Foto attribuita all'U-234 http://members.xoom.com/betterjoe/u837_2.jpg

[Original headline: Jet plane, not uranium, was U-boat's prize cargo]

The German U-boat whose crew, along with a pompous Luftwaffe general, surrendered in Portsmouth Harbor at the close of World War II had been the subject of an intensive Allied intelligence operation, a researcher reports in her new book on wartime uranium movements.

Through the decoding of secret German messages, British and American intelligence had tracked the course of the German submarine U-234 through its construction, rebuilding after a collision, the assembling of its remarkable human and non-human cargo, and the interrupted journey that was to have terminated in the Far East.

In her book, "Uranium Merchants," soon to be published by McGraw Hill, environmental health professor Vilma R. Hunt unveils these and other conclusions based on her research of the odyssey of U-234 and other matters of wartime uranium commerce.

U-234 made news twice, once for its high-visibility surrender in Portsmouth in 1945, and again in the mid-1980s after the U.S. government declassified information that the sub had been carrying 560 kilograms of uranium oxide.

Uranium oxide is the form in which uranium is mined, before it is refined through a complex process into the product that powers electric plants and (at least a half century ago) atom bombs.

Robert K. Wilcox, who has written books on controversial and mysterious military matters, surmised in the 1995 edition of his book, "Japan's Secret War," that U-234 was transporting the substance to Japan for incorporation into an atom bomb project he believes Japan was undertaking at a site in what is now North Korea.

Now Hunt, who has spent years on the trail of U-234's cargo and route, is publishing her own conclusions, some of which challenge some of Wilcox's own research. Her conclusions include these premises:

-- That the uranium oxide was not intended for an atom bomb building project in Japan but, instead, was to be used to harden steel in Japanese tanks and other military armaments Japan needed to defend its dwindling land holdings against the advancing Allied forces.

-- That the primary mission of the U-boat had nothing to do with the uranium on board but with Germany's pioneering of jet fighters. One such fighter, the Messerschmidt ME-262, had been disassembled and loaded on the sub along with a copy of its plans.

-- That the capture of U-234 was enabled by Sigent, the British and American intelligence activity that broke the Germans' top-secret military code, thus allowing the Allies access to information on where the U-boats were, where they were headed, and what they carried.

Sigent had been following U-234 long before it embarked on its journey, Hunt speculates. The U-boat's mission was of such importance to the Allies that, upon receiving reports of the sub's course, authorities ordered a United States Navy ship, the USS Sutton, to track it down and place an armed guard on it — orders, Hunt says, that "went beyond the usual, and were obviously out of the ordinary." The Sutton and two Canadian ships chased it, boarded it and placed the crew under guard. U-234 had a three-ship escort into Portsmouth Harbor.

The Messerschmidt, plus a disassembled Junkers fighter aircraft were being escorted to Japan, Hunt concludes, under the supervision of the monocled Lt. Gen. Ulrich Kessler of the German Luftwaffe and a cadre of Japanese and German aircraft experts.

The war was all but over for Germany in May 1945 when U-234 sailed out of port, but the foundering Nazi German government was attempting to support its ally in the Far East by enabling Japan to inject jet aircraft warfare into a Pacific theater war that still was being waged with propeller-driven aircraft, Hunt concludes.

According to Hunt, U-234 wasn't the first U-boat to attempt to deliver jet aircraft parts and plans to the Japanese.

On Feb. 5, 1945, another cargo-carrying U-boat, U-864, was sunk. It carried plans and parts for the ME-262 twin jet fighter and for the Messerschmidt 163 Komet-rocket-powered interceptor, she reports.

"The Messerschmidt 262 fighter was of overriding importance to the captors of U-234," Hunt writes. "The first jet fighter in the European skies, it had not been fully tested in combat. . . To have a complete jet aircraft with its plans land in their (U.S. authorities) lap was almost too good to be true."

Kessler, who some researchers have speculated knew the war was lost and was plotting to escape to Germany-friendly Argentina, was actually on his way to Japan and then Indonesia where he would head up the manufacturing operations for the Messerschmidt jet, she reports in "Uranium Merchants."

"The plot thickens," Wilcox, author of "Japan's Secret War," said last week when told of Hunt's conclusions.

"I was not privy to all the records on what that uranium was to be used for, but according to a recent book by Wolfgang Hirschfeld, the surviving member of U-234's crew, he saw the containers and remembers they were labeled 'U-305,' which is the exact byproduct of fission, and this suggests it was to be used in an atomic program, not tanks."

Wilcox said people involved in World War II intelligence missions to Germany and Japan told him that when U-234 arrived in Portsmouth, "there was a lot of hush-hush." He said he was told Robert Oppenheimer, director of the atomic laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., made a visit to the site of the uranium oxide.

Wilcox said research by a British physicist revealed that the Germans and the Japanese were working on "some sort of a radiation bomb."

The U-234 surfaced on May 10, 1945, in the mid-Atlantic to learn the war was over and high-level German authorities were radioing orders to U-boats to surrender to the Allied authority closest to their position

U-234's captain, Lt. Johann Heinrich Fehler, held a rare conference with his officers to gauge their feelings on whether to surrender or try to make a dash for South America (or a desert island, as one former sub officer told the Sunday News in 1995).

Fehler decided to make a break for it. He radioed Allied authorities that he was headed northwest toward Halifax, Nova Scotia, at 8 knots (nautical miles an hour), then scrambled across the Atlantic on a southwest course at 16 knots.

Two Japanese on board, a submarine designer and an aircraft expert, committed suicide and the German crew buried them at sea.

The German officer, Lt. Karl Ernst Pfaff, later told the Sunday News he knew nothing of the uranium oxide on board and, had he known, it would have had no significance for him. It would be three months before the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima and, until then, the Manhattan Project and its production of the first atom bombs were well-guarded secrets.

Fehler may have known what was in the 10 small, heavy boxes, Pfaff speculated 50 years after the end of the war, but even he could not have known the uranium oxide's potential.

U-234 was captured and brought in to the Portsmouth Navy Yard on May 19. In 1947 it was destroyed in target practice in waters off Cape Cod.

Officers and crew of the other U-boats brought in to Portsmouth were bused to jail. But U-234's officers were taken to Washington, D.C., then to a military installation in Virginia where, as Pfaff reported in 1995, he was ordered by U.S. officials to open the boxes that contained the substance Pfaff did not know was uranium oxide.

Pfaff, now an American citizen living in Washington state, said the box opening was supervised by a man he later learned was Robert Oppenheimer.

Professor Hunt, who has taught environmental health at Pennsylvania State University and the Harvard School of Public Health, discovered U-234 during her research for her book on uranium. She lives in Massachusetts.

Hunt's book is a commercial history of uranium since the end of the 19th century when the Japanese and French were already using it — the Japanese, she said, defeated the Russians in 1906 with armaments strengthened with uranium steel.

In 1915, rich deposits of uranium ore were found in the Belgian Congo. Before World War II, Belgium stocked up on uranium oxide from the Congo at its own refineries near Antwerp.

It was from these refineries that the uranium oxide that was loaded on board U-234 came, she said.

U-234, originally a minelayer, was built at Krupps Germania boat yard in Kiel in north Germany. It was converted into a large cargo boat but its maiden (and only) trans-Atlantic voyage was delayed for a year while it underwent repairs after a collision.

U-234 left Kiel on March 25, 1945, picked up General Kessler in a Norway port, and set out for Japan and Singapore. Fehler opted for the western route which, though longer, was less risky than the eastern route through Russian-patrolled seaways.

The aircraft on board, she learned, were destined for a Japanese aircraft manufacturing facility in Singapore.

Kessler, she also learned, was to head up the plant that would give the Japanese superior airwar capability as well as provide a naval air arm for Germany. He was also to oversee the transfer of German aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons capability to the Japanese.

In wartime, as in the Cold War years that ensued, competition for uranium was intense. It was important for the U.S. to know which countries — particularly enemy nations — were getting their uranium from where, and what they were doing with it.

Consequently, Hunt says, the primary importance of the find was that it gave atomic project authorities what she calls "an intelligence window" into Germany's use of certain uranium supplies, and helped them understand Germany's patterns of uranium purchase.

As to the Messerschmidt, Hunt feels U.S. authorities must have been delighted not only to divert it from its destination but to have it, and its plans, for their own intelligence-gathering. The technology that went into the development of the ME-262 was cutting-edge in 1945.

And so, 55 years after the historic capture of U-234 with its top-secret cargo, as more sources of information are opened up to researchers, the nature of U-234's mission continues to intrigue historians such as Wilcox and Hunt.

(This is not the U-Boat that Vance brought in)

NEW HAMPSHIRE SUNDAY NEWS, Manchester,
N.H. -- April 30, 1995
NAZI SUB
How U-234 Brought Its Deadly Secret Cargo to New Hampshire.
By PAT HAMMOND Sunday News Staff

AT FIRST, the men on the submarine thought it was a trick. The radio message from the German High Command told them the war was over; they were to surrender to the nearest Allied authorities.

The U-234, 294 feet long and 22,000 tons fully loaded, was one of the titans of the German undersea fleet; it had surfaced briefly somewhere in the midAtlantic at this pivotal moment in its history -- May 10, 1944 -- to receive radio messages and find out what was happening in the European war.

No trick: The war in Europe was over.
The mystery of U-234 and its cargo had just begun, however. The boat was en route to Japan on a secret mission, carrying enough uranium to make two atomic bombs. She would end her journey at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard instead.

The radio message was so stark, so shocking, Lt. Johann Heinrich Fehler, captain of U-234, wasn't about to take it on face value. He would have to test it out, make sure it was authentic, before deciding what his response would be.

The message, issued under the auspices of Admiral Karl Doenitz, former German U-boat chief elevated to supreme commander after the death of Adolf Hitler, praised all U-boat crews for "fighting like lions" for more than six years and then informed them that the enemy's material superiority had driven Germany to defeat.

"We proudly remember our fallen comrades," Doenitz consoled. "Long live Germany!" He ordered surrender.

U-234 immediately submerged. "They are trying to trick us," Fehler speculated, "they" being the enemy -- Britain, Canada, the United States.

Fehler knew all about tricks. As an officer aboard the German raider Atlantis, he'd become familiar with the ship's somewhat infamous means of surface deception. The Atlantis would disguise itself as a friendly ship and lure enemy ships to within range of its camouflaged guns before opening fire. The Atlantis had thus bagged 22 Allied ships before it was sunk by the British cruiser, Devonshire; in November 1941.

U-234 sent out a message of its own to a nearby U-boat, in a special code that only captains could send and decipher.

"We have received a very funny message," Fehler radioed. "Have we surrendered? Is it true?"

The reply convinced him the message was no trick. His orders were to surface, to hoist a black flag on U-234's periscope, and to report his position to the Allies.

Not yet.
Fehler was a German officer which meant when he gave orders everybody snapped to But, for whatever reasons, the man who had earned the nick name "Dynamite" for his job of scuttling captured vessels decided to exercise some democracy that day.

Uranium Oxide

He asked for opinions from some of his colleagues in the converted minelayer whose cargo contained enough uranium oxide to blow up two American cities -- 1,235 pounds of it, possibly destined for a Japanese atomic bomb program. But it is likely that nobody knew about the cargo except Fehler. The officers and crew therefoer were not thinking of uranium when they replied. "We have enough food to last us for years," remarked the boyish second officer, Lt. Karl Ernst Pfaff. "I think we should go to the South Sea and find a desered island with beautiful girls."

It had momentarily slipped Pfaffs mind that he was engaged to Fehler's sister-in-law. Fehler laughed. "That is wishful thinking," he told the 22-year-old Berliner who would never be his brother-in-law.

A pattern of responses emerged, the younger men tending to share Pfaffs compulsion to run from it all while the older ones just wanted to go home to their families and forget the war.

Geography was a major factor in that U-234's position lay at the convergence of four Allied zones established for U-boat surrenders. Fehler could have surrendered to the enemy port of his choice. Britain, Gibraltar, Canada or the United States; or he could have attempted to return to Germany.

The latter would have been risky, Fehler knew, because the Russians -- no admirers of Hitlerite fighting men -- had been expanding naval operations in German waters. Neither he nor anybody on board wished to become a Soviet prisoner.

Picked U.S.

Fehler surmised that if they surrendered to Canada or Great Britain, they would be taken prisoner, first in Canada, then England and eventually France and it could be many years before the men returned to their homes.

Fehler perceived Americans as "not warfaring people, not very military." At worst, he predicted they could be paraded through the streets, showcased so to speak as proof that real, live U boat crew members had been captured , and then sent home.

Fehler decided to turn U-234 into the gentle Americans. But he had to make sure the Canadians didn't get to him first.

U-234 radioed authorities in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that it was headed northwest, toward Halifax, at 8 knots (8 nautical miles an hour). In reality, U-234 was barrelling across the Atlantic at 16 knots on a more or less southwest course, to the port of Newport News, Va.

Japanese Passengers

The depressed atmosphere inside the black-flag-flying U-boat was disrupted by an incident involving two passengers, Imperial Japanese Navy Lieutenant Commander Hideo Tomonaga, a leading Japanese submarine designer, and Lieutenant Commander Genzo Shoji, an aircraft expert, who had come along to study German weaponry.(Whether they also knew of the atomic cargo remains one of the unsolved mysteries of U-234.)

Fehler explained to the Japanese that he had to surrender because he had to obey his high command just as they would have to follow theirs.

An officer later recalled, "They returned to their bunks where they took Luminol, a very powerful barbiturate, lay down and pulled the curtains and we knew they were killing themselves, and that was their right. They took more than 36 hours to die. Then we buried them at sea, as we would do for any one of our own."

Ulrich Kessler

The passenger list also included German Luftwaffe Lieutenant General Ulrich Kessler, former commander of special bombing and attack wings based in Norway. Submarine officers may not have become familiar with him on the trip as he and they had little in common.

Kessler, with a monocle over one eye and a perpetual air of arrogance, passed his time reading books and, upon arrival in Portsmouth, would surrender with a smart salute to the highest-ranking U.S. officer on hand. He later bragged to reporters that he'd learned how to accept defeat in style after World War I and expected he might have to do so even a third time.

But, displaying another, more practical side, Kessler admitted during interrogation that he had intended all along to get off the sub at Argentina -- not an unbelievable story in light of the fact that many top-ranking Germans already had fled to that South American country.

Whether Kessler knew of the atomic cargo remains a mystery today. Researchers find it more likely Kessler, knowing the war was about to be lost, had boarded the sub as a means of escape.

The discrepancy between Fehler's reported and actual course was soon recognized by U.S. authorities who dispatched two destroyers to intercept U-234, wherever it was.

One evening as it plowed the seas south of Newfoundland Banks, U-234 spotted a huge searchlight on the horizon. The destroyer Sutton approached and asked U-234 to identify itself. Crew members of the Sutton boarded and took charge, redirecting it to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where three other U-boats, U-805, U-873 and U-1228, had surrendered within the last few days.

News of the surrender of the giant sub with its high-ranking Luftwaffe passengers turned the surrender into a major news event. Reporters swarmed over the Navy Yard and went to sea in a small boat for an earlier view of the prize.

But the big story -- the more than half a ton of uranium oxide on board -- was promptly covered up.

The United States military, in collaboration with worried officials of the top-secret Manhattan Project, had its own atomic program that would culminate in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August.

Even after the war ended, documents reporting the uranium cargo on U-234 remained classified for the duration of the Cold War as America guarded all its atomic secrets from the new enemy: The Soviet Union.

Researcher Fascinated

Velma Hunt is a retired Penn State University environmental health professor who has spent years researching health issues as They pertain to uranium and tracking uranium shipments during the 1940s. She is fascinated with the U-234.

Hunt says finding out the truth about the sub's cargo was complicated by looting by drunken American sailors who not only carried away souvenirs but also managed to lose documents that might have provided crucial details about the origins and intended destination of the uranium.

"Captain Fehler," Hunt ~said, "while complaining about the looting, mentioned he was all the more indignant about it, considering all he had had to do was pull a lever and every mine shaft would have emptied its contents into the ocean." That would have included the uranium, Hunt said.

Hunt said the U-234 and the Sutton may have gone into two ports between the surrender and the arrival at Portsmouth Navy Yard, once in Newfoundland when an American sailor mistakenly shot in the buttocks had to be evacuated for post-surgical treatment, and once again at Casco Bay. The unscheduled landings presented a problem for Ilmerican intelligence personnel, who worried that some cargo might have been off-loaded in the two ports.

The 41 crew members, six officers and nine passengers had been transferred to a Coast Guard vessel at sea. Fehler's arrival was something less than ceremonious.

Raised Ruckus

Portsmouth radio station WHEB reporter Charlie Gray watched them come ashore at the Navy Yard on May 19 and later reported that Captain Fehler raised a ruckus when he was forced to sit with his men and keep his arms folded.

"He compared the tactics of U.S. Naval personnel to that of gangsters," Gray reported, whereupon an American officer retorted, "That's just what YOU are."

Gray described the crew as looking well-fed but wearing the most nondescript uniforms he'd ever seen on a German sub crew. All were dirty, he said, and each carried a small leather bag, canteen, and blankets.

The men of U-234 joined the officers and crews of the three subs that preceded them, as prisoners in the custody of the U.S. Navy. While at the Charles Street Jail in Boston, where they were being held while in transit to more permanent quarters, the commander of the U-boat U-873 slashed his