
The radio operator, Georg Högel, picked up a distress signal in plain language: ‘Athenia torpedoed 56.42N, 14.05W, 1,400 passengers on board’.6 According to Hinsch, Lemp stuttered: ‘What a mess! Why was she blacked out?’7
It was a horrendous mistake. Lemp had not taken the time that he should have done in order to identify correctly the ship he had attacked. The shock of realising the mistake he had made must have been enormous, evaporating all adrenalin in his system in an instant.
Maschinenobergefreiter Adolf Schmidt, later to be wounded and landed at Iceland, from where he ended up in Allied captivity, wrote an affidavit read at Nuremberg. In this he stated he was one of a few crewmembers who had been called to the tower by Lemp:
Apart from myself, Oberleutnant Hinsch was in the tower when I saw the ship after the attack. I observed that the ship was listing [and] saw much commotion onboard the torpedoed ship. [. . .] I believe one or two torpedoes were fired which did not explode, but I heard the explosion of the torpedo that hit the liner. Oberleutnant Lemp did not surface until after nightfall.8
There was little need for U30 to conceal her location now that Athenia was transmitting, but Lemp must have been shocked into passivity as he failed to render any assistance to the survivors or make any radio signal either to Germany or to potential rescuers. It appears that he just wanted to get away, and U30 left the scene. Lemp remained silent until 12 September, when he briefly informed FdU that the weather was poor. Not once did he notify anybody of the attack on Athenia until back in Germany.9
Wrecked Lifeboats
The torpedo struck Athenia on the port side aft around 19:30. Several of those on duty in the engine and boiler areas were killed. Pieces of metal and wood rained over the tourist deck, killing some and wounding several. Below decks, in the third-class quarters and aft dining rooms, there was absolute carnage. Cabins were smashed, corridors filled with debris and, below, water started pouring in. Some were trapped in their cabins and drowned as the water rose.