Kattegat Torpedoings

AT SEA Kattegat Torpedoings

Danish coastguardsmen with good eyes and ears might have seen and heard, about 11 p.m. one night last week, a most unusual sight eight miles off the Skaw (Denmark's northeast tip) in the dangerous shoal-and mine-strewn waters of the Kattegat (cat's throat). It was a submarine, stalking prey, but its nationality was not German. It was British. Prey was the 4,947-ton freighter Heddernheim, not neutral but German, homebound from Narvik, Norway with a cargo of precious Swedish iron ore.

While clouds and the broad March moon made dangerous patterns on those waters where German patrols abound, the Britisher surfaced and closed in, ordered the Heddernheim's company into their lifeboats. The terrified Germans obeyed with all speed. When they were well away, through the waves from the submarine raced the first British torpedo of World War II to find, thunderously, a commercial target. As the blasted Heddernheim went down, the undersea commander overhauled the German lifeboats, asked for the freighter's Captain Teichmann. His men said he had gone down with his ship, so the Britisher took off Chief Engineer Sinn, for exhibit in London. The remaining 35 castaways were soon picked up intact by a Danish pilot boat.

Safe home in Germany, having escaped capture by disguising himself as a common seaman, Captain Teichmann complained that in blowing up his ship within five minutes, the British had violated a promise to allow him a quarter-hour to abandon ship, but "fortunately" he had distrusted them, saved all hands except Chief Engineer Sinn.

War historians noted the Heddernheim's sinking as the beginning of British action to plug the hole in the Allied blockade represented by Norway's coastal water route, through which a steady stream of iron ore has flowed to Germany's munition mills since war began. Historians recalled how, after an outburst in Parliament against similar leakage, two British submarines in eight days of October 1915 sank nine German ore boats in the western Baltic, made others hole up in Swedish ports until armed escorts could fetch them.

Next victim of Britain's new tit-for-tat program was the 2,189-ton Edmund Hugo Stinnes IV, bound for Copenhagen with German coke. When three shells across her bows failed to stop her, off Denmark's west coast, a British submarine put a shell into her which wounded two sailors. The sub took aboard the German captain, let 20 others start for shore in lifeboats before sinking the Stinnes with more shellfire.

A third victim was the 3,030-ton German steamer Ostpreussen, which went aground on the Danish east coast trying to avoid the British.

Danes were struck by the contrast between what happened to the Heddernheim's crew and the simultaneous fate of more than 60 Danish seamen. Apparently a new fleet of German U-boats put to sea last week, after a lull in torpedoings that had lasted since Feb. 25. Apparently their orders were to concentrate first on vessels plying between Denmark and Great Britain, which mostly carry food. In the space of 24 hours, down went six Danish ships totaling 10,441 tons, all sunk by U-boats, for Denmark's blackest war week yet.

As the new U-boat fleet fanned out, two Norwegian fishing captains reported seeing several of them just outside Norway's territorial waters. One U-boat stopped a Norwegian to buy fish, and a Nazi officer explained: "From now on you will see plenty of German submarines. They will be as common as fishing boats."

The coastal ore route from Narvik will be needed by Germany for only a month more, until the Gulf of Bothnia's ice melts. But that coastal route, the British more than suspect, is the one taken by German submarines and surface raiders to reach the open Atlantic. The Altmark episode was warning of what Britain may do if her destroyers spy Nazi warships trying to sneak out under Norway's sheltering wing. Last week a British destroyer retired repeatedly when warned to do so by Norwegian warships escorting German merchantmen which the Britisher ran in. If Nazi raiders are found abusing Norwegian neutrality, politeness will doubtless cease abruptly.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.