Norwegian merchant fleet
 

On my campaign I was sailing near Stavenger (South West of Norway) on May 1940 and sighted a 2000 ton Norwegian Coastal Ship. I intercepted and sank it, but then I started thinking how much did the sinking really benefit germanys war effort.

After some light research on the subject I found out that...

1. At the start of the war germany actually tried to use the Norwegian merchant fleet for its own purposes or atleast keep them away from allied hands.

2. Later the Norwegian ships joined the Allied cause and had a norwegian led organization called Nortraship leading them in the seas.


So just how much did it benefit to sink a Norwegian merchant (that actually even seemed to be heading back to Norway) near the norwegian shore on May 1940? :hmm:

In game terms......none whatsoever seeing as how the game respawns everything after each reboot.

In RL/historically....every vessel sunk was one less that could carry war materials to aid the allies war effort.

Unless those merchants could have been used by the Axis :hmm: Not an expert on the Norwegian operation so don't know what orders the submarines had got concerning the sinking of norwegian vessels after the invasion, but the situation might have been tempting not to sink commercial vessels in order to seize them later on for own purposes.

I would think such a 'strategic' decision made by a U-boat kaleun might not go over too well with the higher ups....;)

That being said, I don't know the historical view of the Bdu on this matter. Maybe they figured it was more important that the 'allied' cargo ended up on the bottom than the possibility of one more ship added to the 'axis' rolls.