| |
April 23, 1945, 12:14 P.M
Helmut Froemsdorf
aboard the U-853
Gulf of Maine
For two difficult months at sea, it is likely that Helmut
Froemsdorf had dreamed of this moment. His boat had been forced
to remain submerged like a frightened rabbit for virtually
the entire trip across the Atlantic, crawling beneath the
surface to avoid detection and likely destruction from Allied
ships and planes, which had killed more than one hundred U-boats
and their crews in the first four months of 1945. The fifty-five
men aboard the U-853 would be growing restless and
irritable, eating bland food, breathing stale air, living
and working in cramped quarters alongside shipmates who had
not changed clothing or showered in weeks due to a lack of
space for personal effects and restrictions on the use of
freshwater.
Now, the time for cowering and restlessness was over; precision
and daring were the orders of the day. Helmut Froemsdorf,
who had turned twenty-four years old less than a month earlier,
would truly come of age on this raw April day in the Gulf
of Maine. He was operating the U-853 under power
of her electric motors as she crept, submerged, toward the
Eagle 56, the U-boat’s sound masked by the
noisy wake of the American destroyer, Selfridge, seven miles
away. Froemsdorf would have celebrated his good fortune. The
American subchaser was at a dead stop and made an easy target
for the U-853’s torpedoes.
As he drew a bead on the Eagle 56, Froemsdorf may
have recalled the glory days of his predecessors—of
Sommer’s bravery in the open Atlantic, of Hardegen’s
and Mohr’s dramatic kills along the American East Coast
during the Second Happy Time in 1942. He also may have thought
about the last message he had received from Admiral Dönitz,
on April 11, one that rose to the unwavering defense of Adolf
Hitler, calling him the “single statesman of stature
in Europe.”
But perhaps it was the last portion of Dönitz’s
April 11 message that was uppermost in Froemsdorf’s
mind as he prepared to attack the Eagle 56, words
that trumpeted the glory of the Kriegsmarine and its willingness
to “fight to the end,” words that heralded the
bravery of its U-boat captains who would never “think
of giving up [their] ship” and whose “bearing
in the severest crisis of this war will be judged by posterity.”
With the U-853 less than six hundred yards from
the Eagle 56, Froemsdorf ordered his torpedo crew
to fire.
|
