Neutral ship flying French flag(?)
 

Date: July, 1941
Location: Naval square CG21
Events: Sighted a "convoy" consisting of a small tanker, an armed trawler, and a tug boat on a NE heading. The ships were flying flags with vertical blue/white/red bars. According to the flag chart, these were French ships. Given the date, I assumed that these would be enemy ships, and torpedoed the tanker.

To my surprise, the icon on my navigation chart representing the sunken ship was green, indicating that the tanker was a neutral vessel. When I saved and exited, the summary statistics also showed the tonnage as neutral

Can someone with a better grasp of history than mine please explain the status of French ships in July of '41? Thanks.

I think you just torpedoed a Vichy France tanker.

There are "Free French" and "Vichy French"

Free french escaped france during her fall and surrender to the Nazis. These are still enemies (basically merchants and warships which fled france and refused to stop fighting despite their government's orders to do so.

Their flag is seen here... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...0-1944.svg.png

Vichy French are the french who have surrendered to the Germans, and have laid down their arms and were more or less in cahoots with the Germans.

Their flag is seen here... http://www.appliedlanguage.com/flags...nch_guiana.gif

note the subtle difference?

this can be nearly impossible to notice from 1,000+ meters through a periscope.

Attack the french vessels with great caution :up:

If you're using GWX there's a pull-down chart in the Periscope views which shows all the flags, and which ones are friendly, neutral and enemy and at what dates.

Remember, you conquered France way back in 1940, they are defeated.

Free French ships are pretty rare (I haven't seen any), but they have a cross in the middle.

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I sank a small convoy of 3 free french ships off casablance a few nights ago.

That is the chart I used to identify the ships. That chart shows France as an Allied nation from 09/39 - 06/40 and from 10/44 - 08/45. The problem is that the chart doesn't indicate the status of (Vichy) France between those periods. As I now know, Vichy France officially was a neutral country.

BTW, the GWX manual does report that Vichy France was neutral.

Jay, the Gestapo will arrest you when you return to port. :cool:

Why? For sinking French ships? They will probably throw him a party instead, Germany does not answer to the frogs....

Yikes! I'll beat the post-war rush by heading for Argentina right now.:D

Better to dance the tango than sit in a concentration camp-- future ancient saying. :smug:

:rotfl:What if Argentina is overflown with Germans and Vichy French.:lol: (still cant believe that U boat kapitan a attempted to go to Argentina after he got the surrender message.):lol:

Haha, wouldn't he know how good the allies are at catching subs by then? That would discourage me from trying to run across the ocean

Id hate to have been on that sub. They did a large portion of that trip below the surface with there snorkel up. The crew got very ill from lack of sunlight, and the different diseases and mold growing inside there sub.:yep: Id hate to be part of there crew.

Desperate times often call for desperate measures http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif