Hi Urs,

You are quite welcome.

I have continued to research this issue over the years & I have collected quite a few accounts primarily from the merchant marine side but many also from the German side and very few of them contradict the paper. And when they do I generally find that there was no actual evidence of any wrongdoing, and the U-boat commander made other patrols with no hint of any wrongdoing.

It has been so long since the war I rarely find survivors any more & the ones I do find don't have reliable memories. The only still living survivor from the sinking of my dad's ship turned 98 today. It won't be long until all we have is what has already been written down. The survivor's families frequently don't know their stories either.

It very easy to assume that wrongdoing occurred and so difficult to do the research to track down the sources to determine what really happened & I think that has contributed to most of the confusion. And then there is the fog of war.

It is also getting harder to get information from the archives. WWII isn't the hot topic it used to be and many of the archivists that knew where to look have retired & been replaced by young folks that don't know anything about WWII and aren't interested in finding out about it either.

When I ask for specific documents on a sinking and add "and anything else you have that is pertinent" I only get the specific documents I ask for now & then only if they can find them. They are also limiting the number of documents you can ask for in one request & they don't want you to send in another request until they have completed the first one.

Good people are still writing books though & hopefully they will address this issue in them.

It is what it is & we have to work with what we have.

Regards,

Ken Dunn