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'The Eskdene was damaged northeast of the Tyne'. As there is a (River?) Tyne in England and Scotland, and as I'm not sure which 'Tyne' Uboat.net is referring to, I've pointed the 'Tyne' in question at the WP disambig page.
Make up your own mind (unless you know better).
The article for HMS Nelson (28) states that On 30 October [1939] she was unsuccessfully attacked by U-56 under the command of captain Wilhelm Zahn near the Orkney Islands and was hit by three torpedoes, none of which exploded, however, this article makes no mention of any engagements during that time (I guess that would have been the 3rd patrol). Is this a different submarine or is one of the articles wrong?
Sinthorion (talk) 14:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am much intrigued by this story about the unsuccesfull attack of U-56 on the British Home Fleet. I can see in Rohwer Chronology of the war at sea that the Home Fleet was at sea from 23-31 october, busy escorting British iron ore ships from Narvik to England. The Home Fleet returned to Loch Ewe on 31st Oct 1939. So the attack is on the 30th Oct. As the U-56 is a type II boat with 3 torpedo tubes, there are 3 torpedoes launched. One is a miss, 2 hit the Nelson but do not explode. These are facts. There are 2 other aspects which are often mentioned which according to me are urban legend :
Churchill and Dudley Pound were aboard the Nelson
Zahn was so depressed that Donitz relieved him from active duty and put him in training command instead
About the first aspect : Churchill and Pound were on the 31st in Loch Ewe to discuss when the Home Fleet could return to Scapa Flow in light of the U-47 attack. I find it highly unlikely that they were aboard, Sea Lords are not at sea were they are cut off from communications, that's the job of Forbes to lead the ships at sea. They have been on a mission to Norway for ten days, impossible that Churchill and Pound were away for such a long time from their command.
About the second aspect : after this incident, Zahn continued to be in command of the U-56 and executed two more patrols. He left U-56 to commision a bigger boat, the U-69 which indeed you could regard as some training mission, but as the U-56 was a small boat it was the plan all along that these were withdrawn to training flottilas in order to support the expanding U-boat fleet.
So I'd keep those two aspect in the wikipage, as you can read this urban legend in lots of books, but I would clearly mention what they are : urban legends.
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