[Untersberg56]

The advantage of investigating UMO's (Unidentified Marine Objects) is that these craft do not take off from the surface of the sea and can be approached fairly closely. The majority take the form of weird-looking submarines, but in other cases they may be considered as so-called "ghost ships" such as the famous 19th century sailing ship "The Flying Dutchman".

There can be no doubt whatever that ghost ships do therefore exist in a sense, for they know what the date is (many re-appear on the anniversary of their sinking) and they can put on a show to convince operators and instruments aboard naval ships that they really are present and force them to go through the motions of an attack.

It is generally frowned up to mention incidents involving Second World War German U-boats but whatever the rule which keeps these cases out of the public eye, here are two events of UMO's which deliberately set out to taunt two German U-boats in separate incidents.

INCIDENT ONE

(Both of these incidents have been reported separately and at length in two books authored by German Navy eye witnesses who saw the events occur. Photocopies of the War Diary entries for the two U-boats concerned can be obtained from a specialist website to check the facts reported in the books and here.)

The Type VII U-boat U-445 commanded by Oberleutnant Fenn sailed from the Norwegian U-boat base at Markviken on 8 November 1942, and put into St Nazaire, France, on 3 January 1943.

The incident recounted here took place in the German Navy chart grid square AJ 8863, a point due south of the tip of Greenland and east of the northern tip of Newfoundland.

At 2030 hrs on 24 December 1942, Oberleutnant Fenn became aware of a "corvette" (smaller than a destroyer) which appeared suddenly 2.5 kilometres away. The weather was misty with hail. He could hardly make out the corvette through the periscope and the operator at the hydrophones equipment reported that the enemy warship made no noise. The U-boat surfaced and through binoculars the four men of the bridge crew searched for the corvette but could not find it.

Then suddenly at 2200 hrs, the War Diary entry reads, "Alarm! Corvette in sight 1000 metres, heading straight for us. No trace on radar. No Asdic. No propellor noise. We submerged. Corvette passed overhead then zig-zagged. We surfaced."

The First Officer, Sub-Lt Schäffer, was first to the bridge. In his book published postwar he described seeing a warship which he recognized as a US Navy flush-deck destroyer with four chimneys. She stood off 400 yards away offering her broadside. He fired two torpedoes, one missed, the second hit, sinking the destroyer in less than a minute. The destroyer went down leaving no trace of wreckage or survivors.

Although not admitted, it is clear that the officers of U-445 were not happy about claiming anything. They must have sat together for several hours ruminating on the incident until deciding neither to claim the warship as sunk, nor make an entry in the War Diary describing the attack. (This entry was necessary to account for the two torpedoes fired).

For that reason for the period from 2200 hrs until midnight on Christmas Eve 1942, the U-445 War Diary contains an over-large space left by Oberleutnant Fenn to be completed after returning to base and asking advice. At St. Nazaire he was told to leave it blank. You see, no Allied warship was lost to enemy action anywhere over the Christmas period 1942.