The USS Borie: A Fight to the FinishShe had been designed for an earlier war. Launched in 1919, the USS
Borie, DD215, had been the ultimate in destroyer design. She was fast – capable of up to 35 knots (40 mph) and well armed for the time with four 4” guns and two triple mounts of 21” torpedo tubes to deal with surface targets and depth charges for use against submarines. By 1943, though, she was showing her age.
Borie and her sisters could keep up with the new Fast Carriers in terms of speed but little else. Newer and far more powerful designs were coming out in flocks (the Navy would commission well over one hundred of the
Fletcher class alone during WWII) and nothing else would do to escort the fast-stepping and long-legged carriers across the vast Pacific.
She did wind up as a carrier escort, though. She and two of her sisters, USS
Goff and USS
Barry were assigned to be part of a hunter-killer task group centered around the USS
Card an escort carrier. The escort carrier concept arose to fill in gaps in air coverage for convoys crossing the U-Boat-infested Atlantic. Unlike their larger and more glamorous kin, the escort carriers (CVE) were built on merchant or tanker hulls with a flight deck and a small “island” structure nailed on top. They usually carried 21 aircraft: nine or ten “Widcat” fighters and a dozen or so “Avenger” torpedo bombers rigged to carry depth-charges. Running flat out, with everything open but the toolbox, a CVE could make about 20 knots. Since most convoys plodded along at less than 15 knots this was sufficient.
USS Borie in 1942As more and more escorts became available, the CVEs and their escorts were given the freedom to roam ahead and around convoys to search for the elusive German subs and “prosecute” (attack and kill) any U-Boats they found. Many times they were vectored to U-Boats via ULTRA intercepts based on the fact that the Allies had broken the top-secret German ENIGMA codes and
Grossadmiral Doenitz, a devoted Nazi and Boss of all U-Boats, tended to be overly “chatty” with his subs shuttling them hither and yon and using a map grid system which the Allies also had. Therefore if Doenitz ordered a boat to “such-and-such” grid the code-breakers could read his message, locate the grid on a map and dispatch destroyers or a hunter-killer carrier group to deal with the threat. By mid-1943, this system worked with such efficiency that Doenitz was losing more boats in certain parts of the Atlantic than the Allies were ships. For whatever reason, though, the Germans never suspected their codes had been compromised and such sub-sinkings were always credited to more conventional techniques (Sonar, radar, direction-finders, etc.) even as late as the 1960s. Not even the ship commanders were told. Most times the orders just read. “We think there may be U-Boats *here* so go and check.” Escort commanders were flabbergasted how many times their bosses “guessed” right. The ULTRA secret was finally revealed in the late 1970s.
Halloween night 1943 found the
Borie, under the command of Lieutenant Charles H. Hutchins, chasing one of these “guesses” that had already proven correct. One of
Card's Avengers had caught a pair of U-Boats on the surface conducting a re-supply operation and sent
U-584 to the bottom. The other boat,
U-91, escaped and since it was late in the day and the
Card would have to shut down flight operations
Borie was sent to deal with the German.
U-91 fled the scene but at 2000 hours (8PM)
Borie got a radar fix on yet another German the
U-256 which she opened fire upon and then dropped depth charges. U-256 submerged rapidly but the sound men reported an underwater explosion after the depth-charging. An oil slick and debris seemed to confirm the kill. Hutchins jauntily signaled
Card, “Scratch one pig-boat!” Despite heavy damage, though,
U-256 returned to port but never sailed again.
At 0145 on 1 November, a radar contact revealed the presence of yet another U-Boat at 8000 yards. The boat dove as the range closed but
Borie's sonarmen were up to the challenge and regained the contact at 2200 yards. Hutchins swung his ship toward the contact for a depth-charge run. As
Borie passed over the contact a mechanical failure caused all of the charges on one rack to roll into the sea. The resulting explosions literally blew
U-405, under
Korvettenkapitan Rolf-Heinrich Hopman, to the surface and began one of the wildest sea fights in American naval history.
Hutchins ordered his ship's 24-inch searchlight switched on and illuminated the German boat. The German crew literally boiled out of the conning tower racing to man the boat's deck guns.
U-405 boasted one 88mm cannon and four 20mm guns in a quadruple mount along with machine guns and small arms. Shells slammed in to
Borie's forward engine room and bridge but caused no casualties.
Borie responded with 4” guns and her own 20mm guns. As the German 88mm spat defiance,
Borie's forward 4” gun barked once, twice, three times. The second shell landed close aboard and killed some of the 88's crew and the third shell blew the gun completely overboard.
Hutchins now ordered and left turn and closed to ram the sub on its starboard side. A storm was brewing and seas were running at 15 to 20 feet. Hopman saw Hutchins' play and initiated his own left turn to avoid the ram and turn parallel to
Borie. The U-Boat made it about halfway through its turn before
Borie slammed into her. However, instead of striking the U-Boat directly,
Borie hit a glancing blow as the sea simultaneously lowered the sub and raised the destroyer.
Borie came to rest atop the forecastle of the U-Boat about where the 88mm had been. Now the Germans opened up with everything they had. The men of
Borie rushed topside with rifles, Thompson sub-machineguns, shotguns and pistols and returned fire. It was a scene more suited to the days of sail, of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, of John Paul Jones' day than the 20th Century.
The most immediate need was to keep the Germans away from the 20mm mount as those four guns would wreak fearful slaughter among the exposed Americans. German after German tried and died to get to those guns. In one instance a
Borie crewman, out of ammo, pulled his sheath knife and flung it at a German. The blade buried itself in the man's belly and he fell over the side. In another instance, the gun-captain of one of the 4” guns, with little to do since the gun would not depress enough to hit the U-Boat, saw a German sailor heading up the ladder to the 20mm mount and tossed a spent 4” shell casing at him, hitting him on the head and he, too, fell overboard. Going overboard in this fight was a death-sentence as not only were the seas running high but the water temperature was about forty degrees.
The close-quarters battle raged for ten minutes and accounted for roughly half the U-Boat's crew. The straining engines of the two vessels and the action of the waves finally wrenched the two vessels apart and the rattle of musketry died away. Both combatants had suffered grievous injury. The U-Boat's superstructure was a wreck and half her crew was dead.
Borie had suffered no crew casualties but the grinding of her thin hull against the tough pressure hull of the submarine had opened holes and seams in her hull all along the port side. The destroyer was taking on water and her engine room crew was working in chest-deep water to keep up steam and keep her in the fight. A drain fitting was closed and pumps brought in to dry out the compartment.
An artists' rendition of the USS Borie and U-405 in mortal combat.Hutchins maneuvered to pursue
405 as she gradually increased speed to 20 knots and tried to get away. Now the 4” guns could again come into play and began banging away finally putting a shell into the starboard exhaust and possibly damaging the aft torpedo room.
With her engineering spaces once again fit to work in,
Borie bent on 27 knots in pursuit. This whole time the 24” searchlight held the German in its blinding grip. The stern of
U-405 was now pointed directly at
Borie and Hutchins realized the searchlight would give the Germans a perfect torpedo solution for their stern tubes. He ordered the light put out and steered clear. No torpedoes were fired.
Once clear of the “stingers”
Borie now rigged her depth-charge projectors and rapidly closed to attempt another ramming.
U-405 then turned in an attempt to return the favor. By judicious use of rudder and engines, Hutchins turned the destroyer left. Now
Korvettenkapitan Hopman had his chance to strike
Borie in the stern and disable her steering but Lt. Hutchins played his hole card and fired a perfect pattern of depth charges directly into the path of the U-Boat. Set shallow, the 500lb charges went off underneath the conning tower and lifted the sub completely out of the water and stopped her dead with her stern six feet from
Borie's.
The sub quickly restarted her engines and backed away as
Borie also drew clear while keeping up a lively fire from her main battery and adding a snap-shot torpedo which missed. During this part of the action a 4” shell hit the sub's conning tower and probably killed
Korvettenkapitan Hopman. Another 4” round hit the main exhaust and
405's engines died for the last time. Once again the German crew came out of their hatches, but as some fired white flares to indicated surrender others ran to the guns and
Borie's guns kept firing until cries of “
Kamerad!” were heard across the deep.
Now the men of
Borie began to transition from agents of destruction to Angels of Mercy as she closed to rescue survivors. The sub's crew continued to fire flares. The bridge crew of the
Borie saw an answering set of flares in the distance and almost simultaneously the sonarmen picked up the high-pitched
screeeeeee of torpedoes in the water. There was yet a THIRD U-Boat in the area and by slowing for the rescue,
Borie was a sitting duck. Hutchins had no choice, he rang for flank speed on his remaining operational engine to clear the area and swept past the sinking U-Boat whose crew was already taking to life rafts, running over several of the rafts in the process.
The killing was over, the dying would go on for a while.
The German boat that fired that last Parthian Shot never came to look for
405's crew and
Borie quickly lost power and generators some distance away and was helpless to assist either. The entire crew of
U-405 perished.
Borie was also on her last legs. At 0900 she went dead in the water and the generator for her radio also died. Enough flammable liquid was found to get the generator for the radio working for one brief, last message from Lt. Hutchins to
Card at 1100, “Commenced sinking.” The carrier got a radio fix and launched a pair of Avengers on that bearing to find
Borie which they located some 14 miles away. Captain Arnold Isbell of
Card dispatched his remaining escorts,
Goff and
Barry, to render aid to their sister. However the ocean swells were now FORTY feet and neither destroyer could get close enough to
Borie to help without risking catastrophic damage.
It was getting on toward sunset. Captain Isbell ordered Lt. Hutchins to abandon ship lest she capsize in the dark with grievous loss of life. The abandonment began at 1644 and proceeded well but there was a significant problem: the men of the
Borie had been in combat with one submarine, in close-quarters action and a running gun battle with another, been conducting life-or-death damage control AND battling mountainous seas for the better part of 24 hours. They were spent.
As the men took to the rafts in the gathering darkness some, ignoring the pleas of their shipmates, let go and tried to swim to the other destroyers. The forty-degree water ensured they never made it. Others, clinging to the sides of the life rafts were killed when the huge waves based them against the hulls of the other ships.
Goff and
Barry conducted rescue operations until about 0200 on 2 November then secured and returned to rendezvous with
Card and transfer the survivors to her. When the roll was called, a total of 7 officers and 120 men were counted present. 3 officers and 24 enlisted men were lost.
Borie herself survived only hours longer. Abandoned and heavily damaged, some consideration was given to trying to get her back under control and tow her to safety. However, the nearest port was 500 miles away and the nearest harbor that could actually do anything to repair her was over 2000 miles distant. Added to this was the knowledge that there was at least one U-Boat still in the area and an estimated fifty within a couple of day's sail.
It was time.
Barry was sent to sink her with torpedoes but all failed. Finally an Avenger from
Card dropped four depth-bombs close aboard and sent
Borie to the bottom.
Upon reaching Norfolk, the survivors of
Borie gathered on the deck of the
Card for one last formation as a crew. They conducted a memorial service for their lost shipmates.
Three Navy Crosses – one to Lt. Hutchins, two Silver Stars and one Commendation Medal were awarded to the men of
Borie. The
Card carrier group as a whole was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation.
Steel ships can be still be crewed by Iron Men.
The crew of USS Borie during the Memorial service on board USS Card.On the 4th of July, 1944 a new destroyer, DD-704, was launched. She bore the name USS
Borie.
Sailors lost during the abandonment of USS Borie, 1-2 November 1943:S2C (Seaman, 2nd Class) Opal ALFORD
S2C Max G. BLANE
SC2C (Ship's Cook, 2nd Class) Warren H. BLOUGH,
S2C Charles T. BONFIGLIO
LT. Morrison R. BROWN
PH1C (Pharmacist's Mate, 1st Class) Frank J. CITUK
SF2C (Ship Fitter 2nd Class) Domingo CONCHA
CWT (Chief Water Tender) Harold M. DeMAIO
RT1C (Radio Technician 1st Class) Frank J. DUKE
F1C (Fireman 1st Class) James H. FIELDS
S2C Lawrence R. FRANCIS
WT2C Joseph Stanly KISZKA
F1C Joseph D. LOMBARDI
CCSTD (Chief Commissary Steward) Ralph W. LONG
LT.(j.g.) Robert H. LORD
Y2C (Yeoman 2nd) Francis X. McKERVY
F1C William MEDVED
SC2C William E. MULLIGEN
F2C Daniel J. POUZER
COX (Coxwain) Aguinaldo PRUNEDA
CQM (Chief Quartermaster) William J. T. SHAKERLY
ENS. Richard E. ST. JOHN
F1C Frank J. SWAN
S2C Richard E. TULL
S2C D. L. TYREE
F1C Andrew WALLACE
S1C James H. WINN
“
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!”- Traditional Navy Hymn
SourcesSamuel Eliot Morison,
History of U.S. Naval Operation in World War II, Volume X: The Atlantic Battle WonRobert A. Maher and Capt. James E. Wise, Jr., USN (Ret.),
Sailor’s Journey into War E. Andrew Wilde, Jr.,
The USS Borie (DD-215) in World War II: Documents and PhotographsA great deal of info on the
Borie is available here:
http://www.destroyerhistory.org/flushdeck/ussborie/danfs215.html
