At War before the War-SS City of Flint's Ordeal Under the Nazi Flag

摘要

For the American people, World War II started on 7 December 1941, when Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor on that "Day of Infamy." For American merchant seamen, however, and members of the National Maritime Union, the war began almost three years earlier, on 3 September 1939, hours after Great Britain declared war on Germany. That evening, while on patrol about sixty nautical miles south of Rockall in the North Atlantic and 200 nautical miles northwest of Inishtrahull, Ireland, Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, commander of the German submarine U-30, spied a large merchant vessel on the horizon. He quickly plotted an intercept course and began his attack run. Before him lay SS Athenia, a 13,465-ton, unarmed British-flagged passenger liner. Lemp played cat-and-mouse with his prey for three hours and then launched two torpedoes at the hulking silhouette.