Local author and explorer helped rewrite U.S. Navy history

A local historian’s curiosity and determination, a desire for those who knew of a naval officer’s outstanding service to see him recognized, and a treasure hunter’s promise to see the record set straight have combined over a period of years to re-write history.

The result was vindication and recognition – although posthumous – for a hero whose unsung actions saved lives in waters off the Louisiana coast during WWII.

Commander Herbert Claudius was posthumously awarded the prestigious Legion of Merit award by the Secretary of the Navy during a Dec. 16 ceremony at the Pentagon, 72 years after Claudius and his crew sank a German submarine that had attacked a U.S. passenger steamer in the Gulf of Mexico.

The steamer Robert E. Lee, bound for New Orleans, was under escort of the sub-chaser Claudius commander, the PC-566.

The prevailing belief was that the PC-566 didn’t get the job done and that the U-166 was later sunk by a U.S. Coast Guard plane off the Terrebonne Parish coast.

Claudius and his crew suffered reprimands after the incident, from Navy superiors.

The official record is now corrected, with Navy recognition of the role Claudius and his crew played. But a key element leading to the correction was the result of research by historian CJ Christ, now director of Houma’s Regional Military Museum.

“We spent about 30 years plus diving and searching for that sub from Galveston to Mobile,” said Christ, whose personal quest for the U-boat was fueled by unquenchable curiosity. “For 70 something years, the airplane … was credited for sinking that submarine. I knew good and well that it didn’t sink that submarine.”

Christ, an Air Force pilot during the Korean War, found his curiosity piqued in 1967 while taking a celestial navigation course. A friend, the late Charles Cenac Sr., noting that Christ was a diver, mentioned the wreck of the U-166.

“He said there was a German sub in 60 feet of water off of Last Island,” Christ recalled.

He took up the challenge in his spare time, usually with a small group of friends. The searches persisted in shallow waters all over the coast, but to no avail. In the 1970s Christ was still searching.

“We continued to search because there was no evidence that sub was anywhere near where they said that sub was,” Christ said.

During the course of his on-going WWII research, Christ learned that he could have access to daily logs of the German submarine service taken by allied forces in France at the end of the war. The U.S. Navy granted Christ access and sent him the material.

Documents and microfilm arrived in many envelopes and boxes. Christ reviewed 36 spools of microfilm containing 1200 pages each, in addition to the documents.

“I had reports of the daily activity, the operational archives,” Christ said. “I knew where every U-Boat was during every day of WWII.”

Included were the daily diaries of Adm. Karl Donitz, commander of the German U-boat fleet.

Friends who could read German helped Christ decipher the logs. His understanding of them led to correspondence with former U-boat crewmen and officers in Germany, where he visited and shared the historic records. That led to more detailed information for Christ, who was able to make some major determinations.

Another German sub, the U-171, had been patrolling in the central Gulf of Mexico during the same time as the U-166 but its logs were not included in Christ’s collection. That vessel was sunk off the French coast after striking a mine. Its captain, who survived because he was on the bridge at the time, was called in to explain and during his report Nazi superiors that the U-171 had been attacked by an American plane in the Gulf of Mexico prior to its European return, suffering minimal damage.

When Christ learned of this, his belief that the record was wrong grew stronger. The U-171 was the German sub attacked by the Coast Guard plane near Isle Dernieres, he deduced, not the U-166. And that was why decades of searching turned up no vessel.

In 2001 a discovery was made during a joint surveys of the Gulf by BP and Shell for a pipeline. The remains of a wrecked vessel were found beneath 5,000 feet of water, about 25 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River, determined to be the Robert E. Lee.

Less than two miles away a wreck identified by sonar pictures as a submarine was also found; the last resting place of Christ’s white whale, the U-166, was no longer the Neptune’s secret. Christ’s theory was confirmed.

As interest in the wrecks grew, the History Channel became involved with a documentary, for which Christ was a consultant. While working with those crews Christ began another mission, locating Claudius, the captain of the sub-chaser.

The task was not an easy one. Privacy rules at the Pentagon forbade the release of direct information but there was a promise that messages would be sent.

Christ finally received a phone call from Herbert Claudius Jr. of Orange County, Ca; the son of the commander.

“I told him my father had died in 1981,” said Claudius Jr., who along with other family members had no knowledge of the U-166 incident. Christ told Claudius the story and said he wanted to hook Claudius up with the documentary crew. History Channel’s presentation of the “Deep Sea Detectives”episode documenting the story first aired April 12, 2004.

The younger Claudius was able to access reports concerning the incident, with much of the information supplied by Christ.

“It was very detailed,” Claudius said. “My father’s executive officer had included a brief summary sheet of each of the officers on the review commission. The way CJ had said it, he was reviewed by a number of officers who had never sunk a submarine, who evaluated that my father had never sunk a submarine, which he actually had.”

The son said that Commander Claudius was a reserved individual, and that under questioning by the board of review he was circumspect and professional.

“My dad would have made a good poker player,” Claudius Jr. said, noting that his father had during his career earned the nickname “Cautious Claudius.”

Claudius Jr. learned of the reprimand, which resulted in an assignment off the sub-chaser and a shore-side job for a brief period.

“I am sure that he was hurt at the time to be given a terrible grade on his activities and being taken off the 566,” Claudius Jr. said. “I have seen comments about people who served on the 566, that they perceived there was a sense of disappointment over the whole situation.”

The career of the elder Claudius continued on an upward tilt after the war. He went on to be captain of a destroyer escort, earning more gold braids for his arm and bigger ships to command.

As a result of service during the Korean conflict Claudius was awarded the prestigious Legion of Merit for his service in command of the destroyer Floyd B. Parks during shore bombardment and blockade duties in the Bay of Wonsan.

Claudius retired from the Navy in 1963 and died on a California golf course of a heart attack in 1981.

In 2010 Dr. Robert Ballard, the marine archeologist and explorer who located the wrecks of the Titanic, Bismarck and Yorktown among other famed vessels, set out on detailed exploration of the U-161 and Robert E. Lee wrecks.

Using his undersea craft Nautilus he obtained stunning photographs, and worked on a documentary for the National Geographic Society.

Ballard had been told of the raw deal given Claudius. He and another explorer, Richard Koller, consulted with Christ, and there was talk of contacting Navy brass to see what could be done.

“Ballard led the charge,” said Claudius Jr. “His friendship with the chief of naval operations got the ball rolling.”

In December Christ got a phone call from Claudius Jr., inviting him to go with him to Washington, D.C. for an awards ceremony.

He was present when Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert presented the Legion of Merit posthumously to Lt. Cmdr. Herbert Claudius to his son.

“The actions of Lt. Cmdr. Claudius as commanding officer of PC-566 resulted in the sinking of enemy submarine U-166 July 30, 1942,” the official notice reads.

Claudius Jr. said that during the ceremony thoughts – of course – turned to the father he respected and loved.

“I was kind of thinking about my father’s fine career,” he said. “And that he would have felt vindication as a result not of getting the medal, but of changing naval history. That’s something not done very often.”

Houma native CJ Christ poses in front of a military aircraft at the Houma Regional Military Museum. Christ and others helped to rewrite U.S. Navy history during battle times in World War II. 

JP ARGUELLO | THE TIMES