R/C Naval Combat

Italian Caracciolo class battleship

Made it too easy, didn't I?
You're up, DJ.

Which submarine sank, due to the Captain using the head? (He used the toilet for you landlubbers)

Clue #1

I figured our resident bubblehead Tuggy would of got this one by now. It happened during WW2.

On 14.04.1945 U-1206

You got it. For those who want to read about it.

http://uboat.net/boats/u1206.htm

Re: U-1206

What is the German word for "trained toilet specialist"? Is it longer than these questions?

SHIZEN- FUHRER!!!!!

I 'll post a question to get things going again.

Which ship was the first one ever sunk by a submarine launched torpedo?
J

HMS Pathfinder was the lead ship of the Pathfinder class scout cruisers, and was the first ship ever to be sunk by a torpedo fired by submarine (the American Civil War ship USS Housatonic had been sunk by a spar torpedo). She was built by Cammell Laird, Birkenhead, launched on 16 July 1904, and commissioned on 18 July 1905. She was originally to have been named HMS Fastnet, but was renamed prior to construction.

yup, your up!!
J

How did Major William Martin win the war for the Allied?

The name of the operation was Mincemeat. That operation consisted in the use of a body of a dead man, dressed him in the uniform of Royal Marines, given a false identity and place his body with false documents into the sea. The body was discovered in Huelva (Spain), and soon, the fascist regime of General Franco informed the Nazis. The success of Allied landing in Sicily partly attributed to these plans of deception. The real identity of the body was Glyndwr Michael born in Aberbagoed, South Wales, born in January 4th, 1909 and died in London in January 28, 1943.

OK your up David

I read a interesting WW2 story the other day, I had never heard the story before.

Where, when, how, and for what purpose did the Germans make their one and only invasion of the North America continent during WW2?

On June 12, 1942, the U-boat U-202 landed Dasch's team with explosives and plans at East Hampton, Long Island, New York.[8] Their mission was to destroy power plants at Niagara Falls and three Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) factories in Illinois, Tennessee and New York. Dasch instead turned himself in to the FBI, providing them with a complete account of the planned mission, which led to the arrest of the entire team.

Kerling's team landed from U-584 at Ponte Vedra Beach (25 miles [40 km] south-east of Jacksonville, Florida), on June 17. They were tasked with laying mines in four areas: the Pennsylvania Railroad in Newark, New Jersey, canal sluices in both St. Louis and Cincinnati, and New York City's water supply pipes. The team made their way to Cincinnati, Ohio and split up, with two going to Chicago, Illinois and the others to New York. The Dasch confession led to the arrest of all of the men by July 10

No, sorry those were Sabotage tries by trained spies. I was asking about a invasion by armed uniformed men.

There was a German automatic weather station set up in Martin Bay Newfoundland in 1943 that wasn't found until the 80s.
J

Yep that was it, U-537 carried the automated weather station to Martin Bay.

Weather station Kurt erected in Labrador in 1943. The U-537 made the only armed German landing on North American soil in WWII.

U-537 left Kiel, Germany on September 18, 1943. She made a brief stop in Bergen, Norway and headed out to sea again on 30 Sept. The boat went on patrol in the western North Atlantic under Kptlt. Peter Schrewe. Its task was to set up an automatic weather station on the coast of Labrador. U-537 carried a scientist, Dr. Kurt Sommermeyer, and Wetter-Funkgerät (WFL) number 26 (the sixth in a series of 21 such stations) manufactured by Siemens. It consisted of various measuring instruments, a 150-watt Lorenz 150 FK-.type transmitter and ten canisters with nickel-cadmium and dry-cell high-voltage batteries.

On October 22 U-537 arrived at Martin Bay at the northern tip of Labrador. For the next 48 hours U-537 lay at anchor while the crew manhandled the 10, 220-pound canisters, along with a tripod and mast, into rubber boats and then onshore. The weather station was set up 400 yards inland on a 170 feet high hill. At 5:40 P.M. on October 23, having ensured that the station was functioning properly, Schrewe weighed anchor and set off for an anti-shipping patrol off Newfoundland. His patrol was uneventful and on December 8 U-537 returned to Lorient, France.

Reports indicate that the weather station sent out normal transmissions for a few days, but then there was apparent jamming on that frequency (about which nothing is known; no evidence has yet turned up that the Allies learned about the equipment).

U-537 was transferred to the Far East and sunk with all hands on board in late 1944 - only Dr. Sommermeyer and crew member, who had left the boat prior to the its transfer to the Far East, survived the war.

Thus the station was a secret known only by a handful German seamen and scientists. The story became known in the late 1970s, when an engineer named Franz Selinger after his retirement from Siemens decided to write a history of the German weather service. Among Dr. Sommermeyer's papers he found photographs of one weather station and a U-boat that did not fit in with the eastern Arctic installations he had previously been able to identify (Greenland and Svalbard). He identified the Labrador coast, but neither Canadian nor American authorities could provide evidence. Via Jürgen Rohwer and the son of Dr. Sommermeyer he then identified the U-537 and located the logbook at the archives in Freiburg.

In 1980 he wrote to the official historian of the Canadian armed forces, W.A.B. Douglas (who has written an article in MHQ). Douglas and the Canadian Coast Guards were able to go and look and actually found the remains of the weather station. Some parts were missing, but the canisters, tripod and mast, and some dry-cell batteries was left to identify.

After the rediscovery of the station in the 1980s by the Canadian Coast Guard (following press articles etc. on the subject), it was dismantled and brought to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. This unique historical artefact from the war is now on permanent, public display (see photo) at the Canadian War Museum.

http://uboat.net/ops/weather_stations.htm