Hi epossum,

First let me say I could find no evidence that USS WASHINGTON (BB56) ever encountered a U-boat much less sank one & fired on its survivors. It appears someone has their story completely wrong.

It was not the policy of the American government (or the German government) to shoot helpless survivors in the water. There were rare isolated cases of it being done by individuals on both sides but again it was not the policy of their governments. This is the real answer to your question.

There were cases where individuals were injured or killed in the water but were not targeted. They were “collateral damage”. For example, when shooting at an enemy vessel while people are in the process of abandoning it frequently resulted in casualties. U-boats frequently stopped shooting when they saw that the vessel was being abandoned but allies shooting at submarines being abandoning frequently just kept shooting under the assumption that those men could man their guns if they weren’t kept under fire to “hurry them along”. The only exit normally used while abandoning a U-boat was the conning tower hatch & it was in close proximity to the AA guns mounted on the winter garden & if they got down to the deck there were fairly close to the deck gun if the U-boat still had one at that time of the war. Short rounds dropped in the water with the survivors from time-to-time killing some of them in the process too.

If you are hit by a round while abandoning ship or just after abandoning ship you will probably think you were targeted & tell all your friends about the “atrocity” but it was really the vessel being targeted, not you. The gunner probably never even saw you. Keep in mind that most interaction between the allies & U-boat men happened during times of poor visibility (at night or in bad weather) and not necessarily at close range. Still, you were shot while clearly in the process of surrendering (jumping in the water in the middle of the ocean where there is no land in sight in any direction in the presence of the enemy is certainly the equivalent of surrendering) & that is an atrocity. It is not the equivalent of the crew of a damaged tank abandoning it on dry land. They are not helpless, a man in the water is though.

This is a slippery slope. The fog of war keeps even the men doing the fighting from knowing exactly what did happen more often than not.

It is one of the tragedies of war that young men are put in impossible situations & forced to make life & death decisions without having the information necessary to make the best decision. Then if they survive the fight they have to live with what they did or did not do. Even worse they get second-guessed by armchair historians who weren’t there and now have the information that wasn’t available at the time.

That said, the three cases you need to research are the sinking of U-85 by the USS ROPER, the sinking of the Japanese BUYO MARU by WAHOO (Mush Morton) and the attack on U-156 (Hartenstein) after the sinking of the LACONIA by an American plane.

In the case of the sinking of the U-85, after the sinking, the ROPER dropped depth charges in the water with the survivors from U-85 killing all of them.

In the case of the sinking of the BUYO MARU by WAHOO (Mush Morton), WAHOO cruised around the survivors in the water for around an hour shooting them in the water. They were mostly Japanese troops but some of them were Indian troops (our allies) captured by the Japanese and being taken to POW camps that were unarmed and begging for help (but perhaps not in English). They were all killed.

In the case of the attack on U-156 by the American plane, U-156 had a sheet containing a Red Cross draped across its guns and had broadcast a message in the clear requesting Allied assistance, promising not to fire on them and giving his position. He had just sunk the LACONIA and then realized that she had a large number of captured Italian troops, Polish Guards and a complement of British civilians including women & children. He attempted to save all of them & had them in lifeboats tied behind U-156 as well as inside U-156. The American bombed U-156 also killing some of the survivors in the lifeboats. The pilot had requested instructions & was told to drop his bombs.

In none of these cases was the American commander punished for his acts. In fact the Captain of the ROPER was decorated & I think Mush Morton was too but he was killed later in the war.

Of course there is more to the stories but I’ll leave it to you to do the research & draw your own conclusions. Were these atrocities? The men responsible did what they thought was right at the time but were not acting on orders from their government (though the pilot was acting on direct orders from his superior) or their service.

Good luck.

Regards,

Ken Dunn