Quote:
Originally Posted by GreyBeard
...<snip>... Not a navy in the world would set to sea without a full compliment of qualified crewman, unless we're talking Mchale's Navy,  but that's a whole different matter.
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There are many instances of warships putting to sea with inadequately trained or qualified crews and the U-Boat arm was no exception. As their casualties mounted many sailors were drafted from shore establishments or the idle surface fleet with little or no training.
Even earlier in the war, well before Black May, allied interrogators were commenting on the low quality ('youthfulness' was the euphemism of choice) of some captured crews. The following is taken from the British report on the interrogation of the crew of U-131, captured in December, 1941:
"Many of the ratings had had very little or no previous U-Boat experience and were very young. Some of them confessed that they had undergone no training in school boats. One of the telegraphists stated that, had he returned from this cruise he would have been given charge of the wireless apparatus in another U-Boat. Three of the senior ratings could be considered to have the requisite experience usually necessary for the U-Boat service."
Source: U-Boat Archive. Full article here:
http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-131INT.htm
My father was sunk in May 1941 on the CAM ship HMS Patia off the Farne Islands in the North Sea by a German bomber. He told me that they had no trained AA gunners aboard as the crew had been hastily assembled from Chatham barracks only a few days prior to sailing from South Shields. The crew were nearly all raw recruits with little or no sea experience and none of the men in my father's mess had ever served together before. The ship was en-route to collect their aircraft from the Forth when they were sunk. It was her first, and last, 'patrol'.
The bomber was brought down by a lucky hit from an improvised AA weapon operated by the cook. My father wasn't sure if the ship had any purpose-built AA guns fitted. She probably did but he didn't know her well enough in the few days he was aboard and the armament details are incomplete. If she had, he didn't recall them being used. The cook's 'weapon' appeared to be the sole means of air defence for a 5,000 GRT ship.
The Admiralty Courts' Martial proceedings into the sinking are held in the National Archive at Kew in west London. The loss of the ship was attributed to the captain failing to take evasive action when attacked (true) but that verdict also conceals the facts that the crew were inadequately trained, unfamiliar with the ship, its systems and each other, and the ship itself ill-equipped for it's own defence.
Having read the original document it seems that the board found it more convenient to blame a dead man than examine the Navy's own failings.
KH