World War: Submarine v. Blockade

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The lighthouse keeper in Gotland, Swedish island in the Baltic, last week rescued two castaways in a dinghy who had a tale to tell. They said they were members of the Estonian Navy who were on guard duty in Tallinn harbor aboard the interned Polish submarine Orzel, when the latter's crew suddenly cut the telephone line to shore, knocked out one of the guards, cut the Orzel's moorings and took her to sea under fire from other guards on the pier and from shore batteries. After three days of lurking in the Baltic, mostly submerged, with the Soviet Navy angrily searching for them, the Orzel's men set their prisoners adrift in the night upon calm water, in sight of land. The sub was equipped with 16 torpedoes, said the castaways. Unreported again since the Estonians' rescue, the Orzel remained this week one little bit of Polish flotsam still threatening Poland's conquerors.

Targets for the Orzel to hunt were suggested by unofficial Berlin reports of 70 Russian ships en route to Germany with cotton, oil, wheat. Meanwhile the Polish submarine Zbik, with 50 hungry, dispirited men aboard, slid into Stockholm harbor, was promptly interned.

> Less brave than their compatriots of the Orzel, about 200 of the Polish liner Batory's crew refused, for fear of U-boats, to sail when she was ordered to Halifax last week from her safe berth in the Hudson River (see p. 44).

> Torpedoing the British aircraft carrier Courageous remained Germany's proudest stroke of undersea warfare. Official figures in London put the total of dead & missing at 579, the number of planes lost at 24. One survivor was sure he saw the U-boat, hit by a depth bomb, go down. The German naval command was equally insistent that the sub got away, reported its feat in routine style. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, chief of the Nazi Navy, issued a special order praising the commander. He had his picture taken congratulating other successful U-boatmen on a pier at the Kiel naval base.

No U-boat was yet reported in the Mediterranean, but reports from far countries suggested the raiders were scattered far & wide. President Roosevelt caused a flurry by giving credence to reports of submarines (nationality unknown) off Alaska and off New England (see p. 11). U. S. patrols were set to watch for oil leggers who might seek to help raiders fuel in breach of neutrality.

In Buenos Aires, two battleships of the Argentine Navy were said to have been stopped off the Brazilian coast by four submarines flying swastikas, who looked them over, then disappeared.

> Arriving in Lisbon to fetch U. S. refugees, Rear Admiral Charles E. Courtney, commander of the U. S. Mediterranean Squadron (cruiser Trenton, flagship), reported that en route from Gibraltar he had sent the destroyer Jacob Jones to give water and supplies to the crew of the British steamer Constant, exhausted by flight from a U-boat. During the transfer, the U-boat appeared, but vanished when it saw the Jacob Jones.

> The British announced their first rescue of U-boat victims by airplane. Two R.A.F. seaplanes took turns scouting for the enemy and sitting down on rough water while they picked up 34 survivors of the freighter Kensington Court.