Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
The manuals often also had photographs. I don't see how they could have had pictures of each of the thousands of merchants afloat, but they certainly had an idea of rough sizes and types.
One specific item that amazes me is the story of SS Empire Explorer. This ship was a cargo ship converted from a liner originally called Inanda. The U-boat kaleun who sank her reported that he had sunk Inanda, whoch means two things:
1) His ID book contained precise information in this case, and
2) The ship still looked enough like her old self to be recognizable
I can't imagine them having that kind of detail for every single ship, but in this case they certainly did.
One other reason I made a note of this ship: The 75 survivors were rescued by a single MTB, which meant a crowded trip to shore.
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Interesting. Maybe they didn't get rid of the long superstructure with the passenger cabins during the conversion refit. Some converted freighters in WWI were externally quite similar to passenger ships.
I'll look up "Inanda" in "Talbot Booth's 1942 Edition" tonight.
I read of one case where one of a U-Boat's watch officers managed to ID a tanker because he had actually served on her before the war. It was sunk with no survivors. The whole thing was pretty disturbing for him, as some of his shipmates may have still been on board:
http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/701.html