A German torpedo blew a hole in his ship, but the Captain sailed 800 miles on hope alone

The North Atlantic in February 1943 was a graveyard of twisted steel and frozen dreams. The air was a razor-sharp 20 degrees, and the water was a lethal 36. This was the “Mid-Atlantic Gap”—a 600-mile stretch beyond the reach of Allied air cover, where German U-boat “Wolfpacks” hunted merchant convoys with terrifying impunity.

At 19:55 on February 22nd, Commander James Hirshfield stood on the bridge of the USCGC Campbell, a 327-foot Treasury-class cutter. He was 40 years old, a Coast Guard veteran of two decades, but he had never sunk a submarine. Tonight, that was about to change in a way that would defy every rule of naval engagement.

Convoy ON-166 was being slaughtered. Nineteen U-boats had surrounded the 63 merchant ships. Already, the horizon was a jagged line of orange fire as tankers exploded. The Campbell had just finished rescuing 50 Norwegian sailors from a torpedoed tanker when her radar operator shouted:

“Contact! 4,600 yards! Surface target!”

THE DECISION TO RAM

Hirshfield didn’t hesitate. He ordered full speed. The Campbell’s twin turbines roared, pushing the cutter to 18 knots through the black swells. The contact was U-606, a Type VIIC submarine commanded by Oberleutnant Hans-Joachim Bertelsmann. The sub had already been crippled by depth charges from a Polish destroyer and was struggling to flee on its diesel engines.

At 20:19, the lookout spotted the low silhouette of the sub just 350 yards off the starboard bow. In the chaos of the North Atlantic night, Hirshfield realized that if he tried to maneuver for a gun strike, the sub might manage to dive and disappear.

He gave the order that would make him a legend: “Hard right rudder! Ram her!”

THE BATTLE ON THE DECK

The Campbell surged forward like a battering ram. As she closed the distance, her guns erupted. Specifically, Gun 4—a 3-inch 50-caliber gun manned entirely by Black stewards and mess attendants who had stepped up from their kitchen duties to defend the ship—poured 32 rounds into the U-606’s conning tower.

At 20:21, the 2,000-ton cutter struck the 760-ton submarine. It was a glancing blow, metal screaming against metal as the Campbell’s hull scraped along the sub’s pressure hull. But as the ships collided, the U-606’s horizontal diving plane—a slab of sharpened steel—caught the Campbell’s side like a can opener.

It tore a 15-foot gash in the cutter’s hull, three feet below the waterline, right into the engine room.

Saltwater exploded into the engine room under immense pressure. Generators shorted out. The lights flickered and died. The Campbell went dark, dead in the water, and sinking.

THE SINKING GHOST

As the Campbell drifted past the dying sub, her crew dropped two depth charges set for shallow detonation. The explosion lifted the U-606 four feet out of the water before it crashed back down, its back broken. The sub began to settle by the stern.

On the bridge, Hirshfield felt a sharp sting. Shrapnel from the engagement had sliced his ear and eyelid, blood masking half his face. He refused to go below. “Keep the pumps running!” he barked into the darkness.

The situation was catastrophic. The engine room was flooding faster than the standard pumps could handle. The crew formed “bucket brigades,” passing pails of freezing Atlantic water up ladders in a desperate race against physics.

THE MASCOT AND THE MIRACLE

Hirshfield realized the convoy couldn’t wait. He ordered 120 non-essential personnel to evacuate to the Polish destroyer Burza. Only 73 men remained aboard the crippled, lightless hull.

But there was one more survivor who refused to leave: Sinbad, the ship’s dog. A black-and-tan mutt who had been the Campbell’s mascot since 1937, Sinbad was an officially enlisted member of the Coast Guard. The crew believed that as long as Sinbad was on board, the ship wouldn’t sink.

Hirshfield let the dog stay. It was the psychological anchor the exhausted crew needed.

For the next three days, the Campbell drifted. The crew rigged a “collision mat”—a heavy canvas reinforced with rope—and lowered it over the side. The pressure of the sea sucked the mat into the gash, slowing the flood to a manageable leak. They were 800 miles from the nearest port in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

THE 800-MILE TOW

On February 26th, help arrived in the form of the British tug Tenacity. A steel cable, no thicker than a man’s wrist, became the Campbell’s umbilical cord. The journey was a crawl—four knots an hour through U-boat-infested waters.

Every hour, the men on the hand pumps rotated. Every hour, lookouts scanned for periscopes. The U-boat Wolfpack was still out there, but they had moved on to easier targets. They didn’t realize that a legendary “Iron Ghost” was limping home right under their noses.

On March 3rd, 1943, eleven days after the ramming, the USCGC Campbell entered St. John’s Harbor. The shipyard workers stopped and stared. The cutter was sitting so low in the water her stern was almost submerged, her hull a rusted mess.

EPILOGUE: THE LEGACY OF THE CAMPBELL

Commander Hirshfield was awarded the Navy Cross for his “extraordinary heroism.” He eventually rose to the rank of Vice Admiral and Assistant Commandant of the Coast Guard.

Chief Steward Lewis Ethridge, the man who led the all-Black gun crew, was eventually awarded the Bronze Star in 1952—the first African American in Coast Guard history to receive the honor.

As for the Campbell, she was repaired and returned to the war in six months. She served through Korea and Vietnam, becoming the longest-serving cutter in history. They called her “The Queen of the Seas,” not because of her size, but because she refused to die.

U-606 remains on the ocean floor, 2,200 feet down. But the story of the captain who sailed 800 miles with his ship torn open remains a testament to a single maritime truth: A ship doesn’t sink because of the water outside; it sinks because the crew lets the water inside. James Hirshfield and his 73 men never let the water in.

Note: Some content was generated using AI tools (ChatGPT) and edited by the author for creativity and suitability for historical illustration purposes.