The German U Boat U-30 had been at sea for several days, under strict orders to avoid contact or discovery. On September 3rd 1939 she received notification that Germany was now at war with Great Britain.
The U boat’s commander was Lieutenant Fritz-Julius Lemp. He had been in command for almost a year, therefore was not unaware of the “rulesâ€. According to Admiral Doenitz at his trial at Nurenberg, Lemp had been under orders, when notified of the outbreak of hostilities, to keep a lookout for Armed Merchant Cruisers. Doenitz is not specific as to why this should be a priority at the outbreak of war. Germany had invaded Poland on 1st September 1939 and on 3rd September 1939, at 1115 hrs, Britain declared war on Germany.
The Athenia had already left Glasgow on the 1st September and was heading for Montreal with 1100 passengers, more than 300 of which were American. Many were women and children. On the evening of September 3rd, she was sighted by the U-30 about 250 miles northwest of Inishtrahull, Northern Ireland. She was running without lights. Before sailing all German U boats had been issued with strict orders to operate within the Prize Rules, international laws governing the conduct of war at sea. This was known as the Hague convention. Merchant ships were to be stopped and searched, if they were found to be carrying enemy cargo, they could be sunk. This was only after the crew had been seen safely into lifeboats. U-30 had received this signal. Upon sighting the ship, Lemp decided there and then that she was an Armed Merchant Cruiser and shadowed her, watching her zig-zig pattern and course and speed.
Lemp attacked the Athenia without warning. He fired two torpedoes, one of which exploded amidships, ripping open the bulkhead between the engine room and the boiler room. As soon as he had fired the two torpedoes he dived if a torpedo should come back on him. One did misfire. As he came back up to the surface he saw the Athenia starting to list and fired a third torpedo. This too missed.
Perhaps this torpedo being fired caused some of the survivors, in their panic, to imagine that they had been “fired uponâ€, as this was stated at the enquiry. Lemp was by now close enough to see her silhouette. Something troubled him, as the radio operator, Hogel, later recalled that he had heard the distress call.
“I realized it could not be a troop transport but had passengers on board. I knew her name from the call sign – Athenia. Then the commander came to the radio room and asked for the Lloyds Register which listed all sea vessels and the various types. His fingers came to rest on the Athenia. He was, of course, shockedâ€.
A clear insight into what had gone through Lemps mind and his reaction. Soon afterwards the U-30 intercepted a plain language transmission from the ship identifying itself as the Athenia. Now that the Athenia had been transmitting, there was little need for Lemp to conceal his location, but he failed to radio back to base with his report, instead choosing to remain silent. Lemp knew full well the enormity of his blunder and of the consequences to Germany.
The ship sank with the loss of 112 passengers and crew. However, despite the fact that Lemp had murdered 28 US citizens, within hours Roosevelt had announced that his Government was preparing “a declaration of American neutralityâ€.
Lemp remained silent for 11 more days, finally calling in on September 14th. But still he failed to mention the Athenia, instead he reported damage received in a confrontation with 2 destroyers after he had sunk the freighter Fanad Head, and to request permission to offload a wounded man in Iceland for urgent medical attention.
Lemp did not give any assistance to the survivors either, also contrary to the rules of engagement. Also, a few days layer, when he sank the Blairlogie, he did nothing there for survivors. (1) It is possible that he knew of the existence of the Norwegian freighter Knut Nelson in the vicinity and assumed they would come to the stricken ships aid. Going on his track record to date, I somehow do not think so. It is more likely that he just wanted to flee the scene as quickly as possible.
It was a horrendous mistake. Lemp had not taken time to correctly identify the target. He had only a couple of hours before been informed by U Boat Command that he was not on a war footing instead of a peacetime patrol, it is entirely possible that he panicked.
Lemp had disobeyed all his orders. His failure to offer assistance only made matters worse. He had simply run away. Most of the dead (figures vary by half dozen on different sources) had been trapped below deck in the 3rd and tourist dining rooms when the U-30 struck. A familiar story when reading about loss of life at sea in passenger ships, the lower “classes†all suffered the worst. One eye witness described the decks as strewn with bodies and another told of trapped children in cabins below. Amongst the dead were 28 Americans, all civilian. Within 24 hours news of the Nazi outrage echoed around the world. The first day of the war and Germany had broken all the rules. It was described as an act of total war against civilians. This was a propaganda gift to the British who used it to its full extent. Foreign newspapers gave it front page reports.
When the first British reports were received the German government did not believe them. The Propaganda Ministry asked if the Kriegsmarine was responsible and was told by naval authorities that no U-Boats were in the area. On September 7th, Grand Admiral Raeder stated that all U-Boats had been contacted and none was responsible for the disaster. This was also conveyed to the American ambassador. This statement was not entirely true, for several boats had not reported in. In fact, the Germans would not learn the facts until September 27 when the U-30 returned to Kiel Harbour.
The significance was not lost on Hitler. The first thing was to deny everything. According to Josef Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, it was in fact a torpedo from a British submarine that had hit the Athenia. Later he added that it was all a dirty trick by Winston Churchill to discredit Germany and to pull the United States into the war. Hitler was furious and imposed severe restrictions on all U-Boat operations. Admiral Doenitz, commander of the U-Boat arm, was to be frustrated by these restrictions for many months.
The next step which Hitler undertook was to send out an immediate order to the Kriegsmarine:
“The Fuhrer has forbidden attacks on passenger ships sailing independently or in convoyâ€.
No amount of official denials could convince the outside world that the loss of the SS Athenia was anything but a return to "German Barbarism", as the unrestricted submarine warfare of the First World War had been termed. Such moral limitations on submarine operations were not entirely logical. For a submarine, stealth is its most effective weapon. The Hague Convention agreements requiring submarines to surface and warn surface vessels, allowing crews to launch boats before attacking, were unrealistic. The British reaction was to immediately implement the convoy system and ordered all shipping to comply.
When the U-30 returned to Kiel, Lemp and his crew were given strict orders and sworn to absolute secrecy. They were not to mention anything at all to do with the incident at any time. But the U-30 had arrived in post with victory pennants displayed on her conning tower, one of which showed 14000 tons, the tonnage of the Athenia. The official U Boat Command War Diary makes no mention of the incident and Lemp was ordered to falsify his War Diary by rewriting two complete pages. An entry for any vessel of 14000 tons does not appear.
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read more at
http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/athenia.htmlThere's also photographs, and other maritime disasters at this website.
I recently stumbled upon lots and lots of maritime disasters, and have been slow about posting them, but as the whole cave and the whole world knows, franksolich is laid low with influenza, of whose side-effects include (a) short attention-span, (b) weariness of sitting down and laying down, and (c) a general grouchiness.
It'll get better, with time.
