Shadow Divers

This chapter diverges again from the main story to imagine the final moments of the crew of U-869. After leaving Norway, Neuerburg decided to take the long way around to the East Coast of the US, using the Denmark Strait. U-boat Control ordered the ship back to the coast of Africa, to patrol near Gibraltar but received no response and likely attributed that to atmospheric interference or caution on Neuerburg’s part. Meanwhile, the Allies had used HF/DF to locate U-869 and planned to send a hunter/killer group of boats to destroy it. Once U-869 arrived on the East Coast, the crew likely sent up a periscope and sighted an enemy ship, after which Neuerburg made the call to fire a torpedo at it.

Chatterton’s daring plan to access the motor room of the wreck was to shed one of his air tanks and hold the other in front of him, making himself slim enough to fit through a small gap around the fuel tank and enter the motor room. Kohler called it “lunacy” and wrote down an extensive list of the risks, including getting tangled in cables or wires, shifting something that would fall and pin him, and the undisturbed silt in the room kicking up and blinding him in an already unfamiliar space. Chatterton was unmoved by Kohler’s protests. After a few days of argument and refusal, Kohler remembered that despite Chatterton’s reluctance in the very beginning to share information, he had told Kohler about the Nazi plate, respecting his enthusiasm if nothing else. Kohler realized that he could not abandon Chatterton and agreed to accompany him on the dive.

Chatterton was successful in his first attempt at entering the motor room, but with characteristic strategy, he did not start searching the room. Instead, he memorized its features and then left, planning to try again another time. The next time, he entered the motor room with no problem but ran into trouble when reaching through the gap to grab a video camera from Kohler. His wiggling knocked loose a steel beam, which fell and pinned him down. Chatterton could not move the beam and began to panic. He talked himself through it and managed to shift the beam with less than a minute of air left. On his third attempt, he successfully videotaped the room, and on his fourth, he spotted the spare parts boxes. On his fifth attempt, he brought a sledgehammer to clear a pipe that blocked the boxes. He struck the pipe and realized after the silt settled that it was an oxygen tank, which—if hit in the wrong place—would explode and kill him. Nonetheless, he tried again to shift it by hitting it with the sledgehammer. He succeeded and handed a small box of spare parts out to Kohler, who passed it to another diver to bring up to the boat. In trying to get another box, however, Chatterton got his neck tangled in a wire and ran out of oxygen trying to escape. On his very last breath, he escaped and rocketed past Kohler to reach his spare oxygen tank stored on the line. Kohler, angry but relieved, joined him outside the wreck. They began their ascension. While they paused to decompress, another diver descended to meet them. He held up a slate—much like the one Chatterton had used to communicate “SUB” when he first found the wreck—indicating that the wreck was now officially U-869.

Although the contents of the spare parts box positively identified the ship as U-869, many mysteries remained, including how it was sunk, why it was in New York and not Gibraltar, and how the crew died. Kurson asserts that U-869 most likely fired a torpedo at an enemy ship, and the torpedo (a weapon that homes in on the sound of an enemy ship’s propellers), failed to reach its target, instead circling back and homing in on the sound of the U-boat’s propellers. This type of malfunctioning torpedo was known as a “circle-runner.” The only hope to avoid a circle-runner was to immediately crash-dive, an option only open if the threat is sensed in time. U-869 and its crew were likely destroyed within 30 seconds.

Chatterton continued to dive, setting new records and seeking new discoveries. In 2000, PBS aired a documentary about U-869 titled Hitler’s Lost Sub. In 2003, Chatterton hosted Deep Sea Detectives, a History Channel program about shipwrecks. Kohler continued trying to identify the crew members who lost their lives in U-869 and reach out to their surviving family members. He found Martin Horenburg’s daughter, who gave him several pictures of her biological father. In return, Kohler sent her Horenburg’s knife. He also found Herbert Guschewski, the radio operator, still alive in Germany. Having fallen ill before U-869 embarked, he had to stay ashore. He told Kohler many of the details he used to recreate the biographies and actions of the crew in the final moments of U-869’s voyage. Guschewski asked for a small souvenir from the boat and Kohler sent him a plaque that explained how to use an emergency life raft. Kohler now felt more at peace, believing that he had sufficiently honored the fallen submariners.