The waters north of Scotland are nasty at the best of times.During the long winter months, Force 6 to 10 storms with sleet and ice are normal.Winds of 30 to 40 knots howl over the heavy gray waves, with breaking crests forming streaks of foam.But Kapitänleutnant 1 Albrecht ("Ajax") Achilles considered himself to be a lucky man -in fact, doubly lucky.In December 1941, Hans Witt, the first commander of the brand new U-161, had broken his leg in an accident on shore, and on the last day of the year, Achilles, until then First Watch (or Executive) Officer, at age 28 had been given command of the 1,200-ton Type IXC boat.His companion from pre-war merchant shipping days, Oberleutnant 2 Werner Bender, became the new executive officer.And now, the second piece of luck: the first week of 1942 brought only moderate Force 2 to 3 light breezes in those usually turbulent seas between the Shetland and Faeroe Islands.The sky was overcast, good protection from patrolling British aircraft.Gray boat.Gray seas.Gray skies.U-161 was running well, covering more than 230 nautical miles per day.Ahead to the southeast lay the German-occupied French naval bases in the Bay of Biscay, the boat's first port of call.On January 7, Achilles received a garbled message from Group North that a convoy had been sighted just west of his position, but he was too far off to the south to join the hunt.Then, around 12:30 p.m. 3 on January 9, U-161 received a terse, coded "for-officers-only" radio message from Vice Admiral Karl Dönitz, Commander U-Boats."Proceed to Lorient at once." 4 What emergency had prompted this sudden haste, Achilles wondered?Was it a routine dispatch announcing that Lorient was to be U-161's new home?Or was there a new theater of operations in the cards?Orders were orders.Achilles at once shaped course for Lorient.Within minutes, a smoke smudge appeared on the horizon."Ajax" gave chase, but to his dismay, the target was moving too fast and was protected not only by a surface escort but also by an aircraft.U-161 again shaped course south-southwest for Lorient.Shortly before noon on January 10, the Old Man put his crew through the paces of an emergency dive.Within minutes, the boat became heavy by the bow and quickly plunged to depth "A," 80 meters.Chief Engineer Long Night of the Tankers xvi ocean-going tanker with 3.5 million gallons of refined gasoline in its bunkers would be a splendid target!Dönitz then pushed back the pile of papers on the table before him and assumed a more relaxed posture.His skippers knew well that the time had come for the customary pep talk.The admiral impressed on them the importance of the operation and its expected effect on enemy land, sea, and air operations.He informed them of the rich harvest that the six boats currently deployed in Operation Drumbeat (Paukenschlag) were taking off the United States' eastern seaboard.He expected no less from Neuland.He reminded them yet again that the Atlantic was "the decisive theater of the war."He demanded victory at all cost."Be strong!Do not falter!"The Führer and his Wehrmacht stood at the gates of Moscow."Faith in the Führer is a German officer's first and foremost duty," Dönitz sternly lectured the Kaleus."Find, engage, destroy!" "Attack, attack like wolves!"The pep talk behind him, "the Great Lion" turned the briefing back over to Schütze and his staff."Operations Order No. 51 'West Indies'," formalized on January 17, 1942, defined specific targets.Aruba stood at the top of the list.The oil refineries, first and foremost the Standard Oil of New Jersey Lago plant at San Nicolas and secondarily the Royal Dutch Shell refinery north of Oranjestad, were the main targets.Willemstad on Curaçao was home to a much larger Royal Dutch Refinery."The oil is brought to Aruba as well as Curaçao from the Gulf of Maracaibo [Venezuela] in shallow-draft tankers of about 12 to 1,500 tons with a draft of 2 to 3 m[eters], is refined there and loaded onto large ocean-going tankers."The Gulf of Maracaibo was protected by a large sand bank and as a result of the shelling of Maracaibo's Fort San Carlos in January 1903 by the German cruiser Vineta, 14 Juan Vicente Gómez, the Venezuelan dictator, had refused to dredge the sand bank for fear that other foreign warships might enter the Gulf.Thus, only small tankers could exit Maracaibo and only at high tide, "usually at day break."Trinidad offered another target-rich environment, as it not only contained oil refineries and tank farms but was also the port of destination and transshipment site from the Guianas of valuable bauxite, vital for airplane production.Furthermore, it was the departure point for traffic bound for Cape Town, South Africa.A third target was the Florida Strait xvii Prologue and the tankers that traversed it en route to New Orleans, Galveston, and Port Arthur.Antisubmarine defenses, the former Hamburg-Amerika merchant captains reported, existed only at Trinidad.But it was likely, Schütze's staff allowed, that the first "wave" of attacks would in time bring antisubmarine nets, aerial reconnaissance and surface U-boat hunters to the Caribbean.Still, the lack of war experience of what was expected to be hastily dispatched and inexperienced American forces would render ASW "of little fighting value."All U-boats were to proceed to the West Indies running on one diesel engine only, to save fuel oil.Once they crossed the line 40 degrees west longitude, they were to radio in their position and fuel supply.Kernével would then give the signal to commence operations: "Neuland 186," with the first and third letters denoting the day, February 16.The initial attacks were to be driven home "five hours before day break."Werner Hartenstein was to command the assault group.The skippers were to interpret their zones of attack liberally and independently -a departure for Dönitz, who liked to keep tight control of operations.They were free to repeat their attacks after initial strikes."Thus, do not break off [operations] too soon!"They were to use their torpedoes first and thereafter their 10.5-cm deck guns if land targets were in the offing.Last but not least, Schütze handed the commanders commercial sea charts for Aruba, Curaçao, and Trinidad, as well as the most recent sailing plots for the West Indies.Unbeknown to the Kaleus, a bitter dispute as to targeting had broken out behind the scenes between Dönitz and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Commander in Chief Kriegsmarine.While Dönitz as ever was fixated simply on "tonnage war" (sinking ships), Raeder demanded that shore installations such as refineries and tank farms be given priority.He had a point.The world's largest oil refinery was the Standard Oil "Esso" facility at San Nicolas, Aruba; and with the Royal Dutch Shell refinery at Eagle Beach, they together produced 5,000 barrels per day of critical 100-octane gasoline for aircraft alone.Raeder also knew that Pointe-à-Pierre on Trinidad was home to the largest refinery in the British Empire, Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd.The "Great Lion" chose to leave the targeting issue for further discussion.Long Night of the Tankers xviii "Ajax" Achilles was delighted.He and Bender had sailed the waters off Trinidad before the war and they knew intimately its reefs and currents as well as harbors and onshore installations.They planned to exploit this advantage.Moreover, the Caribbean was virgin territory for the U-boats.Surprise was thus assured.Surely, Knight's Crosses (Ritterkreuze) would be in the offing.And what a welcome relief the warm waters of the Caribbean would be from the frigid wastes of the North Atlantic.The meeting broke up precisely at 10 p.m., Dönitz's self-imposed bedtime.* * * Operation New Land was, of course, but one part of the greater Battle of the Atlantic, "the most prolonged naval campaign in history." 15For six long years, German surface and subsurface raiders fought a tenacious battle for control of the North Atlantic sea lanes that connected Britain to its vital allies in North America.Most specifically, Karl Dönitz launched more than 1,000 of his "gray sharks" from their lairs in the Bay of Biscay in so-called "wolf packs" against the Allied lifelines; roughly 780 boats and 30,000 sailors never returned from the Atlantic.For the Allies, 175 warships, 2,700 merchant ships, and 30,000 merchant sailors met a similar fate.In time, an army of technical experts mounted a complex and sophisticated air and sea assault against the U-boats, while especially American industry ramped up merchant-ship production to the point where already by July 1941 the number of new vessels entering the Allied shipping pool surpassed total losses.As the war escalated, especially after America's entry as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Dönitz sent his U-boats ever further west, seeking out the Allied convoys at their North American point of egress.His most spectacular campaign was dubbed Operation Drumbeat ("Paukenschlag"), launched on January 13, 1942, with the arrival of five U-boats in the waters between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Cape Hatteras; eight boats followed in March and April. 16 It was a stunning surprise: in what S. E. Morison, the official historian of the US Navy in World War II termed "a merry massacre," the raiders destroyed 470,000 tons of Allied shipping off the eastern seaboard of the United States in February, and 1.15 million tons to the end of April 1942.