Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "MN Surcouf - Guide 136 (Extended)" video.

  1. The Americans lost submarines to their own aircraft attacking them. Also, different commands had different procedures and transiting from one to the other could be a problem. If the local commands were not used to Allied Submarines transiting their areas - they could well have simply assumed that any submarine they saw was going to be a German one. Given the horrors of the Battle of the Atlantic for the Allies in 1940, '41, '42 and the first third of '43 any Allied unit detecting a submarine - ANY submarine - probably WAS going to attack it. Anyone getting a look at it would almost certainly not recognize it as a Free French submarine and with a Captain and Crew that were not native English Language Speakers you would have another problem. Given the amount of coordination between the Allies that would be needed to safely accomplish the Surcouf's transit ... and ... past examples of the level of cooperation usually received from the French ... it would actually be surprising if it HADN'T been sunk ... Whoever issued the orders for the Surcouf's transit - really should have known better. Blue on Blue incidents have always happened. The P-38 had some problems - Lockheed sent out a team that identified them, several hundred kits were made to refit the P-38's in Northern Europe, they were flown to Britain in a C-54 - the RAF thought it was an FW-200 - and shot it down ... Nothing new about that kind of thing at all. In fact - the very first aircraft shot down by the RAF in WWII - were British Aircraft. Night battles? Off Guadalcanal Admiral Scott was killed by friendly fire. Being as big as she was the Surcouf could have survived repeated attacks but eventually succumbed. As to picking up survivors ... you had to stop to do that ... and stopping to do that could get you sunk so ... unless there was a small ship designated to pick up survivors - from their own ships - that might not have been done even for survivors from KNOWN friendly vessels. For the crew of what had been thought to be a German submarine ... their chances weren't good - and of course - it's harder for aircraft to do that - though the Catalina could have I haven't ever heard of them doing it (which doesn't mean they didn't - I just don't know). .
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