World War II: A chronology
U-234: Hitler's last submarine
U-234's officers and crew, before embarking on their first – and last – voyage
While under construction at Kiel in 1942, the German submarine U-234 suffered bomb damage. Afterwards it was decided not to use it as a mine-layer, and it was rebuilt as a Japan-transporter. It would only make one voyage – and would never reach Japan – but that single voyage would create a mystery that lasted over 50 years.
Extraordinary cargo
At 90 metres (294 feet) long and 22,000 tons fully loaded, the U-234
was one of the titans of the German undersea fleet and, in March 1945,
was the largest U- boat still in Nazi hands. On 25 March, it left Kiel
and, a few days later, reached Kristiansand in Norway. Its ultimate destination
was Japan.
The U-boat was loaded with examples of the finest of Germany's war technology: an entire dismantled Me-262 jet fighter, V-2 missile components, plans for other armaments and, most extraordinary of all, 550 kilograms (1,213lb) of uranium oxide – enough raw material for two atomic bombs. In addition, there were some unusual passengers: several high-ranking German experts and two Japanese officers.
Run silent, run deep
U-234 embarked from Kristiansand on 15 April, 1945, the day
before the Soviet Army launched its offensive against Berlin. The U-boat
proceeded submerged for the first 16 days and surfaced only because of
a severe storm. From then on, it usually ran two hours on the surface
at night and spent the balance of the time submerged at depths of between
40 and 100m (130-330ft).
The U-boat had orders not to make any attacks. The voyage proceeded without incident, except for the time when, unobserved, the submarine almost rammed a large enemy steamer. The first sign that something was amiss was when the Goliath signal station stopped broadcasting and, shortly after, no further signals were received from the Nauen station.
Then on 4 May, U-234 received the fragment of a broadcast from British and American stations about the elevation of Admiral Karl Dönitz, former U-boat chief, to supreme command in Germany following the death of Adolf Hitler.
Hoisting the black flag
The U-boat finally surfaced on 10 May in order to receive complete
signals. When they came, the men on the submarine initially thought it
was all a trick. The radio message from the German High Command told them
that the war was over and that all U-boats were to surface, hoist black
flags on their periscopes and proceed to Allied ports where they would
surrender. Which port would depend on their position at the time.
There was considerable discussion among the officers and passengers on U-234 as to which port they should head for. The talk was particularly heated because, at the time the surrender signal was received, U-234 was exactly on the dividing line that determined whether it should proceed to the British Isles or to a North American port.
The U-234's commanding officer, Kapitanleutnant Johann Heinrich Fehler, thought that if they surrendered to Canada or Britain, they would be imprisoned and it could be years before they were returned to Germany. The Americans, on the other hand, would probably simply send them home. So Fehler decided to turn the U-234 over to the US authorities, but he had to make sure that the Canadians didn't get to them first.
The fate of the Japanese
Inside the U-boat, the atmosphere was dreary. Nobody wanted to surrender.
But for two of the passengers, surrender meant more than an indeterminate
period of imprisonment.
Lieutenant Commander Hideo Tomonaga, a leading Japanese submarine designer, and Lieutenant Commander Genzo Shoji, an aircraft expert, had gone to Germany to study its weaponry, and were now accompanying some of it back to Japan. (Whether they also knew of the uranium cargo remains one of the unsolved mysteries of U-234.)
Kapitanleutnant Fehler explained to them that he had to surrender because he had to obey his high command just as they would have to follow theirs. They informed him of their resolve to commit suicide. Fehler tried to dissuade them, but the pair requested that they be allowed to remain undisturbed in their cabin, which was granted. Before going to their cabin, they distributed numerous gifts among the officers and passengers. Fehler received a Samurai sword, which he later threw overboard, and a sizeable sum in Swiss francs.
An officer later recalled: 'They returned to their bunks, where they took Luminol, a very powerful barbiturate, lay down and pulled the curtains. We knew they were killing themselves, and that was their right. They took more than 36 hours to die.'
The Japanese officers were buried at sea on 11 May. Letters of thanks and appreciation addressed to Fehler were found afterwards. In an envelope was a note requesting that an enclosed signal be sent to Japan. The German captain did not comply with this request.
After its surrender, U-234 is closely escorted to Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Captured
On 12 May, U-234 radioed the authorities in Halifax, Nova Scotia
that it was headed north-west, towards Halifax, at 8 knots. The Canadians
were obviously suspicious since, late that evening, they ordered the U-boat
to report its position and speed hourly. However, in reality, U-234
was barrelling across the Atlantic at 16 knots on a more or less south-west
course, making for the port of Newport News, Virginia, submerging during
the daytime and surfacing only at night.
The discrepancy between Fehler's reported and actual course was soon recognised, however. The Americans dispatched two destroyers to intercept U- 234, wherever it was. At 11pm on 14 May, south of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, the U-boat was contacted by USS Sutton and a prize crew boarded it and took charge.
During an attempt to confiscate all small arms on board, an American sailor was accidentally shot in the buttock by another member of the boarding party. He was transferred to the USS Forsyth, along with U-234's medical officer, who assisted during the emergency surgery on the sailor. Although the latter was stabilised and later transferred to a US Navy dispensary, he died a week later from internal bleeding.
The U-234's 41 crew members, six officers and nine passengers were transferred to a US Coast Guard vessel at sea. The American crew on the German submarine redirected it to the naval shipyard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where three other U-boats – U-805, U-873 and U-1228 – had already surrendered.
Gangsters
News of the giant submarine with its high-ranking Luftwaffe passengers
turned this surrender into a major news event. Reporters swarmed over
the navy yard and went to sea in a small boat for an early view of the
prize.
Coming ashore on 19 May, Kapitanleutnant Fehler objected to being forced to sit with his men and keep his arms folded. According to a radio reporter, 'He compared the tactics of US naval personnel to that of gangsters, whereupon an American officer retorted, "That's just what you are."'
Among U-234's passengers was the arrogant Luftwaffe Lieutenant General Ulrich Kessler, former commander of special bombing and attack wings based in Norway, who had passed his time aboard the U-boat reading. On arrival at Portsmouth, the monocled German surrendered with a smart salute to the highest-ranking US officer on hand.
The men of U-234 joined the officers and crews of the other three U-boats as prisoners in the custody of the US Navy. While at the Charles Street Jail in Boston, Massachusetts, where they were being held while in transit to more permanent quarters, the commander of the U-873 fatally slashed his wrists.
Interrogation
The U-234 officers were then taken to Washington, DC for interrogation.
Lieutenant General Kessler admitted during questioning that he had always
intended to get off the submarine when it reached Argentina. Whether he
knew of the uranium in the cargo is unknown. However, most researchers
believe that Kessler, realising that the war was about to be lost, had
boarded the U-boat simply as a means of escape.
Second Officer Karl Ernst Pfaff was taken to what he believed to be a top-secret Navy installation in Virginia and into a room in which U-234's cargo was being stored. There he was ordered to oversee the opening of a metal container.
The military watchdogs stood back, out of harm's way. The reluctant American with the cutting torch pleaded with Pfaff: 'He begged me not to let both of us get blown up, and I assured him that I too did not want to die young. Why would these boxes be booby-trapped? They were on their way to our ally Japan. Why would we want to blow them up?'
When the big container had been opened and they saw that it was safe, the military came out of hiding. Pfaff was then asked to open the little cigar box-shaped containers that held the uranium oxide.
The only civilian in the room supervised this. 'Who is that?' Pfaff asked. 'Oppenheimer,' somebody said. Later, when Pfaff was in a detention centre in Louisiana, he read news reports about physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos laboratory where the design and building of the first atomic bomb had been carried out.
Major John Lansdale, a Manhattan Project official, has since claimed to have confiscated the uranium for the United States' bomb-building programme.
The big story – that more than half a ton of uranium oxide had been on board U-234 – was immediately hushed up. According to the historian Robert K Wilcox, the U-boat's manifest listed 560 kilograms of uranium oxide for the 'Jap Army'. This concerned the US War Department so much that this fact was kept from the public and subsequently the manifest became a classified document.
The cargo was never officially revealed. But even if it had been, few Americans would have understood its significance. This was three months before the US dropped the world's first two atomic bombs, unveiling the secrets of atomic fission to an amazed world.
Wilcox cites the story of the U-234 as evidence that the Japanese may have been close to developing their own atomic bomb and would not have hesitated to use it. Major John Lansdale and others argue persuasively that U-234's uranium shipment, intended by Germany for its Japanese ally, was ultimately delivered by the US ... in the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Find out more
Germany's Last Mission to Japan: The sinister voyage of U-234
by Joseph Mark Scalia (Chatham, 2000) £20
After extensive research in US, European and Japanese archives, Joseph
Scalia tells the full story of Germany's last mission to Japan. He evaluates
the significance of the cargo carried, which included an Me 262 jet fighter
and 560 kilograms of uranium oxide. He argues that the passengers aboard
were of even greater value, including as they did an air-defence expert,
a top naval construction engineer, a radar expert and an aircraft designer
who later became a key figure in the post-war American fast jet programme.
Japan's Secret War: Japan's race against time to build its own atomic
bomb by Robert K Wilcox (Marlowe, 1995) £8.99
Wilcox argues that had Germany not surrendered, ordering its ships and
submarines to turn themselves in to the Allies, the first cities to be
destroyed by atomic bombs could have been American rather than Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in Japan.
