The Battle of the St. Lawrence by Nathan M. Greenfield Page A
Authors: Nathan M. Greenfield
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about destroying the enemy craft responsible for the recent disastrous sinkings.”
Their plan was textbook: skim along at treetop level, low enough so that they could see the U-boat before it saw them, and then, “by a quick change of course …, complete [a] shallow dive attack before it could submerge, or indeed before the submarine, if still on the surface could get a full blast of gunfire off in our direction.” But “would it still be on the surface, or would it be at periscope depth, or would it be completely beyond view?”
They reached the Sept-Îles lighthouse.
Nothing.
“We knew the elapsed time since the sightings and that underwater a sub wouldn’t make more than five or six knots, so we had a rough search area which we covered in a series of parallel sweeps [trying] to see the periscope,” recalled Lister.
Square after square, flying right angles. Making ever-larger squares.
Each time nothing.
“We then searched all the bays and shore line of the river in that area, finally returning rather deflated to base.”
While Lister and Dunlap searched the waters off Sept-Îles, U-132 was over one hundred miles away, between Anticosti Island and Gaspé, fixing the periscope and pump damage sustained in the first depth-charging of the Battle of the St. Lawrence.
Three days later, on July 10, Brigadier-General Georges Vanier, district officer commanding Military District No. 5, which encompassed the Gaspé, wrote to National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa that rumours of additional sinkings and of the possibility of landings by Germans to either kill Canadians or kidnap them as hostages were sweeping the Gaspé: “Although I am not responsible for its [the Gaspé’s] protection and security”—respon-sibility lay with the General Officer Commanding in Chief Atlantic Command in Halifax—“I feel bound in conscience to recommend that a motorized column, not necessarily large in numbers, should be established at once in some centralized place of the Gaspé Peninsula from which itcould radiate to the long stretches of the coast which are completely open and without railway communication. This motorized column could send out patrols, particularly at night.”
On the tenth, while authorities suspected that U-132 was still in the river because there had been no transmissions to BdU, the defence of the Gaspé spilled over into Parliament and into the perennially dangerous waters of Quebec-Ottawa relations. About the time Vogelsang saw, 800 metres away, “four motored land-based aircraft clos[ing] from bearing 220 degrees,” the member of parliament for Gaspé, Sasseville Roy, rose on a point of privilege and told the House that “three more ships forming part of a fourteen ship convoy were torpedoed last Sunday night opposite Cap-Chat in the St. Lawrence river,” and asked, “Is the minister disposed to make a statement to the House or to arrange a secret sitting to inform the people’s representatives as to the seriousness of the situation?”
Incensed at Roy’s breach of parliamentary privilege to override the censorship rules announced in May, the prime minister himself responded none too subtly. He began by reminding the House that “the minister [for naval services] made it quite clear [in May] that there would be a proper time for the government to make an announcement of any event of this kind,” and then added, “Premature announcements were only serving the ends of the enemy and would not help the ends of Canada’s defence.”
The Speaker of the House refused to recognize Roy’s supplementary question.
Over the next three days, during which time Vogelsang continued to prowl the Strait of Belle Isle and adjacent waters of the gulf, evaded at least five planes by emergency dives and tried to press at least one attack, the political storm worsened. The Saturday edition of
L’Action Catholique
(the second most important paper in French Quebec, which, according to historian Eric Amyot, had
Their plan was textbook: skim along at treetop level, low enough so that they could see the U-boat before it saw them, and then, “by a quick change of course …, complete [a] shallow dive attack before it could submerge, or indeed before the submarine, if still on the surface could get a full blast of gunfire off in our direction.” But “would it still be on the surface, or would it be at periscope depth, or would it be completely beyond view?”
They reached the Sept-Îles lighthouse.
Nothing.
“We knew the elapsed time since the sightings and that underwater a sub wouldn’t make more than five or six knots, so we had a rough search area which we covered in a series of parallel sweeps [trying] to see the periscope,” recalled Lister.
Square after square, flying right angles. Making ever-larger squares.
Each time nothing.
“We then searched all the bays and shore line of the river in that area, finally returning rather deflated to base.”
While Lister and Dunlap searched the waters off Sept-Îles, U-132 was over one hundred miles away, between Anticosti Island and Gaspé, fixing the periscope and pump damage sustained in the first depth-charging of the Battle of the St. Lawrence.
Three days later, on July 10, Brigadier-General Georges Vanier, district officer commanding Military District No. 5, which encompassed the Gaspé, wrote to National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa that rumours of additional sinkings and of the possibility of landings by Germans to either kill Canadians or kidnap them as hostages were sweeping the Gaspé: “Although I am not responsible for its [the Gaspé’s] protection and security”—respon-sibility lay with the General Officer Commanding in Chief Atlantic Command in Halifax—“I feel bound in conscience to recommend that a motorized column, not necessarily large in numbers, should be established at once in some centralized place of the Gaspé Peninsula from which itcould radiate to the long stretches of the coast which are completely open and without railway communication. This motorized column could send out patrols, particularly at night.”
On the tenth, while authorities suspected that U-132 was still in the river because there had been no transmissions to BdU, the defence of the Gaspé spilled over into Parliament and into the perennially dangerous waters of Quebec-Ottawa relations. About the time Vogelsang saw, 800 metres away, “four motored land-based aircraft clos[ing] from bearing 220 degrees,” the member of parliament for Gaspé, Sasseville Roy, rose on a point of privilege and told the House that “three more ships forming part of a fourteen ship convoy were torpedoed last Sunday night opposite Cap-Chat in the St. Lawrence river,” and asked, “Is the minister disposed to make a statement to the House or to arrange a secret sitting to inform the people’s representatives as to the seriousness of the situation?”
Incensed at Roy’s breach of parliamentary privilege to override the censorship rules announced in May, the prime minister himself responded none too subtly. He began by reminding the House that “the minister [for naval services] made it quite clear [in May] that there would be a proper time for the government to make an announcement of any event of this kind,” and then added, “Premature announcements were only serving the ends of the enemy and would not help the ends of Canada’s defence.”
The Speaker of the House refused to recognize Roy’s supplementary question.
Over the next three days, during which time Vogelsang continued to prowl the Strait of Belle Isle and adjacent waters of the gulf, evaded at least five planes by emergency dives and tried to press at least one attack, the political storm worsened. The Saturday edition of
L’Action Catholique
(the second most important paper in French Quebec, which, according to historian Eric Amyot, had
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