The beginning of the end for the U-853 came on May 5, 1945, hours before Germany's surrender. The U-853 had penetrated the waters off Point Judith, Rhode Island eager to find her first kill. Up until this point, the U-853 had never sunk a ship. The danger of the U-853's boldness was that the largest Naval facility in the Northeast , Newport Naval Station, was within close vicinity.

The SS Black Point, a old steamer, was just off Point Judith and the Newport Navy Base with a full load of coal destined for the Edison Power Plant in South Boston. Black Point carried a crew of 46 men.

Captain Helmut Froemsdorf of U-853 sat 1000 yards away and took aim on the Black Point. With no escorts or other ships in sight and the uboats back end being against the Block Island area, the Captain fired a torpedo at the Black Point. Invisible to the U-853 was the fact that four US warships were racing each other from New York to Boston and just happened to be on the opposite side of Block Island.

The torpedo hit the Black Point and sent a quarter ton section of the gun mount onto the bow. Men jumped from the rails or tangled with the lifeboats as forty feet of the Black Points stern was blown off. At 6:05 pm, the Black Point rolled hard to port. It paused as it blew the trapped air out of its interior and then continued its descent to the bottom. Twelve men, that were in the stern section, were killed when the Black Point was hit and from her eventual sinking. Before the Black Point went down, she had gotten off a SOS message.

Apparently, U-853 started to head towards deeper water and away from Narragansett Bay. As he moved away from the attack area, the 4 American warships came around Block Island and were visible to the U-853. The U-853 went deeper and tried to lay on the shallow bottom of this area.

The lead ship of this four-ship group was the USS Ericsson, DD440, and flagship of the flotilla. Destroyer Escorts Moberly, Atherton, and Amick were all relatively close behind and moving quite rapidly. This group had just escorted a 80 ship convoy to New York and were now on a full power run to the Charlestown Naval Base. The flotilla was moving from the westside of U-853 to the eastside of the submarine and onward towards Boston at full speed. This would presumably give the Uboat crew a false hope of survival and that their enemy was moving away from the area.

An hour went by before the USS Ericsson and the other escort vessels turned toward the U-853. According to Lewis Iselin, CDR of the Atherton, and King Upton, Executive Officer of the Atherton, the flotilla was still behind Block Island, west and south of the Black Point's position, when it learned of the torpedoing. They received word via radio shortly before 6 pm from the Kamen, a Yugoslavian freighter, which was picking up survivors from the Black Point. The messages were then forwarded by signal light to the USS Ericsson, where the task force commander-Francis McCune was aboard. A bit of controvery errupts here as the Atherton officers state that McCune ordered the group to proceed towards Boston, while McCune does not remember that aspect of the battle.

Anyhow, it was not until the Atherton was well east of the attack site that the orders were changed to head back and search the attack area. At about 8:14 pm, the Atherton's sonar returned the metallic echo of a contact lying on the bottom. Now the battle began::

Atherton's log::

2030:: Fired magnetic pattern of depth charges. One explosion observed.
2046:: Fired hedgehogs which exploded after approximately 12 seconds. Unable to reestablish contact due to extreme disturbed condition of water.

The next two and a half hours were silent as the Atherton, seven other destroyers including Ericsson and Moberly-joined by PT boats from Melville, tried to regain contact with the submarine.

Atherton's log (continued)::

1137:: Reestablished contact
1141:: Attacked with hedgehogs. Large quantities of oil, life jackets, pieces of wood and other debris, and air bubbles, coming to the surface.

The attacks continued as oil was rising from the depths quite rapidly. At 1305, Atherton telegraghed headquarters that it had finished the submarine off. Orders came back for the group to continue the barrage. Iselin recalls that, "There was no doubt that by this time we knew we had it but it seemed everyone wanted to get into the act. I don't think there is a hull that took a bigger beating during the war.

Atherton's log (continued)::

0510:: Picked up items of wreckage
0640:: Fired hedgehogs, all of which exploded. Fired full pattern of depth charges.

Thanks to Beth Gebbie of the USS Ericsson Association for providing material and pictures.

This information is protected and copyright 1999 Richard Angelini. This is a service provided by the USS Mayo Group. Please ask to use any information contained within these pages. Thank you.

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