U-boats in Betty’s Bay — who knew?

Our host for the weekend is Van As Jordaan, a gentle giant of a man who has a keen eye for nature and a strong interest in SA history. This is borne out in our apartment’s information folder where I discover Van As recorded a leopard prowling around his seafront garden one day. Some were up in arms as the predator killed a number of the Stony Point Nature Reserve’s penguins, but thankfully, common sense and the natural order prevailed.

Yet, even more intriguing to me is the article by Special Signals Services (SSS) veterans, Geoff Mangin and Sheila Lloyd (The SA Military History Society’s Military History Journal of December 1998), whose RDF (radio direction finding) unit was set up to detect enemy vessels, including U-boats, and aircraft. Plots from the 17 stations around the Cape (there were two in and around Betty’s Bay) were phoned into the Filter Room (“Freddie”) who co-ordinated the SA Air Force (SAAF), the nascent SA Navy (SAN) and the Royal Navy responses.

With the Americans upping their antisubmarine tactics after officially entering the war at the end of 1941, pickings for U-boats off the US east coast became slim. Head of the German Navy’s U-boat arm, Admiral Karl Dönitz, needed to redirect some of these resources and he did this by sending a force of U-boats to attack Allied merchant ships rounding the Cape. The first wolf pack (four long-range U-boats, with one replenishment submarine, known as a milch cow) was code-named Eisbär (polar bear) and arrived off Cape Town in October 1942.

Surfacing under cover of night to recharge their batteries, U-boats were a ghostly menace to merchant shipping around the Cape coast. But even when they were detected there were not enough antisubmarine surface vessels to patrol sufficiently and no other fast-reacting deterrents, especially at night, which could be deployed by the SAAF or Royal Navy in the first years of the war. It wasn’t until a few more antisubmarine vessels (mostly converted whalers and trawlers) were allocated to Simon’s Town and the RAF-piloted Catalina flying-boat squadrons arrived in 1943 — based on the Bot River and St Lucia estuaries — that SA had an effective U-boat “seek and destroy'’ capability.

Adding to the U-boat threat was that many of SA’s white population, and certainly a number of its farmers, had German sympathies. “Based on readings taken by the Agulhas radar operators, many people in the area believe that U-boats may have been replenished regularly at night near Arniston by farmers who favoured Nazi Germany,” Mangin and Lloyd write.

“At Arniston a farmer regularly supplied boats with diesel and on one occasion even carted a crankshaft to Swellendam for repairs. In Table Bay two officers rowed from sub to shore, strolled along blacked-out Adderley Street and enjoyed a drink and show at the Alhambra Theatre. Months later, two Alhambra ticket stubs were found among documents from a damaged and captured boat. Another officer contacted a German family in Kommetjie who lent him their car to drive to Cape Town and make his purchases at Stuttafords.”

In their first three days of operations the Eisbär U-boats apparently sunk 14 ships. And with another two submarines sent to bolster their numbers and their field of operations increased as far north as Durban, the Union Defence Force’s (UDF) headaches were only to get bigger. Adding to this threat were five Japanese submarines (one which sank a ship, the Mundra, just 110km northeast of Durban) operating around the Mozambique Channel and one Italian submarine which sank three ships, about 250km southeast of Durban.

While the Eisbär wolf pack was ordered to return north in early December 1942, its final complement of eight U-boats managed to sink 53 Allied merchant ships (a cumulative 310,864 tonnes) while only losing one of their own — U-179 sunk by HMS Active. In the first half of 1943, Dönitz sent another flotilla of U-boats to disrupt shipping off the Cape, and while they were initially not that successful (the UDF’s antisubmarine capability had been dramatically improved) and had to spread their operations right around the coast, they still sunk a further 50 allied merchant ships (a cumulative 297,076 tonnes) in that year.

What certain newspapers started to question, was why the public were being kept largely in the dark about these losses, to which an extract of an editorial from the Natal Mercury of November 7 1942 (U-boats off Natal, The Local Ocean War, 1942-1944, Bill Bizley), refers: “If enemy submarines are operating in SA waters it is right and proper that the people of this country should be told of the fact... The people do not need to be comforted with soothing communiqués.”

And with citizens suffering regular blackouts in coastal cities and a total of 885,818 tonnes of merchant shipping sunk off SA’s coastline during the war (nearly 80% by submarines, the balance by surface raiders and sea mines), you’d have to say they had a point.

I break my historic reverie with a walk along the edges of Stony Point reserve. Where the small human-like forms of hundreds of African penguins now waddle and bay like disgruntled donkeys, I come across another anachronistic relic. A small heritage signboard points to the old “Meat House”, the whale meat, blubber and oil processing plant; a necessary adjunct to the hundreds of whales that were hunted in the region from 1913 (179 were killed in the first year) until 1930 when whale oil’s value diminished.

Further along Una Drive on Stony Point, I look out for the old radar mast anchor points Van As has shown me pictures of and later walk past the old army barracks that housed the operators and technicians. They’ve now been mostly incorporated into a Dementia Care facility, but from the outside a number of the old buildings look much as they were in World War 2.

My wife and I take a drive along Clarence Drive to Gordon’s Bay the next day. Arguably one of the world’s most scenic coastal roads, it first evolved from a footpath into a proper gravel road when World War 2 military personnel and their equipment needed to move between Gordon’s Bay and Rooi Els — and later all the way to Kleinmond.

Named for the man behind its construction, Jack Clarence of Hangklip Estates, I muse that it’s perhaps poetic justice that he exacted sweat and toil from 63,000 Italian prisoners-of-war to make it. Though their countrymen’s sinking of merchant ships was effete compared to those of their Axis partners, the Nazi U-boat commanders, it’s certainly payback of a kind.

Travel Advisor

Where: Betty’s Bay, about 90km from Cape Town, is scattered along a 13km stretch of Clarence Drive between Pringle Bay and KIeinmond.

What it has to offer: Just getting there is half the fun, but the town itself offers the visitor long walks on footpaths along stretches of wild and pristine coastline, bursting with marine life, including a large population of African Penguins in the Stony Point Nature Reserve; while the Harold Porter Botanical Gardens, an institution since 1940, is a must-visit as it boasts a comprehensive display of indigenous flora (including the sought-after Red Disa).

Where we stayed: Crassula, a private ground-floor apartment below the owners’ residence, is equipped for self-catering and has views of the ocean. Call Van As on 072 623 5400.

Where to eat: We self-catered, but our hosts recommended the fish at the nearby and superbly located On the Edge restaurant. In addition, they suggested Sitar on Clarence Drive for Indian and Cape Fusion cooking — also well-rated on Tripadvisor.

Best time of year to go: March, May, August and November.