World War II – October 2019

was neutral, Barb and the other subs could not

conduct their raids inside the 12-mile limit

recognized internationally as “territorial

waters.” They were also expected to positively

identify their quarry before boring in. These

strict rules of engagement hampered opera-

tions and failed to prevent one costly mistake.

While cruising off the Spanish port of

Vigo on December 26, 1942, Barb spotted a

tanker the skipper believed to be German.

Commander Waterman ordered a night sur-

face attack, fired four torpedoes, saw two hit,

then resumed his patrol. Steiny recalled that

“spirits soared” among the crew. But when the

sub returned to base in mid-January 1943, the

Admiralty immediately called the skipper to

London to defend his actions. They told him

that his target had not been German, but the

6,700-ton SS Campomanes—a Spanish vessel.

The Admiralty ordered Waterman to deny the

incident ever happened. Steinmetz learned

after the war that the Spaniards had protested

vehemently to the British about the egregious

breach of neutrality. The British naval attaché

in Madrid smoothed things over by telling the

Spanish Foreign Ministry—quite truthfully—

that the attacking submarine was definitely

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not British. He suggested the Germans were to blame.

During the first three months of 1943, Subron 50’s submarines each

made four patrols in the Bay of Biscay, with little to show for their

efforts. Shad sank a barge carrying iron ore bound for the Germans.

Blackfish encountered a pair of heavily armed German antisubmarine

vessels; the skipper decided to attack both and sank one. But the other

counterattacked, damaging Blackfish’s conning tower and main air

intake. And Herring identified a German coastal U-boat cruising on

the surface some 2,500 yards away. In a matter of seconds, Herring

fired two torpedoes. The sound of a heavy explosion followed two

minutes later, the victim’s screws stopped, and the soundman on Her-

ring heard “loud crackling noises,” as if the target was breaking up.

Alas, intercepts of encrypted German radio messages indicated to the

British that no U-boat had been sunk at that place and time. It appar-

ently had been a Spanish trawler.

This Atlantic patrol business was getting downright disappointing.

The problem lay not with a dearth of juicy targets but the fact that

nearly all were steaming under a neutral f lag. Steiny noted that on

Barb’s second patrol, the sub’s log recorded 485 fishing vessels and 127

large ships—all nonbelligerents.

IN APRIL 1943 the Admiralty overhauled its Subron 50 strategy by

redeploying the American submarines to Norwegian waters 300 miles

above the Arctic Circle to augment a British anti-U-boat patrol already

on station. Barb and Blackfish were the first to sail. The pair was also

to watch for the expected breakout of the German battleship Tirpitz,

then anchored in Altafjord near the northern tip of Norway. Had one

The U.S. Navy base in Rosneath

was, according to Steinmetz, “as

dreary as the weather and offered

nothing in the way of diversions.”