Even if some wrongdoing would have been going on above decks these men certainly couldn't be held accountable for it. They could hear gunfire and perhaps some shouted orders and that's about it. These men didn't have a clue what was going on above deck. Every member of the crew on a U-boat had a battle station just like in any other nation's submarine service. It gets a little easier to understand what really happened when you look at how a U-boat attacked with gunfire.įirst, the participants. For example if a live round comes close to you, the natural thing to think is that you are the target. The origins of some of these atrocity stories can be traced to a number of things in addition to the propaganda though. The Japanese did commit this type of atrocity on numerous occasions so there was some truth in the rumors and propaganda, it just didn't apply to U-boats. Our merchant seamen were led to believe that these things would happen to them by propaganda and rumors. U-boat crews also thought they might be treated poorly if they fell into our hands (and some were). Most of the stories of U-boats shooting men in the water and in lifeboats etc. I was too, but after studying the treatment of survivors by U-boat crews over the last few years now I am no longer surprised. He was both very surprised and very thankful that he was allowed to get away. He had heard all of the stories passed around by men he had shipped with over the years. My father told me he would thank the commander of that U-boat for stopping the shelling when he heard the abandon ship signal from the Cardonia if he could. In addition to the ship being torn apart by 40 to 50 hits from the U-boat's 105mm deck gun there were three raging fires, the steering was disabled, and the ship was sinking. My father was at his post in the engine room and that ceasefire gave him the time he needed to get out of the engine room and get away. When the abandon ship signal was sounded, the U-boat immediately stopped firing in order to give the men time to get into the lifeboats and get it into the water safely. The ship was traveling alone and was unarmed. When the SS Cardonia was attacked with gunfire from U-126 my father (like so many other Allied merchant seamen) assumed he would be killed in the water if he managed to get off of the ship. My father Robert Edison Dunn was Third Engineer on the SS Cardonia on Mawhen she was shelled, torpedoed and sunk by U-126 (Bauer). They were not however targeted and their deaths were tragic but were not crimes. Men were killed by gunfire while on the decks of merchant ships, while getting into lifeboats, and perhaps while helpless in the water. There is however some truth to the stories and this makes getting to the bottom of what happened just that much more difficult. On the contrary, they routinely helped the men in the water and in lifeboats when they could even after they were ordered by Dönitz not to do so. It was never the policy of the U-boat service to shoot men in the water or in lifeboats. There was only one proven case of a U-boat intentionally machine-gunning survivors during the whole war. However, the stories of U-boats machine-gunning survivors are simply not accurate. The Third Reich committed some horrendous atrocities during that war and as a result way too many folks are willing to believe any story about the German war machine without the slightest question and without any investigation at all. It is quite easy to see why so many still believe those stories. The movie wasn't true and neither was the scene containing the machine-gunning but many still believed it. The machine-gunning stories have however crept into a large number of books, magazines, movies and newspaper articles, etc.Īs recently as Apa U-boat machine-gunning men in a lifeboat was depicted in the movie U-571. On the contrary, the official records are full of stories about U-boat crews giving survivors directions to land or giving them medical care etc. The questions were asked when the survivors were debriefed though and the answers were over and over again, "No we were not fired on in the lifeboats or in the water". These stories were however, rarely reported for the record at the time by the crews of ships sunk or damaged by U-boats. There have been allegations that they machine-gunned the lifeboats to make them unusable to escape in, that they machine-gunned lifeboats as the men were getting in them and as they were being lowered, and that men were machine-gunned while in the water. It has been a common misconception by many including some in Germany that during World War II U-boats machine-gunned survivors of the ships they sunk. It was perhaps even better than the treatment of enemy merchant ship survivors by American submarines. In general the treatment of merchant ship survivors by U-boat crews was very good. Treatment of Merchant Ship Survivors by U-boat Crews 1939 - 1945
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