When a blimp duels a U-boat

by Jeffrey Bradley

Hancock County is a downeast coastal community that holds an eighty-year-old mystery. On the night of July 2, 1944, a blimp hunting enemy submarines crashed under troubling circumstances off the coast of Mount Desert Island in Frenchmen’s Bay. Evidence pulled from the water and witness testimony points to it being more than the simple accident the Navy labeled it, indicating instead that the guns of a Nazi U-boat brought it down. A stifling official policy and the obscuring mists of time have kept this controversy alive.

Patrol blimp K-14, a standard-issue airship used in coastal reconnaissance, was performing anti-submarine duty on the night it crashed and killed six crewmen. Clearly, shots were fired between it and something, but the Navy’s reticence concerning any enemy activity during wartime forbids discussion and all were sworn to silence.

Few people realize how infested Maine’s waters were with U-boats during World War II. Only three days later for instance, U-233, perhaps the culprit, was caught lurking nearby and sunk. German torpedoes accounted for the loss of thousands of maritime tonnages from Maine to Florida, dispatching a staggering 454 American vessels by war’s end. Initially the unprotected merchantmen traveled alone and were backlit by the blazing light ashore into easy targets. In one area known as Torpedo Alley, the Germans sent dozens of ships and men to the bottom practically unopposed in just a few months. Inexplicably slow to react—it took years to even resolve a basic design flaw that saw some US torpedoes circling back to sink the sub they had launched from—the Navy finally took measures to keep the marauders below and less of a threat. Among them was a fleet of lighter-than-air ships to patrol coastal waters. Goodyear K-type training blimps built prior to the war proved ideal for the job and were quickly pressed into service. At 250 feet long and powered by aircraft engines, they could drop silently from the sky, hover and harass the enemy on or under the surface. With a crew of 10 and armed with a Browning machine gun, the airships could range for 2,000 miles at 80mph and were rigged to carry four depth charge bombs. Tasked with locating and reporting enemy locations, they were considered too lightly armed to attack directly, although some did, apparently K-14 among them.

Besides torpedoes, U-boats carried an 8-inch deck gun for shelling shore installations and the hapless merchant ships, heavy machine guns, and an “ack-ack” cannon for mounting aft of the conning tower. Powerful enough to knock armored aircraft from the sky, armament like this would make mincemeat of any blimp. Still, between surfacing and running out its guns the sub was vulnerable, giving the blimp a chance of striking first.

The telltale wake of a periscope spotted on that fateful night had the

Coast Guard scrambling ships and K-14 to investigate; later, it dropped nearer the surface to drag a sonar buoy through the water. At 9:20pm came its last check-in communication, then nothing more was heard from K-14.

Early the next morning rescue ships began to arrive to search for the missing blimp.

However, it was, their final encounter probably went something like this. Detecting the sinister silhouette low (cont. on page 10)

(cont. from page 9) in the water, K-14 went on the attack. Depth charges were dropped while the machine gun rattled incessantly, but all hell must have erupted under the hail of return enemy fire. In shot and shell and detonation the doomed craft spun out of control and plunged headlong into the sea. Barely awash, inside that crumpled gondola all was a howling chaos as numbingly cold water poured in to engulf the crew; gripping terror surely informed their frantic thrashings against the rising sea and sagging envelope that trapped them. In the inky darkness, five struggled in vain and drowned. With the windows blocked and the main hatchway sealed from the outside by a metal bar put there ironically to keep the men from falling out, only luck would assist some in escaping to safety. Of those, one died later that night of his injuries. The rest drifted dazed for hours in the icy water and pitch blackness until rescue arrived with the dawn. In the hospital at Bar Harbor they were ordered not to talk. The blimp’s wreckage was towed ashore and examined. Most notable were the two missing depth charges and the gun casings littering the gondola floor. Holes in the envelope were consistent with anti-aircraft ammunition used by the Germans, and the entire rear section had been torn away as if by a larger projectile. Later an inquiry revealed that depth charge explosions had been heard aboard a patrol vessel around the time of the crash, and Schoodic Point observers reported “pom-pom” gunfire shortly after the blimp was seen headed out to sea. Fishermen and residents alike spoke of the flashes of gunfire off in the distance and the dull crump of muffled explosions. Finally, enough people came forward for a secret Navy document to acknowledge that the damage indeed could have been “the result of enemy action.” Publicly, the story was given that the holes in the envelope were put there by salvaging hooks and those missing depth charges had simply been jettisoned.

Although officially listed as an accident caused by “pilot error” no one was ever charged with the crash. Maybe it was all hushed up to bolster public morale at the time, or maybe the Navy just believed its own adage that ‘loose lips sink ships’. But why stay with this fuzzy narrative when issuing a few medals today would resolve the thing more honorably?

One thing is certain. Just about everyone else believes that there was an old Dodge City-type shootout between the good guys and the bad and this time Marshal Dillon didn’t win.