The History
Launched on December 16 1937 at the Bremer-Vulkan Werft in Bremen-Vegesack for the Deutsche Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft (D.D.G) HANSA, the 7,862-ton freighter Goldenfels was one of seven sister-ships, and a half-sister of the Kandelfels, which was later converted into the Hilfskreuzer Pinguin.
155m long with a beam of 18.7m, and powered by two 6-cylinder two-stroke MAN diesel engines, producing 7,600 horse-power, driving a single shaft, for a top speed of 16 knots, she had a range of 60,000 sea-miles at 10 knots.
Converted into an Auxiliary Cruiser at the Deschimag-Werft in Bremen in 1939, she was armed with six rapid-fire 150mm L/45 C/16 guns, one 75mm cannon, two 37mm flak guns, four 20mm flak guns, four 53.3cm torpedo tubes, with 24 torpedoes, two Heinkel He-114 A-2 seaplanes, and carried 92 sea-mines.
On December 19 1939, fourteen weeks after she had docked at the Deschimag yard, Schiff 16 was commissioned into the Kriegsmarine by the 40-year-old, newly-promoted Kapitän zur See, Bernhard Rogge, former captain of the sail training-ship Albert Leo Schlageter
As it was the privilege of each raider captain to name his ship, Rogge informed his 346 hand-picked officers and crew that he would be naming her the Atlantis.
Officially designated as the Handelsschützkreuzer 2 (HSK II) a ‘Trade Protection Cruiser’ for security reasons, Schiff 16 commenced her naval career disguised as an auxiliary minesweeper, or Sperrbrecher, in Kiel, on December 21 1939.
On March 11 1940, following the old World War One battleship Hessen, being employed as an ice-breaker, through the Kaiser-Wilhelm canal to the North Sea, she set sail with two other raiders, Schiff 21-Widder, under the command of Korvettenkapitän der Reserve Hellmuth von Ruckteschell, and Schiff 36-Orion, under Kapitän zur See Kurt Weyher, to begin her arduous working-up and gunnery practice programme.
With First Officer, Kapitänleutnant zur See Erich Kühn, mustering the crew, and Gunnery Officer, Oberleutnant Lorenz Kasch, putting his gun crews through their paces, Bernhard Rogge worked his ship and his men so intensely for several days off the Jade inlet, that signals were intercepted from coastal stations reporting a major naval battle taking place within German waters!
On March 19, Rogge announced that the Atlantis would not be returning to Kiel.
On March 23, anchored in Süderpiep Bay, Schiff 16 adopted her first operational disguise, as overnight, the two-funnelled German naval auxiliary became the single-funnelled 5,749-ton Norwegian motorship Knute Nelson.
Taking on the identity of the Fred Olsen line vessel, the overall naval grey was replaced with a green hull, white superstructure and, to discourage curiosity, a yellow quarantine flag.
As he considered conditions to be too fine to safely attempt the breakout, Rogge waited for seven days for the weather to deteriorate, during which time several British reconnaissance aircraft inspected the anchored ‘Norwegian’ ship.
For the breakout he decided to convert the ship again, overnight, on March 31, into the 5,114-ton Russian Fleet Auxiliary Kim, complete with Soviet Naval ensign, hammer and sickle on the bridge, giant red star on Number 2 hatch, and an indecipherable Cyrillic inscription - the only one Adjutant Ulrich Mohr could find to copy - over her counter, which warned, ‘Keep Clear of the Propellors’ but which to the average Englishman could certainly pass for the ship’s name.
The new look was completed by having one of Flying Officer Richard Bulla’s two Heinkel HE-114 seaplanes, placed in plain view in full Russian airforce livery.
Escorted by the 933-ton Torpedo-boats, Leopard (Kptlt. Hans Trummer) and Wolf (Oblt. z S. Broder Peters) and a submarine, the U-37 (KrvKpt. Werner Hartmann) the Atlantis sailed on April 1 in perfect weather - wind, rain and zero visibility.
* The U-37 went on to become the second most successful U-Boat of World War two.
Heading into the potentially dangerous waters between the Shetland Islands and the coast of Norway, that were continuously patrolled by the Royal Navy, Rogge maintained his course as if heading in the direction of Murmansk.
As the weather deteriorated into a full Force-10 gale, with mountainous waves, the U-37 could no longer safely keep up with the raider and fell behind, soon after which the silhouettes of two warships were spotted on the horizon.
Realising that the Atlantis had been spotted, Rogge called for maximum speed in the belief that out-running the enemy was his only chance of survival.
With the massive 6-cylinder diesel engines driving her at her top speed of seventeen and a half knots, the Atlantis plunged and smashed her way through the huge waves into the teeth of the gale, with the warships in hot pursuit.
While Chief-Engineer Wilhelm Kielhorn was worried that the engines were being driven too hard, and also consuming vast amounts of fuel, the crew were afraid that the ship, which was taking a horrendous battering, would simply come apart.
The warships finally gave up the chase and disappeared, leaving the Atlantis to slow down and ride out the storm as she continued towards the north-east, only swinging west when she had reached the Murmansk to Iceland shipping lane, setting course for Jan Mayen Island, where she met and re-fuelled the U-37.
Maintaining his Russian disguise while slipping through the Denmark Strait with the U-Boat in sub-zero temperatures and mountainous seas, Rogge had to bid Hartmann farewell when again conditions threatened the safety of the submarine.
On April 8, Navigation Officer Kamenz and First Officer Kühn reported to Rogge that the Atlantis had made it through into the Atlantic ocean.
Sailing south into the Atlantic shipping lanes, Schiff 16 crossed the Equator on April 22, but had to wait until two days later, when they were in safer waters, to welcome ‘King Neptune’, ‘Admiral Triton’ and their ‘guard of honour’ on board, and begin the customary ceremonies and initiation rites, after which the crew enjoyed refreshments and were given the rest of the day off.
With the initiates below decks still recovering from their ordeal, the serious work of once more changing the ship’s disguise began, as the trappings of the Soviet Navy were removed and replaced by new ones.
Adjutant, Ulrich Mohr, had chosen several ships that resembled the Atlantis from Lloyd’s register, including the 8,408-ton passenger freighter Kasii Maru of the Japanese Kokusai Kisen line, into which she could easily be disguised.
The same black hull, but with yellow masts and ventilators, a black funnel with a large letter K painted on it, and a red top.
Japanese characters, copied out of a magazine by Mohr, replacing the Cyrillic Russian propellor warning, and the flag of the Rising Sun painted onto the ship’s sides, completed the transformation.
On May 2, when smoke from an approaching ship was sighted, Rogge got his first opportunity to put the rest of his disguise to the test, visibly deploying some of the shorter darker-skinned members of the crew, dressed as Japanese seamen and civilian passengers about the ship.
The smaller among them posed as women, one of whom was accompanied by Pilot-Officer Richard Bulla, pushing a ‘baby’ in a pram.
But, he decided that the ship, identified as the 9,654-ton Ellerman Line armed passenger ship City of Exeter, was probably not worth attacking, as she could be carrying several hundred passengers including ‘real’ women and children.
With her officers clearly scrutinising the Atlantis through binoculars, the liner passed the raider without acknowledgement of any kind, a blatant discourtesy on the high seas, leading Rogge to assume that it was probably because the snooty English felt that a mere Japanese freighter did not merit courtesy.
He was wrong.
The liner’s captain reported the Kasii Maru as ‘a suspicious ship’, a report that was to have implications for the raider’s subsequent operations.
The next day, with Mohr and other members of the crew again dressed in their kimonos posing as Japanese women, some pushing baby carriages, and other crewmen lounging or strolling about the deck like Japanese sailors or tourists, the Atlantis finally went into action.
Having spotted a freighter off the coast of Portuguese West Africa, Rogge altered course to intercept and approached her at top speed.
Seemingly unnoticed, he closed to within 10,000 metres, dropped his disguise, ordered his gunners to line up on the radio room, and ran up his battle flag.
Signalling ‘Heave to or I fire!’ and ‘Do not use your wireless!’, he was astonished to see the Allied vessel make no response whatsoever and continue on her way.
Two 75mm warning shots across the bow produced a bizarre flag signal saying ‘Half’, but no discernable reduction in speed, prompting Rogge to order two shots from his 150mm main armament.
Making as if to comply with the raider’s signals, the freighter suddenly altered course and made off at top speed, followed immediately by another 155mm salvo which struck her stern, causing massive damage and starting a fire.
When a further salvo struck the ship amidships causing more serious damage and starting an even larger fire, Rogge ordered a cease fire to enable the crew of the stricken vessel to surrender and abandon ship, but almost immediately, her radio operator began to transmit a QQQ signal, causing him to resume firing.
As four more heavy salvos were fired at the now frantically signalling freighter, with one bringing the radio mast down, and another setting the cargo on fire, her captain finally brought her to a halt, and boats were lowered.
The boarding party, Adjutant Mohr, demolition officer, Leutnant Johann Fehler, a prize officer and nine armed sailors swarming over the rails of the elderly vessel, identified her as the 6,199-ton British T.J.Harrison & Co. steamer, Scientist.
En route from Durban to Liverpool via Freetown, she was carrying a mixed cargo of 2,500 tons of maize, 1,150 tons of chromium, copper bars, asbestos, zinc concentrate, flour, jute, hides and 2,600 tons of tanning bark.
Despite the seacocks being opened, and Fehler’s 40-pound scuttling charges, attached to the bulkheads between the engine room and the fore and aft holds, detonating, the vessel settled very slowly, and was soon burning so furiously as to be visible for miles.
In order to avoid attracting attention, Rogge ordered Kasch to sink her with 150mm gunfire, but when even that failed, she was sunk by a torpedo.
While two members of her crew had lost their lives, with another dying later on the Atlantis, the surviving seventy-six, including her radio operator who had to have splinters removed by the Rogge’s doctors, settled into their new life in his prisoner accomodation.
Heading south, the Atlantis rounded the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean, and promptly turned back, to appear as if she was coming from the East.
Over a period of four and a half hours on the evening of May 10, Rogge laid his ninety-two magnetic contact mines off Cape Agulhas in South Africa, to disrupt the Allied shipping lanes around the Cape, and on the following day played out an elaborate deception to convince his prisoners that a U-Boat had laid them!
Over the next few days Rogge was pleased by intercepted reports confirming the success of the minefield, but was then staggered to hear that a propaganda broadcast from Berlin had boasted that ‘A minefield, sown by a German raider’ had sunk no fewer than eight merchant ships, with three more overdue, not to mention three minesweepers, and was causing major problems for the Royal Navy, which, it claimed, wasn’t capable of finding ‘a solitary raider’ operating in ‘it’s own back yard’.
Not only did this give the game away as to his presence off the Cape, but it was also sure to antagonise the British into increasing vigilance and would certainly expose his ship to even greater danger.
As if this news wasn’t bad enough, a signal sent from Ceylon on May 20, based on the report sent to the Admiralty by the master of the City of Exeter, warned shipping of a German raider disguised as a Japanese ship in the southern ocean.
Deciding it was therefore time to change his disguise, Rogge selected, from the ever-shortening list of suitable options presented to him by Mohr, the 7,906-ton Dutch Holland-Ost-Azie Lijn motor vessel Abbekerk as a suitable identity.
On the morning of May 21, in squally weather, the task of transforming the ship from the bright Japanese colours to the more sober tones of the Vereenigge Nederlansche Scheep Vaarts My, NV. began.
Within twenty-four hours the job was done, and the ‘MV Abbekerk’ was on her way, but before she could even put her new disguise to the test in action, an American news bulletin announced that the Abbekerk had been sunk!
The report was in fact inaccurate, but this was not known on board the raider.
Reluctant to start over and put his crew through all the work again so soon, Rogge decided to take the chance that as the Dutch line had a number of very similar ships, he would most likely get away with it.
And so it was that on June 10, having sighted mastheads and headed at full speed towards them, seemingly without arousing any suspicion, Rogge was convinced that his new disguise was working, until, at a range of 9,000 metres, the enemy ship suddenly altered course and took off at high speed.
On slightly converging courses, the two ships continued flat out at just over seventeen knots for nearly four hours, with the Atlantis slowly closing the gap.
With the range down to just over 5,000 metres, Rogge turned the Atlantis, dropped his camouflage and ordered the enemy ship to stop, but on receiving no response, brought her fully broadside on, and ordered Kasch to fire at will.
The first salvo was short, the second salvo long, and before another could be fired, the vessel commenced sending distress calls identifying herself as the Norwegian motor-ship Tirranna.
This fast 7,230-ton Wilhelm Wilhelmsen line merchant-ship continued to try to outrun the ‘Abbekerk’, transmitting distress signals, even returning fire, and zig-zagging so effectively that Kasch’s gunners missed with the next five salvos.
The Atlantis had fired seven salvos before registering a hit, and it took a further thirty salvos, 150 rounds, in just over three hours, to finally persuade her to stop.
No one was seen trying to get off the ship as all her lifeboats had been shattered by the raider’s shells, and so, when Mohr, Kapitänleutnant Kühn and the boarding party climbed aboard, they were met by the vessel’s very angry captain.
A two-year-old 7,230-ton German-built vessel, under British Admiralty orders, she was bound for Mombasa from Australia, with a cargo of 3,000 tons of wheat, 27,000 sacks of flour and 6,000 bales of wool, as well as 178 army trucks, 5,500 cases of beer, 300 cases of tobacco, 3,000 cases of canned peaches and 17,000 cases of jam - for the Australian troops fighting in the Middle East.
With five of her crew having lost their lives during the chase, and many more lying badly wounded, Rogge had Kapitänleutnant Kammenz and a work crew sent across to her to assist with their evacuation.
Her Captain complained to Mohr that Norway had made peace with Germany that very day, and later claimed to Rogge that, thinking the Atlantis was a Dutch ship of the Kerk class, and unable to read her flag signals as she was in silhouette, he had thought they were just having a bit of sport racing with her!
Taking this with a large grain of salt, Rogge was nonetheless pleased that his new disguise had been so convincing.
A 27-man prize crew, including twelve armed German seamen under Leutnants Waldmann and Mundt, was put on board, but due to the vessel having only two hundred tons of fuel left in her tanks, insufficient for her to make it back to Europe, she was sent south to wait until the Atlantis could capture a tanker.
On June 13, Rogge assembled the entire crew for a severe tongue-lashing on what he had witnessed during the capture of the Norwegian ship, followed by a lecture on what he required from their behaviour in future.
Prisoners were to be treated with respect, and all souvenir hunting was to be strictly monitored by himself and his officers.
There were to be no exceptions.
On June 14, Rogge decided to change his disguise once more, this time taking on the identity of another Wilhelmsen liner, the 7,229-ton motor-ship Tarifa, which, like the Tirranna, was sailing under British Admiralty orders.
On completion of the work, two days later on June 16, he sailed east, but for the next three and a half weeks, found nothing.
As the days dragged by, with the Atlantis often drifting on the ocean currents to conserve fuel, the boredom of the daily routine, coupled with the humidity and the relentless stifling heat, pushed everyone to the limits of their endurance.
At some point during her operations in the Indian Ocean, one of the Atlantis’s crew, Matrosehauptgefreiter Martin Jester, died of heatstroke. (The Recollections of Wilhelm Müller – Atlantis crewman - 2006)
On July 11, the monotony was broken, when a large amount of smoke was sighted on the distant horizon, quickly followed by a pair of masts.
Ordering full speed, the Atlantis closed the range, and at 7,500 metres could see that the newcomer, armed with a single deck gun aft, was clearly British.
Making no attempt to turn away, the enemy ship allowed the raider to close to within 3,000 metres, whereupon Rogge had to temporarily postpone his challenge and attack routine until after the daily, internationally-recognized interval of radio silence during which all regular radio traffic ceased so that shore stations could scan for distress calls.
Once this interval had passed, he dropped his disguise, ran up the battle flag, fired a couple of warning shots and signalled to the ship to heave to.
The vessel immediately began to send the expected ‘QQQQ’ distress signals, but got no further than one phrase, as a 150mm direct hit on the radio room from a well-aimed gun silenced her, and her crew began to lower their boats.
As Mohr and his boarding party set off towards the now stationary ship, they once again saw evidence of the irrational fear that had been instilled into so many Allied seamen by the propaganda that all Germans were murderous thugs.
The men in the lifeboats, rather than be captured, were desperately trying to escape to an almost certain slow and agonising death adrift in the Indian Ocean.
Identified by the boarding party as the 7,506-ton British Ellerman Line freighter City of Bagdad, the crew of the Atlantis took some satisfaction in capturing her.
Bound for Penang from the UK with a crew of eighty-one, and carrying 9,324 tons of steel, chemicals and machinery, she had previously been the German ship Geierfels, a Hansa Line vessel taken by Britain in 1921, as a World War One reparations prize under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles!
When Ulrich Mohr, who had led the boarding party, commented on her Captain’s fine RCA Victor radio set, the skipper helped him dismantle it, and was rewarded with nightly visits to Mohr’s cabin on the Atlantis, where he chatted with the raider’s officers, enjoyed drinks, and was even allowed to listen to the BBC!
Having taken her crew of eighty-one on board, the City of Bagdad was sunk by Rogge’s explosives expert, the livewire red-headed Leutnant Fehler, who decided to remain on the ship, with 260 pounds of explosives, six times the insufficient amount he had used to try to sink the Scientist.
The resulting explosion took even him by surprise, as the ship foundered so rapidly that he almost failed to get off in time, injuring his arm in the process.
He had been told by Rogge to use 200 pounds, so when brought before him to explain his actions, he said “I just wanted to experience the sensation!”
He quickly experienced the sensation of a stern dressing down from his Captain.
Among the papers found on the City of Bagdad was a copy of the report sent by the captain of the City of Exeter, describing the Atlantis in minute detail, including a photograph of the Freienfels, a ship not unlike the raider, confirming that he had not been deceived by her ‘Japanese’ disguise for one moment.
As a result of this, Rogge had his ship’s profile altered, paying particular attention to the outline of her masts, adding two new ones.
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