SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - HELL BELOW, July 17 - Smithsonian Channel to Premiere New 6-Episode Series

^^ Shooting at hospital ships is definitely crossing the border, and then gunning down survivors.. :nope: as far as i know there were two cases in WW1 regarding german boats. In both cases the crew seems to have objected, but it was done all the same. I read about one case where the german captain was obviously trying to, so to speak, "destroy evidence" and spare his country the shame, after he realized he had been torpedoing a hospital ship. No excuse, of course.
Regarding Entente or allied action and its unrestricted war of this kind, it has seldom been a subject of discussion.

The situation was a bit tight though, regarding especially the british (ab)used hospital and civilian ships as military transports, or all sides flying false flags as in the Baralong case and other british "Q-ships", or the german auxiliary cruisers/commerce raiders. Again, the latter behaved a lot more honourable, they were intially equipped to take the crews of the sunk enemies aboard and detain them, instead of killing. U-boats did not have the capability to do so, which is why german U-boats in WW1 often towed life boats of their enemies to the coast, if the situation permitted. Also seldomly heard of.

The captains of german U-boats, commerce raiders and auxiliary cruisers and their actions in WW1 were celebrated in Germany until long after WW2, not only because of doubtful heroism, but becasue of humane and honourable action. There are a lot of german books about this, Graf Luckner with his "Seeadler, or the "Emden" with von Mueller and von Muecke, and the fate of its crew are two examples.
Looking at WW2 and the Laconia incident, i also seldom heard of such things done by the Allies. Which does not mean it did not happen. Did it?

Also, arming civilian british ships with guns already in WW1 (forbidden by international law b.t.w.) rendered the international prize regulation useless, and it is still well worth to mention that most of the german U-boats still stopped enemy shipping allowing the crew to man the lifeboats; even if the merchants were armed, and even in the (relatively short!) times of german "unrestricted" U-boat warfare. Almost all german captains of the time utterly refused to lead an unrestricted war. Not so the Entente captains.

In Eck's case in WW2 it was fear of being found by planes, put in him by two other U-boat captains before parting, who had warned him about detection and the chances of survival, in a big, slow-diving boat in perfectly transparent tropical waters. He tried to sink all the debris, including life rafts, that could be seen from the air. As he stated he did not intentionally shoot at shipwrecked persons, though the destroying of life rafts certainly put the latter in a very bad situation to say at least.
None of the survivors were allowed to join and speak up in the trial.
Eck sure was not proud of his action, as his comments and answers in the trial suggest, he did not destroy the logbook, he paid the price.
Performing such action as an allied commander, he probably would have been a decorated hero, and another modern sub would bear his sub's name, and number. Like the HMS Torbay.