Open Season

It was not only Allied ships that settled, torpedo-riddled, to the muddy floors of the world's seaways.

In a dense fog somewhere off the St. Lawrence last week the Canadian destroyer Assiniboine, her starboard deck ablaze, rammed and sank a German sub after twelve hours of close-range fighting on the surface. The Canadians saw the Nazi commander killed in his conning tower by a 4.7-inch shell. As the battered Assiniboine closed in to ram, one of its depth charges landed directly on the sub's narrow deck, rolled off, and exploded beneath the surface. The surviving Germans surrendered and were rescued (see cut) as their seawolf sank. The U-boat was, perhaps, the one whose badly aimed torpedo hit the rocky headland and broke windows in a Quebec village last week.

In Berlin taps were sounded for another U-boat master, Lieut. Commander Rolf Muetzelburg, bearer of the oak leaves on the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The fifth of Germany's top sub men killed in action, Muetzelburg had evidently been trapped on the conning tower when his U-boat crash-dived.

But the Nazi submarine was still a formidable menace. The Canadian destroyer Ottawa went down with her captain, four other officers and 107 men. German torpedoes had also bagged two other Canadian warships (a patrol vessel and a corvette) since Sept. 14. The U.S. Navy's Secretary Knox summarized the situation this week: "There can be no question but that today the submarine problem is the major problem confronting us--one which is closely tied in with that of an eventual second front in Europe . . . and with the supplying of Russia in order to keep her armies in the field."

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