I want to make clear that I was never in danger of being torpedoed, my only brush with war was manning ammo ships to Vietnam. We always anchored out and often left the harbor at night. We took a small arms round once but it did no damage.
As for aiding/killing sailors from sunk ships, I have read somewhere that early on in WW2 German sub commanders did give sailors in lifeboats bread, water and the course to steer to the nearest land. In addition, still early in the war, German subs actually ordered enemy ships to stop and waited for their crews to leave their ship before sinking it with cannon fire. As anti-submarine warfare gained strength this practice ended. Later there were reports in the logs of German subs documenting that they rammed lifeboats. The commanders said that they killed the merchant seamen to reduce the experienced labor pool. I saw an American WW2 sailor on one of the TV channels, History or Military, state that he did machine-gun Japanese in the water. He said "my job was to kill Japs and that's what I did". I suspect there was some of both of both sides, but becoming more deadly as the war went on. I did hear of the German submarine that was attacked while trying to rescue passengers from a torpedoed ship and I can sympathize with the change of policy afterwards. A lot of insane acts occur in war. I vividly recall reading that on the morning of the WW1 armistice a famous American general ordered thousands of troops to attack a town straight into German machine guns. The Germans pleaded with them to stop but eventually had no choice but to fire on them. Thousands were killed in the resulting senseless slaughter. The General was said to state that he was looking forward to a hot bath in the town that evening but all he got was a blood bath. As to submarines and ourselves, I remember stories telling of the possibilities of submarine periscopes striking and sinking yachts. It just seemed to fizzle out, a lot like the stories of yachts hitting barely floating shipping containers. Has anyone really got any truth about these stories? Norm S/V Bandersnatch > Norm: > > Dornitz had standing instructions early in the war for his U-Boat Captains to give aid. But as I recall this was taken back when Allies straffed a U-Boat doing so off if Africa. They had communicated their intent but apparently this never was received by our Air Crews. The mistake, afterwards, resulted in no more aid being offered. > > As for the monstrosities you are correct. Iin war all sides of a conflict often engage in such. The adrenalin gets pumping and that "red haze" settles in. Of course this can happen to anyone. What's scary is the monsters out there who usde war as an excuse to commutt murder, especially on civillians. > > BTW my Dad was sunk twice in the Pacific. Once by naval gunfire. But he enlisted. I can understand your position as a non-belligerent being targeted. It must have been frightening. Thank you for serving. > > Gregg > S/V Neverland > _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
