german auxiliary cruiser widderjoe's original dartmouth menu

The name Stier means "bull", and represents the Taurus constellation in the German language. The name he proposed for his new ship … 'Given each raider commander's right to choose the name of his ship, and knowing that to antagonise high-ranking officials was not healthy, he nonetheless suggested the name 'Amazingly, the Admiral made no response to this and later wished him luck with his 'After a successful cruise he was forced to leave the At the war's end, he was indicted as a war criminal on several charges, found guilty, and sentenced to ten years in prison, later commuted to seven.In declining health, he died in prison in Hamburg on June 24 1948.There were those, and not all of them German, who maintained at the time that his imprisonment was not justice, but simply revenge for perceived war crimes as a overly aggressive U-Boat commander in World War One. Ruckteschell spent the last years of the war on the staff of the German naval attaché in Japan. In 1916, with the rank of Ruckteschell was recalled to duty in the Kriegsmarine in 1939 and given command of an auxiliary Ruckteschell was one of the more successful raider captains.

The German Auxiliary Cruiser HSK "Widder" was the sistership of the HSK "Orion". She sunks 10 Ships and returned to the occupied France after six months, because of heavy engine problems. The first two ships being requisitioned were the Kurmark (Orion) and the Neumark (German auxiliary cruiser Widder), and conversion started immediately. On 13 May the Widder confronted the British submarine HMS Clyde on surface, enjoining an exchange of gunfire which lasted for over an hour, with no hits for either side. The German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis (HSK 2), known to the Kriegsmarine as Schiff 16 and to the Royal Navy as Raider-C, was a converted German Hilfskreuzer (auxiliary cruiser, or merchant or commerce raider) of the Kriegsmarine, which, during World War II, travelled more than 161,000 km (100,000 mi) in 602 days, and sank or captured 22 ships totaling 144,384 t (142,104 long tons). Her hull was scrapped shortly after.She was one of only two German auxiliary cruisers to survive the war, after one 1940 cruise. … Seeing the Unable to radio for help, and not prepared to take on a heavily-armed raider with one ancient 4-inch gun mounted on the stern of his ship, he ordered his crew to lower the boats and abandon ship.On seeing the boats being lowered, Ruckteschell had in fact ordered his gunners to cease firing, but, as three seamen were then observed heading aft towards the ship's gun, in what he took to be a foolish and dangerous attempt to resist, he ordered his 37mm and 20mm anti-aircraft guns to rake the vessel's decks, instantly killing all three of them, and wounding several others.The boarding party identified her as the 6,433-ton British Once the ship had been thoroughly searched, and some foodstuffs and tobacco removed, the surviving members of her crew, six of them wounded, were picked up, bringing the total number of prisoners on board the Surveying them from the bridge, Ruckteschell was heard to describe them as, The boarding party's attempts to scuttle the ship with demolition charges failed, and so she was finished off by a torpedo.When his lookouts spotted another freighter on July 13, Ruckteschell closed to within a few miles of her, before once again employing the tactic of opening fire with all the guns at his disposal, to prevent her from signalling or fighting back.Registering several hits and with the vessel seemingly vanquished, he ceased fire, but when her radio operator then began to transmit distress calls, he ordered his gunners to hammer her into submission.As the 37mm anti-aircraft guns directed a murderous barrage at the helpless ship, destroying her bridge, radio room and gun position, where the ready-use ammunition exploded, setting her on fire, Ruckteschell's radio officer, Oberleutnant zur See Kindler, reported that the freighter's radiomen had reported their position incorrectly by some one hundred and fifty miles.With one hundred prisoners already on board, Ruckteschell's well-known aversion to filling up his ship with prisoners, was now exacerbated by his distaste for the twenty-one survivors from the 4,919-ton Panamanian freighter He then made a decision that was to have far-reaching consequences.Provided with water, supplies, sails and compasses, and instructed to make for the Lesser Antilles, 240 miles away, the problem of the large number of prisoners on board the Upon hearing Ruckteschell express irritation at how long it was taking for the ship to go down, her master, Captain George E. Smith, who, having unsuccessfully tried to escape in a boat, now stood with him as he watched her death throes, annoyed him further by remarking, 'On this occasion, Ruckteschell was correct in his assumption that the men in the lifeboats could make landfall, as they reached the island of Anguilla on July 17 and July 18, where they made a full report on what had happened, and gave a detailed description of the The immediate result was that all independent sailings were cancelled, convoys were re-routed, and a large force of Allied warships was sent out to search for the raider, which, with her cover blown, was now in need of a change of identity.On July 28, she re-fuelled, taking on 1,465 tons of oil from the 5,540-ton tanker At this point, realising that the Allies were by now probably well aware of his presence, Ruckteschell decided to radically change his tactics.Calling his officers to a meeting, he outlined to them his intention to apply the same approach he had used as a U-Boat commander in World War One, one which was still being applied by submarines in the current war, that of stalking by day and attacking without warning at night.This tactic, although it carried the risk of exposing the He maintained that as all Allied ships had instructions to immediately radio their position if attacked, and to return fire with their defensive weapons, this was the best way to prevent both, and thus safeguard his ship and her crew.On the morning of August 4, the first opportunity to try out this new concept presented itself, when a tanker was sighted and tracked all day in preparation for a surprise close range night attack.Closing to within 2,500 metres of the poorly blacked-out vessel, on a reciprocal collision course, to minimise her chances of escape, he opened up on her without any warning, with a fusillade of thirty 150mm rounds, registering nine direct hits, quickly bringing the shattered tanker to a standstill.As her terrified crew lowered their lifeboats, Ruckteschell ordered his gunners to rake the helpless vessel with their light anti-aircraft weapons and machine-guns, arguing that he did not wish his men to be picked off by a rifle fire.Identified by the boarding party as the 6114-ton Norwegian Having failed to sink her with a torpedo, which proceeded to run around in circles, the derelict tanker was blown up with demolition charges, after which the Making no attempt to pick up the survivors, who had clearly made off to avoid capture, Ruckteschell chose to leave twenty-eight of them to their fate, over 1,200 miles from the nearest land.Ruckteschell argued that as the gun flashes and the glare of the searchlight might well have alerted enemy warships nearby, he clearly had to be cautious, and that apart from the fact that it could take hours to locate and rescue them, many Allied seamen deliberately tried to escape, and often frustrated rescue attempts, thereby risking their own lives.His Executive Officer, Ernst-Günther Heinicke, pointed out to him that his officers and men were having difficulties with some of his more ruthless procedures, and insisted that in future every effort be made to pick up survivors.While he clearly didn't want prisoners on his ship, particularly in view of the chronic shortage of food on board, which necessitated rationing, Ruckteschell listened, and took some time to pick up the entire complement of his next victim, despite the fact that they were a lot closer to land than the Norwegians had been.When a ship was spotted on August 8, close to the Azores, the Attacking without warning from a range of only 3,500 metres, with over forty rounds of 150mm gunfire, registering six hits, starting several fires that quickly went out of control, the Despite this, the freighter's entire company of thirty-four men, managed to get off the blazing ship in two boats, and were all safely picked up.After a couple of warning shots had been fired, the stately vessel backed her mainmast and stopped without sending any signals.A boarding party sent to check her papers and inspect her cargo, identified her as the 1,817-ton Finnish ship, A neutral ship, from a country later to join in the war on the German side, and travelling from one neutral country to another, with a harmless cargo, everything appeared to be in order, but, when it transpired that both her shipping agent, and the owner of the cargo were British, according to the prize rules, Ruckteschell had the majestic vessel sent to bottom by demolition charges, with all her sails still set, and her crew of eighteen picked up.It has been said that Ruckteschell was reluctant to sink the The surgeon had been filming the voyage for Nazi propaganda purposes, and needed the sinking to have a good ending to the film, and allegedly threatened to report Ruckteschell to Berlin if it was not done.Despite the fact that Ruckteschell ordered the Finnish flag to be lowered before she was sunk, all the true seamen on board the Initiating a program of training men from his deck crew to work in the engine room, so that Kapitänleutnant Penzel and his crew, who had been working without relief for two and a half months, since the voyage began, just to keep the ship operational, could take some 'leave on board', Ruckteschell noted in his war diary that, Ruckteschell instantly decided to employ the same sudden attack without warning method that had brought success against the Approaching on an opposing course, but unable to see his prey until the last moment, he closed with her from directly in front, finally catching sight of one of her lights at 8 o'clock, and opening fire at 8.08 from a 'point blank' range of 2,500 metres, hitting her deck gun and setting its ready-use ammunition on fire.When Kindler reported signals being transmitted, the This murderous barrage not only prevented the ship from calling for assistance, but it also shredded her lifeboats, leaving her surviving crewmen with just one small 'jolly boat' intact on the port side of the bridge, in which seven men, three of them wounded, managed to get away, and several life-rafts.Desperately trying not to attract attention, and quickly putting as much distance between themselves and the shattered, burning ship as possible, they watched, as some of their shipmates managed to launch a couple of the life-rafts, but were horrified to see them appear to come under fire from the German warship.Convinced that the Germans were determined to eradicate all evidence of what they had done, the men drifted off into the darkness, as the raider's searchlight swept over what was left of their ship, picking out her name on the stern.Ruckteschell instructed his torpedo officer Malte Von Schack, to finish her off.Following a massive explosion, which blew a large hole in her hull, she went down slowly by the stern, taking thirty-four of her forty-one man crew with her.Lights had been observed in two life-rafts, as Morse signals were briefly seen passing between them, but as no one appeared to be actively seeking assistance, and as it appeared as if the survivors were attempting to evade capture, making any rescue virtually impossible, Ruckteschell decided not to try to pick them up.Besides, the large explosion that sank the freighter would have been seen for a great distance, and, as he later recorded in his war diary, the lifeboats were Of the seven men who had scrambled on board, amazingly, two were still alive.Adrift for over two months in the tiny open boat, Able Seamen Robert Tapscott and Roy Widdicombe, who crawled ashore half-dead on the island of Eleuthera, on October 30, had endured a most appalling ordeal, as, in the first two weeks after the attack, they had seen their three wounded shipmates succumb to their injuries, and the other two choose to take their own lives rather than face an agonising death from hunger and thirst, after which they themselves had clung to life for a further eight weeks, alone in the vastness of the Atlantic.On August 26, Ruckteschell failed to close with two potential victims, a freighter and a tanker, due to the Early on September 2, a tanker was spotted in the distance, just as Penzel's overworked engine-room crew had managed to get all of her boilers working, and she was accelerating towards her maximum speed of 14 knots.The large amount of funnel smoke that this created was spotted by the tanker's lookouts, leading her captain to alter course, but, by following her closely all day, Ruckteschell was able to close with her shortly after dark, and open fire under the eerie light of a star-shell, from a range of 2,600 metres.The first salvo caused one of the tanker's boilers to explode, swathing the entire stern section of the ship in scalding steam, making it impossible for her gun crew to even approach their gun, let alone use it.Ceasing firing after the explosion, Ruckteschell was informed that the enemy ship was transmitting distress signals, leaving him with little alternative but to instruct Damschen's gunners to resume firing, concentrating on the tanker's bridge, which was soon utterly devastated and ablaze.Circling the ship, and examining her under the beam of the raider's searchlight, he identified her as the 6,317-ton, BritishDispatching the burning ship with a torpedo, Ruckteschell, in keeping with his promise to his Executive Officer Heinicke, and to his Surgeon, to make every possible effort to rescue survivors, spent four hours searching for her thirty-six man crew, who, having abandoned ship, had made off in the boats.Little did he know, while his ship was engaged in this humanitarian activity, that the captain of the With seven men having lost their lives during the attack, twenty-six survivors were found and picked up, leaving three, including the Captain, unaccounted for.The tanker's captain, J.A.Chadwick, his First Officer and his Third Engineer, all escaped in a boat, and were rescued fourteen days later, on September 16, by the tanker Over the next few days, significant changes were made to the raider's paintwork and appearance, as she was painted grey to make her look like 'an Englishman', all white surfaces were painted brown, to make her less visible at night, and masts and derrick booms were either reduced or removed, to alter her profile.While this work was going on, her engines were shut down, as once again major repairs were carried out, leaving her adrift and helpless, and more than one of her crew beginning to wonder if they would ever manage to get her home.Steaming south, he received an urgent communication from the Well aware of Ruckteschell's tactic of attacking ships at night without warning, without even establishing their nationality, Naval Command were anxious to avoid such a lethal and disastrous attack being made on a friendly vessel.That night, with the repairs complete and the engines once more capable of making 12 knots, a freighter appeared, heading straight towards the raider.Turning on her lights and ordering the approaching vessel to stop, under the light of a star shell, she obeyed without any signals, or a shot being fired.The boarding party identified her as the 5,866-ton Greek With one hundred and forty-two prisoners already on board, Ruckteschell instructed the boarding party to tell her captain, George Gafos, to provision his Thirty-one days later, on October 8, Gafos and his twenty-one starving half-dead men were lucky to be picked up by the Portuguese freighter Having provided the raider with meat and other foodstuffs, the Heading back towards the northwest at a 'top speed' of 8 knots, the engine troubles again became acute, reducing her speed to 5 knots and finally to a complete standstill, leaving her drifting helplessly for a full day.Had any sort of Allied warship come along, she would have been 'a sitting duck'.Knowing that their own lives, as well as those of their shipmates, not to mention the one hundred and forty-two suffering souls in the prisoner accomodation, depended on their getting the disabled engines going again, Penzel's engineers worked frantically to repair them.On seeing the raider approach, the tanker's captain, Blessin, believing his ship to be under attack, took off and tried to escape, until, after an infuriating four and a half hour chase, the Dismayed to learn that the tanker could not take his prisoners, as she was due to remain at large in the Atlantic as a replacement for the As Ruckteschell chose to retain all seventy-seven of his English prisoners on board, whilst transferring those of other nationalities, it has been suggested that he may have intended using them as hostages in the ever-increasing likelihood of the semi-crippled That evening, the engines broke down completely, and on the following morning, while completely disabled, a ship was reported heading straight for the Immediately running up the Norwegian flag, and the internationally recognised signal for 'Not Under Control', Ruckteschell ordered his crew to their battle stations, and prepared to bluff it out.Fortunately, the vessel, passing at a range of just over two miles, and identified as the 4,945-ton Vichy-French freighter With the repair work continuing all that day, and into the next day September 28, the engines were finally back on line and getting up towards 12 knots again by midday, only for them to fail completely again that evening.This time, as new bearings had to be cast, it took six days to solve the problem, which at least gave the exhausted engine-room crews a chance to take some well-earned rest, but left the On October 4, as Penzel's miracle workers managed to get the engines into a state where they were capable of seven knots, only for them to start overheating and vibrating, Ruckteschell finally conceded that the Following another two days of enforced immobility, during which he decided to terminate the cruise and head for a home port, he transmitted a signal to that effect to the Receiving no response, he had it sent again the next day, eventually receiving acknowledgement and permission to proceed on October 9, with the additional welcome news that the On October 10, the crippled raider turned northward for France, and over the following three weeks, passed close to the places where she had attacked so many of her victims, and spotted several ships, including an Taking evasive action as best she could, given her slow speed and the condition of her engines, the extreme weather provided refuge and she escaped unseen.On October 27, as she turned eastwards to approach the coast of France, she was met by the Italian submarine With the storm still unabated the next day, no aircraft materialised, but on the morning of October 29, one did appear, only to completely ignore her.That night, in pitch darkness, she was challenged, and having given the correct response, was welcomed by the With the weather preventing the units of the Fifth Torpedo Boat Flotilla putting to sea, she was joined by several patrol boats over the final stretch, arriving into the port, and dropping anchor in the roadstead of Brest on October 31.After almost six months at sea, during which she had sunk nine ships, and taken one as a prize, for a total of 58,644 tons, and caused considerable chaos and disruption in the Allied shipping lanes, the By way of a hand-delivered message, he was ordered by the Ruckteschell refused point blank to obey, pointing out to the officer whose job it was to convey his reply to Berlin, that such a voyage would put his highly experienced crew in unnecessary danger for a jaded ship with clapped out engines, adding that he would present this view personally in Berlin, if necessary, but that under no circumstances would he take the Because of this, he was refused permission to land after six months at sea.As several events had been arranged for them, including a 'homecoming celebration' on board, the crewRemaining at anchor for two weeks, the raider was moved into the local shipyard on November 14, and the crew were given their well-deserved shore leave.Their captain, summoned to account for his actions, boarded a train for BerlinThe award of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, an honour bestowed only upon German heroes, to Korvettenkapitän Hellmuth von Ruckteschell, confirmed that his masters in Berlin viewed him as such, and that they approved of his methods.J.Revell Carr, in his superb book on Hellmuth von Ruckteschell and the sinking of the He was rewarded further by being assigned to precommissioning duties in a fresh command, the brand new, fast, motor-vessel, Anchored in Kåfjord she accomodated the shipyard workers assigned to carry out repairs on the bomb-damaged battleship On November 12 1944, she witnessed the death of the giant ship off Hannoy Island.Requisitioned by the British as a reparations prize after the war, she was sold to the During her three years with the Greek company, her chronic propulsion problems persisted, even leading to a collision with another freighter off the coast of India in 1950, which necessitated her putting in to a shipyard in Singapore for repairs.She returned to German ownership in 1951, being purchased by the She operating as a tramp for the next five years, and on May 17 1954, while being rebuilt as a motor-ship,On October 3 1955, in service as an ore transporter between Narvik and Emden, the As neither her captain, Ludwig Lindner, nor the local Norwegian pilots, had been informed that an important marker beacon had been moved, the 26-year old freighter ran out of luck, and onto the rocks, tearing a massive hole in her side.Despite Lindner's managing to beach her, she broke in two the following day, and was pounded to destruction by heavy seas six days later.Ruckteschell was highly-cultured, artistic and devoutly religious.Although physically tough, he was a complicated and introspective man, with a quirky and mischievous sense of humour, but whose often moody, irritable, and temperamental disposition, was shared by many former U-Boat Officers.Like so many others, his submarine service had left him with a nervous stomach, severe migraine headaches, and understandably, a paranoid fear of Q Ships.He was of the view that the British Admiralty's orders to ships masters could not be reconciled with International Law, and that he could never be certain what any one of them might do under pressure.He had therefore refined his method of attack, tracking and stalking by day, a fast approach at nightfall and then, usually without warning, a sudden assault with his main armament, accompanied by anti-aircraft and machine-gun fire aimed at the victim's bridge and radio room, that generally resulted in a number of deaths and injuries before the enemy even knew they were under attack.This was a risky and controversial tactic, particularly hard on those victims that were, for example, unarmed, or willing to surrender without resisting.Captain S. W. Roskill, the eminent British naval historian, remarked in 'Ruckteschell, in his view, was ' The only exception', his conduct being 'So far contrary to the Hague Conventions that he was brought to trial and convicted as a war criminal in 1947'.Trying to escape or returning fire, was obvious resistance, but Ruckteschell and many other Germans maintained that the use of wireless also constituted 'resisting' and so justified their attacking ships that did so.It might even be argued that organising ships into escorted convoys was a form of resistance to capture.Ruckteschell confided in his family that the thought of being executed was not nearly as hard to bear as the thought of As an officer, he refused to ask for mercy, saying that he simply wanted justice, conceding that, 'On May 21 1947, he was sentenced to ten years in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel prison, the sentence subsequently being commuted to seven years, due to the fact that the charges concerning the On June 24 1948, shortly after hearing that he was to be released because of his deteriorating heart condition, Hellmuth von Ruckteschell died.While the British held to their contention that his methods were brutal, there were those on the German side who, while possibly feeling that Ruckteschell was emotionally somewhat unsuitable to command a raider, still believed that the court had acted in vengeance for his escape from prosecution as a U-Boat commander who had applied himself so aggressively to his service during WW1, that the Allies had hoped to finally bring him to trial for war crimes.A British officer who had spent eighty days as a captive in the raider Born in Prussia, on March 22 1890, the son of a Protestant pastor, Hellmuth Von Ruckteschell was older than the other commanders, and was the only officer from the Naval Reserve to be given command of an auxiliary cruiser.Not wishing to be judged by his enemies, he fled to Sweden and then to Lapland where he worked as a lumberjack and a surveyor before returning to Germany.Highly cultured, he was an artist at heart, and was in many ways more of a true Corsair', some people would say 'Pirate', than the other These circumstances compelled him to develop the controversial tactics that were later considered brutal, as he would invariably try to attack at night, usually without warning, continuing to fire until the opponent surrendered, seemingly indifferent to casualties.

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