Sinking Passenger Liners

[Brag]

In real life I met an englishman born in Brazil. He was heading to join the RN on a ship bound for the UK. The vessel was full of Brits from Brazil, Argentina and CHile. The ship was torpedoed. Once the liner was abandoned by passengers and crew, the submarine surfaced. Presumably the captain, asked the people on the life boats if they had everythin they needed. he then told them whic course to take for nearest land.

The U-boat sailed away.

[Steeltrap]

Originally Posted by Brag

In real life I met an englishman born in Brazil. He was heading to join the RN on a ship bound for the UK. The vessel was full of Brits from Brazil, Argentina and CHile. The ship was torpedoed. Once the liner was abandoned by passengers and crew, the submarine surfaced. Presumably the captain, asked the people on the life boats if they had everythin they needed. he then told them whic course to take for nearest land.

The U-boat sailed away.

That was farily common, as far as I've read. Peter Cremer discussed it in U333.

The skippers/crews didn't like to think of the people they were killing. They tended to think of them as fellow seamen, and also understood they themselves could be in the same situation.

[Pegasus2]

I read U-109 did this several times to crews of Merchant vessels early in the war. They gave them food, water and blankets as well as directions.

I also remember a U-boat picking up many survivors from a ship, so many they filled the entire deck and they were taking them to a port.

[BROJD]

Originally Posted by Brag

In real life I met an englishman born in Brazil. He was heading to join the RN on a ship bound for the UK. The vessel was full of Brits from Brazil, Argentina and CHile. The ship was torpedoed. Once the liner was abandoned by passengers and crew, the submarine surfaced. Presumably the captain, asked the people on the life boats if they had everythin they needed. he then told them whic course to take for nearest land.

The U-boat sailed away.

Those were the U-Boat orders in the first couple months of the war, as Hitler and the Germans tried to comply somewhat with the 1928 (?) convention on seaman and hoped to forestall a full war with Britain and France.

At the very beginning, a U-boat would surface and give warning to a ship before sinking her.

[Uncle Goose]

This all changed after the Laconia incident. Also remember that later in war U-boats rarely came close to ships and thus saw little of the horrors they inflicted on ships. But they knew what happened to the sailors.