"Bow gunner open fire" A ridiculous order, for the U-Boat was still miles away and our ammunition was limited. Also, most effective use of fifty caliber machine guns calls for them to fired in short bursts to allow some cooling of the barrels. Tell that to a sailor riding down a trail of tracer smoke while the adrenaline races through his blood stream. We still had a mile to target when the bow guns seized up and we sat helplessly watching the U-Boat’s conning tower come closer. Close enough to see the gun crews, stripped to the waist, doing everything they could to keep those depth charges from tumbling from our bomb bays. The Plane Commander at least had something to do, concentrate on the attack which he did brilliantly, dropping the string so that two charges landed on either side of the U-Boat--a perfect bracket.

Miraculously we had not sustained a single hit from those lethal cannons. But that soon changed. It was jokingly said in Anti Submarine Warfare circles that to get credit for a U-Boat kill you had to bring back the skipper’s drawers. The next best thing was pictures. Our plane commander was determined to bring back pictures and so he set up a circle around the sub so the waist photographer could record the evidence. In so doing he had underestimated the courage of the U- Boat crew. Later pictures at the time of the attack showed the charges perfectly placed which meant the gun crews were not only badly shaken but drenched by the spray. They quickly recovered and soon we were again seeing tracers headed in our direction as we circled at constant range. This time, however, their aim was more effective. I saw the strut of one of the wingtip floats disappear leaving jagged edges of twisted metal. The radioman in the midst of sending off his contact report suddenly screamed, "I’m hit" and came up to the cockpit with blood streaming from his leg. The shell that got to him actually hit the side of the hull just below the waterline and the shrapnel had come up through the flight deck from below. Once he realized he was not mortally wounded he cried out gleefully "I’ll get the Purple Heart". Two weeks earlier self-sealing fuel tanks had been installed. If that had that not been the case you would not be reading this little memoir.

As the twenty millimeter gunners apparently had ‘got the range’ we were finally able to convince our gung-ho plane commander that we had done the job we were sent out to do and bear off and get the wounded back to base. Darkness had set in by the time we returned to San Juan harbor and we had no idea now bad the below the waterline damage was or if the damaged wingtip float would keep the wing out of the water after landing. Quick work on the part of the beaching crew got us on the ‘dry quickly and the ambulance dashed off with the wounded, none of whom were seriously hurt. The aircraft was another story. We had taken three hits, one of which just missed severing the flight controls to the tail assembly. The Admiral, tired of my insisting that the U- Boat’s guns were of heavy caliber, sent me off to recover pieces of shrapnel for examination. While in the plane, now on its beaching gear in the hangar, we felt a swaying and rocking and quickly evacuated the aircraft to the hangar floor to discover that we had just experienced a rather heavy earthquake. Later it turned out that officers in the pool at the O-Club noticed a wave action in the water of the pool. In 1997, Mrs. Christa Von Hillenbrant, Director of the Puerto Rico Seismic Network, advised me that this was indeed a large earthquake (7.4 on the Richter scale). However it did almost no reported damage.

The war went on and we all matured. It was many years later that confirmation was finally received that the U-Boat we had attacked was last heard from on the day of the attack and never returned to base. By that time we all had our hands full raising families and trying to progress in our chosen profession.

In 1981, retired and carrying out a long dreamed of voyage in my sloop YTIEMPO II, I found myself back in a familiar area, just south of Mona Island. The voyage from the Panama Canal had been tedious with strong headwinds all the way, breakdown of rigging, trouble with the diesel engine and we were wet and tired as we neared the end of our two month voyage from Los Angeles. Our three man crew, new to each other at the start of the trip was looking forward to completing the trip and didn’t particularly’ care if we never saw each other again. We were crossing between Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, just south of Mona Passage. As the light faded with the setting sun and we enjoyed our evening scotch 1 thought again of that evening thirty-eight years before when two small groups of young men found themselves pitted against one another in an unfriendly theater. As I contemplated the darkening sea I tried to imagine what it would be like on the deck of a mortally wounded submarine thousands of miles from home. Our little sloop had life jackets and a life raft with all kinds of emergency supplies. We weren’t expecting to have to use them, but they were there if needed. A U-Boat could not afford such luxuries. The water now, as then, was about seventy-nine degrees. Land was not visible anywhere. It would take a long time for hypothermia to set in.

That we would be passing over this exact spot had occurred to me early on. Thoughts of a little ceremony as we did so crossed my mind. I had not mentioned it to my crew. Now, here we were at the exact spot on the earth’s surface 1 had been thirty eight years ago, and coincidentally, in the same twilight conditions. Somehow it seemed a private matter. I raised my glass to my lips and drank a silent toast to a band of courageous young men who rested forever many thousands of feet beneath our hull.

In 1994, fifty-one years after the event, Naval Institute Press published THE U-BOAT WAR IN THE CARIBBEAN by Gaylord T. M. Kelshall of Trinidad. From this detailed and well researched record I learned that U359 had been commanded by Kaptaainleutenant Heinz Forster. I often wondered how it was possible that the U-Boat gunners had missed such a large target at such close range. Mr. Kelshall pointed out that U359 had taken vigorous evasive action. In the calm reflection of later years it dawned on me that perhaps the very action of turning into the aircraft to save his boat may have been a fatal error, for in so doing the outgoing rounds may have been deflected just enough to miss the PBM during the attack phase.

Emmett Evans

April, 1998