By Dave Kindy
Clary Edwards was rousted from bed at 5 a.m. by the sound of loud pounding. Wearing only shorts, he opened the front door of his home in New London, Connecticut, to find the unwelcome view of the Shore Patrol. “These two guys are telling me to get dressed because there’s a U-boat cornered off Block Island,” recalled Edwards, who was a Navy diver serving aboard the submarine rescue ship USS Penguin (ASR-12). “Well, I thought these guys were nuts. The war is over.”
Indeed, on May 6, 1945, it certainly seemed like World War II in Europe was at an end. Hitler was dead, Berlin had been captured, and the once-vaunted Nazi military machine was all but finished. Just the day before, Hitler’s successor Adm. Karl Dönitz had sent an emissary to Allied Supreme Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to negotiate Germany’s surrender.
However, rogue submarines lurking in the North Atlantic during the last weeks of the crumbling Third Reich, would deliver a final, fatal blow. On May 5, an American collier headed to Boston was sunk by a torpedo fired by a German submarine. Now, ships of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard were locked in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with the U-boat just a few miles off the coast of Rhode Island. With the capitulation of Nazi Germany only hours away, the Battle of Point Judith was underway.
As Edwards pulled on his uniform, he wondered about the rest of the Penguin crew. The day before, in the wee hours of the morning, sailors crawled back to base in New London after a ship’s party involving copious amounts of alcohol. Held at Central Gardens Restaurant in nearby Uncasville, Connecticut, the celebration marked the pending end of hostilities in the European theater with rounds of “power drinking,” according to the party program.
The hungover Penguin sailors probably felt like they had dodged a bullet. The war with Germany was about to end, and they had survived the worst of the Battle of the Atlantic, which had claimed an estimated 72,000 Allied lives, 3,500 merchant vessels, and some 175 warships. Yet, sailors along the New England coast were headed back into harm’s way.
“It’s like Yogi Berra said, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over,’” said retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Samuel Cox, Director of the Naval History and Heritage Command and Curator of the Navy. “No one wants to be the last to die in a war, but there has to be a last one. Most of the sailors were probably thinking, ‘We have a duty to do and we’re going to do it.’”
Few Americans were prepared for the events of that spring day 80 years ago, when a torpedo fired by U-853 sliced off the stern of the SS Black Point, the last American merchantman sunk in World War II. She sank in 85 feet of water in Block Island Sound, just two miles from the village of Point Judith at the entrance of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.
The naval engagement is remembered by some as “The Last Battle of the North Atlantic” in World War II, though other German submarines were still on the prowl elsewhere. At about the same time, U-881 was sunk off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada by the destroyer escort USS Farquhar (DE-139). Two other U-boats were damaged or destroyed by British forces on May 7 in the waters in and around Denmark and Norway.
Aboard SS Black Point, Captain Charles Prior had just stepped out on the deck. At about 5:40 p.m. on May 5, he left the bridge to have a cigarette. With the war almost over, he felt like he could let down his guard a bit while his 337-foot freighter, loaded down with 5,353 tons of coal, passed the R-2 buoy about 1.5 nautical miles from the Point Judith Lighthouse.
“That’s when it hit the fan,” he later remembered. “The clock was blown off the wall and the barometer off the bulkhead. The wheelhouse door was blown open and I don’t remember if I lit the cigarette or swallowed it. I could smell gunpowder in the air and the stern of my ship was completely blown off.”
Howard Locke was also caught off guard by the attack. The 19-year-old merchant marine from Georgia was in the fire room shoveling coal into the furnace of a boiler when he heard a loud explosion and felt a violent shudder. The lights went out, and water surged all around him.
Locke ran to the main deck and was stunned to see the stern missing. As he prepared to abandon ship, he heard a terrible scream: it was the Black Point’s mascot, a chimpanzee, who was below decks. Locke then dove into the ocean.
“The last thing I remember was that monkey hollering,” he later told a newspaper reporter.
At the time of the explosion, U.S. Navy gunner Stephen Svetz was manning the 6-pound cannon on the ship’s stern. He had no memory of what happened next. When the torpedo hit, it sent him and a quarter-ton section of the gun mount spiraling through the air. Svetz was found on the bow and helped off the ship as it sank. He was the only survivor from the fantail.
Svetz’s battery mate, Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Lonnie Whitson Lloyd, was not so lucky. The Naval Armed Guard gunner was the last U.S. sailor to die in combat in the North Atlantic.
Within minutes of the torpedo attack, Prior ordered the crew to abandon ship. Clinging to life rafts and debris were 34 survivors. Including Lloyd, 12 men were either killed instantly or died trapped below decks when the bobbing stern slipped below the surface
The SS Black Point foundered for about 25 minutes, then rolled over on its side and sank in Block Island Sound, about 22 miles northeast of Montauk Point on Long Island. Rather than run, U-853 slowly settled on the seafloor, apparently waiting for another opportunity to strike. However, time was running out for the German submarine as ships from U.S. Navy Task Force 60.7 were storming to the scene to hunt it down.
Though no one realized it at the time, the Battle of Point Judith had actually begun weeks earlier off the coast of Maine. At noon on April 23, the patrol boat USS Eagle 56 (PE-56) was towing targets for bombing exercises in Casco Bay, a few miles from Port Elizabeth. Suddenly, a geyser of water shot 300 feet into the air as an explosion rocked the World War I-era patrol boat amidships. The 200-foot vessel split in two and sank within minutes, taking 49 sailors to the bottom with her. It was the greatest loss of Navy personnel in New England waters.
Machinist Mate Second Class John Breeze of Washington was one of 13 survivors. As he desperately scrambled off the sinking Eagle 56, he noticed a submarine conning tower with red and yellow markings. “I only saw it momentarily,” he later told a newspaper reporter. “We didn’t know what we’d hit or what had hit us. You don’t think about things like that. All you think about is saving your own life.”
Nearby, the crew of the collier SS Plymouth witnessed the attack. Merchant Marine Loring “Bud” Small of Maine was on watch in the engine room when he heard his chief exclaim, “Christ Almighty, they just sank our escort!”
At a Naval Court of Inquiry a week later, five sailors testified they had also seen the U-boat with its colorful insignia. Remarkably, the board ruled that a boiler explosion had sunk the Eagle 56. That decision was overturned in 2001 after a reexamination of the evidence.
Small, as well as many others, didn’t accept the initial determination. “The Navy didn’t want it out that the Eagle was sunk by a submarine,” he told a reporter years later. “I knew it. The fellows on the deck saw a submarine but the Navy Department said, ‘Shut up.’”
Amazingly, Small also was on hand for the sinking of the Black Point. On May 5, the freighter Plymouth was trailing the Black Point by just a few miles. Laden with coal, both ships chugged up the coast to Boston. Small remembered the engine room chief uttering a similar expletive the second time around: “Christ Almighty, they just sunk [sic] the Black Point.”
The architect of this death and destruction off the coast of New England was the 24-year-old captain of U-853. Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Frömsdorf was at the helm of the Type IXC/40 U-boat when it departed Norway on February 24, 1945. He had taken over for Oberleutnant Helmut Sommer, who had been wounded 28 times when the submarine was strafed the previous year by two Grumman FM-1 Wildcat fighters from the escort carrier USS Croatan (CVE-25).
U-853 was nicknamed Der Seiltaenzer (“The Tightrope Walker”) after Sommer, who had deftly extricated the submarine from several close calls on its first patrol in 1944. The conning tower featured a large yellow shield with a red horse—the same colors as reported by witnesses during the sinking of the Eagle 56.
Before departing on U-853’s third and final patrol, the 6-foot, 10-inch Frömsdorf met with Sommer, who was still recuperating in the hospital. Now a kapitänleutnant, the older submariner cautioned his protégé about the mission he was about to undertake: “The war is nearly at an end. Do not be frivolous with the crew. They are all good boys. Make sure you bring them home.”
Unfortunately, Frömsdorf may have had notions of glory. On previous missions, U-853 had failed to score a kill. With no sunken ships to the sub’s credit, the young commander appeared willing to risk crew and craft in an attempt to earn an Iron Cross.
Captain Bill Palmer, a scuba diver and charter boat captain based in Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, believes that was the case. For his 2012 book The Last Battle of the Atlantic: The Sinking of the U-853, Palmer wrote that Frömsdorf had a Halsschmerzen, or “sore throat”—that is, he was desperate for the prestigious German military decoration to be placed around his neck.
“I spoke to a number of U-boat officers and sailors and was told Frömsdorf had a ‘sore throat,’” Palmer said in a 2020 interview. “He was looking to distinguish himself before the war ended. But you don’t do that when 50 men are depending on you for survival.”
If that is the case, it would explain why Frömsdorf disobeyed at least two direct orders from Admiral Dönitz. The acting leader of Germany and head of the Kriegsmarine sent out a May 4th radio message, effective May 5th, to all submarines to cease combat activities and return to base. Either Frömsdorf ignored that directive or never received it. Either way, it was a tragic failure.
“More likely he missed the order rather than ignored it,” Cox said. “There were a couple of other diehard submarines out there.”
In addition, Dönitz had banned U-boats from attacking at depths of less than 200 feet because of the risk of being spotted from the air or hunted down by ships. When Frömsdorf torpedoed the Black Point, he was operating in about 100 feet of water. Inexplicably, the young U-boat commander did not leave the area and instead rested on the bottom of the shallow waters off coastal New England.
It was Frömsdorf’s second deadly mistake.
When the Black Point went down, ships of Task Force 60.7 were on their way to Boston. They had just escorted a convoy of merchant ships to New York City from Oran and were moving at full speed up the coast when orders came to reroute to Point Judith.
The task force was led by Commander F.C. McCune, who was on board the USS Ericsson (DD-440), captained by Lt. Cmdr. Charles Alexander Baldwin. When the radio message arrived, the Benson/Gleave-class destroyer was in the Cape Cod Canal. The other ships—destroyer escorts USS Amick (DE-168) and USS Atherton (DE-169) and frigate USS Moberly (PF-63)—were strung out behind it in Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay.
With the flagship out of the picture, U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Leslie B. Tollaksen of the Moberly took temporary command of the task force. Manned by Coast Guard officers and crew, the U.S. Navy frigate and the other two ships arrived off Point Judith at around 7:20 p.m. and began searching for the U-boat.
About an hour later, Lieutenant Commander Lewis Iselin of the Atherton reported contact with a possible submarine. The Cannon-class destroyer escort made a sweep with magnetic depth charges. One exploded, so Iselin followed with three rounds of hedgehog projectiles. Each attack resulted in more explosions. A quick check with searchlights detected “oil geysers, air bubbles and considerable debris,” according to the after-action report.
McCune resumed command of the task force when the Ericsson arrived. Unsure if they had hit the submarine or a previously sunken ship, he ordered the Atherton to mark the spot while all four vessels continued searching throughout the night.
While Atherton’s crew was doing its best to destroy U-853, the ship’s doctor was trying to save a German life. In sick bay, Lt. Maurice Vitzky was performing emergency surgery on prisoner Franz Krones, a captured Wehrmacht private, who was critically ill with a ruptured appendix. Krones had been transferred to the Atherton so Vitzky, a Jewish doctor, could remove the organ.
Gunner’s Mate Preston Davis of Virginia was fascinated that a German prisoner was onboard his ship. He snuck down to sick bay to see Krones. “I’d just walk by and look at him every now and then,” Davis told a reporter years later.
Krones survived the operation and went back to Germany after the war, where he told his family and friends how “a Jewish doctor saved his life,” said Davis, who reached out to Krones in 2006.
At daybreak, the task force returned to the original contact site and discovered a grim scene floating on the surface: “German officer’s cap, believed to be that of the commanding officer of the submarine; southwester; several emergency abandon ship kits containing canteens, rations, and inflatable rubber life rafts; considerable air bubbles; oil slicks extending for a distance of over a mile; considerable other debris much of which had German markings; a jackstaff; chart table top; planking; considerable other miscellaneous debris.”
McCune was not convinced the U-boat was dead, so he ordered a resumption of sweeps. The Amick had departed to escort a Canadian freighter, so the duties fell to the crews of the Moberly, Ericsson and Atherton. Other destroyers had joined the hunt, searching outside the initial contact area in case the sub slipped through the cordon.
The task force was joined by two U.S. Navy blimps, the K-16 and K-58, from Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Part of Airship Squadron ZP-12, the dirigibles deployed sonobuoys and magnetic anomaly detectors along with dye and smoke flares. K-16 fired six rocket bombs while K-58 also dropped two depth charges, after which more debris was spotted.
Incredibly, sonar readings showed that U-853 was still moving, creeping slowly along the bottom. McCune determined the sub was likely damaged, though the pressure hull had not yet been breached. He ordered the Moberly and Ericsson to move in for the kill, each firing a series of hedgehogs. After that, no more movement was detected. The U.S. Navy later gave credit to the Atherton and Moberly for sinking U-853.
On the off chance there might be survivors, USS Penguin was ordered to the last known contact site. On May 7—the day Nazi Germany surrendered—two Navy divers descended to the bottom, where they detected two holes in the U-boat’s hull.
In hopes of securing the logbook, one of the divers opened a hatchway and found several bodies blocking the way. He removed one and brought it to the surface. The remains were later identified as those of Matrosenobergefreiter (sailor corporal) Herbert Hoffman, who was 23 at the time of his death. His body was later sent to a hospital at Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island. What happened to his remains after that is unknown.
Scheduled for the next dive on the sunken U-boat, Clary Edwards was suited up on the diving platform when he was ordered to stand down.
“I said, ‘What’s going on?’ and was told that all diving operations were to stop due to unexploded depth charges,” he later told Bill Palmer, a Mystic Seaport scuba diver, who has explored the wreck several times over the past 50 years. No further dives were ordered by the Navy, which had future nautical charts of the site marked with the cautionary “Danger: Unexploded Depth Charges.”
The story does not end here, though. Rumors abounded in the 1960s that the U-853 carried Nazi gold at the end of the war. The scuttlebutt proved to be false.
Also in the 60s, a wealthy entrepreneur wanted to salvage the U-853 and raise it as a tourist attraction. He even went as far as to remove skeletal remains from the wreck. His plans were halted after objections from the U.S. and German governments, local officials, and religious leaders. Now considered a military grave for the remaining 53 dead sailors, the site is protected from looting by international law.
“We, the Navy, consider it a war grave,” said Admiral Cox. “Official policy is that a sunken ship is a fit and final resting place for the sailors who went down with it. That was Navy tradition until recently when it was codified into regulation.”
The unidentified remains were turned over to the U.S. Navy, which buried them with full military honors at Newport’s Island Cemetery Annex. Each year, representatives of the German navy and government attend graveside services honoring all who perished at sea in World War II.
“There was a bag of bones,” Palmer said. “It may not have been one individual.”
Next to the Naval War College Museum in Newport rests a stark reminder of the cost of war: the U-853’s two propellers. The memorial is a testament to the sacrifices made by tens of thousands of American and German boys during the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military operation of World War II. Whether through bravery or folly, their deaths serve as a symbol of what can happen when societies bang the drum of war.
“This is the end result of war,” Palmer said. “It’s not a video game where players come back to life. These men gave their lives when the war was really over.” He added, “They were all good boys.”
Freelance author David Kindy has written extensively on World War II for HistoryNet, Smithsonian, and numerous other publications. He lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Nazi boys were not good boys. It’s disgraceful to lump them together with Allied dead.