A fact from Wilhelm Zahn appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 31 December 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Wilhelm Zahn was one of the commanding officers during the sinking of MV Wilhelm Gustloff(pictured), which has been described as "Adolf Hitler's Titanic"?
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This is a purportedly biographical article, but it contains nothing about its subject's pre-career life other than his birth date. There's nothing about his parents, siblings, schooling, etc. His life after WWII is also a blank, other than his death date. Surely, a naval officer left a better trail than that. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 02:12, 31 December 2013 (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you could regard as some training mission, but as the U-56 was a small boat it was the plan all along that these were withdrawn to training flottilas in order to support the expanding U-boat fleet.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.
I am posting this on the talk page of U-56, Wilhem Zahn and HMS Rodney
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