HITLER’S SABOTEURS LAND BY U-BOAT

The Type VIIC U-boat, U-202 ‘Innsbruck’, skippered by Kapitänleutnant Hans-Heinz Lindner had left Lorient in Brittany on 26 May 1942 and was heading west, running on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean at night and submerged by day. Every day there was a practice alarm when the submarine crash-dived deep into the water as each man raced to his station.

It was an uncomfortable first underwater ride for the U-boat’s four civilian passengers who had been squeezed in the cramped quarters for the journey to the United States. There were no bathing facilities and the crew did their best to keep clean by swabbing with alcohol. The constant stench of diesel fumes and cooking in the galley, together with long hours of boredom, added to the seasickness suffered by John Dasch, Peter Burger, Heinrich Henck and Richard Quirin.

These four men had been selected to be part of Operation Pastorius by Walter Kappe, who ran a small, somewhat independent, German intelligence unit from a third-floor office at Rankestraße 8, Berlin. The objective was to establish a permanent espionage organisation with headquarters in Chicago, a city which had been characterised as having a particularly anti-war culture.

For another three weeks the four men endured the sort of atmosphere that none of them could have been prepared for. It would have come as relief, therefore, when Lindner told them that they were approaching the Newfoundland Banks, Canada but the thought of what was coming next would soon have had their pulses racing. They became increasingly nervous, endlessly checking their kit and equipment and practicing getting into the rubber dirigible that would take them from ship to shore. Persistent thick fog off Nova Scotia, Canada and the threat of US coastal patrols ratcheted up tension within the rest of the U-boat crew who were now much closer to the US coast than they had ever been before.

Then on the evening of 12 June 1941, the skies cleared and Lindner was able to take bearings which he thought put his ship off Long Island at East Hampton, New York. He was out by 3 miles, actually lying off Amagansett, New York, which, under the circumstances, was still a remarkable feat of navigation. Dasch and his men changed into military uniform and checked their gear one last time.

The U-boat inched its way towards the shore and surfaced into another fog bank that had descended with the dusk. The dirigible was inflated and tied with a towline that was meant to guide it back to the boat in the fog after landing the saboteurs. Just after midnight, the four men and two crew loaded the boxes and U-202 quickly disappeared in the fog as they pulled away.

It was something of a bare-knuckle ride. The water was choppy and threatened to dump them all into the water as they rode the surf towards then shore. It was a huge relief when they ran aground on the sandy beach and the boxes could be quickly unloaded while the two crewmen emptied the dirigible of water ready for their return to the submarine. Dasch remained with the sailors while the others carried the four boxes up the beach and changed into their civilian clothes.

When Dasch followed them some moments later he was surprised by a man walking along the beach with a flashlight. Dasch quickly approached the man to prevent him observing the sailors in the boat and realised that he was a member of the Coast Guard. The guard, John Cullen, asked Dasch what he was doing on the beach in the fog and Dasch told him that he had just landed a fishing boat and was trying to work out which part of the beach he had arrived at. Cullen suggested that he accompany him to the Coast Guard station, but Dasch was obviously disinclined to do that.

Dasch had to decide whether to follow the instructions Kappe had given him in the event of being discovered – which was to lure the man down to the water’s edge where he could be overpowered by the sailors. However, Dasch could see that the guard was little more than a youth and he baulked at the thought of killing him. He tried instead the option of bribing the man to go away. He was not having much luck with this when Burger appeared out of the fog dragging a duffel bag full of discarded uniforms and speaking to Dasch in German. He saw Cullen and gave him a hard look.

Cullen became aware that Dasch was wearing a kind of uniform and when the other man had spoken German it dawned on him that they were probably engaged in some sort of illegal activity. Dasch sensed that Cullen was now quite scared and played on that. The best Cullen could do, he told him, was take some money, go away and pretend he had never seen them. He thrust a handful of notes into Cullen’s hand.

Cullen took what turned out to be $260, turned and quickly left. The saboteurs now buried the boxes in the sand and Dasch hurriedly changed into his civilian clothes. Dasch would later boast to the FBI that he had ‘fooled that little navy boy’. Meanwhile, the distant sound of a U-boat engine fading away in the fog brought home to all four of them the cold reality that what they were now involved with was no longer a theoretical exercise – they had arrived in the United States to spy for Nazi Germany.

The full story of the mission undertaken by John Dasch, Peter Burger, Heinrich Henck and Richard Quirin is revealed by Norman Ridley in his book Spying for Hitler, due out at the end of October and available now for pre-order.