The Ole Jacob departed on November 16 and reached Kobe on December 6.
Exchanging her cargo for 11,000 tons of diesel oil, to be made available to the German Naval Attache in Tokyo, and an aircraft, to be supplied at Lamotrek in the Caroline Islands - a neutral venue chosen by the Japanese, who had not yet joined in the war and were anxious not be seen as contravening neutrality laws - she briefly served as a supply ship to the Orion (Kpt.z.S. Kurt Weyher) before eventually making her way back to Bordeaux, arriving there in July 1941.
* Re-named Benno, a diminuitive of Bernhard, after Rogge, she was used as a supply ship until sunk by British bombers off the coast of Spain on December 23 1941, which incidentally delayed the departure of the raider Thor (Kpt.z.S.Gumprich) on her second cruise.
Giving copies of the captured British documents to the Japanese, who couldn’t believe they were genuine, Paul Kammenz, posing as a senior German official, travelled to Vladivostok, and from there to Berlin, via the Trans-Siberian Railway.
* Once he had delivered his report, Paul Kammenz was sent to Lorient, from where he embarked on the U-106 (Kptlt. Jürgen Oesten) from which he transferred to the supply ship Nordmark, from which he eventually re-joined the Atlantis in April 1941.
Back on the Atlantis Rogge was concerned that his fresh water supplies were running low, and that his officers and men had for some time needed a break and a chance to get off the ship and onto dry land for a while, if only to spend some time away from one another, was also conscious of the fact that the ship itself needed work done on her engines.
Scanning the charts found on the Teddy, with Ulrich Mohr, he decided to make for the remote Kerguelen Islands, where there were countless inlets and bays in which they could lay up unobserved, and also an abundant supply of fresh water.
While on course for the islands, an intercepted message on December 1, revealed that Kapitän zur See Ernst-Felix Krüder of the Pinguin had captured the 8,998-ton Norwegian tanker Storstad, with a cargo of 10,000 tons of diesel oil on board, and was planning to send her back to Europe with his 400 prisoners.
Rogge immediately requested that they rendezvous to re-fuel the Atlantis first.
He was delighted to hear that the SKL had already planned to not only re-fuel the Atlantis, but the Komet and Orion as well, and so on December 8, amid joyful scenes of mid-ocean reunion and celebration, Krüder stepped aboard the Atlantis.
The captured tanker arrived the next day, and the re-fuelling commenced.
On December 10, as the Pinguin played host to Rogge, a signal was received from Berlin announcing the awarding of the Ritterkreuz, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, to the Commander of the raider Atlantis, which prompted further celebration, after which the three ships went their separate ways.
The Atlantis resumed her course for the Kerguelens, the Pinguin headed south for her historic rendezvous with the Norwegian whaling fleet in the Antarctic Ocean, and the Storstad set off on the long journey back to France.
The Atlantis reached Kerguelen, an archipelago situated at 49°20' S, 70°20' E, midway between Africa, Antarctica and Australia, on December 14 1940.
Rogge sent Mohr and a heavily-armed landing party ashore at Port Couvreux to make sure that the settlement there was uninhabited, and having ascertained that it had been deserted since 1936, they were recalled to the ship.
Sending boats ahead to take depth-soundings, the Atlantis moved slowly towards the natural inner harbour through a narrow channel and promptly ran onto a hidden rock, tearing a hole 6 metres long by 2 metres wide in her outer hull.
She was to remain stuck fast on this rock for nearly three days.
Following three days of back-breaking hard labour by all on board, she was finally re-floated and dropped anchor near the deserted former French whaling station at Port Couvreux, where she remained until January 11, repairing and replenishing her damaged hull and fresh water tanks, carrying out the engine overhaul and some general maintenance.
On Christmas Eve, the Atlantis suffered her first casualty on board, when a rope supporting the platform from which Leading Seaman Bernhard Herrmann was painting the funnel, was severed by hot exhaust gases inadvertantly released by the engine-room crew starting up the diesel engines for a routine inspection, throwing him heavily to the deck below, shattering both of his legs.
Despite the best of medical care, he died of his horrific injuries on December 29, and was laid to rest with full military honours, wrapped in the German naval ensign, in what was to be the southernmost German grave of World War Two.
* Concealed by his shipmates when they departed a few weeks later, the grave was re-located, with the assistance of the French authorities, in May 1965.
Twenty-six days after he had moored the Atlantis in Gazelle Bay, Rogge weighed anchor on January 11 1941 and took her slowly out towards the open sea.
With the damaged hull repaired, 1,000 gallons of the purest fresh water in her tanks, her engines completely reconditioned and with a new identity, this time as the 7,256-ton Norwegian Wilhelmsen line freighter Tamesis, she was ready to resume raiding operations … if she proved to be still sufficiently seaworthy.
There was not a man on board who was not extremely apprehensive as Rogge slowly took her up to speed, and conducted rigorous tests of manoeuverability and performance, including the firing of a full broadside while under way, until he was fully satisfied that she was once again fit for action.
Had the repairs to her hull not held, they knew that she would most certainly have foundered before they could get her back to the islands, and they would have been cast adrift in the freezing, storm-tossed and deserted Antarctic ocean.
Forbidden by the SKL to return to his earlier zone of operations as it was now being covered by another raider, Rogge decided to make for the Arabian Sea.
Throughout mid-January, once again under the scorching tropical sun, he had Bulla carry out a series of reconnaissance flights, until eventually, in the busy shipping-lane between India and Madagascar, on January 23, they paid off, when the aircrew reported a ship sixty miles to the north.
Altering course to intercept her, and spotting the vessel’s smoke on the horizon, Rogge brought the Atlantis within range, and waited for nightfall.
Under cover of the pitch black tropical night, he approached at top speed on a converging course, and was astonished to find that the ship had vanished.
When a search proved fruitless, he waited until first light on January 24, at which point the seaplane quickly found the enemy ship again.
Returning to the Atlantis, Bulla was ordered to bomb the ship and attack it with machine-gun fire while the raider charged in to finish the job.
With a motorboat launched, loaded with extra fuel and ammunition as back up, and the Atlantis following up at speed, the Heinkel took off, and swooping down out of the sun onto the unsuspecting ship, tore away her aerials on it’s first run.
On his second run, as the raider appeared on the horizon, Bulla dropped his two 110-pound bombs, straddling the ship.
Her captain’s response was to take evasive action and increase speed, while his radio men rigged an emergency aerial, and machine guns were set up on deck.
Lashing the bridge and deckhouses with machine gun fire, with the British trying in vain to return fire, Bulla roared over the ship once more, before breaking off the attack and heading back to the motorboat.
Identifying herself as the Mandasor, and frantically sending distress calls via her newly-rigged aerial, Rogge closed in on the zig-zagging freighter at top speed until, from a range of 8,500 metres, he turned and gave her a full broadside.
This first salvo missed, but the second struck home amidships with devastating force, silencing the radio and setting the ship on fire.
The 5,144-ton Brocklebank & Co.freighter, en route to the UK from Calcutta, with a crew of eighty-eight, and a cargo of 2,000 tons of pig iron, 1,800 tons of tea and some jute fibre, lay dead in the water, her ‘midships area a mass of flames, and the surviving eighty-two members of her crew hastily abandoning ship.
But the Atlantis still had to pursue her, firing a total of sixty-one 155mm shells, scoring eight hits, which killed six members of her crew, before the by now fiercely burning ship hove to and finally came to a halt.
As Ulrich Mohr, in command of the boarding party, moved his launch in to assist the men in the water, he noticed some of them being menaced by sharks and promptly opened fire on the predators with his submachine gun, driving them off.
With large quantities of fresh and canned foods, charts, weapons and important documents discovered on board, it was some time before Fehler’s demolition squad could go about their deadly business, but, after several hours, during which most of it was transferred to the raider, they set their fuses and left.
Within six minutes of the charges going off, the twenty-year-old Mandasor went down, bow first, leaving nothing to mark her passing but a large patch of tea.
As darkness rapidly approached, Rogge anxiously returned to where he had left Bulla and his back-up launch, only to find the Heinkel upside down in the water, the motorboat’s engine incapacitated and the crews of both seriously seasick.
With the nauseous men and the boat safely back on board, the capsized Heinkel, Rogge’s ‘eye-in-the-sky’, which had proved invaluable, had to be sunk by gunfire.
The loss of the plane was a bitter blow to the Atlantis’s operational prospects.
Sighting what they thought was the 81,235-ton liner Queen Mary on January 27, and quickly turning away for fear of falling foul of her escort, Rogge returned to the tanker lanes off the Persian Gulf, where a ship was spotted on January 31.
*It was in fact the 22,281-ton P&O liner Strathaird, being used as troop transport.
Approaching at speed by moonlight, Rogge ordered the target illuminated, after which three salvos from the Atlantis quickly brought the vessel to a stop, without transmitting any distress signals.
The boarding party found the 5,154-ton Andrew Weir & Company, Bank Line freighter Speybank, bound for New York from Cochin, with a valuable cargo of manganese ore, monazite, ilesite, carpets, teak and shellac, undamaged.
A typical British freighter, with no fewer than sixteen almost identical sister ships, and fully stocked and fueled for a long journey, the Speybank was an ideal prize, and a ship that would be very suitable for conversion to a naval auxiliary.
Having put a ten-man prize-crew on board, under Leutnant Breuers, Rogge dispatched her south to the Saya de Malha Bank to await his further orders.
Subsequently converted into an auxiliary minelayer, Schiff 53 /Doggerbank, under the command of Leutnant Paul Schneidewind, was to carry out one of the most daring minelaying operations of the war, off Cape Town, but was sunk in error off the Azores by U-43 (Oblt. Hans-Joachim Schwantke) on March 3 1943 with all but one of 365 men on board losing their lives.
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