All language subtitles for BBC The Battle of the Atlantic S01 E02_track3_[eng]-en

(NARRATOR) Hidden by London's
elegant public buildings,

just yards from Trafalgar Square,
is a dark, forbidding block known as the Citadel.

60 years ago, this bunker was at the heart
of the secret war against Hitler's U—boats.

/n an airless sub—basement
20 feet below the ground,

Naval intelligence sought to track
the enemy in the Atlantic,

at first with tittle success.

Britain depended on its lifeline to North America,
but in the first 18 months of war

the Germans sank
more than five million tonnes of shipping.

/t was a battle for survival
and Britain was losing it.

But in the spring of 19471, a new source
of intelligence began to flow into the Citadel

which promised to transform
the Battle of the Atlantic

and to shape victory from defeat.

On May 7th 1947, a British
Ustening station intercepted a signal

to a U-boat on war patrol in the Atlantic.

it was from U-Boat Headquarters,
that much was clear,

but the message itself was in code.

Dozens of signals like this
were intercepted every day.

if sense could be made of them,
Naval Intelligence would be able

to locate an enemy hidden
in three million square miles of ocean.

(MORSE BEEPING)

The signal was sent to a U-boat hunting
in the waters south of Greenland, the U-T10.

The message was encoded
on an Enigma machine.

The settings for this machine
were changed daily

and the tables containing the settings
were changed every month.

(TRANSLATION) How safe was the code?

We were told that the odds
were at least one to a million.

You could say it was as safe
as winning the jackpot on the lottery.

The Enigma machine on its own
wasn't enough to break a code.

You also needed the code tabies.

(NARRATOR) The message from Headquarters
promised immediate action,

the first for the U-7O in almost two weeks.

(TRANSLATION) A convoy had been spotted

and we were ordered by
U-Boat Headquarters to try and intercept it.

We were at last
close enough to be able to do that.

(NARRATOR) The U-7i0's commander,
Fritz—julius Lemp, was an experienced hunter,

@ holder of the Knight's Cross,
Germany's most prestigious decoration.

The convoy was sighted
on the morning of May 9th.

Lemp chose to risk a daylight attack.

(TRANSLATION)
Then we attacked. Fired at two steamers.

/ followed the torpedoes until they hit the targets.

Suddenly, there was a terrific explosion,
/ think on the starboard bow,

and we knew that a ship had been torpedoed,
then another ship was hit.

Turned the convoy the other way, raced’ over
and started picking up the contacts.

(SONAR BLEEPING)

(HOGEL) | said to my mate,

“Fritz, usten, They've got us.
We're being echo—located."

(TRANSLATION)
The last depth charges caused serious damage.

We had water and diesel oil
leaking into the U-boat.

The control room looked tike a wrecked kitchen.

(TRANSLATION)
The lights went out and it really was the end.

(NARRATOR) The U-boat,
like the one filmed here,

shot to the surface,
taking the Royal Navy escort ships by surprise.

It is the dream, when you attack,
to have a U-boat coming to the surface.

It happened so seldom.

As we opened fire, the noise in that U-boat
must have been absolutely terrific.

(SPEAKS GERMAN)

(ECKE) / can still hear Commander Lemp
as he opened the hatch.

He shouted down, "Uhlandstrasse,
last stop, all change.”

This was the last stop for us.

(TRANSLATION) | climbed from the control room
through the tower, up to the bridge.

The Commander was standing there, / said,
“Sir, the secret things are still down there.”

He just said, “Leave it, Wilde,
the boat's sinking anyway.”

(NARRATOR)
The British rescued those they could.

But 77 of the crew,
including Commander Lemp, were lost.

The U-T10 remained stubbornly afloat.

(BALME) My captain said to me, “Look, Sub,

“take the boarding party
and get what you can,“

(CREAKING)

(BALME) One couldn't believe
that they'd just left this U-boat.

/ felt sure there must be somebody down below.

So, going down that last ladder,
my revolver holstered,

| felt terribly vulnerable and very frightened.

Very eerie, No noise at all.
Deathly silence. Nobody there.

/ then shouted up to my boarding party,
who I'd left up on deck, to come down,

And then we started collecting
everything we could.

The telegraphist came to me and said,

“There's something very interesting here,
come and see.”

So / went and there was this typewriter thing.

We both pressed a few buttons
and jt lit up in a rather strange way,

and of course a mass of cipher books
which didn't mean anything to us.

(NARRATOR)
Four days later, the intelligence haul

was delivered to a Victorian mansion
in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

This was Bletchley Park,
the Government code and cipher school,

a place so secret it was known
in official documents as "Station X".

— Staff Sergeant.
— Right, sir, coming.

By 1941, the Bletchley code—breakers were able
to read both German Army and Air Force signals.

Only the Navy's Enigma codes were unbroken.

The material from the U-7o
helped to change all that.

We got out almost everything
in spring/summer of 1941.

Maybe an occasional day
it didn't come out or something,

but steady success.

(NARRATOR)
The intelligence material captured in the spring

offered the cryptographers enough of an insight
into the mechanics of the codes

for them to crack the daily wheel settings,
even when, in the summer, the tables changed.

(WILEY) After june and july were over,
when we had the messages on a plate,

then we had to solve each day separately
and it was an extremely satisfying job.

And each time you had to do some work
and you knew what you were doing was useful.

Wonderful

(NARRATOR) By the summer of 1941,
a flood of decrypted signals

was clattering down the secure teleprinter lines
from Bletchley to the Admiralty.

it was known as “Ultra” or “special” intelligence.

(BARING)
The speed with which the decrypts came into us,

there were just piles and piles of them,

and we were reading enemy traffic
and knowing what they were doing,

probably at the same time
as the recipient of the signal.

(NARRATOR)
At the other end of the teleprinter line

was the Admiralty's intelligence centre,
the Citadel.

At the heart of the secret bunker,
a small team of intelligence officers

sought to track U-boats in the Atlantic.

The submarine tracking room was to mirror
operations at U-Boat Headquarters,

and lest anyone forget,
a grim portrait of Karl Donitz,

the leader of the U-boat arm,
hung on the wall

in the summer of 7941, Ultra was to transform
the work of the tracking room

and the Battie of the Atlantic.

On fune 21st, a British cruiser sank
the German supply ship “Babitonga",

one of the network put in place to refuel
surface raiders and U-boats at sea.

Within a month, Naval intelligence
was able to lead British warships

to nine German tankers.

it was a severe biow to Donitz's plans
for long-distance operations in the Atlantic.

To make matters worse,
his U-boats were also struggling

to find convoys closer to home.

in May 1941, they'd sunk 58 ships.
In july, just 77.

Donitz began to suspect an intelugence failure.

(TRANSLATION) He'd sent his signals
and intelligence officer to Berlin

and this man was told, "Find out
if everything is OK. Can we trust this?"

And again and again
he would return with reassuring words.

"Nothing can have happened,
it's got to be OK."

But one always felt

that Dontz had, I'd say, a premonition
that something wasn't quite right, you know.

(NARRATOR) On the day the British
captured the Enigma materials from U-T10,

Admiral Donitz was appearing in a film
being given its gala premiere in Berlin.

(STIRRING MUSIC)

(NARRATOR) The leading parts, with the
exception of Donitz, were played by actors.

But the U-boat was real enough.
The U-123 had already sunk 18 ships.

(ROUSING SINGING IN GERMAN)

(NARRATOR)
That summer, the U-123 was to set out

on war patrol under a new commander,

(TRANSLATION) It wasn't that simple
taking over a successful boat.

/ had to impose myself, of course,

The older crew members in particular

were a bit reluctant to accept me,

because our first voyage
was a journey south to the Equator.

They'd never done a long voyage,
so it wasn't easy getting them behind me.

(NARRATOR)
Hardegan was determined to make his mark.

His maiden voyage in "123" was to take
him south along the African coast,

where hunting was supposed to be good.
At first it was.

By the end of june 1941, he was able
to report his first successes to Donitz.

"At battle stations. Turned onto a parallel course.

"A hit at the bridge and a bright fiery glow.

"There's an oil patch at the site of the sinkings

“and a few people are floating
in the water, holding spars.”

(NARRATOR) But U-123's war patrol
was being tracked by the British.

Hardegen's signals were read in the Citadel
just hours after he'd sent them.

Time enough for convoys
to be directed away from U-123,

The tracking room
was carrying out the same operation

with a dozen more U-boats
right across the North Atlantic.

On fune 24th,
Donitz sent a message to his commanders

urging them to press home
the attack more vigorously.

For Naval intelligence,
this was confirmation that the U-boats

were experiencing a lean time.

Donitz was tetchy.

Finding targets, how should / put it?
This was getting harder and harder.

(TRANSLATION)
The U-boat locations were known,

and the convoys
were being directed around them.

(NARRATOR)
U-123's war patrol began to fizzle out.

At least for the U-boats in these waters,
JE was time to relax in the Affican sunshine.

(TRANSLATION) | organised a deck party
with sausage snatching,

shark fishing and the crew was able to swim.

(UP-TEMPO SINGING {N GERMAN)

(TRANSLATION) The water was
around 30 degrees, it was lovely.

We could have a nice shower.
We took our clothes off

Everyone was naked, you Know.

(GERMAN ACCORDION MUSIC AND SONG)

(NARRATOR) By July t4th,
U-123 had reached Freetown,

on the coast of Sierra Leone.

This was an assembly point for convoys
preparing to make the journey home to Britain.

There were hopes at last of an easy success,
They were short lived.

The Royal Navy had been tipped off
by U-123's own signals,

Now the only ships passing in and out
of Freetown were the ones they couldn't sink.

(HARDEGEN) We had them in our sights,

as we warited to sink them,
but when it got dark they were brightly lit

and all had the American flag on their sides.

They were neutral and we couldn't do anything.

(NARRATOR) Hitler had personally ordered
that a signal be sent to U—boats

expressly forbidding
contact with American ships.

The frustration of Hardegen and his crew
was mirrored across the U-boat arm that summer,

the failure of its codes compounded
by the presence of an enemy it couldn't touch.

(TRANSLATION)
We had very strict orders to avoid anything

that could cloud the relationship.

(TRANSLATION)
But one already felt in those days

that the Americans were doing quite a lot
that couldn't truly be reconciled with neutrality.

We shall give every possible
assistance to Britain

and to all who with Britain are resisting
Hitlerism or its equivalent.

All additional measures
necessary to deliver the goods will be taken.

(NARRATOR) By the summer of 1941,
half the food Britain imported

and many of the weapons
she needed to fight the war

were passing across the Atlantic from North
America, and Britain was pressing for more.

We hoped that the Americans
would come into the war.

if they did, that would be it,
the war would be won.

It has to be said that there were many people
who were very, very much in favour of Britain

and would be glad to get into the war,
of whom President Roosevelt was one.

(MILITARY BAND MUSIC)

(NARRATOR)
The growing warmth of this friendship

was demonstrated in August,
when Churchill steamed across the Atlantic

for a shipboard suminit with Roosevelt.

The President came bearing gifts.
British sailors were given cigarettes and fruit,

a taste of life as it was once tived at home

American sailors were able
to meet the British Prime Minister.

(CREW SING
"ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS")

The two leaders gave voice
to their unity of purpose

in a joint service aboard the battleship
"Drince of Wales".

# Onward, Christian soldiers
Marching... #

(NARRATOR) Churchill got what he wanted,

Roosevelt agreed to bend
the bounds of neutrality even further.

American warships would begin protecting
British convoys in the Western Atlantic.

(TRANSLATION) The USA declared
a security zone, an exclusion zone,

and that was for us, of course, nonsense.

We regarded the whole of the Atlantic
as our operational area.

But the Americans attacked

a number of submarines in the Western Atlantic

it regarded them as pirates,

(NARRATOR) The Admiralty was now confident
that the tide of battle was turning its way.

its figures show
that in the last six months of 7947

shipping losses had more than halved.

The U-boat was struggling to find targets.

When it did, it risked confronting
the muscular neutrality of the United States.

But it was Clear this stand-off
couldn't last forever.

On October 3ist, Eric Topp's U-552 was hunting
in the waters south-east of Greenland.

(TRANSLATION) | came upon the convoy
in the early hours of the morning

and attacked immediately with two torpedoes.

The “Reuben James" was hit
and burst into flames

and 710 men lost their lives in the icy cold water.

Oi spouted out of the ship into the sea
and in places this was on fire.

Then, unfortunately,
after the boat started to sink,

her depth charges began to explode,
and that tossed the survivors

high up into the air —
they were thrown up to a height of 15 metres,

and of course, hit the water again
in a very badly wounded state.

(NARRATOR)
Topp's U-552 sank the first American warship

before there was officially a war to fight.

in the Atlantic at least, the United States
was now at war with Germany in all but name.

(TOPP) f reported
every detail of the attack to Donitz

and he said nothing more than
“t's all right, you acted correctly.”

(NARRATOR)
Donitz approved, Hitler did not.

Topp wasn't disciplined,
but Hitier stili refused to rescind Ais orders.

No more attacks on American ships.

By December, the U-boat war
had almost ground to a halt.

But the issue was settled five weexs later,
not in the Atlantic but in the Pacific.

(NEWSREEL) This is the "Arizona",
writhing in death agony,

awakening America to battle and rallying
America to a new battle cry —

"Paemember Pearl Harbor".

(NARRATOR) Hitler was surprised
by the Japanese air strike at Pearl Harbor.

But in support of his ally,
he now declared war on the United States.

Donitz and his crews were delighted.

(TRANSLATION)
The entry of the United States into the war

was, | would almost say, a relief.

We could now respond to what
the Americans had already been doing to us,

in terms of hostile attacks.

(NARRATOR) Preparations began
for “Paukenschlag” — “Operation Drumbeat",

(SINGING IN GERMAN)

(NARRATOR) Now, at last,
was an opportunity to breath new life

into the faitering U-boat campaign.

Just five large U-boats were to spearhead
the attack on the United States.

One was the U-?73

Hardegen and his crew set out for the new
combat area on Christmas Eve 1947

(TRANSLATION) A few of us wondered
if we would get back in one piece.

It was a fair way.

(HARDEGEN) | had no charts for America.

/ had a Knaur pocket atlas
and in it was a small city map

of New York — that was all | had.

(NARRATOR)
U-123's arrival would not go unannounced.

There was Ultra, On january 10th 1942,

@ message was intercepted
and delivered to Bletchley.

/t was an order from Donitz
to the Drumbeat boats.

/t was clear an attack was building
off the American coast.

But the eyes of the American Navy
were still turned to the Pacific.

The warning reached the desk
of its Naval Intelligence service,

but no action was taken.

(SMITHERS) in those first days
after Pearl Harbor, it really was a pantomime.

But the United States is a helt
of a long way from anywhere else,

And the Americans were not accustomed to think
of people attacking them on their own shores.

(NARRATOR) On January 2th,
U-123 inched its way into New York Bay.

Operation Drumbeat had begun.

(HARDEGEN) | had flooded the front tanks
so that only the tower showed.

What American fisherman
would recognise a German U-boat tower?

I'd assumed that | would find a coast
that was blacked out.

There was a war on, after all.

But ships were sailing
with their navigation lights shining brightly.

(TRANSLATION) We could see
the cars driving along the coast road,

and | remember we could
even smell the woods.

(HARDEGEN)
/ waited until the ships left New York.

Then 1 would sail behind them until they were
in about 40-50 metres of water,

and then sink them.

(CREW SPEAK GERMAN)

"The night of the long Knives —

“a Drumbeat with eight ships sunk,
including three tankers,

“Wf only there had been 70 or 20 U—boats here,
they would all have had successes aplenty.“

(NARRATOR) Hardegen was able
to report to U-Boat Headquarters

that American waters were teeming
with ships unprotected by convoy.

The U-boat could sink at witli

(TRANSLATION) We had expected there would
be some successes at the beginning.

But we hadn't expected they would be as great.

That was, let's say, a nice surprise.

(NARRATOR)
This was not what the Admiralty had anticipated

when the United States entered the war.

Losses began to climb,
48 ships in january, 95 by March.

There was worse news.

On ist February 1942,
Naval Intelligence was obliged to report

that the flow of Ultra was at an end.

Bletchley had lost access
to the key Enigma code.

(BARING) The work dried up
and everything stopped.

Nothing was happening at all
and we were really rather desperate.

It had a very bad effect;
people walked around with long faces,

particularly the cryptographers,
who were almost in despair.

(NARRATOR) Donitz had insisted on the change.

There were just too many coincidences,
too many convoys missed,

too many supply ships sunk,

A new four-wheel Enigma machine
had been issued to the Atlantic boats,

and a new code, called “Shark”.

it ensured that the Ultra tap was turned off
just when the United States needed its help.

We were very miserable
about not being able to get into the Shark.

We knew that was more important
than anything else we could do.

We knew what the sinkings were like.

(NARRATOR) On April 8th 7942,

the tanker “Esso Baton Rouge”
was passing along the coast of Georgia.

These were dangerous waters. They'd become
a favourite hunting ground for the U-boat.

After four months of war,
there was still no convoy protection.

Nor had most Americans woken to the new
Pearl Harbor unfolding on their doorstep.

All the businesses, they wouldn't dim their ughts,

and a ship going up the coast or coming down,

you're silhouetted against this light —
this was like a shooting gallery.

You picture yourself sitting out there
at about 120, 140 barrels of high octane gas,

there's something to think about.

(NARRATOR) There were many
whe refused to sail on tankers.

They were an especiaily prized target.

in the first four months of America's war,

more than 50 were sunk
on the east coast and in the Caribbean.

The “Esso Baton Rouge”
was a little more than two miles offshore

when her shadow was spotted
by Hardegen's U-123,

(EXPLOSION — ALARM)

"Ba-woom", she says.
| don't know how high up in the air | went,

because she was right under me, just about.

/ don’t Know if it Knocked me out
but when / come to { says,

“Holy mackerel!”
You know the first thing | said?

First thing out of my mouth,
"Please God, help me now."

The first thing out of my mouth.

(NARRATOR) Nine days after
the sinking of the “Baton Rouge",

all tanker traffic
on the east coast was suspended.

The U.S, Navy was unable to protect
shipping in its own waters,

it was fighting a war on two oceans,
And in the Atlantic it was losing.

| was a pretty sick cookie.

I'd come home, my mother
would put the rubber mat in the bed.

| was having such nightmares, I'd wake up
in a pool of water, sweating so bad.

Boy, I'd get some doozies.

One time / was running down the hail
hollering “General Quarters!”

Do you believe jt?

(MORSE BEEPING)

(NEWSREEL) The tin fish has surfaced,

Like all fish out of water,
it's doomed if it stays too long.

(NARRATOR) Much was made in newsreels
of an American counter-attack

The public was told of hundreds
of hunt and destroy missions...

of & U-boats sunk
in the first three months of the war.

(TRANSLATION) Planes would come
and drop a few bombs.

We would only laugh because
they were so far away they had no effect,

but they always reported, “I've sunk a U-boat".

— Return to base.
— OK.

(HARDEGEN) We were supposed
to have been sunk three times.

Every time we sunk 2 Ship, we were sunk again.

The Americans needed this as a consolation,
the idea that they had done something.

But it wasn't true.

(NARRATOR) Despite the American claims,

no U-boats were sunk in United States waters
in the first three months of the war,

and with tankers burning off the beaches

it was impossible to hide
the failure of the Navy's response.

(UP-TEMPO MILITARY MUSIC)

Operation Drumbeat breathed
new life into the U-boat war.

Donitz's boats were sinking
more than 400,000 tonnes of shipping a month.

Hardegen's U-123 alone sank 19 ships
on its two patrols to the United States.

(TRANSLATION) We were the ones
who'd had the greatest success,

and the reception and propaganda circus
around us was correspondingly noisy.

f/f was a little embarrassed at times

because, in fact, we hadn't
encountered much resistance.

Donitz pinned the Knight's Cross
on me on the deck of my boat.

That was, of course, a special moment.

(NARRATOR)
Donitz had good cause for satisfaction.

Everyone wanted to be part of what the crews
called “The Great American Turkey Shoot".

U-Boat Headquarters didn’t care where
in the Atlantic the successes were won,

just as long as more ships were sunk
than the Allies could butid.

Donitz sent all the U-boats
he could muster to American waters.

This was made possible
by a new type of submarine,

which, thanks to the change in the Enigma code,
was a well—guarded secret.

(BEEPS)

U-boats could now rendezvous
off the American coast

with giant underwater tankers,

loaded with up to 700 tonnes of fuel,
food and torpedoes.

A U-boat could now double the length
of its war patrol on the American coast.

Staff at the Admiralty
were unable to contain their frustration.

There was sharp criticism of their American
ally's failure to introduce convoys sooner.

The monthly total for june
was to be the worst of the war —

173 ships sunk.

These losses were threatening
the whole Allied war effort.

But for all the Admiraity's anger,
its grim statistics had a new and disturbing trend.

A growing number of ships were being sunk
many miles from the American coast.

U-boats had struggled
to find ships the summer before.

Now they seemed able to find them
even in the middle of the Atlantic.

When a ship was sunk here,

the chances of survival were slim,
and the U-boat crews knew jt

| suddenly realised that about 100 feet away
was this thumping great U-boat.

And.,.the machine guns were manned,

she had a couple of cannon, they were manned,
and we all thought that was it.

instead, he asked someone to come alongside
and he handed out...bread,

tins of butter and some first aid dressings,
and he said,

“We will report your position after dark,
and good luck," and took off then.

/ think it was the worst time,
that first night, in many ways.

You began to think about how
a few hours ago you were having breakfast,

and you ought to be having
a jolly good dinner now.

(WRIGHT) You were wet and icy cold,

Your backside would sit
on the hard surface, wet surface,

wet clothes, rocking, thrown about like that,
you're never still.

(BECKER) Each man got a quarter
of this can of pemmican.

It's like fruit and chopped-up meat,
a lot of coconut, coconut oil,

pressed into...ke a utile sardine can.

And they'd get two maited mitk tablets
and this tittle container of water

about the size of a shotgun shell,
they got that twice a day.

And that was our ration.

(LESTER) You see a wave
the size of a house coming towards you,

in an open boat with 17 chaps in it,
and you think,

"This one's going to come
over the top, this is it."

(BECKER) We had two helmets in the boat,

so there was always two men
with those helmets bailing water.

You just Kept at it because if you gave up
you were done and you knew this.

As the days wore on,
your tongue started to swell,

and all you thought about was
when was the water coming.

When? You longed to drink something.

(WRIGHT) As | child | had read
Charles Dickens' "CAristmas Carol".

There was a lovely iliustration in that,
the Ghost of Plenty.

He sat up in front of a giant fire,
log fire, with fruit and food

and mulled wines
and all sorts of things around him,

and every time | closed my eyes,
| could see that.

(NARRATOR) From the summer of 1942,

many of the merchant seamen
forced to undergo this ordeal

were paying the price
for a catastrophic British intelligence failure.

The breaking of the German Enigma codes
was of immense value to the Admiralty,

and yet it was cavalier
about the security of its own codes,

it relied on book ciphers —
easy to use, but often easier to penetrate.

Little effort was made
to disguise the code's indicator,

the key for anyone decrypting a signal

By the summer of 1942, the Germans
had cracked the British convoy codes,

(DREYER) Their most successful
U-boat pack attacks on our convoys

were based on information
obtained by breaking our ciphers.

They were doing just about as well
with our ciphers, breaking them,

as we were doing with Ultra —
at times they may be doing better.

(MORSE BEEPING)

(NARRATOR) Thousands of signais
were sent to Allied ships every week.

As much as 80% of those sent in one code
were read by the Germans.

A secret report written
for the Admiralty after the war

admitted it had cost the country dearly
in men and ships,

and nearly lost us the war at sea.

By the time the U-boat returned
to the convoy war later that summer,

the intelligence advantage rested with Donitz.

He would use it to direct his packs
against convoys deep into the North Atlantic,

7000 miles or so away from land.

Before the end of three weeks,
we realised we were really in trouble,

because the food was going down

and we saw
all these fish swimming around with sharks,

and these pilot fish, they would swim closer,
real close to the boat.

You'd pitch them in the belly
and throw them in the boat

You probably missed
450 of them before you got one.

(LESTER) Your tongue, which was black,
and your lips were black,

and boils, which were all over your legs,
painful, ‘cause they were in salt water mostly.

(BECKER) We would read the New Testament,
we had the book with us.

We'd read that two or three times a day.

Well, | think it kind of settles your mind.

(LESTER) / can remember being at home,
playing tennis, in fact,

and | wasn't in that boat for quite a long time.

It was uncanny really.

(BECKER) This guy, we found out
he'd been torpedoed before.

Mentally, he was not with it
and he'd lay his money out in the boat

and he'd give somebody a five—dollar bill,

tell them to call the water taxi,
he wanted to go ashore.

We got into this terrible storm one night,
and as we were all doing our thing,

he stood up in the middle
of the boat and jumped.

He just literally jumped right out of the boat
and we never saw that man again.

it was kind of heartbreaking,
he'd been through so much,

and then he just decided he'd had it.

(WRIGHT)
it was a grey, cold, North Atlantic day,

and somebody saw this shape on the horizon
and it was an icelandic trawler.

And its name was “Surprise”.

Some surprise.

We were put onto the mess deck in hammocks,

and the crew of the "Snowflake",
| can't speak enough.

(BECKER) To us it was emotional;
to them, they'd picked up survivors before,

and it meant really not that much to them,
until such time

as they finally understood what we were telling
them, how long we were out there.

Then they couldn't believe it.

(NARRATOR) U-boats sank
a staggering 1100 ships in 1942.

More than 30,000 British seamen
were forced to take to lifeboats.

70,000 lost their lives.

it was the costliest year of the war at sea So far,

At the beginning of the war,
Donitz had announced that with enough U-boats

he would secure victory in the Atlantic.

Then he had commanded just 57.

Now, at the start of 7943 he had