Talk:Q-ship: Difference between revisions

When you read the article you can get the idea that Q-Ships were a perfectly legal, brilliant idea to counter the treat of german submarines. The british were certainly in desperation yet the usage of concealed warships was considered a warcrime by the maritime war of these days, which explains why it was "one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war." German submarines operated under the prize rules which demanded that every merchant vessel had to be stopped, it's cargo checked and only if it was transporting contraband it was allowed to be sunk, after the crew was on lifeboats in safe distance, usually combined with an SOS. Only then the ship was sunk by using the deck cannon to save precious torpedoes. It was the utopia of a civilized warfare without unnecessary casualities. The result of the Q-ship usage was that the war on sea got noteworthy brutalized on both sides, leading to the unconditional submarine warfare with submarines ignoring the prize rule by just firing without warning, out of paranoia to not make themselves a victim to Q-ships. The invention of Q-ships can be seen as a premise which might have been a main reason for the Lusitania incident that would follow in May 1915. Another example worth mentioning in this article were the Baralong incidents. The HMS Baralong sunk 2 submarines by sailing under US flag and thus appearing as a neutral ship. After U-27 was sunk every surviving german sailor, still swimming in the sea or on board of the Nicosian was shot by the crew of the Baralong under order of it's commanding officer Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert. <small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/188.108.151.179|188.108.151.179]] ([[User talk:188.108.151.179|talk]]) 13:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->

: I agree with this edit. Therefor I deleted one phrase in the lemma. --[[User:Orik|Orik]] ([[User talk:Orik|talk]]) 13:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

 

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