Sea Control - Sea Control 208 - At Close Range with James Brun

Episode Date: October 25, 2020

Links1. "At Close Range - Inside the Deadly Firefight Between HMCS Assiniboine and U-210," by James Brun, August 7, 2020, MilitaryHistoryNow.com.2. "The Flower-Class Corvette - 9 Facts About the Tiny Warship That Played a Huge Role in WW2," by James Brun, August 17, 2020, MilitaryHistoryNow.com.3."The Sinking of the 'Faa di Bruno' - Inside Italy's Submarine War in the North Atlantic," by James Brun, September 23, 2020, MilitaryHistoryNow.com.4."The Storming of U-94 - How Two Allied Sailors Took on the Crew of a U-boat in the Caribbean," by James Brun, October 14, 2020, MilitaryHistoryNow.com.

Hey folks, Jared here. This was a huge week for us. On Tuesday evening, we learned Sea Control had been included on the Commandant of the Marine Corps' reading list. This is a tremendous honor, and I want to use this opportunity to thank CIMSEC President Jimmy Drennan, CIMSEC staff and board for offering the opportunity to restart the podcast. I also want to recognize our back-end team, who's done an excellent job of piecing together every episode. That team is Keegan Ingersoll, Ed Salo, and William McQuiston. Hear their names every week at the end of each episode, but the work they're doing gives the requisite space to do research, create the necessary documents before we record an episode or pitch our guests. And finally, I just want to thank all of our guests who have agreed to come on,

especially those who came on early as we were just trying to establish a space for ourselves. Been very appreciative and been happy to find this network of maritime security professionals, academics, historians, naval officers. It's really been a tremendous experience. So for this episode, we are back in the history classroom shortly after the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the North Atlantic. Canadian Naval Officer James Brunn published an article on militaryhistorynow.com about a legendary gunfight between HMCS Assiniboine and U-210. We're going to discuss that battle today. With that said, I still want to preface the episode with our usual disclaimer, all opinions are our own and not representative of any institutions with which

we might otherwise be associated. Keep tuning in. We're going to have some exciting news about changes for sea control coming very soon. And with that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today's guest is James Brunn, an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy, and we'll be reviewing his article for Military History Now at close range inside the deadly firefight between HMCS Assiniboine and U-210. You'll be able to find the article linked in the show notes.

James, welcome and thank you for coming on. Thanks very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and your background with our listeners? Sure, yeah. I grew up in Vancouver on Canada's west coast, a few blocks away from the woman who would eventually become my wife. We live in Ottawa now with our three great kids. I'm a student right now at the Canadian Forces College, having just started the Joint Command and Staff Program.

I've been in the Royal Canadian Navy for about 15 years. And in that time, I've sailed in patrol vessels, brigades, destroyers, and I've had a lot of fun doing it. My last tour at sea was as the operations officer and then combat officer in the Halifax-class frigate HMCS Winnipeg, during which time we conducted four named operations and circumnavigated the globe along the way. Yeah, and we're actually recording this August 23rd, so Winnipeg is out at RIMPAC right now. That's right. You're missing out on all the photo X's that I see on Twitter and everything

else, all the stationing problems. I don't mind missing out on the photo X's, but seeing Regina and Winnipeg there. It's definitely, I wish I was there with them. Yeah, and unfortunately, I think probably minimal social program at RIMPAC. The highlight for me was always moose milk on board the Canadian vessels. So sadly, there's a whole micro generation of U.S. naval officers who are going to miss out on this version of RIMPAC. So let me ask first, how did you learn about the story of the duel between Assiniboine and U-210? so i don't recall the first time that i actually learned about the dual but it was probably back during my first course in the navy after basic training which we used to call naval

environmental training program for officers netpo since the canadian armed forces share a common basic training based on an army model that course netpo is really the first naval indoctrination course that we take once we join the Royal Canadian Navy. We were given a copy of Mark Milner's book, Canada's Navy, the First Century, while we were on that course, and the engagement was discussed in there. More recently, though, I've been working as the Deputy Project Director on the Royal Canadian Navy's Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ship Project, where we're delivering a fleet of new ships to Canada. And one of those ships, the third in the fleet, is named after Max Bernays, who was the coxswain in Assiniboine during the action with U-210. So I learned about

it a lot more through that lens. Thanks. And why did you decide to write about it now? Is there any way linked to having seen Greyhound come out this summer? No, actually, the reason I chose to write about it on Twitter, I posted a Twitter thread of some of the images. There's some incredible images that were taken during the action. And I posted a thread and then the editor of Military History Now asked me if I would like to write an article about it. So that was how that happened. Thanks. We'll circle back to Max Bernays later because I want to ask a couple of follow-ups about him now that you've mentioned him. So the battle took place the summer of 1942. Where were we at this point in the Battle of the North Atlantic? What was going on? So in the summer of

1942, the Battle of the Atlantic was really getting much more deadly. The RCN was being driven nearly to collapse by their escort role, and they were being pulled in a lot of different directions throughout the Atlantic. American ships were starting to move to the Pacific. So by virtue of that, the RCN was expanding their escort role. German U-boats were operating in Canadian coastal waters and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, sinking ships that were operating independently. So as a result of that, the RCN responded by expanding their convoy operations close to home between Halifax and St. John's. U-boat commanders, frustrated by not being able to pick off the individual ships, started pushing further south into American waters,

and they started wreaking a lot of havoc in the U.S. waters. So the RCN began escorting convoys between Boston and Halifax that March, at a time when really the U-boats were having a lot of success. So in March, that month where the RCN started escorting ships from Boston to Halifax, U-boats sunk 28 ships off the American coast, and then 23 the following month. So it was really, things were really heating up in the Atlantic. And interestingly, the convoy that Assiniboine was escorting during this action, SC-94, is really considered by many to be the passage that marked the true intensification of the mid-ocean battle in the Atlantic. Over the course of the eight-day transit, 11 of the 36 merchant ships in the convoy were sunk and two submarines were destroyed.

Thanks. What was the backstory of Assiniboine? Is she a new ship at this point, an older one? So Assiniboine was transferred from the Royal Navy to the RCN in 1939 at the outbreak of war. So she was previously a river class, well, she was a river class destroyer from the RN, transferred in 1939. She was about 10 or 12 years old at the time of the battle. When she was transferred to Canada, she didn't have the steam heating necessary to operate in a Canadian winter, so she was transferred immediately down to the Caribbean. where she spent the first couple of years of the war. And then after she got refit, she was assigned to the Mid-Ocean Escort Force,

doing runs between Canada and Newfoundland and the UK. And then how about our captain, Lieutenant Commander John Stubbs? Was he pretty experienced? So he was. So Lieutenant Commander John Stubbs, he's a bit of a hero of mine. He's sort of a sailor through and through. He was a naval cadet as a boy. and then joined the rcn at 17 in 1930 he did his early training with the royal navy

and then joined skeena hmcs skeena in 1935 as her navigator he was immediately recognized for his talent at navigation and is sent back to the uk for specialist navigation training at the outbreak of war he was immediately at sea he was appointed to command of assiniboine in 1941 when he was 28 years old so he was relatively young for a destroyer captain but everyone that writes about johnny stubbs has the same sorts of things to say about him he was a great tactician he was an excellent ship handler calm under pressure there's a story about him standing on the bridge of his ship for 30 hours straight during one convoy which funnily actually you mentioned greyhound i was reminded of of him watching tom hanks stand on the bridge

throughout that that action that's a story that really you know comes from people like john stubbs prior to the uh convoy that we're talking about today sc94 he was the senior officer of an escort group that was attacked by six u-boats concurrently and it's stubbs's leadership that's credited with the convoy escaping with the loss of only four ships so you mentioned that he was a renowned tactician what was the royal canadian navy tactical training like at that point in the war were they doing training in canadian waters or being trained by the british they were being trained at that point in the war they were being trained in canadian waters there was a training squadron that was established to start imparting the asw lessons that they were

learning early in the war that was being run by an officer called james chummy prentice with his escort squadron so they were training these newly learned asw tactics to the to the fleet as they were learning these lessons and then uh what can you tell us about our adversary the u-210 what kind of boat was it who was in command so quite a lot is known about about the crew of U-210, because the survivors, there was a lot of survivors of the action, and they were brought back to the U.S. and the U.K. for interrogation after they were recovered. The U.S. Navy then wrote a report about the sinking based in part on these interrogations. So the crew were primarily fanatical Nazis. They were reported to hile loudly on the deck of Assiniboine as they were being

separated into officers and crew, but the crew were generally young and inexperienced. Only a few had previous submarine experience, and a number of them had not even participated in sea trials. This was their first patrol. It was the first time at sea. Both the XO, the executive officer, and the engineering officer had some experience, but both of them were 22 years old, so it was a young crew as for the captain rudolph lemke he was an experienced and decorated destroyer commander but he'd previously won the iron cross but this was his first submarine command and it was just sort of the nature of the war in the atlantic in 1942 that germany was pushing out a lot of submarines and they didn't have a lot of experienced commanders so he didn't have his

crew stated in the interrogations that he didn't have a lot of experience. He'd also just come out of the penalty box into this command appointment. He'd been demoted from his time in a destroyer for beating a subordinate who'd fallen asleep on watch. So I don't think he was thoroughly liked even before he lost his submarine. Thanks. What was Assiniboine's mission for this trip? so assiniboine was one of the escorts of convoy sc94 she was the sole destroyer in the in the escort group there was six other ships three british corvettes and three canadian corvettes and they were escorting the convoy from sydney nova scotia to liverpool what were the primary sources for your article so i read um you know pretty widely when i was writing it but the

primary source that I used was the report of proceedings that Lieutenant Commander Stubbs wrote a few days after the action occurred. So the battle was on August 6th and on August 10th he actually sat down and wrote a remarkably detailed retelling of the events that included all the timings for the first few hours, engine movements that he took, actions that he and the crew took and even some of the details of his thought processes so it's an incredible read and it's very informative thanks so then how did this encounter begin so the day before the action on august 5th is is when i would say that the encounter began one of the ships the merchant ships in the convoy was trailing trailing astern and assiniboine and another corvette were asked

to go round round up the straggler and as they were approaching uh still about six miles away the ship was torpedoed and destroyed um which resulted in in a chase for the for the submarine but it was managed to evade and escape and then assiniboine and her uh partner rejoined the convoy and then they sort of searched throughout the night knowing that um there was a submarine there and in fact throughout that night a wolf pack did gather and then in late morning of august 6th the conning tower of u-210 was sighted from assiniboine i want to go back to one thing you said before i just remembered uh said studs had the only destroyer is he actually in command of the escort group at this point and then is he in command of the larger convoy or is there somebody

he's not it was uh the commander was a a british officer and he and he was not embarked on a cinnabon i believe he was embarked on one of the the british corvettes i'm not sure what ship he was embarked on though okay no worries uh how did the battle unfold then yeah so i would describe it is kind of a typical asw asw battle um to start with between a surface ship and a submarine in the sense that while these things are whole ship evolutions it really comes down to the captains of the two vessels out thinking each other so for hours the battle unfolded with assiniboine's sonar detecting a contact or a member of her crew sighting a conning tower um or a periscope which followed by you know maneuvering a chase gunfire depth charges going over the side

and then the submarine submerging and evading and then the search beginning again so this went on for about five hours each time the submarine was lost dubs had a decision to make he had to make the call of where he thought the submarine would go next which he talks about in his report of proceedings so he would organize his assets he had in this case a british corvette HMS Dianthus was assigned to him at various parts throughout the action and the two ships would you know conduct a search primarily his thinking Stubbs's thinking was that each time she evaded she would try and close the the convoy and so he organized a search with that in mind the final action occurred when U-210 was regained by the ASDIC operator in Assiniboine about a half

a mile off her bow um and stubs charged the submarine guns blazing in assiniboine and the u-boat and for 35 minutes the gunfight played out at closer than 300 yards primarily at about 100 yards um which was too close for the um the main gun in assiniboine to actually depress to get any many successful hits on the submarine eventually the submarine attempted to dive and Stubbs maneuvered to ram her catching her just after the conning tower which brought the submarine back up Stubbs wheeled around to ram her a second time and during that maneuver Assiniboine's main gun obliterated the U-210's conning tower killed the submarine captain a shallow pattern of depth charges were thrown over the side, and that finished off the submarine.

So you mentioned this before, but in the aftermath, 38 prisoners of war were recovered. Did any of them provide insight into why the sub chose to engage in the surface? Yeah, so I think it comes down to the inexperience, really, of the submarine commander. So, reports from the survivors state that the submarine captain, Lemke, he believed that Assiniboine was much more badly damaged than she actually was from the gunfire at the early stage of the battle. Assiniboine was in bad shape, you know, throughout the engagement. She was badly burned. There was quite a large fire just aft of the bridge on the ship that the damage control team was fighting for most of the battle. there was you know they were riddled with with bullets um almost all the compartments below the

water line were flooded so there was a serious amount of damage but um evidently the submarine commander believed that the damage was was greater than it actually was and was going to stop them from from being able to fight so the crew states that as a reason why she stayed on the surface throughout the battle so the crew actually blames the captain for not diving the boat ralph hennessey who was the xo in assiniboine in later interviews throughout his life talked about it and he referred to it as he thought it was silly that's his word that the sub commander didn't submerge and torpedo assiniboine and he as well chalked it up to inexperience so what was uh max bernays role in this then you said he was the coxswain so i think uh for our

american audience you're frankly helmsman yes uh so the coxswain is um the senior uh nco in the ship so he's he's this yeah that's right that's right got it so so uh chief petty officer bernays uh so he's the coxswain the command master chief so his role in it and perhaps why why you may have thought it was the helmsman is he he did take over on the helm and the throttles during the action he relieved both the throttleman and the helmsman to breed them up to go sort of fight the ship and and to be useful on it in the damage control role and then him and he was in the wheelhouse and he was so he was actually awarded the conspicuous gallantry medal for his actions because the wheelhouse was essentially all around it was engulfed in flames and then he was there

and bullets were flying through the wheelhouse and the actual number of um helm and telegraph movements are recorded and it's in the hundreds but throughout the the thick of the action Stubbs was from the bridge relaying helm orders which he was sort of deftly picking up and doing the job of two people while surrounded by flames

and machine gun bullets so that was what he did during the battle and he was actually written up for the Victoria Cross for his actions but was given the conspicuous gallantry medal

he remained in the navy after the war and continued to serve in in the korean war and anyone who's served in the or visited the canadian navy's esquimalt base our base in the west coast may be familiar with his name because he's the uh it's the name of the housing block for chiefs and petty officers on the west coast and and then as i said earlier his name continues to live on because the third Arctic and offshore patrol ship for the Navy is going to be named the future HMCS Max Bernays. Is that the DeWolf class that you're referring to? That's right, yeah. Okay. So what happened

in the battle's aftermath then to Assiniboine and her crew? So Assiniboine was detached from her escort duties right after the battle, which actually you know, as I mentioned earlier, she was the only destroyer in the group. And so there was only six Corvettes remaining. None of the Corvettes had HF directional finder. Only one of them had a surface, a modern surface radar. So they were in kind of in trouble once the destroyer left. The other thing about, I mean, a destroyer, which may be evident, but they've got the speed that a corvette doesn't have so as soon as they're as soon as a u-boat surfaces and to attack the

destroyers are really used to chase down the submarine and try and get them away whether they could destroy the submarine or not it's kind of um you know an inconsequential really they just needed to scare them off and get them running but the corvettes have a harder time than the destroyer so when assiniboine was detached that left a real gap um in their escort group but But Assiniboine was detached. She sailed back to Canada to undergo an extensive refit. But after her refit, she was back doing the North Atlantic run until 1944, when she was put in an ASW role for the Normandy invasion.

And what happened to the convoy then? Your description of the gap there seems to indicate they had a rough go of it after Assiniboine detached. That's right, yeah. So they had, the previous day they'd lost one merchant ship, as I mentioned. They went on to lose 10 more merchant ships during the transit, so they lost 11 ships. And in addition to U-210, the British Corvette also rammed and destroyed a second German submarine on that transit. So they lost 11 merchant ships and two submarines were destroyed. Thanks. So let me ask, I'm sorry, did you have a call up there?

no i was i was just going to say they were eventually two rn destroyers eventually met them on the other side of the air gap um so they were able to get destroyer escort escort for the last day or two but uh yeah they went through the the mid the mid-ocean air gap without without a destroyer and uh so they they did the best they could so then as a student of sort of battle of the north atlantic what did you think of greyhound i loved it i thought it was great i mean it was just you know 100 action there was not really any backstory or character development but the uh the actual action i thought was fantastic and and really reminiscent of i mean i'm sure they were they had actions like this one in mind um when they set to set down and make the the film

I know it was based on the Forrester book but really sort of took on a life of its own I think the film did but I really enjoyed it and I think it's great that it's bringing attention to the Battle of the Atlantic yeah and here we are on the 75th anniversary I think

that's right I saw a lot of commentary from historian Twitter online about inaccuracies and then reading your article and speaking with you today I was reminded that there's a lot of truth to what was in the movie even if the exact ship shown is not necessarily accurate but uh do you have any final thoughts

otherwise i'll close this out for us if i if i could take a minute to talk about stubs yeah absolutely is that fine yeah great yeah the um so you know i i did talk about you asked about max bernays but the xo um as well ralph hennessey he he was awarded the distinguished service cross for his actions leading the damage control organization during the battle he um and he had a very distinguished career in the royal canadian navy he went on to command assiniboine um later in the war he took part in over 80 convoys took part in the hunt for bismarck met winston churchill and was decorated by the king and he retired a vice admiral and then john stubbs who i'm glad i get to speak about last. He left Assiniboine a couple months after the action. He spent a year ashore,

and then he was appointed in command of HMCS Athabaskan. Athabaskan was sunk off the coast of France in April 1944 while patrolling the English Channel with her sister ship Haida. Haida, incidentally, is the ceremonial flagship of the Royal Canadian Navy. She's alongside in Hamilton in Ontario you can visit her but Athabaskan was hit by a torpedo her magazine exploded killed many of the crew outright the survivors went into the water some of them were rescued by Haida some of them were taken as prisoners of war Stubbs went into the water and his last command very famous in the Royal Canadian Navy so Haida was so close that pulling people out of the water

that he yelled at Harry DeWolf who was Haida's captain to get away because he was afraid that Haida would meet the same fate as Athabaskan did so Haida did, whether DeWolf heard him or not is a question for debate but

Haida did leave, left a lot of sailors in the water Stubbs was badly burned and he was among the 128 Canadians who were never recovered so his story ends there but you know he was he was a real hero of our service and i'm sure would have gone on to great things that he stayed alive does the canadian navy commemorate this action in any way so we don't specifically the athabascan sinking or the u-210 attack

i don't think i would say that no we don't we this year as you mentioned it's the 75th anniversary of uh allied victory in the atlantic so the royal canadian navy is is really making a push to try and highlight a lot of the stuff that canadians did in the atlantic um to help win that war win that battle um so a lot of stories are coming out because of that and the u-210 action is highlighted um you know from time to time by the navy by virtue primarily of Max Bernays' role because, you know, all the ships of the DeWolf class, Arctic patrol ships, are named after a Canadian naval hero.

So the Navy is doing its part to try and raise the profile of those figures so that people in Canada know a bit more about their naval heroes. That's tremendous. James, that's unfortunately all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, James Brunn. Where can we find you online and what are you working on next? I had a great time. I really appreciate you bringing me on here.

I'm, you know, as we were just saying, it's the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Atlantic. And so the Royal Canadian Navy is trying to highlight this. I'm trying to do the same. So I'm writing a series of articles on different actions that happened in the Atlantic. I've just got an article on the Flower Class Corvette that's out, and I'm working on an article on the first submarine, which was sunk by the RCN, which is actually an Italian submarine. So hopefully there'll be more to follow throughout the year,

and I can be found online on Twitter, where I tweet at LeBronJames81. Well, thank you very much, and to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Sea Control is produced by Keegan Ingersoll. We'll be right back. Water, wine, both white and red Oh, put it on the shimbo now So help me, Bob, I'm pulling in the alley

Why are they pulling in the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm pulling in the alley Put it on the shimbo now