World War II Database

1.  Alan Chanter says:
15 Jul 2020 03:20:02 AM

During the 9th and 10th of April 1940 the destroyers of the Home Fleet from Scapa Flow were engaged in protecting the bigger ships off the approached to Vestfiord from U-boat and air attacks. About midnight on the 10th a German submarine, U25, fired three torpedoes at the Tribal Class Destroyer, HMS Bedouin. The explosions that followed led the U-boat commander to believe that two destroyers had been sunk.

Fortunately for the British, however, German torpedoes at this time were suffering from two serious defects. The magnetic pistols in the warheads were failing to function correctly owing to the difference in the earth’s magnetic field in those northern latitudes from that in German waters. Furthermore, the depth-keeping mechanism of the torpedoes themselves was unreliable.

Nevertheless U25s torpedoes were not without some effect. Exploding harmlessly near the Bedouin, they led Commander McCoy to believe that his ships were in the middle of a minefield controlled electrically from the island of Baröy where unusual activity had been detected. McCoy deemed it wise to withdraw his force from the area which, by so doing, permitted Captain Bey’s two ships (Giese and Zenker) to escape through the narrows undetected.

So common were German torpedo failures that the U-boats were virtually unarmed. When Admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler’s U-boat chief, read the reports coming from commander’s reports he exploded angrily, “I do not believe that ever in the history of war have men been sent against the enemy with such a useless weapon.”