U-boat captain who shot down NZ VC-winner found

[tibor]

The captain of the U-Boat whose anti-aircraft fire shot down New Zealand Victoria Cross winner Lloyd Trigg's Royal Air Force Liberator more than 60 years ago is still alive in Germany, an Auckland aviation researcher has discovered.

Arthur "Digger" Arculus has also unearthed fresh details about the fierce Atlantic action that cost the lives of Trigg, his seven crew and many of the submarine's complement.

Uniquely, it was the testimony of the enemy skipper, Klemens Schamong, and the other few survivors from U-468, destroyed by Trigg's exploding depth charges as his aircraft plunged into the sea, that led to the posthumous award of the Commonwealth's highest award for bravery.

Trigg and his men perished on August 11, 1943, 386km off Dakar, West Africa, as they attacked U-468 on the ocean surface. Shells from the German vessel's flak guns ripped into the Liberator but the sheets of flames that erupted did not deter Trigg...

The rest of the story is at: www.stuff.co.nz/4030262a11.html

The story also mentions Triggs' crew. Four of the other seven airmen killed with him were New Zealanders – Ivan Marinovich (navigator), 26, from Auckland, Arthur Bennett (wireless operator), 29, Lower Hutt, Lawrence Frost (gunner), 22, Auckland, and Terry Soper (gunner), 21, Takaka.

Obviously they did not all get VC's, but I'm assuming they were decorated - they certainly deserved to be.

[Dave Homewood]

Hey, that's fantastic, and really fascinating. Arthur is actually a member of this forum though I don't think he's posted much.

I thought I'd better post the whole article here as those stuff.co.nz pages disappear after a few days.

U-boat captain who shot down NZ VC-winner found
By MAX LAMBERT - NZPA | Wednesday, 18 April 2007

The captain of the U-Boat whose anti-aircraft fire shot down New Zealand Victoria Cross winner Lloyd Trigg's Royal Air Force Liberator more than 60 years ago is still alive in Germany, an Auckland aviation researcher has discovered.

Arthur "Digger" Arculus has also unearthed fresh details about the fierce Atlantic action that cost the lives of Trigg, his seven crew and many of the submarine's complement.

Uniquely, it was the testimony of the enemy skipper, Klemens Schamong, and the other few survivors from U-468, destroyed by Trigg's exploding depth charges as his aircraft plunged into the sea, that led to the posthumous award of the Commonwealth's highest award for bravery.

Trigg and his men perished on August 11, 1943, 386km off Dakar, West Africa, as they attacked U-468 on the ocean surface. Shells from the German vessel's flak guns ripped into the Liberator but the sheets of flames that erupted did not deter Trigg.

The depth charges released moments before the aircraft crashed exploded alongside the submarine with devastating effect. Schamong told Arculus they "damaged the boat to death".

Now 90, the old seaman lives in a small town not far from Kiel where his U-Boat was built, and commissioned exactly a year before its sinking.

When Arculus began researching Trigg's story for young Australian Sam Biddle, an eight-year-old grandson of a Trigg cousin, who wanted to know more about his famous relation, he decided to try to find out what had happened to Schamong.

Arculus, 80, started his Schamong quest by e-mailing a German contact. The man's detective work eventually turned up a John Schamong, a Captain in the German Navy. More checks showed he was indeed the son of the old submariner and, yes, his father was still alive.

Schamong Senior responded to an Arculus letter with a short note about the sinking and several enclosures, among them an old letter from the Canadian navigator of the RAF Sunderland that found the U-Boat survivors.

Schamong remembered the Atlantic action vividly: "We opened deadly fire from our `two 20mm cannons' and the first salvo at a distance of 2000m set the plane on fire. Despite this, Trigg continued his attack. He did not give up as we thought and hoped. His plane. . . flew deeper and deeper. We could see our deadly fire piercing through his hull. And when Trigg was almost over us we saw his `ash cans' coming down on us and (they) exploded and damaged the boat to death."

It was not surprising Schamong expected Trigg to "give up" because on an earlier patrol the sub's flak frightened off a Grumman Avenger from a US carrier escorting an Atlantic convoy.

Schamong told Arculus that he informed interrogators after his rescue that "such a gallant fighter as Trigg would have been decorated in Germany with the highest medal or order".

The letter said little else so Arculus asked Horst Ahrens, a friend in Kiel, to put a handful of questions to Schamong. Unfortunately the ex-skipper did not wish to go further.

It might have ended there but Arculus has since received a copy of the now declassified October 1943 Naval Intelligence Division (NID) report disclosing what had been learned from the interrogation of Schamong and the other survivors after their arrival in Britain as POWs.

The report said the U-Boat's shooting was so accurate the Liberator was on fire before she had properly lined up the sub.

"She nevertheless ran in to attack with great determination and without deviating to avoid the U-Boat's sustained and heavy fire."

The aircraft crossed the submarine behind the bridge at a height of just 15m, hit the sea 300m away and blew up. But as she roared over the U-Boat the depth charges tumbled down, two exploding with tremendous force within 2m of the submarine.

"The whole U-Boat was thrown violently upward and suffered catastrophic damage."

The massive blasts ruptured the hull, tore engines, motors and transformers from their mountings, blew the fuel tank above the diesels down and shook equipment off bulkheads.

Water poured into the battery compartment and the sub filled with clouds of choking, killing chlorine gas, submariners' worst nightmare.

The U-Boat went down inside 10 minutes, leaving 20 swimming crew battling the horror of sharks and barracuda, attracted by blood leaking from wounds.

Then miraculously a rating found an RAF rubber dinghy floating in the aircraft's debris, inflated it and climbed in with two other seamen. Eventually, Schamong, his first lieutenant and an engineer officer supporting a wounded rating on his back were hauled in – seven survivors from a crew of 39.

A Sunderland, searching for the missing Liberator crew, spotted the dinghy the following day, its crew understandably jumping to the conclusion the waving men were their RAF mates.

Arculus' research trail led recently to Patrick Dempsey, 84, the Sunderland's Canadian navigator, now living in Florida.

Dempsey says he remembers watching sharks circling the dinghy and some swimming under it. "We could see them very plainly from the air."

He worked out the position of the dingy, radioed it to base "and then we prepared to drop two emergency supply packs which were about the size of a man each".

The Sunderland made two runs, the first so accurate the package almost hit the dinghy, scaring the Germans out of their wits. The second was much further away – too far away to recover because there were no paddles in the survivors' dinghy.

The patrolling aircraft dropped marker dye and headed home. HMS Clarkia arrived the next day and took the Germans aboard.

The NID report called Schamong "a civilised type with considerable poise and charm, in marked contrast to many U-Boat officers. He nevertheless had very firm ideas of the duties of a German officer in captivity, was constantly on his guard and divulged nothing concerning his boat except the story of the sinking".

Arculus was unable to discover anything about Schamong's postwar life until he got an unexpected e-mail recently from Wolfgang Schamong, a nephew, who unravelled this small mystery.

The younger man revealed his uncle became a lawyer after the war, eventually joined Germany's Defence Ministry and in the mid-1970s headed a liaison team in Paris working on German-French naval ships. He and his wife had son John and twin daughters.

Schamong also told Arculus an astonishing story about his uncle's mother, a devout Catholic.

"Now, the same day when the `Atlantic' fight took place she was at home in Cologne asleep and suddenly woke hearing the noise of water streaming into the room. She first thought of some damage to the water pipes but then said to her husband, `It's not here. I see Klemens' U-Boat sinking but he and some others are safe'."

A mother's intuition perhaps.

Oberleutnant zur See Klemens Schamong, who joined the German navy in 1938, was the only skipper of U-468 and it was his first and last command.

The U-Boat didn't have much luck as she hunted with submarine packs in the North Atlantic during her first two patrols, sinking only one Allied ship, a small empty west-bound tanker.

She left La Pallice, on France's Atlantic Coast, on her third patrol on July 7, 1943, and was sunk by Trigg barely a month later. Schamong's fuel-short boat was returning to base when Trigg found her, creeping along the West African coast.

Flying Officer Lloyd Allan Trigg, born at Houhora, Northland, in May 1914, was about four years older than Schamong. He farmed, then became a salesman before enlisting in June 1941.

Trigg trained in Canada and after reaching England was posted to 200 Squadron in West Africa flying Hudsons.

He did about 50 operations – shipping reconnaissance, convoy patrols, anti-submarine flights – on the twin-engined aircraft before flying to the US in May 1943 for a conversion course to fly Liberators, much bigger four-engined American bombers.

The New Zealander died not knowing he had already been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for two determined attacks on U-Boats in March 1943. Notification had not reached his squadron before his death.

Four of the other seven airmen killed with him were New Zealanders – Ivan Marinovich (navigator), 26, from Auckland, Arthur Bennett (wireless operator), 29, Lower Hutt, Lawrence Frost (gunner), 22, Auckland, and Terry Soper (gunner), 21, Takaka.

Marinovich and Bennett were in Trigg's original Hudson crew and together the five hugely experienced New Zealanders collectively totalled more than 250 ops. Frost had done no fewer than 65. Two Britons and a Canadian made up the rest of the crew. All eight are commemorated on the Malta Memorial to the air war dead.

The final two sentences of Trigg's citation declare that the Liberator captain's exploit stood out in the Battle of the Atlantic as an "epic of grim determination and high courage. His was the path of duty that leads to glory".

The same could be said too of all his crew.

[Luther Moore]

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[oggie2620]

RIP Trigg and his crew. Well done Arthur for finding out more about this young man. If you guys dont mind I will put this on the www.cwfww2.com forum as they will be interested in it too. I will make sure they know where its come from!

[baronbeeza]

A little over a decade ago I was working for an airline in the UK. I initially shared a desk with our part time computer 'guru', Jim would come in and work just a few hours every week.

He was not a young chap at all and was telling me that during the war he could remember the NZ'ers being billeted in his village. What was remarkable was that he said he could remember both Trigg and Trent (it was two out of the three anyway) .
I got the impression that the aircrew used to eat at the family home.. I wished I had listened more but then again we were both working in a large open-plan office.

Those names had stuck in his mind because of their exploits and awards but he must have got to meet many of our young airman.

[Dave Homewood]

Where did this chap live? What village? I mean, Trigg spent most of his time in West Africa, and before that I'd imagine he'd not have crossed paths in the same place as Len Trent much as they were in different Commands, Trigg in Coastal Command and Trent in Bomber Command. They would both have been billeted in Brighton when they arrived in England, but there were no civvies there as far as I'm aware as it was a restricted area taken over by the military.

[baronbeeza]

It had me wondering when I wrote those comments also Dave. I was concerned that Trigg may have been in Coastal command. It was just a few minute conversation and I never thought to follow it up.
I have no doubt about Jim's sincerity. He must have been in his seventies but was a computer whizz. I think he had written aircraft engineering records software it the 1980's and just could not get away from it.
I am sure he told me that he had met two of the three. it would be my memory that has it wrong.
Could it have been Ward and Trent then ?
If that is the case then I have gone off-topic for which I apologise.
I am doing my best wracking my brains out trying to come up with his surname.
I did not mean to suggest the two were in the same place at the same time either. I have no idea of the time-frame involved.
Jim would have only been young at the time, a teenager or even younger. The memories may have been instilled in him after the event.
It was just the way he told the story, - it really did just seem like last week to him.

[jamiesoper]

Hi there, thank you for the very interesting information.
My Uncle was Flt Sgt Terry Soper.
I don't know much more than what you have already posted apart from the fact that Terry was the rear gunner on the plane. However if anybody has photos of the crew and their plane, I would love for you to share them with me and family.
I will be attending the Anzac Day service wearing both Dad's and Terry's medals with pride.
Thank you for honouring these brave men and I look forward to reading any further posts with interest.

[errolmartyn]

Apr 23, 2013 15:25:37 GMT 12 jamiesoper said:

Hi there, thank you for the very interesting information.
My Uncle was Flt Sgt Terry Soper.
I don't know much more than what you have already posted apart from the fact that Terry was the rear gunner on the plane. However if anybody has photos of the crew and their plane, I would love for you to share them with me and family.
I will be attending the Anzac Day service wearing both Dad's and Terry's medals with pride.
Thank you for honouring these brave men and I look forward to reading any further posts with interest.

From my trilogy For Your Tomorrow - A record of New Zealanders who have died while serving with the RNZAF and Allied Air Services since 1915 (Volume Fates: 1943-1998) :

Wed 11 Aug 1943
WEST AFRICA
Anti-submarine patrol SW of Bathurst
200 Squadron, RAF (Yundum, Gambia; detachment at Rufisque, French West Africa - 295 Wing)
Liberator GR.V BZ832/D - took off from Rufisque at 0729 and set out on patrol, but at 1105 was diverted to hunt for a U-boat which had just been attacked by a Catalina of 490 Sqn, RNZAF. En route, at position 1220N:2007W, some 90 miles north of the Catalina’s quarry and about 240 miles SW of Dakar, sighted another surfaced submarine. This was U-468 on its way back to base in France under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Clemens Schamong. Diving down to its 50-foot attack height, the Liberator was repeatedly hit by 20mm cannon fire as it ran in to bomb, fire breaking out in the fuselage as a salvo of depth charges released to straddle the U-boat. Both hunter and hunted were mortally injured, BZ832 surviving but seconds as it plunged into the sea 300 yards beyond its victim, exploding on impact. The eight crew are commemorated on the Malta Memorial. U-468 sank less than 10 minutes later, leaving some 20 of its crew swimming about in the shark infested waters. Ironically, Schamong and six others, who became the action’s only survivors, owed their lives to one of the Liberator’s rubber dinghies which had released in the crash. Next day they were sighted at position 1228N:1918W by Sunderland ‘H’ of 204 Sqn, which dropped supplies and signalled the corvette HMS Clarkia to come and pick them up. In an unusual turn of events, the prisoners subsequent account of their attacker’s coolness and courage so impressed British authorities that the Liberator’s captain was posthumously awarded the VC.
Captain: NZ413515 Fg Off Lloyd Allan TRIGG, VC DFC, RNZAF - Age 29. 656hrs. 47th or 51st op(?)
Navigator: NZ413103 Fg Off Ivan MARINOVICH, RNZAF - Age 26. 605hrs. 50th op.
WOpAG: NZ412861 Flt Sgt Arthur Godfrey BENNETT, RNZAF - Age 29. 488hrs. 52nd op.
WOpAG: NZ414872 Flt Sgt Lawrence James FROST, RNZAF - Age 22. 449hrs. 65th op.
WOpAG: NZ412908 Flt Sgt Terence John SOPER, RNZAF - Age 21. 420hrs. 39th op.
It will be observed that the collective experience of the five RNZAF airmen exceeded 250 sorties. This was the third and last ‘air’ VC to be earned by a New Zealander, although Sqn Ldr L H Trent’s (for his actions the previous May) was not promulgated until after the war. Trigg’s DFC was awarded in June for determined attacks against a U-boat on 28 March and another two days later. This sortie and another on the same day were 200 Squadron’s first operations undertaken with the Liberator.

And from Vol Three (Biographies & Appendices):

SOPER, Flight Sergeant Terence John.
NZ412908; b Nelson 7 Jan 22; Puramahoe Sch; tractor driver - M R Couper, Takaka. RNZAF Levin/ITW as Air Gunner u/t 11 May 41, emb for Canada 18 Jun 41, att RCAF 3 Jul 41, 3WS 5 Jul 41 [hosp 23 Oct-4 Nov], 7BGS 24 Nov 41, Air Gunners Badge & remust as Wireless Operator/Air Gunner & Sgt 22 Dec 41, 1 Y Depôt 16 Jan 42, Ferry Cmd HQ Dorval Jan 42, 'engaged on ferrying aircraft from Montreal to Newfoundland', att RAF & crewed a Hudson to UK 31 Mar 42, 3PRC c.4 Apr 42, 3RS (various a/c types) 20 May 42, 1(C)OTU (Hudson) 21 Jul 42, 1444FTF [redesignated 301FTU 1.11.42] (Hudson) c.14 Oct 42, 1OADU (Hudson) 26 Dec 42, crewed a Hudson to Gambia via Gibraltar lvg 27 Dec 42, 200 Sqn (Hudson - 37 ops, Liberator - 1 op) on arrival [det & by Liberator & Commando to Bahamas & 111OTU (Liberator) via Gold Coast, Ascension Is, Brazil, Trinidad, Puerto Rico & USA e.May-13 May 43, (crewed a Liberator?) to Gambia via Canada, Newfoundland, UK & Morocco 12-18 Jul], kao 11 Aug 43. Malta Memorial - Panel 12, Column 2. Son of Algernon Leslie & Jean Winifred Soper (née Vaughan), Takaka RMD. [OH U-boat, BSD & phot. TWN 27.10.43 & 7.6.44].

Errol

[seyeky]

Greetings Folks,
This is very interesting. I have been looking into my great Uncle who was the navigator FO Marinovich. If anyone can direct me to some pictures that would be great. I have some photos of their names on the memorial in Malta if anyone would like to see.
Regards All.

[Dave Homewood]

An interesting article here from the Evening Post dated the 16th of November 1943:

HORRIFYING ORDEAL

SURVIVORS OF A U-BOAT

(Special P. A. Correspondent.) Rec. 2.20 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 15.

The Australian commander of the corvette which picked up survivors of a U-boat sunk when Flying Officer L. A.. Trigg won the Victoria Cross has reached England. He is Lieutenant-Commander S. Darling, of Melbourne, in charge of H.M.S. Clarkia. The Clarkia was diverted from a patrol off the West African coast with instructions to pick up survivors of Trigg's Liberator plane which, had been located by another aircraft. Just before dawn one morning the Clarkia's searchlights found a rubber dinghy. It contained three or four German officers and ratings from a U-boat which Trigg had sunk. They had spent 48 hours in the dinghy. R.A.F. aircraft had dropped them food and water on the previous day, thinking they were members of the Liberator's crew.

The German captain told Lieutenant-Commander Darling that Trigg attacked towards midday. The Liberator made two attacks and was then burning around the tail. As it approached for the third attack the U-boat's anti-aircraft guns got a direct hit. The Liberator made a power-dive into the sea and disintegrated, but a stick of depth-charges exploded around the Ü-boat's hull near the batteries. Chlorine gas killed half of the men in the U-boat, which circled for 20 minutes and then sank. Twenty-four men were left struggling in the sea.

One German sighted a small packet half a mile away and began swimming towards it. He reached it half an hour after the Ü-boat sank, and discovered it was a Liberator dinghy. He inflated it, and then began a tragic and horrifying ordeal. The sea was full of sharks, and only seven Germans succeeded in reaching the dinghy. Two of them were bitten by sharks. One had a large amount of flesh torn from his thigh, and the arm of another was lacerated, showing that he had wrenched it from a shark's jaws. The last man aboard the dinghy was the captain. The remainder of the U-boat's crew were either drowned or killed by sharks. The men in the dinghy paddled round and round, but could not find any more of their comrades. The captain was only 26 years old. Four of the ratings were under 20. It was their testimony of Trigg's determined attack upon which the award of the Victoria Cross was made.

[pepe]

I'm curious.
The article quotes the U-boat captain as saying the Liberator made three attack runs before being shot down. All other reports I have read refer to just one attack run. I wonder which is correct?

[Dave Homewood]

I had always thought that Trigg had pressed home several attacks, whilst on fire. You'd not get a VC for one attack surely.

[pepe]

Dec 28, 2019 19:31:19 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I had always thought that Trigg had pressed home several attacks, whilst on fire. You'd not get a VC for one attack surely.

That is actually the first report I have read that suggests multiple attacks.

The citation in the London Gazette (Nov. 1943) details just one attack.

www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/36230/supplement/4813

[Dave Homewood]

Here is very similar case to the Trigg case.


SUICIDE BLOW

CRASHED ON U-BOAT

BRITISH BOMBER

Rec. 1 p.m. RUGBY, December 7. A suicide crash and dive by a British bomber on the deck of a damaged U-boat to make sure of destroying the enemy is reported in a Canadian Navy statement, according to an Ottawa Press message. The sole survivor was picked up in the Bay of Biscay by the Canadian destroyer Iroquois. He is Sergeant A. A. Turner, the tail gunner, who was floating for several hours, wounded, in a rubber dinghy. Sergeant Turner said that a Wellington bomber, spotted a surfaced U-boat and dropped bombs square on the target, but not before the submarine's guns had got some telling shots.

"When our pilot realised we were going to crash he decided that the Nazis should go, too," he said. "He manoeuvred the plane and crash-dived tight on the U-boat, and submarine and plane vanished beneath the surface locked in a death-grip."

Canadian destroyers and corvettes helped the Royal Navy and the R.A.F. to blockade the German submarine fleet in the Bay of Biscay just before Britain acquired the new bases in the Azores. The blockade was so successful, states the Canadian Navy Minister, that the modest Allied losses in the North Atlantic have more than been balanced by the heavy toll of U-boats in the Bay of Biscay alone. The losses inflicted on U-boats are so great that on some occasions the sea seemed to be alive with submarine survivors.— B.O.W.

EVENING POST, 8 DECEMBER 1943

[pepe]

It certainly is a carbon copy case. I hope they were rewarded in a similar way.

I remember reading, that during this period of the war, the German Navy had changed their tactics in regards to U-boat air defense.
Instead of trying to immediately dive upon sighting enemy patrol aircraft, they remained on the surface to engage the slow low flying targets. Their anti-aircraft weapons were also increased to support this strategy.

It would seem, in some cases, it had limited success.

[steveh]

Sorry if this is a diversion from the original posting, recently, there was an article in the local paper by noted local author Gerard Hindmarsh about Terry Soper, the first time I'd been aware that a local man had died in this epic exploit.
www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/117779703/takaka-airman-in-doomed-fight-with-german-uboat
Steve.