Admiral Donitz’s comment in U-505’s war diary was that the sinking of the schooner ‘had better been left undone.’ Loewe was relieved of his command and assigned to shore duty as a member of Donitz’s staff. U-505’s second war patrol, which had begun so auspiciously, had ended in frustration.

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Captain Peter Zschech came to U-505 with a very high reputation. As first watch officer of U-124, he had been trained by Jochen Mohr, skipper of a crew that had sunk more than 100,000 tons of Allied shipping. However, being commander of a submarine is a different matter. Although he chose a new emblem for U-505 that graciously incorporated the ax symbol of Loewe’s command, it was clear that Zschech was very sensitive on the issue of who the captain was now. Over time, the crew’s natural goodwill and respect for their new commander began to erode.

On October 4, 1942, U-505 sailed on her third war patrol, operating once again as a lone wolf in the area around Trinidad. Relations between captain and crew worsened as Zschech’s bullying personality became more pronounced. Even the crew’s continuing success against Allied shipping did not help improve morale. On November 7, U-505 sank a 5,500-ton freighter, but other targets escaped when the engineering officer raised the periscope too far, alerting the intended victims.

The last straw came at noon on November 10. Planes from the British air base on Trinidad had been constantly harassing the boat for weeks, and the second watch officer, noting the cloudy conditions that Captain Loewe used to call ‘perfect air surprise weather,’ suggested to Zschech that the lookouts be doubled. Zschech responded angrily to the implied comparison between himself and the former captain.

Goebeler remembers clearly what happened next: ‘A lookout suddenly shouted the alarm, and a second later there was a gigantic explosion. We had suffered a direct hit by a bomb that nearly tore the boat in half. The airplane that dropped the bomb was itself destroyed by the blast, and it crashed into the ocean next to us. The body of one of the pilots was lying on a part of a wing that was floating nearby, but we didn’t have time to think of him. The Kapitän gave the order to abandon ship, but the chief petty officer said, `Well, you can do what you want to do, but the technical crew is staying on board to keep her afloat.’

‘Other boats with the same damage might have sunk, but our crew knew what to do, and we did keep her afloat. That lucky boat, U-505, was the most heavily damaged German submarine to ever get back to base during World War II. Two days after the bombing was my birthday, so now I celebrate my birthday on both days because it is a miracle we survived.’ It took six months of intensive repairs before U-505 was ready for action again. On July 3, 1943, she set sail on her fourth war patrol, but after only four days a series of serious malfunctions forced her to return to base. Back in Lorient, it was discovered that shipyard workers had sabotaged U-505.

The next two missions were also aborted due to shipyard sabotage. One often-used trick was to undermine the integrity of the hull by packing ropes into welding seams. Another ingenious trick involved drilling a small, pencil-sized hole in the fuel tank that caused U-505 to trail a line of diesel oil, which could be spotted miles away by Allied aircraft. At one point, Goebeler himself was instrumental in the arrest of a saboteur whom he had overheard gloating to his friends in a tavern.

The damage to U-505 was minimal compared to the corrosive effect recent events were having on Zschech’s morale. During the time U-505 was in the dockyards for repairs, several of Zschech’s closest friends were killed in action. Ugly rumors circulated among officers and men alike regarding his competence and bravery, exacerbating his depression. When U-505 sailed on her sixth war patrol, Zschech finally cracked. Goebeler was there when it happened. ‘We were being depth-charged very closely by some destroyers,’ he recalls. ‘All the lights were out, and we had been knocked off our feet by the explosions. I looked over and noticed the Kapitän and saw him slowly begin to lean over. The radio petty officer came out of the radio room and carried him to his bunk. When the lights came on, I saw the blood and found out he had shot himself in the head with his pistol during the depth charge attack. The depth-charges were so loud I never noticed the sound of the pistol.’

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