Crushing fishing boats: historical?

[starkwolf]

So, in SH3 you can crush fishingboats of enemy nations. Rather cruel, waste of time and an unnecessary risk considering they would probably try to report your position if they go down, and certainly would if they got away. That said, Hitler had a fondness for fear tactics, often sacrificing practicality to try and make the war as scary for his enemies as he could. Not to mention I could somehow imagine Hitler rationalizing it as a starvation tactic.

That got me wondering, did Uboats ever actually attack fishing vessels? If so, were they ordered to or did they do it on their own volition? While it seems wildly impractical to me, it doesn't seem far fetched that someone as bent on terror as Hitler was might consider such a thing.

[XenonSurf]

The 'human life-saving' way is simple: if you are spotted by an enemy fishing boat make sure it spots you at doing a heading that was not your original course, once you get far away enough, out of sight, you return to your original course. Simple enough, that's what I would do. No way that they can report anything useful about you (except that you exist of course...If that's too much you need to kill them. At war you kill your enemies.)
The best solution is not getting in sight at all.

[starkwolf]

Originally Posted by XenonSurf

The 'human life-saving' way is simple: if you are spotted by an enemy fishing boat make sure it spots you at doing a heading that was not your original course, once you get far away enough, out of sight, you return to your original course. Simple enough, that's what I would do. No way that they can report anything useful about you (except that you exist of course...If that's too much you need to kill them. At war you kill your enemies.)
The best solution is not getting in sight at all.

Logically yes, better even than what I was thinking. That said, putting a siren on a dive bomber and driving up the time it takes to produce it simply for the sake of frightening your enemies seemed logical to Hitler. War has a way of making people aggressive beyond what is rational, and I was wondering if that was the case here by any chance.

[Faith]

Hitler never gave the order, since at the beginning of the war, U-Boats still considered fishing vessels as targets. As in World War One, rather than shooting at them with the deck gun, the crew boarded the vessel and planted timed explosives, while taking the crew aboard. But with the massive improvements in aviation, this method was seen as suicidal. During the first two years of the war, only two fishing boats were sunk this way, on September 16th and October 28th, 1939. There was a brief resurgence when the USA declared war, but it didn't go beyong late 1942.

Interstingly, fisherman were protected by the Hague Treaty of 1907, which said that the participants were "not to take advantage of the harmless character of the said vessels in order to use them for military purposes while preserving their peaceful appearance". While the countries of the world honored the treaty during the First World War, no one respected it during the second.

Hope this answers the historical aspect, and I apologize if I sound rather "brusque".

[starkwolf]

Originally Posted by Faith

Hitler never gave the order, since at the beginning of the war, U-Boats still considered fishing vessels as targets. As in World War One, rather than shooting at them with the deck gun, the crew boarded the vessel and planted timed explosives, while taking the crew aboard. But with the massive improvements in aviation, this method was seen as suicidal. During the first two years of the war, only two fishing boats were sunk this way, on September 16th and October 28th, 1939. There was a brief resurgence when the USA declared war, but it didn't go beyong late 1942.

Interstingly, fisherman were protected by the Hague Treaty of 1907, which said that the participants were "not to take advantage of the harmless character of the said vessels in order to use them for military purposes while preserving their peaceful appearance". While the countries of the world honored the treaty during the First World War, no one respected it during the second.

Hope this answers the historical aspect, and I apologize if I sound rather "brusque".

Thank you very much, very interesting!

[XenonSurf]

Originally Posted by Faith

Interstingly, fisherman were protected by the Hague Treaty of 1907, (...)

Wasn't it Cicero who said "In war times any law evaporates..." ?

Hitler was very ignorant about the military potential of u-boats before they showed success. Also U-boat commanders were rather listening to what Doenitz had to say, or they used their own judgement, also in the above fisherboat case.
Time and situation permitting, some commanders allowed tanker crews to leave their ship before it got destroyed, that's historically proved.

As for fishing boats, the commander had to judge if such a boat could become a threat or not once the u-boat was spotted. Later in the war where enemy planes had become a considerable danger for u-boats (because of radar), such fisherboats would almost always be considered as a threat, rest assured that u-boat commanders were considering first their own crew's safety. German u-boats didn't follow some american examples for taking crew onboard AFAIK, not in WWII.

[Captain1966]

I am reading Clay Blair's "Hitler's U-Boat War" at the moment. According to the book it was common in 1939-1940 for U-Boats sailing out around the British Isles toward the Atlantic to sink trawlers they came across. Usually by Deck Gun.

[XenonSurf]

I currently play the War Ace Campaign (WAC 5.01) which contains a lot of historical radio messages; I play it with the german voices and text. I don't know if all these messages are textually authentic, but I assume most of them are, taken from research and archieve documents.
On September 1-3 1939, when the war against Poland and soon after against England and France broke out, Admiral Raeder didn't issue an order like 'Sink them all', but he had issued orders citing the relevant international treaties of that time, and these were full of interpretation possibilities. At some point he issued an order like '...can be sunk if any possible threat against the submarine is noticed'. Some orders were even tragi-comic, e.g. when he issued the order (roughly translated) '...I want to ensure you understand that also ships from "Great Britain" are to be pursuied and destroyed...'

Such orders open for interpretation was very bad news for any neutral shipping at the start of hostilities, but latest in mid-1940 or late 1940 neutral ships like fishing boats knew very well that going off-coast was kind of a suicide, or at least they *should* have known, informed by their governement. Because german u-boat commanders had the same line of reasoning, fisherboats, or neutral boats with questionable flags (or without) and far outside of ports had to be considered as spies and were mainly destroyed, not because of tonnage consideration or issued orders, but as a precaution measure for not revealing ongoing operations and u-boat movements.

But was it really so? I don't know the whole picture, today all we have are interviews and archieves from the people involved and who made statements during and after the war. I would have to research myself.

A certain fact is, fisherboats and else, the naval sub war was a very cruel one, also in the Pacific battlefield. Sub commanders didn't ask many questions, they did shoot and asked later.

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by starkwolf

So, in SH3 you can crush fishingboats of enemy nations. Rather cruel, waste of time and an unnecessary risk considering they would probably try to report your position if they go down, and certainly would if they got away. That said, Hitler had a fondness for fear tactics, often sacrificing practicality to try and make the war as scary for his enemies as he could. Not to mention I could somehow imagine Hitler rationalizing it as a starvation tactic.

That got me wondering, did Uboats ever actually attack fishing vessels? If so, were they ordered to or did they do it on their own volition? While it seems wildly impractical to me, it doesn't seem far fetched that someone as bent on terror as Hitler was might consider such a thing.

It all depended on the commander. Some of them evaded fishing boats; others sank them.

I've read accounts from both World Wars and it was fairly common to sail away from them .... too little tonnage to be worthwhile, plus the danger of them radioing for destroyers. Also, some trawlers worked in combination with submerged enemy subs. Or had guns big enough to breach the pressure hull; I have seen plans for fishing boats of the time with 3" guns....more than enough to sink a sub.

[XenonSurf]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

It all depended on the commander. Some of them evaded fishing boats; others sank them.

I've read accounts from both World Wars and it was fairly common to sail away from them .... too little tonnage to be worthwhile, plus the danger of them radioing for destroyers. Also, some trawlers worked in combination with submerged enemy subs. Or had guns big enough to breach the pressure hull; I have seen plans for fishing boats of the time with 3" guns....more than enough to sink a sub.

Interesting. Weren't these called Q-boats? Disguised 'inoffensive' boats?