Free Black May by Michael Gannon Page B

who operated the boat’s seagoing and torpedo attack equipment, such as the diesels, E-motors, torpedo mechanisms, radio, hydrophone, and the diving and surfacing systems. The second category had a high representation of nonspecialized entry-level metalworkers from the industrial regions of central Germany—young men who might be expected to feel comfortable in an all-metal environment, who had a common vocational experience to bind them together as comrades, and who possessed the canny skills to contrive emergency repairs when the boat was far from base. All hands would have received three months of basic naval training, followed by three to six months of intensive course work at U-Boat School, either at Neustadt prior to May 1940, or at Pillau from May to November 1940, or at Gdynia after the latter date. 47
    Whatever their backgrounds, categories, or ratings, the crewmen of U-659, like all U-boat men, shared certain communalities. Everyone ate the same food, used the same head (a second head aft was usually employed as a pantry for canned foods), and breathed the same foul air. Nor was there any dress code to distinguish ranks from ratings, petty officers from mates. Except for the tropical white cover worn on the Commander’s
Schirmmütze,
or peaked cap (for visual identification at night), every man’s attire had a dull sameness. Most wore standard blue-gray fatigues, perhaps with a
Schiffchen,
or forage cap, made from blue wool with black lining. In cold weather one saw sweaters knitted by grandmother and other unconventional mufti.
    On the bridge in cold weather the watch officer and lookouts wore gray-green leathers, and, in heavy weather, sou’westers. When in warm waters, on the other hand, short pants of varying hues were the dress of the day. In one other particular, too, the crewmen were aware of their societal cohesion: at sea every man depended absolutely on the performance of every other. In no other war machine was the integral participation of every team member so vital. Any one man of them could sink the boat. One hatch uncovered, one valve unturned, one battery array unchecked for gas, one enemy aircraft unspotted, one vessel on collision course unsighted, and the mission, boat, and crew were doomed.
    The trim secured, Stock took a careful look around the horizon and sky with the wide-angle sky periscope, whose shaft dominated the forward center space of the control room, and, seeing no enemy ship or aircraft, he ordered: “Surface!” The L.I. accordingly instructed his ballast tank operators, “Blow main ballast!,” listened approvingly as the hissing compressed air expelled water from the ballast tanks (diesel exhaust would finish the task on the surface), and called out the upward cant angles on the fore and aft planes. When the E-motors had driven the boat dynamically forward to the water’s surface and the conning tower bridge hatch had broken clear (”
Turmluk ist frei, Boot ist raus!”),
the diesels were lit, and Stock pounded up the aluminum ladder that ran up through a hull hatch into the tear-shaped conning tower (Turm) that housed the fixed attack periscope eyepiece, the torpedo deflection calculator, and a compass repeater with rudder buttons.
    After opening the upper tower hatch, Stock stepped up onto the dripping open bridge, where he was followed by the I.W.O., commanding the midwatch, a seaman Petty Officer, and two seamen. Since the seas were heavy, with waves breaking against the tower, the boat was now pitching and rolling sharply in the riled-up water, and the men at once attached their safety harnesses to brackets extending out from the bridge’s wood-slatted enclosure. From the bridge, Stock and the lookouts could see, fore and aft, the full length of the boat’s deck casing, 67.1 meters (221⅓ feet), with its hardwood planking, and along the waterline to either side the long, bulging “saddle tanks,” which contained, among their various bunkers, the main fuel oil and