Crushing fishing boats: historical?

[Faith]

Hitler never gave the order, since at the beginning of the war, U-Boats still considered fishing vessels as targets. As in World War One, rather than shooting at them with the deck gun, the crew boarded the vessel and planted timed explosives, while taking the crew aboard. But with the massive improvements in aviation, this method was seen as suicidal. During the first two years of the war, only two fishing boats were sunk this way, on September 16th and October 28th, 1939. There was a brief resurgence when the USA declared war, but it didn't go beyong late 1942.

Interstingly, fisherman were protected by the Hague Treaty of 1907, which said that the participants were "not to take advantage of the harmless character of the said vessels in order to use them for military purposes while preserving their peaceful appearance". While the countries of the world honored the treaty during the First World War, no one respected it during the second.

Hope this answers the historical aspect, and I apologize if I sound rather "brusque".

[starkwolf]

Originally Posted by Faith

Hitler never gave the order, since at the beginning of the war, U-Boats still considered fishing vessels as targets. As in World War One, rather than shooting at them with the deck gun, the crew boarded the vessel and planted timed explosives, while taking the crew aboard. But with the massive improvements in aviation, this method was seen as suicidal. During the first two years of the war, only two fishing boats were sunk this way, on September 16th and October 28th, 1939. There was a brief resurgence when the USA declared war, but it didn't go beyong late 1942.

Interstingly, fisherman were protected by the Hague Treaty of 1907, which said that the participants were "not to take advantage of the harmless character of the said vessels in order to use them for military purposes while preserving their peaceful appearance". While the countries of the world honored the treaty during the First World War, no one respected it during the second.

Hope this answers the historical aspect, and I apologize if I sound rather "brusque".

Thank you very much, very interesting!

[XenonSurf]

Originally Posted by Faith

Interstingly, fisherman were protected by the Hague Treaty of 1907, (...)

Wasn't it Cicero who said "In war times any law evaporates..." ?

Hitler was very ignorant about the military potential of u-boats before they showed success. Also U-boat commanders were rather listening to what Doenitz had to say, or they used their own judgement, also in the above fisherboat case.
Time and situation permitting, some commanders allowed tanker crews to leave their ship before it got destroyed, that's historically proved.

As for fishing boats, the commander had to judge if such a boat could become a threat or not once the u-boat was spotted. Later in the war where enemy planes had become a considerable danger for u-boats (because of radar), such fisherboats would almost always be considered as a threat, rest assured that u-boat commanders were considering first their own crew's safety. German u-boats didn't follow some american examples for taking crew onboard AFAIK, not in WWII.

[Captain1966]

I am reading Clay Blair's "Hitler's U-Boat War" at the moment. According to the book it was common in 1939-1940 for U-Boats sailing out around the British Isles toward the Atlantic to sink trawlers they came across. Usually by Deck Gun.

[XenonSurf]

I currently play the War Ace Campaign (WAC 5.01) which contains a lot of historical radio messages; I play it with the german voices and text. I don't know if all these messages are textually authentic, but I assume most of them are, taken from research and archieve documents.
On September 1-3 1939, when the war against Poland and soon after against England and France broke out, Admiral Raeder didn't issue an order like 'Sink them all', but he had issued orders citing the relevant international treaties of that time, and these were full of interpretation possibilities. At some point he issued an order like '...can be sunk if any possible threat against the submarine is noticed'. Some orders were even tragi-comic, e.g. when he issued the order (roughly translated) '...I want to ensure you understand that also ships from "Great Britain" are to be pursuied and destroyed...'

Such orders open for interpretation was very bad news for any neutral shipping at the start of hostilities, but latest in mid-1940 or late 1940 neutral ships like fishing boats knew very well that going off-coast was kind of a suicide, or at least they *should* have known, informed by their governement. Because german u-boat commanders had the same line of reasoning, fisherboats, or neutral boats with questionable flags (or without) and far outside of ports had to be considered as spies and were mainly destroyed, not because of tonnage consideration or issued orders, but as a precaution measure for not revealing ongoing operations and u-boat movements.

But was it really so? I don't know the whole picture, today all we have are interviews and archieves from the people involved and who made statements during and after the war. I would have to research myself.

A certain fact is, fisherboats and else, the naval sub war was a very cruel one, also in the Pacific battlefield. Sub commanders didn't ask many questions, they did shoot and asked later.