Operation Elster
I was recently contacted by a journalist from Prince Edward Island
(P.E.I.) in
Canada. She was asking if I knew anything about a story about a Nazi
submarine
being attacked & sunk by the Canadian Air Force.
I replied telling her what I knew about the filming of 49P.
P.E.I. is just across the water from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where
the
submarine scenes were filmed for 49P & I wondered if the making of the
film had somehow passed into legend as a real event (it's happened
before - see IKWIG trivia).
But no, Mary has just sent me an earlier story she wrote about the
submarines
and P.E.I.
From: Mary Mackay
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 16:23:17
Hi Steve,
Here is part 2. Hope you enjoy
@* Byline:Mary MacKay
@* BylineService:The Guardian newspaper/Charlottetown/Prince Edward
Island/Canada
Headline----Tale of two subs:
Subhead -- Top secret German U-boat mission to rescue PoWs detained on
Canadian
soil during the height of the Second World War forever intertwined with
Prince
Edward Island's 1943 legend of a mysterious sunken submarine.
It has all the elements of a great adventure movie.
A carefully scripted German U-boat mission across the Atlantic to the
Prince
Edward Island coast to rescue PoWs who were to escape from a New
Brunswick
internment camp during the height of the Second World War.
But it's no movie and it's true.
A twist to this documented 1943 naval drama is that it is a tale of two
submarines.
Another is that Operation Elster (Magpie in English) is a little-known
military
chapter in P.E.I.'s history, but one that quite likely initiated one of
the
Island's most persistent marine legends - the alleged sinking of a
mystery
submarine by Canadian forces off the coast of North Cape on May 7, 1943.
The
spectacular battle is still recalled today by many credible witnesses
and was
added as a top-of-the-page notation in a diary kept by a prominent MLA
and local
businessman of the time.
German military records confirm that there was indeed a submarine in the
area
from May 2-6, 1943. The U-262 was assigned the secret 'special task'
code-named
Elster, which was a simple plan, yet amazingly complicated when one
considers
the circumstances at the time.
Several German navy officer PoWs were directed to escape from internment
Camp
70, near Fredericton, travel by whatever means possible the 250
kilometres (150
miles) to Cape Tormentine, N.B., somehow cross the Northumberland Strait
to
P.E.I. and make their way to North Cape, where if all went well, a
German U-boat
would be waiting. The U-262 was there, but the rescue fell through
because the
escape never happened.
'Broke off search in accordance with orders. It is a pity that I must
return
without succeeding,' a disappointed Captain Heinz Franke recorded in his
log
before leaving North Cape on May 6th, 1943, one day before the alleged
mystery
submarine sinking.
Add to the mix that the U-262 was the backup boat for Operation Elster
and the
plot thickens. The primary submarine - the U-376 - was dispatched with
the
initial PoW rescue order, recorded as sunk in the Bay of Biscay, off the
coast
of France on April 10, 1943. To this day, she and her crew of 47 have
never been
found.
For the past few years amateur naval and marine historian Paul Lawton of
Brockton, Mass., has been intrigued by Operation Elster and more
recently its
possible connection to the mysterious submarine said to be under 33
metres (110
feet) of water off North Cape.
Last year, Lawton, who is team leader of the U.S.S. Eagle 56 Search
Team, which
is attempting to locate an American warship sunk by a German U-boat off
the
coast of Maine, visited P.E.I. to probe into the legendary local battle
and the
historical circumstances surrounding it.
'Operation Elster was actually contrived through coded notes and letters
sent
home and received by German naval officer PoWs who were interned at Camp
70 near
Fredericton, N.B. They used a written code that was known by Allied
Intelligence
upon breaking it as Irland (Ireland),' Lawton explains.
The cracking of Operation Elster was also bolstered by the fact that the
British
Allies had already captured a U-boat Enigma code machine, had broke the
code and
were tracking the German transmissions.
'So they actually knew that an operation was going to occur out there
(off North
Cape, P.E.I.),' Lawton explains.
On April 6, 1943, Operation Elster's primary boat - U-376 - under the
command of
Captain Friederich-Karl Marks, left La Pallice, France, and headed into
the Bay
of Biscay in the direction of Canada.
The U-376 was actually preceded by the mission's backup boat. The U-262
had
departed the same port for the same destination on March 27, but had to
return
because of a defective air vent. She sailed again on April 7.
Although each U-boat was given identical orders, the mission itself was
unknown
to backup captain Franke until weeks later.
'All these boats had a vault in which they had a number of sealed orders
and
they could only open those orders upon being directed to as a security
matter by
U-boat headquarters (the BdU),' he says.
'(In the case of U-262) they would have these sealed orders in case
anything
happened in the primary boat. . . . In that event, (BdU) would radio and
tell
them to open these particular orders.'
That order came shortly after U-376 reportedly sank on April 10 in the
Bay of
Biscay with all 47 officers and crewmen on board after being
depth-charged by a
British Wellington bomber. But Lawton says there is no conclusive proof
of the
destruction of that U-boat.
'(A) post war assessment determined that the Wellington attack was
actually
directed towards another submarine - U-465 - which dove, was damaged and
returned to base for repairs,' Lawton says.
Communication from the U-376 ceased from that day on. Three days later,
the BdU
listed the submarine and its crew as missing and presumed lost in the
Bay of
Biscay.
On April 15, Franke was directed to open his sealed Operation Elster
orders, but
was apprehensive about the journey ahead.
On the other side of the Operation Elster coin, a number of incidents
were
unfolding at the Fredericton Internment Camp, also known as Camp B-70,
or
'Ripples' for its remote location by Ripples Brook, between Fredericton
and
Minto.
The only barbed wire compound of its kind in eastern Canada during the
Second
World War, in 1943 Camp 70 was a temporary home for as many as 1,000
PoWs.
Enclosed by two separate barbed wire barriers, six sentry towers and a
dozen
searchlights, the camp was difficult to escape but not impossible.
Tunneling was
a popular attempt but was never successful. A few PoWs did escape during
an
outside work detail, but turned themselves in within a week.
The conditions that faced anyone who succeeded in an escape were
formidable:
hoards of black flies, soggy swamps and impenetrable forest.
'That area was complete wilderness. There was just an old farm road out
there to
get to the camp. And if they (the intended Operation Elster rescue
targets)
didn't know the area, I don't know how they'd ever get to P.E.I. unless
they had
someone on the inside helping them,' says Ted Jones, author of the
two-volume
set, Both Sides of the Wire: The Fredericton Internment Camp, which
detail its
1940-45 history.
Inside the camp, crowded conditions and infighting among the PoWs
resulted in a
riot in February 1943, the instigators of which were moved to the
Fredericton
county jail for months. Other transferals of temporary and even some
long-term
PoWs to other internment camps in Canada were a common occurrence, but
only
intermittently, a few at a time.
However, on May 14, 1943, barely a week after the U-262 called it quits
on
Operation Elster, more than 100 German merchant seamen and crew members
from
three ships were relocated to the more impregnable Camp 31 at Fort Henry
in
Kingston, Ont.
Was this massive movement to make more room in the overcrowded camp or
was the
shift by the Canadian military to remove the intended PoWs escapees'
Jones can't
say for sure, but adds that in researching the camp's five-year history
and
interviewing former staff and PoWs, the failed Operation Elster mission
has
never been mentioned.
In the weeks leading up to U-262's May 2, 1943 arrival off the coast of
P.E.I.,
Captain Heinz Franke was unaware that Operation Elster had already been
scuttled. But he was acutely aware of danger overhead as he passed
through the
narrowest section of the Cabot Strait on April 26/27.
'Four explosions, probably aircraft bombs, roughly five to 10 (nautical
miles)
distant. I cannot imagine that they were intended for me because I have
already
been proceeding submerged for two hours. Whether another of our boats is
in the
vicinity is not known,' the German captain wrote in his log.
To avoid detection, Franke only surfaced at night. He hit a huge snag
halfway
though the strait when he encountered ice, which dented the door to one
of the
torpedo tubes, flooding the area. The tube door was made watertight
again by
using force on it once submerged.
Although U-boats were not designed to operate in the extreme ice
conditions that
faced him, Franke continued under an unmeasurable ice field. When he
attempted
to surface on April 28, there were a few breathtaking moments.
'Attempt to surface, the conning tower hatch cannot be opened because an
ice
floe is lying on it,' noted the persistent captain, who succeeded on his
second
surfacing attempt but not without a price. Ice had taken yet another
toll, this
time it tore off the bridge rail, net cutter, damaged his guns and three
of his
four torpedo tube doors were bent and could not be opened. He was
virtually
defenseless.
On May 2, 1943, at precisely 1:44 p.m. Franke arrived at his pickup
destination,
roughly four nautical miles off the northwest tip of P.E.I., so close he
could
see the lighthouse in his periscope. It wasn't the only view to be had -
overhead were what Franke thought to be three 'Maryland-type aircraft.'
'It appears very suspicious that all three aircraft are flying
surveillance
precisely above my rendezvous position. However, it is also possible
that there
is a training base not too far away in Nova Scotia,' he speculated from
his
precarious position.
Because Maryland aircraft were not used in Canada, it is believed that
Franke
might have spied a grouping of Avro Anson aircraft from the
RCAF-operated
General Reconnaissance School in Summerside.
At the time, now retired Lt.-Col. Robert Gurney of Ottawa was a student
at the
school. According to his flight logbook, the students' four final
training trips
were canceled in favour of a real hunt for U-boats said to be in the
area. After
a short briefing, each unarmed Avro Anson crew was given a patrol line
to fly.
'(On May 2) we did our trip from one to four (o'clock) in the afternoon.
And at
two o'clock the U-boat (captain) said he had three airplanes circling
around
him. When I (recently) checked the time in my (1943) log I thought, 'My
gosh,
that had to be us!' We didn't see him but he certainly must have saw us.
The
water almost completely covered with ice floes. We just didn't think
that a
U-boat would be operating in that type of situation.'
For four days, the U-262 surfaced at night and remained underwater
during the
day.
On May 6, Greenmount radar station near Tignish observed a questionable
slow-moving blip on the radar screen, as did personnel at the radar
filter room
in Halifax, N.S. A plane was sent out from Summerside to investigate and
the
17th Reserve Armoured Regiment in Charlottetown was put on 24-hour
alert.
At high noon on May 6, with permission from BdU, Franke pulled the plug
on
Operation Elster and pointed the U-262 in the direction of home.
One day later, numerous residents in the North Cape area witnessed a
heated
anti-submarine naval battle that involved a Canadian destroyer or
corvette and a
slew of smaller support boats. Depth charges were said to have been
dropped,
forcing a submarine to the surface where it was hit and sank stern
first.
The Canadian Navy has no record of any anti-submarine action reports in
that
area on that date, although a naval training exercise in the area cannot
be
ruled out.
Fishermen in the area continue to tell of a large underwater object that
snares
their nets.
In 1995, The Guardian was on board a Canadian Navy minesweeper which
performed a
side-scan sonar search in the general area of the underwater anomaly and
witnessed battle.
That day, a diver discovered two large boulders the size of a severed
submarine
lying on the bottom, which sprouted a theory that in 1943, a Canadian
warship
showed up shortly after the U-262 left and detected and depth-charged
the same
leviathan stones.
The other remote but not implausible theory focuses on the Operation
Elster's
primary submarine. The U-376 could have survived the Bay of Biscay,
continued on
in radio silence and arrived at the North Cape rendezvous point on or
around the
time of May 7.
'The simple lack of radio communications did not mean that the boat
wasn't
operating,' Paul Lawton says.
'Quite often German U-boats would sustain irreparable radio damage
either making
them incapable of receiving or transmitting. You have to remember they
used
vacuum tube technology at the time and those things break under extreme
pressure
and vibration, particularly if you get a couple of close depth charges,'
he
adds, reminding that the last radio contact with the U-376 was before
the depth
charge battle in the Bay of Biscay.
'Another thing, simply because a boat lost radio function did not mean
that they
were to return to base and scramble the operation because they didn't
have
enough fuel to do that. They had to be out on the front lines at all
times,
taking out as much (enemy) tonnage as they possibly could.'
After interviewing witnesses and reviewing local records of these
alleged
events, Lawton, who is also lawyer, is convinced that the North Cape
area
residents did witness something on May 7, 1943, but adds that the weight
of
evidence is still slightly against the presence of U-376.
However, he adds, 'the coincidence that the U-376 was the only other
boat
dispatched to that precise location at roughly the same time however is
compelling, particularly since the people of North Cape could not have
known
anything about Operation Elster at that time.'
Michael Hadley's U-boats Against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian
Waters,
which extensively details the U-262's Operation Elster mission, tells
that on
May 16th, long after the U-262 had left the area, a Charlottetown-based
Anson
training aircraft dropped two depth charges on 'a stationary submarine
at
periscope depth' between the eastern point of P.E.I. and the Magdalene
Islands.
The attack produced 'some wreckage and oil slicks.'
Sightings continued for the next few days. On May 21, a Catalina flying
boat of
117 squadron at Gaspé, Que., reported that they attacked a submerged
U-boat
northeast of the Magdalenes. Hadley points out that German records shed
no light
on the very remote possibility of there having been any other U-boat in
the area.
'Certainly nothing on record explains the bravado with which the NOIC
(Naval
Officer in Charge) Gaspé logged the inflated battle action in his War
Diary for
the month of May: 'Enemy submarines made several appearances in the Gulf
area.
The excellent co-operation of the RCAF gave these visitors a warm
welcome and it
is regrettable that in the one case when surface vessels were near
enough to the
scene of a sighting to join in the hunt, no contact could be obtained.'
Speculation aside, Operation Elster survives as Hadley best describes
it: 'one
of the finest failed operations on record.'
Heinz Franke and the U-262 survived the Second World War. The captain
went on to
become one of the most respected U-boat commanders of his time.
The Fredericton Internment Camp or Camp 70 no longer exists. It was
bulldozed
flat after it closed in 1945, but in 1997 the New Brunswick Internment
Camp
Museum was created in the Minto municipal building to house memorabilia
from
former PoWs and staff.
Although nearly 60 years have passed, P.E.I.'s North Cape saga of the
battle
between the Canadian military and the mystery submarine persists.
And the U-376 and its 47 crew are still missing.
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