These reports come from attacks delivered on suspected U-Boat contacts , Bruce Whitney made two attacks and when he saw these papers back in the early 90's was less than impressed with the ease at which the chairbound made their comments - they were not on the spot. ( He was critcised for not deploying his whole stick by his C.O. , but the Station Commander greeded with his course of action.) As luck would have it he made another attack 4 days later , the powers that be felt that this was a false alarm.
In post war assessments this was thought to have been a contact with U-484, reviewed in the mid 90's this was found not to have been U-484 and has been judged to have been a water spout. False contacts proved to be a number of things , oil leaking from wrecks , water spouts , whales , aircraft broke cloud to find themselves homing on fishing boats , and occasionally found themselves having to discourage fishing boats from interferring this bouys and markers which were dropped. Again from F/O. Farren , at the time this was judged to have been a submarine damaged , today it is judged to have been a submarine. Scene of the atack 5 miles to the West of Achill Island. Would apologise for posating these up like this but they are earier read with the diagram to be hand, also for the bad copy,
James, Thanks for posting those historical copies. It really makes for excellent reading. It also goes to show that Churchill thought highly of Coastal Command. Perhaps because the 'U-Boat' menace, was the one thing that really worried him during his time as Prime minister. Regards Tom Regards Tom
The appendicies do hold some excellent items , unfortunately I seem to have mislaid a lot of stuff which I thought was save and sound - not feeling to happy at the moment
james, Thanks for posting these details. As you say many whales were attacked in mistake for a U-boat, in this account of a whale sighting by a 120 Squadron Liberator, the whale escaped......... Not all sightings were of submarines, on 18 May, W/C. McNair and crew on patrol in Liberator MkII AL542. O/120 sighted foam and refuse on the surface. McNair thought the object that was also seen moving under the surface to be a whale but dropped a sea marker, five minutes later the object was again seen under the water on a course of 140 degrees. Photographs were taken in view of the possibility that it might have been a U-boat. In this case the ‘whale’ escaped unharmed but many were mistaken for submarines and attacked with depth charges. Regards Peter.
