Hello Everyone

I am clearing up some of my 'victim' list for UC 61. I refer to an incident on 5 May 1917 when Le Gard, a steamer from Nantes for Casablanca, was attacked by gunfire at 0525 by two submarines. Le Gard escaped with casualties and damage by running for it, using smoke bombs, and fighting back. I have found a multi-page report in French by the captain, Etienne Robert (TNA, ADM 137/3988).

Georg Gerth on UC 61 describes his attack in his KTB as in the Loire estuary at 46 by 14 north, 3 by 44 west. He speaks admiringly of the accurate gunnery from Le Gard and is unable at the end to match the French boat for range, especially in a heavy swell. After diving, chasing and being damaged by shrapnel, a piece of which slightly injures one of UC 61's seamen in the foot, Gerth calls it off after some two hours. He then spends an uncomfortable day in Audierne Bay carrying out repairs. Gerth mentions no other submarine involved in the duel.

However, Robert clearly does and his story gets a brief mention in ADM 239/26 with an 'improbable' sinking. I wonder in the first place which was the other u-boat and, in the second, whether there was anything more to it. Here's a section of Robert's first-hand battle report:

'At 0535 at the fourteenth firing of Le Gard’s cannon we hit [one of the u-boats] full on at 4,200 metres; immediately we clearly noticed a vertical flame rising to about twenty metres, and black smoke quite different from that of the smokescreen, rising in a plume. Then the submarine quickly went down by the stern, its nose in the air.'

Best wishes
Chris Heal