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.’There was a rustling of papers and Schneider said, ‘Sir.At 1230 there will be lunch in a restaurant adjacent to the dockyard.At 1430 we meet Herr Dorsch, the architect from the Todt Organisation, and tour the dockyard.At 1600 we have a general review meeting with the Naval Commander, Brest.Also you will wish to meet U-319 when it returns.The last ETA we received was 1530.’Doenitz nodded.‘Very well.’U-319 was commanded by Kapitanleutnant Fischer.Fischer was a good man.He had done especially well on this patrol.Doenitz remembered the brief radio signal received at HQ in Paris yesterday.It had reported six ships sunk.Six! And by one boat during a five-day patrol.It was remarkable.Yet many of the other boats were achieving great successes too.The average sinkings per U-boat per day were way up.September should be a record month, with at least fifty ships sunk.Fischer already wore the decoration of the Iron Cross of the Knight’s Cross, First Class.Doenitz would present him with the Oak Leaves this afternoon.In the U-boat Arm they did not wait for boards of senior officers to approve awards; decorations were given immediately, on the dockside, when emotions were running at their highest and the men could share the recipient’s moment of glory.The car was travelling along the edge of a wide estuary.The occasional farmhouse had given way to a string of small villas: they were coming into Brest.Doenitz considered the rest of the day’s programme: the planning session with the Todt Organisation man should be straightforward.It was a matter of discussing the construction of the necessary dockyard modifications.Work was already in progress.They were using Polish labour apparently, and Poles always worked hard.The staff meeting would be the usual mixture of optimism and resignation.The staff did not bother – or maybe, Doenitz wondered, they did not dare – to ask for the one thing they knew he could not provide: more boats.Only six new U-boats were being launched this month; in August it was a disastrous two.It had been the same in May, June, and July … Not enough even to replace losses!The High Command always told him it was a matter of resources – what they really meant was that everything was going into Goering’s precious Luftwaffe.They were descending into the dockyard area.The car swept in through some large stone gates and approached an ugly grey stone building over which flew the flag of the Third Reich and the ensign of the Kriegsmarine.Waiting on the steps of the building were the commander of the 1st U-boat Flotilla and his staff.An ordinary seaman was keeping a tight rein on the flotilla’s mascot, a goat draped with the flotilla’s insignia.Doenitz was pleased.Back in 1935 this flotilla had been the one and only U-boat flotilla, and Doenitz himself had been its commander.Doenitz remembered with pride that the men themselves had thought them up, the insignia and the mascot.Immediately the greetings were over they went to the restaurant.The lunch was indifferent.Doenitz considered French food to be very overrated.The wine, however, was excellent, though he drank very little.He cut the lunch short and they started the tour of the dockyard early.Brest was a well-developed port, as one would expect of one of France’s major naval bases, and considerable repair facilities already existed.It was a question of making modifications, Dorsch explained.The larger drydocks needed to be adapted to take two U-boats at a time; also more engineering shops and welding facilities would have to be created.‘How long will the work take?’ Doenitz asked.‘Eight weeks at the most.’‘Good.’ Once the work was done another flotilla could be moved to Brest from Kiel.Doenitz wanted as many boats as possible here, where they would be most effective.As the party walked slowly back towards the cars the distant drone of a plane sounded high in the sky.Everyone looked up.‘One of ours.’Doenitz nodded.So it should be.Goering had promised air supremacy: he’d better deliver it otherwise here in port the U-boats would be totally vulnerable to air attack.Rumour had it that the air battle with Britain was not going so well.He turned to the architect.‘Herr Dorsch, how long would it take to create sail-in bunkers for my boats? Ones that would be invulnerable to air attack?’Dorsch was taken by surprise.‘Oh? Er, I would think – allowing for the fact that the roof would have to be massively thick – my goodness, yes, very thick indeed … er, I would say, at least six months.All the concrete … all the labour.How many boats would need to be protected at once?’‘Ten, twelve, more if it was possible.’‘It would be … a massive project.’‘But possible?’‘Oh yes! Most certainly!’Doenitz was pleased.If the air battle was lost then at least his boats would be safe in port.That left one really vulnerable point: the run across the Bay of Biscay.It was here, in the approaches to his new French bases – Brest, Lorient, La Palice and St Nazaire – that his boats were most exposed to enemy air patrols.Rather than search the open Atlantic, it was easier for the British to wait for departing or returning boats in the Bay.He made a mental note to ask at the staff meeting about the current state of enemy air activity.What the U-boats really needed was proper air cover.But they never got it, Goering saw to that.Back at headquarters the flotilla commander, Korvetten-kapitan Scheer, was waiting and the meeting began promptly.The routine reports of successes, losses, and mechanical breakdowns were read out.The U-boat quotient – the average tonnage sunk per U-boat per day – was going up monthly.Everyone was pleased.‘But soon it will go up very much more,’ Doenitz said.He explained that, as soon as another flotilla could be based on the French coast, they would have enough boats to reintroduce properly organised wolf pack tactics.The wolf pack would increase kills dramatically.Doenitz also promised first-class intelligence to help locate convoys.Then they looked at the problems.Scheer, the flotilla commander, was most concerned about air attacks.The RAF had taken to carrying – and dropping – depth charges.And as Doenitz had foreseen, many of the attacks were being made in the Bay of Biscay.‘But the boats manage to dive in time?’ Doenitz asked.‘Yes,’ Scheer agreed, ‘but sometimes it’s closer than we’d like.In bad visibility the enemy never find us, of course
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