Talk:German submarine U-48 (1939)

City of Benares: Distance of Allied ships

If the SS City of Benares was a convoy flagship, why were the closest allied ships 300 miles away? Was the entire convoy sunk? Just curious, Huon 14:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Not as far as I am aware; not even PQ 17 (a convoy to the USSR that achieved notoriety when it lost more of its ships than any other), falls into that category. As to the 300 miles, I think that can be quite simply put down to the size of the Atlantic.

Sorry for the tardiness in answering, I've only just seen your question. RASAM (talk) 19:18, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! I still don't see how no other Allied ships could have been closer than 300 miles when the City of Benares was the lead ship of a convoy's center column. The Atlantic is large, but the entire point of a convoy is to have multiple ships within supporting distance, preferably with some escorts.

According to the Uboat.net article on the convoy, it was a 19-ship convoy, only two of which were sunk by U-48. That would leave 17 in the immediate area. A third ship belonging to the same convoy was attacked by U-48 less than half an hour later but escaped. That ship must have been much closer to the scene than 300 miles. Possibly that distance refers to the closest Allied warships; the convoy apparently did not have any escorts of its own. I expect the reasons for the high death toll are the storm, the problems with the lifeboats and probably a delay because the German submarine could have attacked any freighter stopping for a search-and-rescue operation.

Anyway, unless there's a source for the 300-mile statement, I'll just remove it. Huon (talk) 21:10, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Copyedit

A few comments/observations:

1) I have added sub-section headings for the U-boat's patrols, but not dates, (I don't have the information).

2) In the 'Fourth patrol section: "...two neutral Dutch ships were added to her tally shortly afterwards, as well as a Finnish ship [my emphasis], all of them operating in the North Atlantic in cooperation with the Allied convoy system."
I thought that Finland was one of Germany's allies at this time. So, is this statement correct?

3) In the 'Seventh and eighth patrols' section: "The operating zone for both these patrols was far to the north of her previous areas, being south of Greenland."
On looking at the 'locations' map, all of U-48's sinkings were in the north Atlantic right enough, but 'south of Greenland'? I would say that there is only one dot that is 'south of Greenland'. But it is also east of Newfoundland and even west of Europe! It is rather difficult to tell what the distances are as the map does not have a scale. The dot seems to be just about in the middle of the north Atlantic.
Is a bit of re-wording required?

RASAM (talk) 19:18, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the fourth patrol, the Finnish ship was the Wilja, which apparently was attacked because it was darkened; I doubt the U-boat commander knew its nationality. In February 1940 Finland was involved in the Winter War with the Soviet Union, but since Germany and the Soviet Union weren't yet at war, Germany and Finland weren't yet allied, either. Huon (talk) 21:10, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

According to Uboat.net's page on U-48's patrols, the earlier patrols were west of the Channel to the south and southwest of Ireland, which would indeed put them much farther south than the 7th and 8th patrols, which covered an area to the northwest of Ireland (or south of Greenland).

I will add the patrol dates from uboat.net. Huon (talk) 21:10, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

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Quote

The quote under reference No. 18 is not reliable. It is taken from a secondary source, a Daily Mirror-report about a book taken from the context. Can anyone verify the original source, i.e. the book? --HC Stempel (talk) 11:55, 2 June 2021 (UTC)