Trooper was only four months old, commissioned in August of 1942, a little over 1500 tons and capable of 9 knots when submerged. The boat was led by a man with a most interesting name. Lt. John Somerton Wraith moved to Trooper from the submarine Upright in June of 1942, and was assigned to support operations in the Med. Tall, aristocratic in aspect and demeanor, Wraith was eager to put the new devices to good use. His crew and boat had spent the entire month of December training to deploy the Chariots, and they were finally given their first target, not Palermo, but Bizerte.
Life aboard his sub was no easy matter. Conditions were smelly and cramped, the food terrible, fresh water scarce, the air stale, and danger ever present. Now ‘The Wraith,’ as he was called, would have a pair of strange contraptions on his deck, and four extra men to fit into the crowded interior space of that sub. The daily ration of rum was a small consolation under such conditions, but the men bore up and endured. Many would not choose to be anywhere else, for there was something about the undersea service that was strangely alluring. Sixty men would go out on Trooper; another sixty on Thunderbolt. They would put their grubby service to the task at hand, eager to do something strangely different this time out. The two boats had worked out together in the Clyde for two months before sailing to the Med. Now they were ready for some action.
The cylindrical containers on the outer decks were 24 feet long, and about five and a half feet in circumference. Lieutenant Wraith could immediately feel the difference in the way his boat handled when the chariots were slipped inside and he put to sea, burdened like a mule. He had to keep his speed down, and be cautious with course changes, so as not to rattle his deck cargo and give his position away. The two subs crept along the coast, stopping briefly by night to approach the small port of Bone for a little periscope reconnaissance. As dawn approached they stayed submerged, wary of being spotted by German air patrols. There was very little sea traffic between Bizerte and Bone, for the Germans were content to land their supplies at the two major ports and move them overland by truck. Yet the sea was far from empty.
Somewhere out there, the Italian sub Dandolo was hunting off Algiers, for 39 merchantmen were due into the harbor, escorted by TF-33 with five US Destroyers. U-73 under Oberleutnant Deckert was also on the prowl. He had Helmut Rosenbaum’s old boat, a man that had been fated to get the carrier Eagle on his last sortie with U-73. That had been during the ill-fated Operation Pedestal, an operation that was shadowed by a strange intruder that had appeared in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Yet that was history that had already been re-written on this meridian. The Germans took Malta, so there was never a reason to mount such a relief operation as Operation Pedestal, and the mighty Kirov had sailed north around the top of the world to the Pacific in this Second Coming. In spite of that, Rosenbaum had enough success in the Med to warrant the transfer to the Black Sea, where he was now organizing a small flotilla of U-boats to neutralize the Soviet Black Sea Fleet at Novorossiysk.
Horst Deckert was on the conning tower of U-73 that morning, his Iron Cross, 1st Class, hanging prominently beneath his left shirt pocket, a cigarette dangling between the thumb and fingers of his right hand. His officer’s cap was ruffled from too much use, and he looked tired, yet his eyes were searching the still grey waters, looking for any sign of trouble. He was feeling flush, for on New Year’s Day, he had caught the last US Convoy, UGS-3, and put two torpedoes into the Liberty Ship Arthur Middleton. He had hit her right on the bow, the explosion so spectacular that he knew he must have ignited a part of her cargo. He could clearly see portions of the hull plate careening up into the sky, followed quickly by a sheet of roaring flame. The damage was so severe that it nearly blew the bow right off the ship, which immediately began to sink, taking 81 crewmen with her, and only three of those men survived.
Harry Cooke was among the dead, a man who had applied for a position as an officer in the US Navy in 1942. While he waited for news on that, his mother harangued him for idling about Boston while so many others were serving dutifully. So he signed on to the Arthur Middleton to bide the time and get a little experience at sea. He was just a Junior 3rd Mate, and right before setting sail from New York he wrote home to his mother to say he had been given the high honor of taking charge of the ship’s cat. His mother would get two more letters, one announcing the sinking and his tragic death, the second arriving weeks later, congratulating him on his acceptance as an officer in the USN.
There were a hundred stories like that written every day in this war, lives, hopes, dreams, memories, aspirations all packed onto ships to venture out on the high seas, and the dark U-boats lurking in the shadowy depths were out there waiting for them. Harry Cooke was just one of those little stories, and there were 77 more on the Arthur Middleton that night, all letters that would soon reach the states with their dark news of Deckert’s accomplishment.
It was a strange thing that put metals on a man’s chest for such an endeavor. Deckert already had three, and he had just added 7,176 tons to his account. They counted the weight of the ships they killed, not the lives of the men who sailed in them. Perhaps that was a way of maintaining some thin moral distance from the act of ordering those torpedoes into the water. At least Deckert always thought that way. He was killing ships, not men.
A year later, he would take that same boat out from Toulon to prowl off Oran for a repeat performance. Another convoy was lining up to enter the harbor, and Deckert would line up on the Liberty ship John S. Copley. He would again put a torpedo into that ship’s starboard side, just forward of the mainmast. Flooding and an eight degree list ensued, and the crew was put off, but the damage was later found to be light enough to save the ship. Deckert would be hounded by the convoy escorts for his trouble, and destroyers Woolsey and Trippe would rush to the scene, force him to submerge with gunfire, and then put depth charges on his boat. There were 34 survivors, Deckert among them, but he would receive no more medals for torpedoing Liberty Ships, and spend the rest of the war as a P.O.W.
This day, however, he would be caught up in a comedy of errors as he hovered off Algiers, making ready to return home soon. It was then that his sharp eye spotted a periscope, and he quickly flicked his cigarette overboard and hastened below. His 1st Warrant Officer, Heinz Bentzein was there to greet him.
“No fresh air for you, Heintz,” said Deckert quickly. “Take us down. There’s another boat out there, and it’s very close. Come right ten degrees and dive!” Deckert had spotted the Trooper, leaving port submerged with her secret little cargo on deck and easing out to sea. The next minutes were very tense, and Deckert slowed to a near crawl after he was submerged, wanting to be as quiet as possible.