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From: brooksp@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Peter Brooks)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: U-700 Information Wanted
Message-ID: <1990Nov21.223815.22867@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 21 Nov 90 22:38:15 GMT
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From: Peter Brooks <brooksp@hpcc01.corp.hp.com>
More on submarine captures and Ian Fleming:

In addition to U-570, an important capture occured in May, 1941, of
U-110, under Captain (Franz-Julius?) Lemp.  This was fairly conventional;
the crew got out when the boat appeared to be sinking.  The Brits sent
a boarding party over to get whatever.  Apparently, Captain Lemp saw
that the boat was not sinking and he swam over to it.  This is
speculation, but it is believed that somebody in the boarding party
shot Lemp.  He was never found.  (Nor court martialed :-).

The haul included an intact enigma cyphering machine (with the
current settings still in place), and more importantly, papers with
the Enigma settings for several months.  The tactical advantages of
a quick enigma decode were enormous.  (the RN had figured out the
wiring of the Egnima, with some help from multiple sources, but
without the current settings it could take anywhere from a few days
to a few weeks to decode messages.  Thus the advantage from the U-110
papers.)  

Ian Fleming was in the Naval Inteligence, as personal assistant to
the Director.  I don't know if he was involved in submarine evaluation.
BTW, Lemp had the dubious distinction of sinking the first vessel
in WWII, the SS Athenia, a passanger vessel.  The resulting propaganda
debacle was quite embarassing to Germany.

My source for this has been Dan van der Vat's THE ATLANTIC CAMPAIGN.
It is pretty thorough, covering mistakes and triumphs on all sides.
He mentions several (over 100 subs) by number, but no mention of
U-700 captured on august 7, 1941.  U-570 was captured August *27th*.

Technology transfer went both ways, too.  The early magnetic 
detonators were so ineffective that the Germans used contact
detonators copied from a British design.  

Pete Brooks  pb@hpocia.hp.com