List of Officers
Kapitän-zur-See Bernhard Rogge
Adjutant: Leutnant-zur-See Dr Ulrich Mohr
First (Executive) Officer: Kapitänleutnant zur See Erich Kühn
Navigation Officer: Kapitänleutnant Paul Kamenz
Chief Engineer: Wilhelm Kielhorn
Gunnery Officer: Oberleutnant Lorenz Kasch
Radio Officer: Oberleutnant Adolf Wenzel
Administration Officer: Korvettenkapitän Fritz Lorenzen
Principal Medical Officer: Marine-Stabsarzt Dr. Georg Reil
Assistant Medical Officer: Dr. Hans-Bernhard Sprung
Meteorological Officer: Dr. Wolfgang Collmann
Demolition Officer: Leutnant Johann-Heinrich ‘Dynamite’ Fehler
Chief Petty Officer: Oberleutnant Wilhelm Pigors
Flying Officer: Leutnant Richard Bulla
Ritterkreuzträger Konteradmiral Bernhard Rogge
Commander HK Atlantis – 1939 to 1941
Born on August 4 1899, in Schleswig, Bernhard Rogge was a pleasant, genial man, but a military perfectionist, who handpicked his officers, and insisted on the right to review the service record of every man assigned to his command, and to reject those he felt to be unsuitable, which was about 50%!
The son of a Government official, he joined the Imperial Navy as a cadet in 1915, and having served on cruisers during World War 1, on the light cruiser Karlsruhe, and the sail training vessels Gorch Fock and Albert Leo Schlageter during the mid to late 1930s, he took command of the Hilfskreuzer Atlantis in 1939.
Apart from his military capabilities, and his prodigious instinct for survival, Rogge, whose ice cool nerve was legendary, was a true gentleman, appreciated by both his crew and by his many prisoners.
Even in the most difficult situations, he remained calm and sharp, as when, instead of opening fire on HMS Devonshire, well beyond the maximum range of his guns, he chose to scuttle his ship before the enemy could identify her, thus saving the lives of his crew.
The cruise of the raider Atlantis lasted 622 days, longer than any other raider, and for her record of 22 ships, totalling 145,968 tons, roughly the same as that sunk by the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in ‘Operation Berlin’, Rogge was awarded the Knight’s Cross in 1940, and the Oak Leaves in 1941.
Promoted Konteradmiral in March 1943, and Vizeadmiral two years later, he joined the newly-formed Bundesmarine, with the rank of Konteradmiral in 1957.
In the preface to Schiff 16, he wrote that he wished “… there was a common endeavour which could bring men together in the way they came together during war, but without the horrors of war … to work together without the constant presence of pain, suffering, and death”.
He died in Hamburg on June 29 1982.
Atlantis - War Records from 30-03-1940 to 22-11-1941
Number Prize Name Type Flag Date Tonnage Fate
1 Scientist Freighter UK 03-05-1940 6.199 Sunk
2 Tirranna Freighter Norway 10-06-1940 7.230 Captured
3 City of Bagdad Freighter UK 11-07-1940 7.506 Sunk
4 Kemmendine Freighter UK 13-07-1940 7.769 Sunk
5 Talleyrand Freighter Norway 02-08-1940 6.732 Sunk
6 King City Freighter UK 24-08-1940 4.744 Sunk
7 Athelking Tanker UK 09-09-1940 9.557 Sunk
8 Benarty Freighter UK 0-09-1940 5.800 Sunk
9 Commissaire Ramel -Passenger Liner -France 20-09-1940 10.061 Sunk
10 Durmitor Freighter Yugoslavia 22-10-1940 5.623 Captured
11 Teddy Tanker Norway 09-11-1940 6.748 Sunk
12 Ole Jakob Tanker Norway 10-11-1940 8.306 Captured
13 Automedon Freighter UK 11-11-1940 7.528 Sunk
14 Mandasor Freighter UK 24-01-1941 5.144 Sunk
15 Speybank Freighter UK 31-01-1941 5.154 Captured
16 Ketty Brövig Freighter Norway 02-02-1941 7.301 Captured
17 ZamZam Passenger Liner Egypt 17-04-1941 8.299 Sunk
18 Rabaul Freighter UK 14-05-1941 6.809 Sunk
19 Trafalgar Freighter UK 24-05-1941 4.530 Sunk
20 Tottenham Freighter UK 17-06-1941 4.762 Sunk
21 Balzac Freighter UK 22-06-1941 5.372 Sunk
22 Silvaplana Freighter Norway 10-09-1941 4.793 Captured
Total Atlantis Prizes 145.968
Notes to:
1 Sunk with explosive charges.
2 Very valuable ship and cargo. Dispatched to Bordeaux with over 300 prisoners on board. Torpedoed and sunk off the Gironde by HMS Tuna. 60 prisoners, men, women and children, lose their lives.
3 Sunk with explosive charges.
4 Set on fire. Sunk by two torpedoes.
5 Used as a "target ship" for seaplane attack tactics. Sunk with explosive charges.
6 Sunk by gunfire. Six dead.
7 Sunk by gunfire.
8 Captured by the seaplane. Sunk by explosive charges.
9 Sunk by gunfire.
10 Sent to Mogadishu in Italian Somaliland with 312 prisoners on board.
11 After replenishing Atlantis’ fuel tanks she was sunk with explosive charges.
12 Sent to Japan with her entire load of high-octane aircraft fuel and top-secret documents about the defences of the port of Singapore taken from Automadon. As a consequence, granted approval by the Japanese Government to use the small Muag Island in the Marianas as rest-refitting-replenishment area for raiders and blockade runners.
13 Valuable cargo and secret documents. Sunk with explosive charges. Meeting with Pinguin. Rest at Kerguelen Islands.
14 Seaplane removes radio antennas. Seaplane later capsizes and sinks. Ship sunk by explosive charges.
15 Converted in an auxiliary. Later sent to Bordeaux with prisoners and valuable cargo of manganese and rubber.
16 Converted in auxiliary supply tanker. Meeting with blockade runner Tannenfels and Admiral Scheer, Ketty Brövig replenishes the three German ships. This auxiliary ship also re-fuels the prizes of other raiders, plus the Italian submarine Perla.
17 With the crew of 110 and 217 passengers, most of them Americans, taken prisoner, among them 100 Protestant Ministers, 76 women - American, Greek, British and French - 35 children, some members of the American and French Red Cross, a Fortune Magazine journalist and a Life Magazine photographer, life becomes very difficult on board.
18 Sunk by gunfire. Crew, plus the other prisoners on board the raider are transferred to the blockade-runner Dresden, which safely reaches Bordeaux some weeks later.
19 Sunk by gunfire and torpedoes.
20 Sunk by gunfire.
21 Sunk by gunfire. Around 60 prisoners in total. Meetings with Etappendienst supply ships Asterufer, Babitonga and Nordmark, all escaping from British hunting groups after the Bismarck sinking. Meetings with Kormoran and Orion.
22 Valuable ship with a cargo of rubber. Sent to Bordeaux where she arrived safely. Some weeks rest at Vana-Vana in the Cook Islands. Atlantis crew see friendly girls for the first time in almost 18 months. Meeting with U-68 and U-126. Sunk by the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire with 10 casualties. Devonshire leaves the area at high speed, not rescuing survivors. Atlantis crew rescued by the supply ship Python, which is later sunk by the heavy cruiser HMS Dorsetshire. Both crews, 400 men, taken by U-A, U-68, U-124, U-126 and the Italian submarines Tazzoli, Finzi, Calvi and Torrelli. All of them safely reach Saint-Nazaire at Christmas 1941.
Additional Info about the Ships engaged by Hilfskreuzer Atlantis - 11 March 1940 to 22 November 1941
1 - Scientist
En route from Durban to Liverpool with a mixed cargo, including 2.500 tons of maize, 1.150 tons of chromium and 2.600 tons of wattle bark on board, this elderly 6.199-ton British Harrison steamer refused to stop and sent repeated ‘raider-attack’ signals.
Hit by several 150mm shells, and firmly ablaze, she was abandoned by her crew.
Despite the sea-cocks being opened, and the explosive charges detonated, she settled very slowly, and was burning so furiously as to be visible for miles, and so, to avoid attracting too much attention, she was quickly sunk by a torpedo.
Two members of her crew had lost their lives.
2 - Tirranna
This fast, spacious Norwegian liner tried to outrun the Atlantis, which fired seven salvoes before scoring a hit, thirty-two more, 150 rounds, over three hours, being required to stop her.
A 7,230-ton Wilhelmsen liner, she was bound for the UK, with a cargo of wheat, flour and wool, as well as 178 trucks, 5,500 cases of beer, 300 cases of tobacco, 3,000 cases of canned peaches and 17,000 cases of jam!
Five of her crew lost their lives during the chase, and her Captain complained bitterly that Norway had just made peace with Germany that very day! A prize crew was put on board, but due to the Tirranna being so low in fuel, she was sent to the south to wait until the Atlantis could capture a tanker.
Having failed to do this, Rogge ordered that she sail to Italian Somaliland with his prisoners, and then rejoin the raider.
Having duly returned, and with over three hundred prisoners on board, the Tirranna was dispatched to Bordeaux, arriving on the September 22, only to be torpedoed and sunk off the Gironde, within sight of land, by the British submarine HMS Tuna, with over sixty men, women and children losing their lives.
3 - City of Baghdad
The crew of the Atlantis took particular satisfaction in capturing this 7,506-ton ‘British’ freighter, carrying a crew of eighty-one, and 9.300 tons of steel, chemicals and machinery, as she had previously been, the Geierfels, a Hansa-Line German ship taken by Britain as a World War One reparations prize!
When Rogge’s Adjutant, Leutnant Ulrich Mohr, who led the Atlantis’ boarding parties, commented on the Captain’s RCA Victor radio set, the skipper helped him dismantle it, and was repaid with nightly visits to Mohr’s cabin on the Atlantis, where he was served drinks, enjoyed chats with the raider’s officers … and was allowed to listen to the BBC!
Once her crew had been taken on board, the City of Bagdad was sunk by explosives expert, Leutnant Johann ‘Dynamite’ Fehler, who remained on the ship, as 280 pounds of explosives went off, seven times the amount he’d used on the Scientist!
When reprimanded by his captain he said, “I just wanted to experience the sensation!”
4 - Kemmendine
An unfortunate error led to this 7.769-ton liner, outward bound to Rangoon, via Capetown, from Glasgow with one hundred and forty-seven passengers and crew, and a cargo of whisky, beer and piece goods, being fired upon and set ablaze.
Radio tuning transmissions from the raider’s own auxiliary station below decks were thought to be coming from the vessel, and so the Atlantis re-opened fire.
Having stopped, surrendered and with boats being lowered, a shot was fired from the liner’s 3-inch deck-gun, causing a furious Rogge to open fire again. Fortunately there were no casualties on either side, and the boats drew safely alongside the Atlantis.
The hazardous task of lifting small children from their mother’s arms in violently pitching lifeboats onto the raider, was overcome by the use of her coal buckets lowered on ropes!
The liner was so well ablaze that the boarding party, which had been busy searching for documents, had to evacuate her in a hurry, but having left the scuttling charges lying on the deck, they returned to find them ringed by flames!
As a result she had to be sunk by torpedo, and it took two to do it, much to the further annoyance of the raider’s commander.
The Atlantis now had over three hundred and thirty prisoners on board.
5 - Talleyrand
On August 2nd, with the Atlantis drifting, her crew busily painting her, and the Tirranna, having returned from Somaliland, embarking prisoners in squally weather, the 6.732-ton Norwegian Tallyrand, a Wilhelmsen sister-ship of the Tirranna, suddenly appeared out of the fog.
After a six-minute chase and four 150mm salvoes, she stopped and surrendered. With a cargo of 4.500 tons of steel, 16.000 bales of wool, 22.686 sacks of wheat and 240 tons of teak, a crew of thirty-six, one of them a woman, and, like the Tirranna, armed with one 4,7-inch gun, she was on her way from Sydney to the UK. Like her sister, the Talleyrand was low in fuel, and what she had, was transferred to Atlantis, thereby gaining the raider two months extra endurance, while her ammunition was transferred to the Tirranna. She also yielded an excellent motorboat!
She was subsequently used a target ship for Atlantis' Heinkel seaplane, which dropped dummy bombs on her and practiced tearing away her radio antenna with a trailing grapnel hook.
6 - King City
The peculiar behaviour and the slow and continually changing speed of this 4.744-ton British freighter off Madagascar, caused Rogge to believe his ship was being drawn into some sort of trap, so he opened fire without warning, first with a torpedo, which missed, and then with a 150mm salvo, which did not. This quickly set the by then almost stationary vessel ablaze, killing four of her crew, with another missing and causing a further man to succumb to his wounds later on board the Atlantis. Realising too late that the ‘enemy’ was a harmless merchantman, Rogge immediately ordered that two whalers, taken from the Tirranna, be launched to assist her remaining crew, all of whom were fortunately rescued from the mountainous seas.
Bound for Singapore from Cardiff with 7.300 tons of coal on board, her strange manoeuvring was later explained as having been the result of engine trouble.
A blazing inferno, she was sunk by gunfire.
7 - Athelking
This 9.577-ton British motor tanker, on her way from Australia to East Africa, refused to heave to when ordered to do so, radioed her position and returned fire.
It took ninety-one rounds to finally bring her to a halt, with her captain and two crewmen dead, and her hull so badly damaged that it was not possible for the Atlantis to take on any of her valuable cargo of oil.
With a boat being lowered in response to a signal requesting medical assistance, fresh radio signals were picked up, which were thought to be coming from the Athelking, causing Rogge to re-open fire on the stricken tanker, but were in fact coming from another ship nearby, the Benarty, which was duly intercepted, making off at top speed, by the raider’s aircraft the next day.
Sunk by gunfire, the surviving thirty-seven members of the Athelking’s crew were picked up.
8 - Benarty
Having betrayed her presence by re-transmitting the Athelking’s distress signals the previous day, this 5.800-ton freighter, carrying a mixed cargo of lead, zinc and wolfram, was bombed and strafed in spectacular fashion with machine gun fire the following day by Atlantis’ seaplane, as she tried to escape, enabling the raider to approach and bring her to a halt with gunfire.
Fragments of paper found in her wrecked wireless room made it possible for the Germans to read part of the new British merchant navy code, which had recently replaced that taken from the City of Bagdad earlier. She was sunk by explosive charges.
9 - Commissaire Ramel
Having first agreed to stop and maintain radio silence, this blacked-out 10.061-ton French passenger liner, initially seen by Rogge as an ideal vessel to solve his overcrowding problems, commenced signalling and was sunk by gunfire, burning fiercely as she went down in a cloud of smoke and steam, her red-hot hull hissing under the waves like lava, adding sixty-three more prisoners to the two hundred and thirty already on board the Atlantis.
The largest ship yet taken by the raider, she had a largely Australian crew, and a cargo of steel, wheat, soap, leather and fruit.
10 - Durmitor
Because the Captain of this filthy 27-year old, 5.623-ton ‘neutral’ Yugoslavian vessel, used his radio when challenged, and admitted he was bound for an enemy port for ‘orders’, his ship was declared a legitimate prize.
When it was established that she had enough coal on board to get her as far as Japan, her fate as a Prison Ship was sealed!
Infested with rats and cockroaches, and carrying a cargo of 8.200 tons of salt, she was provisioned and sent to Italian Somaliland under a prize crew of fourteen with three hundred and twelve mutinous prisoners, duly arriving three weeks later.
11 - Teddy
This 6.748-ton Norwegian tanker carrying 10.000 tons of fuel oil and 500 tons of diesel oil from Abadan to Singapore, was taken intact by a ruse in the Bay of Bengal, as the raider, pretending to be the British Armed Merchant-Cruiser HMS Antenor, had a boarding party alongside before the tanker’s crew realised what she really was!
With a prize crew on board she sailed south to await further orders.
After the sinking of the Automedon, Rogge took on as much fuel as he could stow from the Teddy, and then had her scuttled. This prompted criticism from the SKL for not trying to send her home as a prize, or at least passing her oil on to another raider.
12 - Ole Jakob
This modern 8.306-ton Norwegian tanker with 10.000 tons of aviation fuel, was captured in the same way as the Teddy. Despite the fact that she continued to send wireless signals, and even asked the Atlantis to stop following her, Rogge did not open fire, as he needed her cargo.
She was sent to Japan under a prize crew with the secret documents about Singapore found on board Automedon, and having exchanged her cargo of fuel with the Japanese for diesel oil, she eventually made her way back to Bordeaux.
13 - Automedon
This 7.528-ton Blue Funnel liner, en route from Liverpool to the Far East, with a cargo of aircraft, cars, machinery, textiles, cigarettes, mail and other provisions, sent an SOS when challenged, and so Rogge opened fire from close range, killing the captain and everyone else on her bridge with the first salvo, followed by a further three salvoes until the signals stopped. Having quickly ceased firing, a man was seen running towards the liner’s deck gun, and so a further three salvoes were fired into the shredded vessel.
As the Captain and all his officers had been killed, the ship’s confidential papers and documents fell into the hands of Mohr and the raider’s boarding party. These included notes of the military defences of Singapore, details of Naval and Royal Air Force deployment and strength, and many other top-secret documents drawn up by the Planning Division of the British War Cabinet.
Having yielded it’s treasures, the Automedon was scuttled.
14 - Mandasor
This 5.144-ton British freighter en route to the UK from Calcutta, with a crew of eighty-eight, and a cargo of 2.000 tons of pig iron and 1.800 tons of tea, was located by the Atlantis’ Arado, and attacked with bombs and machine-gun fire. Having torn away the ship’s radio antenna, the plane came under fire from her anti-aircraft gun as her crew rigged a spare aerial and began signalling QQQ.
Closing to within 8.500 metres, the raider, opened up, firing sixty-one 150mm shells, and having scored eight hits, which killed six members of her crew, the Mandasor stopped signalling, and was soon fiercely on fire, as the surviving eighty-two members of her crew abandoned ship. As they did so, the Arado, putting down beside the lifeboats, damaged one of her floats, capsized and sank!
The Mandasor was sunk by explosive charges.
15 - Speybank
This 5.154-ton British freighter bound for New York from Cochin with a cargo of manganese, ore, carpets, tea and shellacwas captured at night before she could send any signals.
Having put a prize crew on board, Rogge dispatched her to Bordeaux.Re-named the Doggerbank, and converted into an auxiliary minelayer, she was sunk in error off The Azores on March 3 1943 by the U-43 (Oblt. Hans-Joachim Schwantke) with all but one of the three hundred and sixty-five men on board losing their lives.
16 - Ketty Brovig
This fast 7.301-ton Norwegian tanker, carrying 6.370 tons of fuel oil and 4.125 tons of diesel oil from Bahrain to Lourenco Marques, and the first completely unarmed ship Atlantis had ever come across, was surprised and captured in another night attack, which left her stopped, and her predominantly Chinese crew, in a wild panic, throwing themselves overboard.
As she had made no attempt to transmit any signals, shelling was stopped. The next morning, after a steam pipe on the funnel, damaged during the attack, was repaired, a prize crew was put on board and she was sent to a rendezvous point.
As an auxiliary supply ship, the Ketty Brovig re-fuelled the Admiral Scheer, several other raiders and their prizes, before being sunk with the supply ship Coburg by the Australian and British cruisers HMAS Canberra and HMS Leander on March 4.
Having rendezvoused with the Tannenfels and the Italian submarine Perla, the Atlantis later met again with the Tannenfels, the Ketty Brovig, the Speybank and the Admiral Scheer, and finally again with the Speybank, the Ketty Brovig and the Scheer’s prize, the British Advocate.
17 - ZamZam
This 8.299-ton Egyptian passenger liner, the former Bibby liner Leicestershire, sold to Egypt a few months before the outbreak of war, en route from New York to Cape Town, with an exotic crew of one hundred and ten, Egyptians, Sudanese, Turks, Greeks, Czechs and French, and over two hundred very unhappy passengers, Americans, British, French, Greeks, Canadians, South Africans, Norwegians and Italians, which included one hundred and fifty missionaries, Catholic, Lutheran, Adventist, Baptist and twelve other denominations, twenty-four American volunteer ambulance drivers, seventy-six women, of whom five were pregnant, Americans, British, French and some ‘very photogenic Greek nurses’, thirty-five children, Charles J. Murphy, editor of FORTUNE magazine, LIFE magazine photographer, David E. Sherman, and a mixed cargo of lubricating oil, tin plate, ambulances, trucks, steel bars, radios, typewriters, batteries, girdles, cosmetics and Coca-Cola, was identified as a ‘Bibby’ troopship and attacked by moonlight, without warning, from a range of 9.200 metres. The first two salvos missed, but the third salvo knocked out the radio room.
The crew, having abandoned ship and taken to the lifeboats in panic, leaving their passengers to their fate, found themselves being shaken off Atlantis’ lines so that the Germans could help the women, children and the many others who were seen floundering about in the water.
Having collected as much of the passengers clothing and as many of their belongings as possible, including a little girl who had become lost, and a tricycle for someone small and deserving, the boarding party spent over five hours aboard the slowly sinking liner, plundering her larder and stripping her bar!
Everyone was safely picked up and transferred two days later to the supply ship Dresden, from where, despite Rogge’s wish to have them transferred to a neutral ship or landed in a neutral country, they were ordered instead to France.
18 - Rabaul
Having rendezvoused with the HK Kormoran, the tanker Nordmark and the supply ship Alsterufer, from which, among other much needed provisions, the Atlantis received no fewer than three new crated Arado-196 A-1 floatplanes, this 6.809-ton British freighter bound for Capetown from the UK with a cargo of coal, failed to stop when requested, was shelled, and sank in flames.
With seven of her 58-man crew killed, the rest, including three wounded, were picked up.
19 - Trafalgar
A week after having narrowly missed being caught, while stopped, by the British battleship HMS Nelson and the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle, as they passed, a mere 7,000 metres astern, the Atlantis used one of her new Arados to locate her next victim, the 4.530-ton British freighter Trafalgar, with a cargo of 4.500 tons of coal and two aircraft.
Having stalked her all day, she was attacked and battered to a standstill by six rapid salvos, which left her deck cargo, the aircraft, on fire, her funnel and mast down, rudder jammed, twelve of her crew dead, and the rest in the water.
On fire, abandoned and circling for a possible collision with the Atlantis, Rogge ordered a torpedo fired to finish her off.
The torpedo went out of control, briefly threatening the raider itself, narrowly missing her bows, and having missed with a second torpedo, he finally washed the treacherous fires out with a third.
Rescue operations were difficult in the dark, but due to the small red flashlights pinned to their lifejackets, thirty-three survivors were eventually picked up.
20 - Tottenham
This 4.762-ton British freighter, bound from the UK to Alexandria via the Cape, carrying aircraft, aircraft parts, ammunition, tractors and cars, was followed for a day and attacked at nightfall with a warning shot across her bows. The RRR signal was heard and one shot was fired from the freighter’s 4-inch gun, which, although it fell short, prompted Rogge to open up with thirty-nine 150mm and eleven 75mm shells, scoring two hits.
Her Captain ordered his crew to abandon ship while she was still under way, causing two of the lifeboats to be swamped as they hit the water fully laden. Once again the raider’s torpedoes proved unreliable, with two missing completely and the third causing insufficient damage to sink the freighter, so that she had to be sunk by gunfire. According to Ulrich Mohr, “She erupted like a volcano!”
With his position now known to the British, Rogge, having picked up twenty-nine men, including the Captain and Chief Engineer, from one boat, but having failed to find the seventeen men in the other, and anxious to get away, called off the search.
Eight weeks later, the boat drifted ashore on the coast of Brazil, near Rio, abandoned, awash and empty.
Trafalgar’s Second Officer Cameron, and sixteen others had deliberately avoided rescue, and having found five more men on life rafts, and then drifted for eleven days, were luckily picked up by the SS Mahronda on June 28.
21 - Balzac
This 5.372-ton British freighter, bound for Liverpool from Rangoon with a crew of forty-seven and a cargo of 4.200 tons of rice, "vast quantities" of beeswax and other mixed cargo, having been attacked from a range of 9.000 metres, radioed RRR and began to zigzag.
Having fired forty salvos, one hundred and ninety-two 150mm, and fifty-three 75mm rounds, with only four hits, two of the raider’s port 150mm guns overheated and the recoil systems jammed, but as Rogge turned the ship to bring his disengaged starboard battery into action, the Balzac was seen to stop and lower boats.
With three of her 54-man crew killed, and another losing his life later on board Atlantis, the survivors were picked up.
22 - Silvaplana
Having rendezvoused with the HK Orion in the South Atlantic Ocean on July 1, the Atlantis rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed for over a month to the south of Australia and the Pacific waters east of New Zealand, where, when pursued by her at full speed, this modern, 4.793-ton Norwegian motor vessel, with an exotic and valuable mixed cargo of rubber, tin, copper, teak, wooden idols, 100.000 lbs of coffee, wax, sago, vanilla and spices, immediately sent QQQ alarm signals.
As the Germans tried in vain to jam them, they finally stopped her and having put a prize crew aboard, they sent a further signal cancelling the first one.
A fast and beautiful ship, Rogge decided to keep the Silvaplana as a prize, and duly dispatched her to Bordeaux, where she arrived safely on November 17.
The Atlantis rendezvoused with the Munsterland, the HK Komet and her prize Kota Nopan, and having rested at Vana Vana in the Cook Islands, and on Henderson Island, Rogge then met with the U-68 (Kptlt. Karl-Friedrich Merten) off St Helena , to supply her with oil, water and food.
Against his wishes and better judgement, the Atlantis’ commander then had to comply with an SKL instruction to likewise supply the U-126 (Kptlt. Ernst Bauer) in the crowded and dangerous sea-lanes off Ascension Island.
The Hunter becomes the Hunted - The Sinking of HK Atlantis
November 22 1941: Drifting on the gentle South Atlantic swell, smack in the middle of the crowded traffic lane between Freetown and the Cape, with fuel hoses connected, her launch ferrying supplies, U-Boat officers on board enjoying hot baths, a glass of sherry and good coffee, her port diesel engine stripped down to replace a piston, and with no air cover, due to the loss of her seaplane on the previous day, the raider Atlantis could hardly have been more vulnerable.
The peace of this tranquil scene was shattered by a lookout’s cry, “Feindlicher Kreuzer! … Fiendlicher Kreuzer in Sicht!
The three funnels and masts of the London-Class heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire (Captain R.D.Oliver) had appeared on the horizon and were closing fast.
As the fuel lines were rapidly cut, Rogge turned his one-engined ship, to present her stern to the enemy and to try to hide the U-Boat from the cruiser’s ‘Walrus’ seaplane.
The U-126, spotted by the aircraft, which immediately signalled SSS, with her Commander and several other officers still on board the Atlantis, and a large oil slick marking where the fuel hoses had been severed, immediately crash-dived.
The Atlantis was no match for the heavy cruiser, armed with eight 8-inch guns, and even with both engines fully operational, he was slower by about 14 knots, so Rogge knew his only hope was to lure her closer, within range of his guns and torpedoes.
But the cruiser, from long range, fired two 8-inch salvos, one to the left, one to the right, to which Rogge responded by stopping, signalling RRR, and identifying his ship as the 6.269-ton Dutchman Polyhemus.
Suspicious of a possible trap, having heard that there was possibly a U-Boat about, and because Atlantis signalled with only three Rs instead of the required four, Captain Oliver was cautious. Remaining out of range, with his Walrus circling the raider, he called up Commander-in-Chief South Atlantic to make sure the ship was not the Polyhemus.
He well remembered how HMS Cornwall had closed to within range of the Pinguin’s guns and had suffered heavy damage.
With Rogge hoping that somehow the U-126 would manage to attack her, the cruiser stood off for over an hour, steaming backwards and forwards at 26 knots at a range of over 17.000 metres, until her captain finally received confirmation that the Atlantis could not possibly be the Polyhemus.
Unfortunately, the First Lieutenant of the U-Boat had, in the mistaken belief that the Devonshire would close with the Atlantis, stayed close to the raider to have a better chance of using his torpedoes.
Coming about with all battle flags flying, the Devonshire straddled the Atlantis with three 8-inch salvos, scoring two hits. A further thirty salvos into the helpless, stationary ship, registering six more hits, killed seven men on board and in the water.
As the doomed raider was now firmly on fire and making smoke, boats were launched, charges were set in place as she was prepared for scuttling and her crew abandoned ship.
With her commander being the last to leave, Leutnant Fehler’s charges rocked the ship, her magazine exploded, and the Atlantis sank in two minutes.
With the sunken raider’s entire crew in the water, and secure in the knowledge that there was definitely a U-Boat in the vicinity, HMS Devonshire made off at top speed.
Fifty-five men, having been picked up, were on the U-126, back under the command of her shipwrecked skipper Bauer, the remainder of her crew, fifty-two huddled on her decks, and two hundred and one others in four boats on tow behind the submarine, were eventually picked up by the supply ship Python, which was on her way to re-fuel and replenish the U-68 (Kptlt. Merten) and the U-A (Kptlt. Eckermann).
The Final Chapter - The Sinking of Supply Ship Python
On the afternoon of November 30 1941, with the U-68 re-fuelled, the U-A connected to the fuel lines, and four hundred German seamen busy transferring supplies from the Python to the two submarines, in an almost exact repetition of what had happened to the Atlantis, the British heavy cruiser HMS Dorsetshire, a sister-ship of the Devonshire, was seen approaching at 25 knots.
The U-68, her deck hatches open, taking on torpedoes, could not dive immediately, but the U-A, having quickly let the fuel lines go, turned away to intercept the enemy.
The Python, which had been stopped, fired up her engines, but giving no response to the cruiser’s signals, and having made smoke, immediately came under heavy fire, was set ablaze and abandoned.
The Dorsetshire, remaining at a range of about eight miles, and steaming at high speed for fear of a possible U-Boat attack, was fortunate that by doing so, the five torpedoes fired at her by the U-A all missed.
In eleven boats and seven rafts, the combined crews of both ships, totalling over four hundred and fourteen men, were adrift on the high seas, waiting for the U-Boats to re-appear.
With about 100 crammed into each of the two U-Boats, and the rest in ten boats, with a motor launch ferrying hot food to them from the sub’s galleys
Two more submarines the U-129 (Krvkpt. Nico Clausen) arriving on December 3, and the U-124 (Kptlt. Jochen Mohr) two days later on the 5th, alleviated the crowding, followed over the next two weeks by four Italian submarines, the Luigi Torelli, the Enrico Tazzoli, the Giuseppe Finzi and the Pietro Calvi
All eight rescue submarines safely reached Saint-Nazaire between December 23 and December 29 1941.
Notes
Hilfskreuzer (Auxiliary Cruiser / Raider) Atlantis
General Details
Nationality German
Type Auxiliary Cruiser (Raider)
Ship Number 16
HSK Number II
British Admiralty Letter C
Builder Bremer Vulkan Werft, Bremen-Vegesack.
Launched 1937
Previous Owner Deutsche Dampfschiffahrts Gesellschaft (Hansa Line) Bremen.
Previous Name Goldenfels - Sistership of the Kandelfels – which was converted into the HK Pinguin
Conversion Deschimag-Werft, Bremen.
General Cruise Details
Commander Fregattenkapitän (Captain) Bernhard Rogge (Knights Cross with Oak Leaves)
Sail date 11 March 1940
End date 22 November 1941
Fate Sunk by the British heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire
Performance
Ships Sunk / Captured 22 ships sunk – 6 captured
Tonnage 145.968
Days at Sea 622
Tons per Day 234,67
Displacement
Displacement 7.862 tons
Dimensions
Length 155 metres
Beam 18,7 metres
Armament
Main Armament 6 x 150 mm
Secondary Armament 1 x 75 mm, 2 x 37 mm Flak, 4 x 20 mm Flak
Torpedo Tubes 4 x 53,3 cm
Mines 92
Aircraft
Aircraft 2 x Heinkel He-114 A-2 - later supplied with three Arado Ar-196 A-1 aircraft.
Smaller Boats
Light Speedboat None
Propulsion
Engine Type Two 6-cylinder two-stroke MAN diesels
Horsepower 7.600
Endurance 60.000 nautical miles at 10 knots
Speed 17,5 knots
Fuel Type Oil
Complement
Wartime 347 (21 officers 326 men)
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