General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
RE: Wilhelm Gustloff Revisited
Posted by:
Rainer Bruns
()
Date: April 20, 2001 09:06PM
<HTML>Hi John,
Beg to disagree with you on the point of propaganda. I don\'t think the S13 Skipper saw anything but a fat target coming over the horizon and was not even aware of the purpose of WG\'s trip.
The success of the SU Army in \'44 and early \'45 was by no means shared by their Navy and this skipper was a notable exception, even without the ridiculously exaggerated sunken tonnage claimed by Yuri in one of his earlier posts.
Am sure the flak was aboard GW for at least a year.
On a personal note: Though my mother is a pretty smart lady, I always suspected, distrust of the furniture movers guided her motivation in this instance. It took us a little over 2 weeks to get to a rural area between Kiel and Flensburg. It was a treck.
One thing I still remember as if it was yesterday -
We were on a secondary road - some distance west of Berlin, when one of those huge (I mean Huuuge) American bomber formations overflew us east to west. It seemed like never ending stream of little toy planes high up in the sky. So I asked my mother: \"Are the flying towards England?\" She replied watching the planes: \"Yes, but first they are making a detour to Berlin.\"
:-)) Rgds, RB</HTML>
Beg to disagree with you on the point of propaganda. I don\'t think the S13 Skipper saw anything but a fat target coming over the horizon and was not even aware of the purpose of WG\'s trip.
The success of the SU Army in \'44 and early \'45 was by no means shared by their Navy and this skipper was a notable exception, even without the ridiculously exaggerated sunken tonnage claimed by Yuri in one of his earlier posts.
Am sure the flak was aboard GW for at least a year.
On a personal note: Though my mother is a pretty smart lady, I always suspected, distrust of the furniture movers guided her motivation in this instance. It took us a little over 2 weeks to get to a rural area between Kiel and Flensburg. It was a treck.
One thing I still remember as if it was yesterday -
We were on a secondary road - some distance west of Berlin, when one of those huge (I mean Huuuge) American bomber formations overflew us east to west. It seemed like never ending stream of little toy planes high up in the sky. So I asked my mother: \"Are the flying towards England?\" She replied watching the planes: \"Yes, but first they are making a detour to Berlin.\"
:-)) Rgds, RB</HTML>
