[m1903a3]

Regarding the story:

In addition to the numerous inaccuracies about the P.04, I feel compelled to call "BS" on the underlying story. As a student of the Kaiserliche Marine, and one who has read a great many accounts by German officers about surface and submarine actions, nothing in the story rang true. British merchant mariners were civilians, they wouldn't have had machine guns and rifles to shoot at a submarine. In the early years, U-Boats followed the rules of cruiser warfare and would surface and allow a crew to abandon ship before sinking it by gunfire. Torpedoes were both unreliable and limited in number, so the deck gun was the preferred weapon. Neutral ships had to be boarded and determined to be carrying arms before they could be sunk. That changed with the introduction of Q-Ships (heavily armed ships disguised as unarmed merchant vessels) and the addition of a deck gun with a Royal Navy gun crew to many ships, which led to using torpedoes while submerged more frequently.

But the ship in this story doesn't have a Navy gun crew and gun, but a civilian crew with rifles and at least one machine gun. Not plausible. Then there is the circumstance of the sinking. Stalking a British merchant vessel in the North Sea and finally sinking it after it first opens fire on the U-151. The problem with that story is that the U-151 only sank a single British merchant ship while under the command of Kaleu Kophamel - the Gryfevale. But she wasn't in the North Sea, she ran aground at Cape Blanco on the west coast of Africa while trying to evade the U-151 before she was ultimately sunk by gunfire.

Finally, the holster of the P.04 is attached to the stock, making for a bulky thing to wear. Sub captains wouldn't be wearing such a thing, especially when they might have to dive through a small hatch at a moments notice. The only pictures I have ever seen of them being worn on a U-Boat are NCOs and enlisted men who are either part of a boarding party or are guarding prisoners on the deck of a U-Boat. Other than the Marinekorps Flandern, the only photo I have ever seen of an officer wearing a P.04 was in a landing party.

The story appears to be pure fiction, and not particularly plausible.

The picture is a 1915 painting by Willy Stöwer, a well known painter of Kaiserliche Marine related subjects. This particular one is "The Sinking of the Linda Blanche out of Liverpool". The little 369 ton steamer was sunk off Liverpool on 30 Jan 1915 by U-51, an event totally unrelated to the story.

The picture below it is another unrelated picture, an Alamy stock photo of an unidentified U-Boot.

The first photo is of U-15, one of the earliest boats and also unrelated to the story.

The last is the most interesting. It is a picture of U-155 in London after she was surrendered at the end of the war. That submarine was actually the first of the U-151 class boats built. The first two were actually unarmed civilian merchant vessels designed to carry 700 tons of cargo between Germany and the USA by going under the British blockade of German ports. They were built by a German shipping company, with the first one christened the Deutschland and the second Hamburg. The Hamburg was lost on her maiden voyage, but the Deutschland made two successful round trips to the USA carrying high value cargo. She received an enthusiastic reception in Baltimore on her first trip, and a slightly less enthusiastic one in New London on her second, which was marred by another U-Boat sinking a couple of ships just off the coast. The third trip was cancelled because of the deteriorating relations with the US and the expected entrance of the US into the war. The remainder of the boats were taken into the Navy and completed as the U-151 class U-Kreuzers, very long range subs heavily armed with four deck guns but only two torpedo tubes. The Deutschland was rebuilt with a new bow with six tubes and a pair of 15cm deck guns and commissioned as the U-155. The Deutschland and her captain were extremely famous, so much so that you can generally find several photos of both on eBay at any given time.

That picture at least shows a U-151 class boat, although that is unimportant given the entire story is bogus.