Resupply ships historical question

[Gustav Schiebert]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

i appreciate the responses... i think a more appropriate question would be:

if a crewman was seriously injured, or became seriously ill during a patrol and the prognosis was that he would die within a few days if not hours without medical treatment or surgery, what would be the options?

what about being on a long drumb beat patrol and one of the men comes down with appendicitis?

This is a good question, got me thinking. I've been doing a bit of digging, and as far as I can tell, ultimately the operational status of the boat wouldn't be comprimised for the sake of one man. If he was dying, and there was no immediate opportunity to relieve him, then he'd die on the boat. I searched on u-boat.net and found -

U-488, 15 Oct 1943
A man died of illness on 15 Oct. [Maschinenmaat Karl Bergmann]

I know one incident doesn't prove the rule but in the various memoirs/autobiographies I've read there's reference to illness on the boat. Mostly VD, but the procedure seems to have been getting casualties off onto milk-cows where possible. Where it wasn't - burial at sea.

I think the place to start would be any memoirs of milk-cow crews, but given that all 10 boats were lost I doubt weather any exist. This is the problem with the history of the Atlantic War (especially amateur historians like me) is that this stuff is passing out of living memory now. Things like torpedo-firing procedure (not just how the TDC worked) are pretty much gone as there are barely any operational commanders left alive now.