The Purpose Of The Naval Luger
 

Ship To Ship Combat~ https://www.gunsamerica.com/digest/navy-p14-luger/

Although many merchant ships had deck guns in WWII, it strikes me that "ship to ship combat" was more like piracy/predation. A U Boat versus a destroyer would be more of a fair fight. ;)

That painting is all wrong! Disregard the missing deck gun - The whole sub is way too small! :rolleyes:

German Sub Pictures https://search.aol.com/aol/image;_yl...v_t=loki-tb-sb

Navy recruits

Most of it is under water...Early subs weren't real big, and deck guns didn't become popular til later in WW1. Note they are letting the sailors leave before they sink the ship. They'll probably even bring them aboard and take them prisoner, as opposed to leaving them at sea. Things got a lot more brutal later in the war. Go figure.

Imperial navy

My Grandfather, 1914, Rustringen (Wilhelmshaven)

God Looking Dude!

They Are Way Cool!

@Cirilaw: Lovely collection !

Can you tell us what the book is about?
The title is: Imperial Marine
But, the second line translates to "2. Matron Division" ?

I don't know yet~ I wILL come close!

U-BOAT COLLECTION` https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/u-boat

The book is a Militärpaβ, the service record for an individual sailor.

That is actually a commercial cover for the Militärpaβ, which contains pages with his personal information, training and awards, promotions, duty stations, and separation.

Here's what the Militärpaβ actually looks like.

Actually, Kaiserliche Marine = Imperial Navy
The 2nd Matrosen Division was the training organization for sailors in Wilhelmshafen. There was 1st M.D. in Kiel.

The Matrosen Division trained the sailors who operated the ships. There were corresponding Werft Divisions that trained the sailors with technical duties. There were also Torpedo Divisions which trained the sailors in operating and maintaining torpedoes. (in those days there were a large number of torpedo boats and virtually every other ship up to and including battleships had torpedo tubes.)
Other training units included the U-Boot Abteilung in Kiel and the Minen Abteilung in Cuxhaven.

The Matrosen and Werft Division sailors received training on machineguns and rifles for landing parties. The Torpedo, U-Boot and Minen units all trained with P.04s

1920 weimer nazi navy artillery. STARTED OUT AS AN IMPERIAL, COVERTED TO WEIMAR THEN TO NAZI NAVY!

Things got more brutal because of the English first sea lord - Winston Churchill.

The English were losing so much shipping that Churchill gave the order to sink any U-boat found on the surface

including boats carrying survivors and the Red Cross on the conning tower.

U-boats then took to sinking by torpedo without surfacing

War is atrocious and therefore soldiers commit atrocities whether by command or individual psychopathy. The winner of any conflict gets to write its history and truth plays only a small part in it.

We are 'told' what a great hero Winston Churchill was and how evil and psychopathic Adolf Hitler was but an in depth study of history proves both premises to be inaccurate.

War allows both the good and evil in mans heart to reveal itself under the illusion of righteousness ... man will always suffer because of this fault and thus we see a captain who will save his enemies from drowning or worse and a captain who will shoot drowning men for sport or hatred.

What would you do ??

I would not send 6 million to their death in concentration camps.

And do we have any evidence of U-boats with Red Cross flags being sunk by the Royal Navy? There were protocols for exchanging prisoners.

Sunk? Not that I know of. But you should read about the Laconia Incident, when the Brits suckered the US into bombing one that was displaying a red cross, had a deck full of civilian survivors and was towing several lifeboats.

Mike, thank you for the reference. I looked it up on Wikipedia then chased down some of their references.
The Americans do not appear to have been duped. The orders were given by the Americans knowing the sub was offering aid the shipwrecked victims by an American officer who said he did not think the sub was could legally fly a Red Cross flag. I wonder if he was influenced by the opinion that most of the survivors were Italian POWs of the British. I could find nothing on that aspect other than the Brits noted many survivors were POWs. when they informed the Americans.

So, bad call on the US part.

The Americans returned for a second attack. That was absolutely all on them. But the Brits are the ones who notified the US that the Laconia was sunk by submarine and omitted the information that Hartenstein had radioed in the clear that he was picking up survivors and would not attack any vessels that came to their aid.