DEATH OF A U-BOAT ACE

DEATH OF A U-BOAT ACE

3/8/1941 - In what will be a huge blow to German war morale, while patrolling the waters west of Ireland, Captain Gunther Prien and his sub, U-47, victors of over 30 encounters with Allied shipping, vanish after attacking Convoy OB-293 and are never seen again.

Prien

Born in Osterfeld, Germany, the son of a judge, Prien somehow gets salt water in his veins at an early age, joins the Handelsmarine (the German Merchant Navy) and takes to the ocean in 1923 as a cabin boy on the three-masted sailing ship, Hamburg.  From his initial journey over the waves, Prien steadily advances in rank, but the Depression puts him ashore, and seeking a door to open on any kind of employment, he joins the National Socialist Party (the Nazis for those not up to speed on your WWII history) in 1932, and finding out the Navy is trying to fill its ranks with Merchant Navy officers, he enlists in the Reichsmarine in 1933 at the rank of ordinary sailor ... he does not stay there long.  Putting in for submarine duty, Prien goes to the underwater school for submariners in Kiel, Germany (a candidate goes through 66 simulated surface and 66 simulated underwater attacks before firing their first live torpedo).  During the Spanish Civil War he is aboard U-26 for two patrols.  Experience readied (Prien also finds time to fall in love, get married to his sweetheart Ingeborg, and have two daughters, Birgit and Dagmar) he is made the commander of the new Type VIIB submarine, U-47, in 1938.

Model Of The U-47

Model From Above

The Real Thing - 1939 - The Battleship Scharnhorst Behind

Built in Kiel, Germany, the U-47 has its keel laid in 1937, is launched in October of 1938, and is commissioned on 12/17/1938.  The submarine displaces 741 tons on the surface (and 843 tons submerged), her length is 218 feet and 2 inches (within is a pressure hull 160 feet and 1 inch in length), at her beam she is 20 feet and 4 inches, her draught is 15 feet and 7 inches, she can be powered by two diesel engines or a system of electric batteries, her range is 8,700 nautical miles, her speed is 17.7 knots surfaced and 7.6 knots submerged, and she can dive to 750 feet below the Atlantic. Aboard, the submarine has 4 officers and from 40 to 56 enlisted crew to fight the ship ... fighting with 14 torpedoes fired from 5 tubes (4 in the bow and 1 in the stern), a 3.46 inch deck gun, and one anti-aircraft gun. Gunther Prien will be the only commander the U-47 will ever know.

Conning Tower & Deck Gun

Prien Painting

More Prien Artwork

Already at sea when WWII starts on 9/1/1939 with the German invasion of Poland, Prien becomes the second German captain to send a British ship to the bottom when he sinks the "Bosnia" on 9/5/1939.  Intelligent and aggressive, on his return to Germany he is asked to personally volunteer himself, his men, and his boat for a dangerous mission to England by the commander of Germany's U-boat forces, Commodore Karl Donitz.  The mission, Special Operation P, will be an attempt to penetrate the seemingly impregnable British naval base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.  Which is exactly what Prien does on his second cruise of the war!  Braving shallow water, unknown shoals, tricky currents, blocking vessels, anti-submarine booms, and thousands of British seamen, under the play of the Northern Lights above, the U-47 is able to get into the harbor (cables are brushed several times, and for a brief time the sub is caught on a sand bar) and line up on the best target available, a large shadow that is the silhouette of the battleship, HMS Royal Oak (a huge WWI dreadnought left in port because she can not keep up with a patrol of quicker, newer ships ... her crew of 909 sailors is headed by Rear Admiral Henry Blagrove).  Firing twice at the ship. four torpedoes score hits that put the battleship on the bottom of the harbor in less than 15 minutes ... and take the lives of 833 men, including Rear Admiral Blagrove's.  Mission accomplished (returning to base, Watch Officer Engelbert Endrass will paint a snorting bull on the conning tower of the U-47, and Prien will henceforth be known in the German navy as "The Bull of Scapa Flow"), Prien and his men are then amazed that they are able to slip back out of the base without being seen (unaware of the cause of the explosions, believing no enemy ship could enter the area undetected, the British do not go submarine searching until the U-47 is already back in the open seas of the Atlantic).  The sinking is a major black eye for the British that almost costs Churchill his new job as First Lord of the Admiralty!

Men Of The HMS Royal Oak

The Attack

Sinking Of The HMS Royal Oak

Artist's Depiction - On The Bottom

Celebrating U-47's Success & Return To Kiel

Hitler Rewarding Prien

Heroes upon their return to Germany, Prien is the first U-boat commander to receive the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves of the war, and in what will be known as the "Happy Times" of submarine warfare (before the superiority of the Allies' sonar, radar, long range bombers, Liberty ships, and convoy tactics kick in), in the first 18 months of the war, he and his men will sink 30 commercial ships and one war ship (the doomed HMS Royal Oak), while damaging 9 other vessels.  In the North Atlantic in 1941, Prien's death signals the end of Germany's "Happy Times" under the sea ("die gluckliche Zeit").

U-47 Crew After Scapa Flow

With 45 men aboard, in March of 1941, the U-47 leaves Lorient, France on its 10th, and last, patrol of the war. Aggressive as ever, Prien soon sights convoy OB-293 in the North Atlantic, 37 west-bound ships out of Liverpool, protected by two destroyers, HMS Wolverine and HMS Verity, and two corvettes, HMS Arbutus and HMS Camellia.  More ships than his 14 torpedoes can handle, Prien calls for wolfpack help, and is soon joined by three other U-boats ... on the evening of 3/6-3/7 the wolfpack attacks and three Allied ships are sunk (Prien receives partial credit for putting the whale factory ship Terje Viken on the bottom) and another two are severely damaged.  The response of the escorts however prevents further victories ... working in concert with each other, the convoy defenders in the next five hours drop over 100 depth charges on the German subs, forcing U-99 out of the area, sinking U-70, and wounding the U-A ... only Prien avoids the attacks ... at first.  Stalking the convoy, seeking an advantageous firing point from behind a screen of wind and rain, Prien suddenly goes from hunter to prey when the wind unexpectedly shifts and the U-47 is exposed to the four defenders of OB-293.  Crash dive immediate, the U-47 is soon tag-team depth charged by the Wolverine and Verity ... for over 4 hours.  Finally, at 5:43 in the morning Prien's and the U-47's luck runs out ... after a sonar contact directly below and a full salvo of explosives launched, British sailors see a large orange flash underwater that is followed by a massive explosion that sends up a huge column of water.  Gone ... the U-47 and her crew vanishes ... never to be heard from or seen again (and no wreckage is ever found).

HMS Wolverine

HMS Verity

Horrified when the U-47 fails to report in, Hitler and his military command will keep the loss of Prien a secret from the German public for 10 weeks (even his wife is not told of Prien's supposed death) ... only letting out the news after British bombers drop leaflets over the country asking, "Wo ist Prien?" ("Where is Prien?") and Churchill announces the death in a speech to the House of Commons.  Happy Times over (in the week that follows Prien's death, the Germany submarine force also loses U-boat aces Otto Kretschmer <47 ships sunk> and Joachim Schepke <36 ships sunk> ... both 29-years-old, Kretschmer is captured and Schepke is killed), by war's end, 793 U-boats will be sunk by the Allies, a disaster for the German military that costs the lives of 28,000 submariners (a casualty rate of 75%, the highest of any German service during WWII).

 

Kretschmer & Schepke

3/8/1941 ... German war hero Gunther Prien dies a submariner's death, going to Davy Jones' Locker with the men of his command at the age of only 33.

U-Boat By Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau

U-47 Conning Tower Bull & Prien

Gunther Prien

The U-47 Goes On Patrol

THE DEATH OF RED BUCK WAIGHTMAN

3/4/1896 - Gloves off after the Ingalls, Oklahoma debacle of 1893 in which Deputy Marshal Thomas Hueston, Special Deputy Marshal Richard Speed, and Deputy Marshal Lafayette Shadley are killed trying to arrest members of the Doolin-Dalton Gang, slowly but surely authorities in Oklahoma begin picking off members of the gang.  By 1896, Bill Dalton, Tulsa Jack Blake, Bitter Creek Newcomb, and Charlie Pierce are dead, while Bill Doolin, Arkansas Tom Jones, and Little Bill Raidler are all behind bars. Only George "Red Buck" Waightman and Little Dick West still on the loose, 45-year-old Waightman is the next to go.

Newcomb (L) & Pierce (R)

Born in Tennessee in 1850, Waightman (also spelled Weightman by some historians) goes west after the Civil War, and after a stop in Texas, eventually winds up in Oklahoma.  Trouble in a well muscled package topped by dark red hair (the origins of his nickname, "Red Buck"), Waightman is soon rustling horses and offering to kill with his guns for a measly $50 a death.  In 1889, the law gets its clutches on the outlaw for the first time as he is arrested by legendary Deputy U.S. Marshal Henry Andrew "Heck" Thomas and sentenced to three years in prison for horse theft.  The sentence is never served though ... on his way to prison by train, Waightman soaps his wrists during a visit to the toilet, slips out of his handcuffs, opens a window, and leaps out of the moving train to freedom (trying to do the same, two other prisoners will be shot to death as they try for a window escape too).  Free, he is at first a fine fit for the Doolin-Dalton Gang which forms after the Dalton Gang is wiped out in Coffeyville, Kansas on 10/5/1892.

Heck Thomas

As a member of the Doolin-Dalton Gang, Waightman participates in the robbery of the Ford County Bank of Spearville, Kansas (1892), the robbery of a Santa Fe train to the west of Cimarron, Kansas (1893), a gunfight with a posse near Fort Supply, Oklahoma (1893), the Ingalls battle (1893), a post office robbery in the Oklahoma town of Clarkson (1894), the robbery of the Farmers Citizens Bank of Pawnee, Oklahoma (1894), a hit on the Santa Fe Railway station at Woodward, Oklahoma (1894), a store robbery in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma (1894), and the robbery of a store in Texana, Oklahoma (1894).  There are troubles though as Waightman over and over wants to gun down almost everyone he encounters and argues continually with fellow gang members (his only redeeming quality is the ability to entertain the gang with his fiddle playing) ... twice he is dissuaded by Bill Doolin from ambushing Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman (Doolin will state to Waightman, "Bill Tilghman is too good a man to shoot in the back.").

Tilghman

After the Dover train robbery, Doolin finally has had his fill of Waightman.  Surprised after the robbery by a posse that kills Tulsa Jack, in the gun battle that follows Waightman's horse is killed and he is forced to escape riding double with Bitter Creek Newcomb ... double until the gang comes upon the ranch of a former Baptist minister named Godfrey.  Jumping into the corral, Waightman selects a new mount and steals the horse.  Preacher pissed at the commotion that interrupts his meal, protesting the action from his porch, without a warning or any hesitation, Waightman guns down the man.  An unnecessary killing of an unarmed man, Doolin confers with Dalton, and on the spot, Red Buck is kicked out of the gang.

Tulsa Jack

Doolin

Dalton

And so it is that Waightman forms his own gang out of a group of Texas renegades looking to hook up with a big name badman ... George Miller, a Texas lawman turned bandit, and outlaws Joe Beckham, Hills Loftis and Elmer "Kid" Lewis.  In action immediately, the men rustle cattle, rob stores, kill a rancher that betrayed the gang's hiding place, hold up a train near the town of Curtis, Oklahoma (1895), and hit a bank in Wichita Falls, Texas (1896) ... and like the Doolin crew, all the men become instant targets for law enforcement in the region, with the expected results ... Beckham dies in an 1895 shootout, Loftis simply vanishes and is never seen again after escaping a shootout, and Lewis is hung by an angry Wichita Falls mob that isn't happy about having their bank robbed.  In March of 1896, it's Waightman's and Miller's turns. 

Red Buck Fleeing A Posse

Receiving word that the bandits are once again hiding out in Oklahoma, a posse of lawmen that includes U.S. Deputy Marshals Chris Madsen, Joe Ventioner, William Holcomb, and Bill Quillen begin combing the Custer County region and soon locate the men hiding out from the cold in the farmhouse of Dolph Pickelseimer, a local with a habit of befriending outlaws (he will be arrested and spend time behind bars for sheltering the bandits).  House surrounded, when Waightman steps out the front door and on to the porch in the morning, he is gunned down by Ventioner before he can even slap leather.  Miller however does get his gun out and firing his pistol, wounds Ventioner in the stomach (Ventioner will survive the wound).  Exposed to posse fire by his action, Miller is horribly injured when a round fired by Holcomb hits the bandit's cartridge belt, causing several rounds to detonate ... bullet explosions that blow off the badman's right hand at the wrist, and take the three middle fingers off his left hand (Miller will be fitted with a steel hook the earns him the nickname "Hookey," serves a prison term, and eventually once more becomes a lawman upon his release from captivity ... a lawman who is in turn gunned down trying to serve an arrest warrant in 1923 at the age of 61).    

Madsen

Hookey

One less badmen to worry about for the state, Waightman is planted in the Arapaho, Oklahoma cemetery. 

Death Report

Red Buck Waightman As Played By Hugh O'Brien In 1952's
The Cimarron Kid - Starring Audie Murphy As Bill Doolin

The Real Red Buck In Death
 
Gravesite

A ROCKY MOUNTAIN KIDNAPPING

3/2/1932 - Most people never have a monetary value placed on their lives, but on this day in 1932, 31-year-old Charles Boettcher II, heir to one of Denver's wealthiest families discovers his value, when his family pays a ransom of $60,000 to get him back alive and whole from the men who kidnapped him only a few weeks before, on 2/13/1932.

Charles Boettcher II

Born in 1901, Boettcher is the grandson of Charles I, a self-made millionaire who immigrates to the United States from Germany at the age of 17 to work with his brother Herman in Wyoming selling hardware (earlier in Germany, the family owned a hardware store) ... nails specifically at first in the town of Cheyenne's Hoyer & Company Hardware store, with that added perk that Charles I can sleep for free behind the store's front counter.  Moving to Colorado in 1871, Charles I opens his own hardware store in the town of Evans (just a few miles away from the city of Greeley) and is in the right place at the right time to service miners and settlers when the state experiences gold and silver rushes.  In the years that follow, hardware money goes into creating a sugar industry in the state (the Great Western Sugar Co.), and that wealth in turn goes into other businesses and interests that include expanding into Nebraska and Wyoming, establishing Leadville's first electric company, going into the cement industry (Portland Ideal Cement Co.), becoming the largest landowner in downtown Denver, starting an investment company that becomes known as the "Wall Street of the West," building the famous Brown Palace Hotel, opening a school for crippled children, and giving generously to a variety of "good causes" around the state and country.

Charles I

The Brown Palace Hotel

Growing up, grandson Charles II is brought up in the lap of luxury, and as a young adult, enjoys being one of Denver's wealthiest playboys, with a deep and abiding passion for flying.  Settling down somewhat, in 1926, he marries Anna Lou Piggott of Helena, Montana (they will have two children together).  The good life (they live in a newly built mansion at 777 Washington Street in Denver) ... until 2/13/1932.  Returning on a snowy night from an evening of partying, the couple are just getting out of their car at home when a man steps out of the shadows, pointing a gun. Telling Charles he won't be hurt if he does as told, Anna is given a strange ransom notice of misspelled words and fill-in-the-blank sections for the kidnapped person's name asking for $60,000, before Charles and his kidnapper vanish into the night.

Anna Lou

The kidnapping is the work of the man who will become Public Enemy #1 in America for the year of 1932 ... Verne Sankey.  Born in Canada in 1890, Sankey works for the Canadian Pacific Railway before coming to South Dakota to try his hand at farming.  A failure, to make ends meet when the farm doesn't pay off, along with partner Gordon Alcorn, Sankey becomes a bootlegger of fine Canadian whiskey, dabbles in bank robbing, and then decides to try kidnapping, first successfully picking up $35,000 in ransom for the release of St. Paul, Minnesota refrigerator magnate, Haskell Bohn. Look for a new target, the pair compile a list of 30 wealthy Denverites they believe are rip for the plucking, and in turn, narrow the list down to 5 ... a list that along with Charles II, includes the beer brewing giant, Adolph Coors.  They are on a scout to determine who should get taken on 2/13/1932, but decide their man is chosen when Boettcher and his wife get out of their car, hence a ransom note not yet fully filled out.

Sankey

Alcorn (L) and U.S. Marshal Arthur Anderson

Told to keep the kidnapping private, the Boettcher Family nonetheless contact authorities, and soon police and FBI agents (Hoover assigns the case to his then favorite agent, Melvin Purvis, operating out of the Chicago office he heads) are searching from coast to coast for Charles II.  Paid their $60,000 fee, Sankey and Alcorn release Boettcher from the South Dakota farm near Sioux Falls where they have been holding him, and begin planning their next caper ... the totally insane kidnapping of sports figures Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey ... plans that are interrupted by the men being arrested. Following up on a tip that Sankey frequents the two-chair Chicago barbershop of John Mueller, FBI agents and police stake-out the establishment (some will sleep in the caskets of an undertaking business near the barbershop).  When Sankey shows up at the barbershop on 1/31/1934, a group of over a dozen officers places him under arrest ... handcuffed, the public enemy is carrying no weapon, but does have 12 poison pills on his person that he had planned on taking if caught (he has stated to numerous persons over the years that he would rather die than go back to prison), and at his apartment, they find a small cache of weapons, ammunition, and $3,450 of Boettcher ransom money.  A day later, using clues found at Sankey's residence, Alcorn is arrested in South Dakota where he has been living under the alias of Walter Thomas.
Purvis

Victim freed and culprits caught (most of the money is never recovered though) in a seemingly happy ending, tragic epilogues to the story include 44-year-old Sankey being true to his word and committing suicide in jail (depressed at his circumstances and the prospect of seeing his wife and children on his son Orville's 5th birthday, and despite guards walking by his cell every five minutes, Sankey is able to fashion a noose out of a necktie and hang himself ... though many will believe it is an assassination by the guards, or even a hit paid for by Boettcher), 29-year-old Alcorn being sentenced to life for his part in the crime (with stays at Leavenworth and Alcatraz), still traumatized by the kidnapping and upset at the state of her marriage, Boettcher's wife kills herself in 1941, while Purvis will use the successfully captures of Sankey and Alcorn to springboard into the desperado pursuits of 1934 that take the lives of John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson (listening to his demons too, in 1960 at the age of 56, Purvis will also commit suicide, using the revolver given to him by fellow FBI agents on the day of his retirement from the Bureau to put a death hole in his head).  Only Charles II has a seemingly normal life after the kidnapping ... remarrying, having more kids, working in the family business, and dying at the age of 62 in 1963.

Headlines

Off To Prison For Alcorn (Center)