Britain suffered its first warship loss of World War II on September 17, 1939, when a German submarine sank the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous in the Atlantic. The carrier went down in just 20 minutes, taking 518 crew members with her. The attack came just over two weeks after the war began with Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, the same day a U-boat sank the British liner SS Athenia, killing 112 people and opening what would become the Battle of the Atlantic.
In the early weeks of the conflict, land fighting on the Western Front remained limited. France launched a brief, half-hearted offensive into western Germany on September 7 but withdrew by mid-October. At sea, however, German submarines quickly became a serious threat to British shipping. Britain depended heavily on imported food and raw materials.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced a naval blockade of Germany on September 4, and Germany responded with a counter-blockade of Britain, using U-boats to try to cut off its supplies. Germany began the war with a fleet of 57 U-boats. The larger Type VII boats served as the primary hunter-killer submarines, while smaller Type II coastal boats were mainly used for mine-laying around the British Isles. The pocket battleships Deutschland and Admiral Graf Spee were already at sea on commerce-raiding missions in the Atlantic when hostilities broke out.
The Royal Navy, vastly superior to Germany’s surface fleet, organized merchant ships into escorted convoys but lacked effective technology to hunt and destroy submarines. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill ordered anti-submarine hunter groups centered on aircraft carriers to patrol the western approaches west of Britain and Ireland. The strategy was deeply flawed. Carrier aircraft of the day could spot U-boats on the surface but lacked suitable weapons to attack them, and submarines could dive quickly to escape.
Worse, the large carriers themselves became attractive targets. On September 14, 1939, HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s most modern carrier, narrowly escaped disaster when U-39 fired three torpedoes at her. All malfunctioned and exploded prematurely. Escorting destroyers then forced U-39 to the surface with depth charges, and her captain scuttled the submarine to prevent capture.
Three days later, another U-boat succeeded where U-39 had failed. U-29 was a Type VIIA submarine that had entered service in 1936, displacing 626 tons on the surface and 745 tons submerged. She was 211 feet long with a crew of four officers and between 40 and 52 enlisted men, armed with five torpedo tubes, eleven torpedoes, and deck guns. Her commander was Lieutenant Commander Otto Schuhart, a highly experienced naval officer with a decade of service who had just turned 30 on September 4.
U-29 had left port on August 19, twelve days before the invasion of Poland, sailing with five other boats into the Atlantic before each took up an individual patrol area. Schuhart’s zone was west of Ireland. On September 17, Schuhart spotted HMS Courageous and began stalking her. Courageous was a World War I ship converted into an aircraft carrier in 1928.
She displaced over 24,000 tons, stretched 735 feet, carried 48 aircraft, and had a crew of more than 1,200 men. For two hours, she remained completely unaware of the submarine shadowing her. The opportunity came when Courageous turned into the wind to launch aircraft. As she turned, she passed across the bow of the submerged U-29, and Schuhart ordered a spread of three torpedoes fired.
Two struck the carrier on her port side. Courageous listed heavily, capsized, and sank in about 20 minutes. Her two escorting destroyers hunted U-29 for hours, but Schuhart managed to escape. The sinking marked the first time a British warship was lost to enemy action in World War II.
In Germany, news of the victory was greeted with great joy. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine, and Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of the U-boat service, were ecstatic. In an unprecedented move, Raeder ordered that every member of U-29’s crew receive the Iron Cross Second Class. Schuhart also received the Iron Cross First Class, a pin-backed badge worn on the left breast.
The Iron Cross had been reinstituted by Hitler on September 1, 1939. Originally created in 1813 during the Napoleonic Wars, it had been re-issued with design changes in 1870 and again in 1914. The World War II version was nearly identical to the 1914 medal except for the ribbon color, the replacement of imperial symbols with the swastika, and a new date. U-29 returned home to a hero’s welcome.
Hitler personally reviewed the crew at a medal ceremony on September 26, 1939, which was broadcast in newsreels to an exultant German public. Schuhart went on to sink twelve more ships during the war and received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, Germany’s highest award for gallantry and meritorious service. He survived the war, unlike many of his fellow U-boat men, and served in the postwar Bundesmarine until 1967. He died in 1990 at the age of 80.
U-29 was scuttled near Flensburg on May 5, 1945, to prevent her capture by the British. The wreck remains there today.