The Emile Miguet a 14,115 ton tanker sunk by gunfire from a German submarine.

[NEON DEON]

One of the largest Tankers in the world at the time of her sinking, The French Tanker Emile Miguet was sunk by gunfire from the Famous U-48. A type VII B U-boat with of all things an 88 mm(roughly 3.5") gun! In fact, it was U-boat ace Herbert Shultze's biggest kill of the war!

"At 18.08 hours on 12 Oct, 1939, U-48 (http://uboat.net/find_boat.php3?find_boat=48) stopped the Emile Miguet, which was straggling from the convoy KJ-2 (http://uboat.net/ops/convoys/convoys.php?convoy=KJ-2) and shelled her until 19.00 hours. The tanker was set on fire, was abandoned and sank south-southwest of Ireland. The survivors were picked up by the American merchant Black Hawk."

http://uboat.net/boats/u48.htm

[Sailor Steve]

You keep bringing this up. What exactly is your point? That ships were indeed sunk by gunfire? Of course they were. You didn't, however, link to the direct page http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/62.html which gives exactly no information. How many rounds? How much time? It only says the ship was shelled, set on fire, abandoned and sank. Most ships, if allowed to burn freely, will eventually sink, as a fire, especially a fuel fire, will eat through steel.

[Rockin Robbins]

Another pretty awesome find there Neon! Again: an hour on the surface. Wouldn't have been a good idea in Japanese controlled waters, which were swarming with hostile aircraft.

This looks like a nice good hidey spot away from Allied aircraft about 250 miles west of the Irish coast. 1939? A doable year when the British were still wondering whether they chose to participate. Ja, he was pretty safe.

Still a confirmed gun sinking of a tanker, which could be one of the most difficult of ships to sink even with torpedoes.

[AVGWarhawk]

Yes, but fire as Steve points out means many things. Explosions, men abandoning ship, fire melting steel. On good flick of a cigarette in the wrong place can sink the ship.

Now we know why there was only one lighter on the Hindenburg in the specially designed smoking room :hmm:

[Subnuts]

Since the tanker was a "straggler," there's a chance it had already hit by a torpedo, making it easier to sink afterward. Unfortunately, the article doesn't say if it was or not.

[NEON DEON]

Since the tanker was a "straggler," there's a chance it had already hit by a torpedo, making it easier to sink afterward. Unfortunately, the article doesn't say if it was or not.

The ship was from convoy KJ-2. The only attack made on KJ-2 was the U-48.

http://www.uboat.net/ops/convoys/convoys.php?convoy=KJ-2

Also Ubootwaffe shows sinking by gunfire.

http://www.ubootwaffe.net/ops/ships.cgi?boat=48;nr=5

And this from Chronology of US Navy:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/USN-Chron/USN-Chron-1939.html

October 12, 1939

"German submarines attack convoys of French and British shipping; U 48 shells and sinks French motor tanker Emile Miguet (from convoy KJ 2S) at 50°15'N, 14°50'W, and later torpedoes and sinks British freighter Heronspool (convoy OB 17S) at 50°13'N, 14°48'W. U.S. merchantmen rescue the survivors: freighter Black Hawk rescues Emile Miguet's crew, passenger liner President Harding rescues Heronspool's."

[Rockin Robbins]

This was also less than 2 months into the war, off the west coast of Ireland in a place where the sub could expect not to be subject to any reprisal whilst lollygagging on the surface. Everybody gets a free play. Then they have to pay for such innocent frolicking later in the war when ASW would mean death for such a naive maneuver.

[NEON DEON]

This was also less than 2 months into the war, off the west coast of Ireland in a place where the sub could expect not to be subject to any reprisal whilst lollygagging on the surface. Everybody gets a free play. Then they have to pay for such innocent frolicking later in the war when ASW would mean death for such a naive maneuver.

Apparently not for the Americans against weak Japanese ASW who conversely were loosing the war. At night, the japanese could not hit the round side of the Super Dome from the air much less a submarine.

I havent finished yet but I am up to April of 1943 and I have not found one U boat that sank because it instigated a gun battle. Not one. Of course I still have 2 more years to go!

BTW: The German U-boats made 435 attacks using gunfire.

Cross oceans to the Pacific and you have one US sub sunk while initiating a gun battle. The S 44 when she misidentified a destroyer as a merchant.

In June of 1945, Fluckey from 1,000 yards out bombarded Kaihyo Island for over an hour. In the attack, Fire was returned but the Barb's 40 mm and twin 20 mm silenced machine guns a 37 mm gun and disabled a 75 mm While the 5 inch was focused on destroying the town. After about an hour he pulled back and waited 2 more hours for aircraft to show up. None did. He again went in his intent to land a shore party and raise the American flag on Japanese soil. However when closing a lookout sited 3 pillboxes one that was firing. The 40 mm returned fire sending a shell thru one of the pillbox slits destroying it. Fluckey then changed his mind and went back two thirds without making the landing.

And to site Kenny Rodgers.

You got to know when to hold em. Know when to foldem. know when to walk away, Know when to run.

In short, the deck gun of WW II is a weapon of opportunity. The torpedo was the primary weapon of WW II subs. The deck guns main use according to the Germans was to save torpedoes by making combination attacks followed by too small to waste a torpedo on followed by oh well no more torps lets take target practice followed by last stand at the alamo.:D Not on the list but should be Shore bombardment something you cant do with a torpedo. Unless of course you count Carry Grant sinking a truck!

[Rockin Robbins]

You're right. Fluckey was performing shore bombardments in several places, including rocket attacks. He was truly ahead of his time and aggressively looking for more ways that a submarine could hurt the enemy. He used his own scuttling charge to blow up the train! And he was the only American military unit to invade Japanese home soil during the war. Eugene Fluckey was the supreme example of aggressiveness without recklessness. He showed that most submarines were operated in somewhat unimaginative ways. When in a wolfpack, he always encouraged his packmates to participate in his creative forays, but they always declined. Their loss.

Fluckey ended up replacing Admiral Lockwood after the war, signalling a gross expansion of the role of the submarine's missions in war for the United States.

But what you said about how pitiful the Japanese were at the beginning of the war. I think the entire crew of the USS Houston would have had something to say as they were totally humiliated by Japanese excellence in torpedoes, night gunnery and aerial bombardment as all three took out our fleet near Krakatoa without more than one or two minor fishies escaping. The Japanese navy was more maligned by prejudice than actuallity. They were excellent. They just were not defensive-minded and that killed them. Attack the enemy was all they knew. They did it well but that wasn't enough.

And Fluckey ran into radar equipped Japanese airplanes that harassed him so much at night that for a couple of nights he ran submerged, surfacing in the daytime so he could catch up on his sleep. Read that again. Portraying the Japanese as incompetent fools misses the mark by a mile. Respecting your enemy is a necessary condition for defeating him.

[NEON DEON]

The Houston was envolved in a surface engagement at the start of the war and I fail to see what that has to do with sinking a submarine by air at night. Another very important variable is the pilot. By mid 1943 the Japanese were hurting for trained pilots. They could ill afford experienced combat pilots for the ASW because they didnt have enough to man the carriers!

True Fluckey ran into a japanese plane with radar. The plane missed because japanese radar is not very good. Fluckey also for the most part operated surfaced unless he was resting, evading radar warnings, or making a torpedo attack on a warwship.

http://www.fleetsubmarine.com/radar.html

The same can be said for Japanese radios installed in aircraft too.

Now add SD and later SV radar on US boats and you pretty much come up with hampering Japenese airpower even more.

BTW. Only 5 US subs were lost to air attack alone. In combination with surface asw the total reaches 10.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=105116

Also this page pretty much sums up Japanese ASW:

http://ibiblio.net/hyperwar/USN/rep/WDR/WDR58/WDR58-3.html

Japanese ASW was poor and at best mediocre.

[Rockin Robbins]

Wrong, sir. You bolster my point. Fluckey indeed championed fighting a submarine as a submersible PT boat. The fact that he was forced to submerge by not just one but many radar equipped Japanese planes gives the lie to your "findings."

O'Kane also relates getting into an area patrolled by radar equipped Japanese planes (not one, but many) who "incompetently" convinced O'Kane that he was not the hunter but the hunted. He left the area.

Both of these instances are anything but your "poor and at best mediocre" ASW. I can also trot out dozens of examples, taken from the submarines themselves, where they would have your head for saying something so clearly abhorrent as "Japanese ASW was poor or at best mediocre."

Post-war analysis is not the gold standard of truth, as it is conducted by people who use it to justify their prejudices. For instance, surface Navy types use it to prove that the submarines didn't have meaningful opposition like they did. Oftentimes post-war analysis proves to be little more than a look into interservice rivalry and its political aspects. When, as a byproduct of that, we actually get good information, that is interesting, but must always be questioned in view of the process that obtained it.

Friday I get my power supply and access to the stories of the submariners themselves. Then I will begin posting their experiences, totally at odds with the website you quote. These men were afraid. They had no politcal axe to grind. In contrast to the writers of these sterile post-war analyses, these guys put their lives on the line. I believe them.

Edit: Muahahahahaha!http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/smileys/muhaha.gif

Found one story: No I didn't. Ussubvetsofwwii.org is down. The site doesn't say "under construction" it says I do not have permission to view it. As these men who know the truth pass away one by one and we near the time when no one is left to tell the story of what it really was to serve on a submarine against the "poor and at best mediocre" Japanese, the truth of the terror and real danger will be lost to the antiseptic numbers of post-war sanitation. Then the whole world will believe you and the rewriters of history. That will be an inconceivable tragedy.

[Captain Vlad]

Well said, RR. It can be argued that the Japanese anti-submarine doctrine was less than it could've been because they didn't pay much pre-war attention to it, but I've seen no evidence that they could not carry out their tactical duties competently.

O'Kane even pointed out, repeatedly, how good the IJNs gunnery tended to be.

[Rockin Robbins]

Oh yeah! One of our subs was taken out by a single shot from 5 miles away. I tried to send an e-mail to webmaster@ussubvetsofwwii.org and it came back undeliverable. That's NOT a good sign. I hate to think about all those dozens of first-hand accounts lost forever.

[Fincuan]

Just a few experiences with TIIs and the -88 in RFB+OpMonsun:

Small merchant, ~1500 tons
2 torpedos fired, one hit under the smokestack and one dud. Surfaced and used 10 rounds HE to finish him off.

Medium sized merchant, ~4500 tons
2 torpedoes fired, one hit under the rear crane and one just forwards of the bridge. Surfaced and used 17 rounds HE to finish him off.

Medium sized merchant, ~5000 tons
2 torpedoes fired, one hit under the rear crane and one just forwards of the bridge. Used 13 rounds HE to finish him off.

All the targets went down under 30 mins from the first torpedo strike. Had I waited longer I probably wouldn't have had to use that much 88-rounds, but I decided to give some practice to the gun crew while I still can(September 39). :up:

[Elder-Pirate]

Good grief its great to be back as I've been off the net about 4 1/2 months.

Sure missed you guys beating each other over the head, falling down and getting right back up and swinging. :lol:

Even though I'm retired there just isn't enough time in a 24 hour day to read up on Navel history as some of you do, so this site has its rewards with people like you, as I do learn a lot. :up:

RR, you burn up another power supply?? Mine went out few months ago ( Nvidia 7800 GS shot it right through the heart. :lol: ) so I figured I'd have a new one put in but I got sick and said nuts to the computer. Little More than a month ago I thought hey I can put in my own power supply, called BFG and bought a 680 watter with four 12 volt rails at 20 amps ea. Very easy to install in this big ole "AlienWare" full tower and room to spare. Gadzukes it runs sweet.

OK, ok I know http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y116/oleman/ontopic1-1.gif

I'm outta here.

[NEON DEON]

Oh yeah! One of our subs was taken out by a single shot from 5 miles away. I tried to send an e-mail to webmaster@ussubvetsofwwii.org and it came back undeliverable. That's NOT a good sign. I hate to think about all those dozens of first-hand accounts lost forever.

A single shot of what?

Jack Daniels?:D

[NEON DEON]

Wrong, sir. You bolster my point. Fluckey indeed championed fighting a submarine as a submersible PT boat. The fact that he was forced to submerge by not just one but many radar equipped Japanese planes gives the lie to your "findings."

Nope you bolster mine. You are just sighting the fact that both Fluckey and O'Kane successfully detected and avoided Japanese planes even when equiped with radar. Which means you can afford to be on the surface to prosecute attacks on merchants. Hence the whole submersible PT boat thing.

Just in case we have lost sight of where this originated:

This was also less than 2 months into the war, off the west coast of Ireland in a place where the sub could expect not to be subject to any reprisal whilst lollygagging on the surface. Everybody gets a free play. Then they have to pay for such innocent frolicking later in the war when ASW would mean death for such a naive maneuver.



Fluckey used his deck gun and he did so late in the war in enemy territory and it did not mean death for him.

[tater]

Wow, this old argument again.

I have always been clear that overall, IJN ASW was clearly ineffective.

That is not the same as saying that individual prosecutions were poor, or even that their technical capabilities were terrible.

They had a decent DC in the Type 2 Mod 1. 3m/s sink rate, decent warhead (167kg). They had acceptable sonar, and they had MAD gear, as well as radar after '43/'44.

The principal failures in A/S compared to the Allies were:

1. Poor signals doctrine and encryption. This cannot be stressed enough. The Allies put ships where u-boats WERE NOT, and put A/S assets where u-boats were. This is why u-boats were the abysmal failure they were looking at the big picture. The "Happy Time" was just a battle, not the war. Both the KM and IJN were FAR too chatty, and sigint ALONE would have done them in, even without code breaking. The rule for subs should have been to STFU. Period.

2. Late, and half-hearted adoption of convoys. ~1% of allied ships convoyed were sunk by u-boats. 1%, and a fair % of those were stragglers out of the convoy proper. Convoys concentrate A/S capability, which for the limited IJN would have made a critical difference.

3. Culture. IJN culture was pathologically weighted to offensive action, and A/S was considered defensive. As such, it was a temp assignment, and there was little continuity to pass on knowledge.

4. Technology. This is important early where their shallow settings really hurt them, but in the grand scheme less important, IMO.

#1 is huge when comparing the 2 forces. Huge. #2 is lesser, but very important. #3, and 4 are relatively minor.

Simple reality check what-ifs. Remove allied sigint vs u-boats, and make tiny convoys, if any. Result of thought experiment? Endless "Happy Time," even with hedgehog, etc. (even if slightly less happy).

tater

PS—none of the above addresses another very important factor. USN sub doctrine was actually pretty good (aside from pre/early war attack doctrine that was not aggressive enough). The boats were quite, and they fought their strengths against enemy weakness. KM doctrine worked playing the sub vs the lone merchant, but vs Allied strength, it was an abject failure.

[tater]

US forces were more likely to use the gun later in the war, but again, only on craft they deemed not worth a torpedo. They sank many picket boats, etc. In addition, the japs went to a distributed shipping system where they banged out thousands of small ships from ~1000t Fox Tare types, to wooden "sea trucks" well under 1000 tons (150-300t being common).

Those were DG targets.

[Caron]

My father Léon Caron was second officer on the Emile Miguet . I was told me the first officer went away out of the convey meet the germans, He was prosecuted after the war.

A Young sailor called 'Le Maou' who died in my fathers' arms, he was wounded by a shot or by the torpdedo coup de grace ?.

The survivors were picked up by the American steam merchant Black Hawk

After that in June 18 1940 my father was captain on the tanker 'Palmyre' in St Nazaire harbour. He fled when the germans get there. Is ship not being finished he droped is propeller in tn the middle of the river 'Loire' ans was taken back to the harbour.

[Rockin Robbins]

Welcome to Subsim! Now THAT is a very interesting story. So the ship that was sunk left the convoy. That explains why the gun action was prosecuted to begin with, as surfacing in the midst of a presumably armed convoy to initiate a gun battle wouldn't have been very bright.

So this gun sinking was an anachronism, not a normal sinking at all. Even then the U-Boat was risking air attack for a prolonged period of time while helpless on the surface. It's possible that air attack wasn't that likely so early in the war.

[Sailor Steve]

WELCOME ABOARD, Caron!:sunny:

Thanks for that interesting story, and for reviving this thread. It prompted me to have another look at Uboat.net, and this time I noticed the part that agrees with what you said about the attack itself:
At 18.08 hours on 12 Oct, 1939, the Emile Miguet, a romper of convoy KJ-2 since 6 October, was shelled and stopped by U-48 190 miles southwest of Fastnet. At 18.20 hours, the U-boat fired a coup de grâce at the abandoned tanker which caught fire after being hit. The burned out wreck was scuttled by HMS Imogen (D-44) (Cdr E.B.K. Stevens, RN) the next day. The survivors were picked up by the American steam merchant Black Hawk.

So, the tanker was stopped by gunfire, finished by a coup de grâce (which indicates a torpedo), and still didn't sink until the next day, when she was scuttled by the crew of a British destroyer. Interesting, for a ship "sunk by gunfire".