The one lifeboat which survived was picked up on 31 October by HMS Bideford, one of a convoy forming part of ' Operation Torch', heading for North Africa but, in the heavy seas at the time, no other lifeboats or survivors were ever found. One more torpedo was fired into the ship to deliver the coup de grace, and about half an hour later Abosso sank, U575 then departing to rendezvous for refuelling. The U-boat surfaced to inspect the target and Heydemann recorded seeing lifeboats being launched. Coates (translator), The U-Boat Commander’s Handbook, Thomas Publications, Gettysburg, 1989) one discovers this was a textbook operation.Īt 22.13hrs, Berlin time, one of the middle torpedos of four directed at the Abosso in a fan pattern struck the ship virtually amidships. Reading the U-boat's log today, and comparing with the U-Boat Commander’s Handbook (available as a translated reprint as E. Realising this, Heydemann risked running out of fuel and moved closer to the ship to attack. At that point, thinking they had lost the sub, Abosso’s master made the fatal decision to stop zig-zagging. Realising he was being traced, he went deep, out of reach of the ASDIC, but followed from a distance until he was nearly out of fuel. He was running low on fuel but decided to try and attack. Heydemann, a much decorated Commander in the ‘Brandenburg’ wolfpack in the North Atlantic, sighted the Abosso about 6 p.m. The log of U575 has survived, so we can also follow what happened from the U-boat’s perspective. The contacts on all the ships’ clocks would then be adjusted accordingly and zig-zagging would begin at a specific time, thus foiling the U-boats' attempts to align torpedoes with a target ship. If in convoy with other ships it is of course vital that all the ships adopt precisely the same agreed pattern of zig-zags, and when the instruction to zig-zag is given, the whole convoy would be signalled a secret code for the pattern to be used. Just one lifeboat survived with 31 souls to tell the tale, some of them Navy officers who were aware of the detail of what happened.ĭeciding not to try and out-run, but to zig-zag, the Abosso brought into action its zig-zag clock, a part of the navigational equipment on the bridge of WW2 merchant ships at the time.Ī fairly standard ship's bulkhead clock is adapted to have an electrical contact at the tip of the minute hand, and round the periphery of the minute track on the dial is a metal ring with a number of moveable electrical contacts.Įach time the minute hand touches a contact it closes a circuit and a bell rings in the wheelhouse informing the crew to change course one way or the other. 362 of the 393 passengers and crew lost their lives, including Uncle Pat, who was just 23 and had married only a few weeks before. On the evening of 29 October 1942, when the ship was travelling alone in the North Atlantic, it was torpedoed by a U-boat and sunk. My Uncle Pat – my mother's brother – was serving on a merchant troop ship, the MV Abosso. When planning the trip I realised that, by a rather extraordinary coincidence, during the transatlantic crossing there would occur the 80th anniversary of a family tragedy, played out in those very waters. By good fortune the date of the conference came just before a short holiday we had planned in New York, with passage home on the Queen Mary 2 – a delightful way to cross the pond. Antiquarian Horological Society | The story of time Objects and ideasĪ couple of weeks ago, I attended Bob Frishman's NAWCC conference on 'Great Horological Collectors' at the Horological Society of New York's home in New York City – a wonderfully successful and interesting event.
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