Operation Kiebitz

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Operation KIEBITZ was a failed German operation during World War II in 1943 to organize an escape of four skilled German U-boat commanders from a Canadian POW camp (the Bowmanville POW camp). Its counterattack by the Royal Canadian Navy, Operation POINTE MAISONNETTE became a key operation in the Battle of the St. Lawrence.

A plan to have Otto Kretschmer, Horst Elfe, Hans Ey and Hans Joachim Knebel-Döberitz escape and picked up by a U-boat, was developed in 1942 by the Kriegsmarine and was to be executed in September 1943. Knebel-Döberitz was the former adjutant of Admiral Karl Dönitz. The successful escape of Otto Kretschmer, a top U-boat ace, would be sensational propaganda for the Nazi war machine.

Coded messages sent to the Nazi prisoners at the Bowmanville POW camp were intercepted in mail by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and military police guards. The RCMP and Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) did not tip off the prisoners that their instructions had been intercepted, so that the RCN might get a chance to seize a German U-boat in Canadian waters, which would be an intelligence coup for the Allied navies.

The RCMP and camp guards monitored the POWs as they began to secretly dig several tunnels, at least one of which would eventually lead outside the camp boundaries. The POW tunnellers created a crude railway that could haul the soil out of the tunnel, allowing the work to proceed more quickly. At one point the excavated dirt from one of the tunnels collapsed part of the ceiling in a camp building where it was being hidden, however the camp guards, aware of the ruse, did not stop the project.

As the date of the escape attempt drew closer, the RCMP and military guards moved in and seized the POWs and collapsed the tunnel. In desperation, one of the Nazi naval officers (not Kretschmer) managed to escape over the camp walls using a crude zip-wire. This officer made his way on Canadian National Railways passenger trains from southern Ontario to Pointe Maisonnette in northern New Brunswick on Chaleur Bay. The officer arrived at the location at the appointed time only to be arrested by RCMP and RCN personnel who were waiting to coordinate a surface task force that would attempt to attack and seize and/or seize the U-boat.

The RCN implemented Operation POINTE MAISONNETTE to attack and/or seize the U-boat. This involved RCN and Canadian Army personnel on shore at the Pointe Maisonnette lighthouse where a portable surface radar array was established, along with a task force of several warships centred on HMCS Rimouski (K121) that was hidden nearby. Rimouski was outfitted with an experimental diffuse lighting system that was considered revolutionary at the time.

The Nazi submarine U-536, which had been tasked with picking up the escaping naval officers, surfaced at the appointed time off Pointe Maisonnette in September 1943. The RCN and Canadian Army personnel on shore signalled with a light that the escapees were to have used, however the U-boat commander was suspicious, particularly after his hydrophones picked up the sound of vessels (the RCN task group) nearby. He opted to not await the expected escapees and chose to submerge and evade the RCN warships which searched throughout the night.

Despite evading the RCN's trap in Chaleur Bay that September, U-536 was sunk the following month before it returned to its German homeport.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Greenfield, Nathan M (2004). The battle of the St. Lawrence: the Second World War in Canada. Toronto: HarperCollins, 286. ISBN 0002006642 9780002006644. 
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