Altmark Archives - Charles McCain

I received many letters from the public after this affair: a number wrote to say that, as I had failed to shoot, or hang, the Captain of the Altmark, I ought to be shot myself.” Vian in his memoirs, Action This Day

The London Gazette (Official newspaper of the British Government)

Admiralty, Whitehall. 12th April, 1940.
“The KING has been graciously pleased to give orders for the following Appointments to the Distinguished Service Order:—
To be a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order: Captain Philip Louis Vian, Royal Navy, H.M.S. Cossack;”

“for outstanding ability, determination and resource in the preliminary dispositions which led to the rescue of 300 English prisoners from the German Armed Auxiliary Altmark, and for daring, leadership and masterly handling of his ship in narrow waters so as to bring her alongside and board the enemy, who tried to blind him with the glare of a searchlight, worked his engine full ahead and full astern, tried to ram him and drive him ashore and so threatened the grounding and loss of Cossack.”

The most famous of the Royal Navy’s Tribal Class destroyers: HMS Cossack underway at slow speed.

(Official Royal Navy photo courtesy IWM)

Captain Philip Vian, RN, commanded the 4th Destroyer Flotilla from his flotilla leader’s ship, HMS Cossack, one of the famous “Tribal Class” destroyers. In February 1940, Vian had been ordered to board the German ship Altmark, then anchored in neutral Norwegian waters. This particular ship had been a supply ship to the Admiral Graf Spee and had taken several hundred British merchant navy officers and men from the Graf Spee, who had captured these men when she sank their ships.

Vian’s men boarded the Altmark with their famous shout, “the navy’s here!” and freed more than 200 British merchant sailors being held prisoner. Captain Vian didn’t have instructions from the Admiralty on what to do with the German officers aboard the ship. Since Altmark was in international waters, Vian wisely decided to only bring off the British merchant sailors and leave the Germans on their ship.

Wrote Vian in his memoirs, Action This Day by Admiral of the Fleet Sir Philip Vian GCB, KBE, DSO & Two Bars:

“I received many letters from the public after this affair: a number wrote to say that, as I had failed to shoot, or hang, the Captain of the Altmark, I ought to be shot myself.”

Philip Vian (2nd from left) with Admiral Halsey aboard USS Missouri, c. mid-1945. At that time, Vian was Commander-in-Chief of the British Pacific Fleet. Photo courtesy of US National Archives.

Vian was a tightly wound man, to put it mildly, and had a ferocious temper. He wasn’t a likable man. If you served with him over a period of time, knew your job and followed his orders precisely, then you at least won his loyalty. Whenever he was appointed to a new ship or position, he dismissed that ship’s senior officers and brought aboard his own men. This has always been the prerogative of an Admiral but it still rankled some.

Below is a passage from the obituary of Vice-Admiral Sir David Brown, published in the London Daily Mail of 21 July 2005:

“Later, in Portsmouth, Brown was summoned onboard the flagship of the Home Fleet, the battleship Vanguard, to receive a furious blast from Admiral Sir Philip Vian, the Commander-in-Chief, for failing to salute his flag. Others quailed before Vian’s outbursts, but Brown fearlessly pointed out that the flagship herself had committed a breach of etiquette by failing to pipe him onboard.”

This must have taken a certain fortitude on Brown’s part since he was then commanding a small minesweeper.

As part of honors received at the end of World War Two, Admiral Vian received the Legion of Merit of the United States, Degree of Commander, as well as the US Navy’s Distinguished Service Medal which is awarded for “exceptionally meritorious service to the Government of the United States in a duty of great responsibility.”

Upon his retirement in 1952 from active duty the Royal Navy (Admirals of the Fleet remain on the active list so technically don’t retire), after 45 years of service, he was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet to recognize his significant contributions to Allied victory in World War Two. One has to search diligently to find a British admiral who commanded as many engagements at sea as Vian did.

Admiral Philip Vian by Charles Wheeler, 1942. National Maritime Museum, London.

Commander, later Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Philip Vian, in the first years of World War Two. He was one of the Royal Navy’s greatest fighting officers of the war. During his encounter with the Bismarck, Vian commanded his destroyer flotilla from the ship he had made famous during the Altmark incident, HMS Cossack.

In Feb 1940, the German auxiliary ship, Altmark, which had served as supply ship and oiler for the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, had made its way from the South Atlantic to a fjord in what were then the neutral waters of Norway. In addition to her other functions, Altmark served as a floating POW camp for almost three hundred British merchant officers and men whose ships had been captured by the Graf Spee.

Tribal class destroyer HMS Cossack, under the command of Philip Vian, was sent to hunt for the Altmark. While the Germans and Norwegians denied it, the British knew from radio decrypts that a large number of British merchant sailors were being held aboard. Under orders from London, Vian was given discretion to violate Norwegian neutrality and free the British prisoners.

In a Norwegian fjord, February 1940, German auxiliary supply ship Altmark. Photo taken after she had been boarded by an armed party from HMS Cossack and almost three hundred British prisoners freed. Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

The biggest problem said Vian in his memoirs, Action this Day: A War Memoir, is that no one actually knew what the Altmark looked like.

Wrote Vian “The best clue we could find was in a wardroom copy of the Illustrated London News. This showed a picture of two vessels, the caption of which read: ‘German raider Altmark examining a neutral merchant ship in the Atlantic.’ Which of the two was Altmark it did not say, and we assumed it was the four-masted ship in the foreground, rather than the tanker-type further away.”

Eventually they found the correct ship. So afraid of the Germans was the Norwegian government that a Norwegian patrol boat was actually guarding the Altmark against an attempt by the Royal Navy to board the Altmark. After positioning HMS Cossack so she could not be torpedoed by the patrol boat, Vian trained his guns on her. This persuaded the Norwegian patrol boat to signal she had no choice but to yield to force majeure and exited the scene.

HMS Cossack headed into the fjord to board the Altmark and get the British prisoners. Altmark trained her searchlight onto the bridge of HMS Cossack to blind the officers then came full speed astern down the channel in the ice she had made going into the fjord intent on ramming the Royal Navy warship.

Both ships maneuvered for advantage and seizing a clear moment, Vian lay Cossack alongside the Altmark and the order, “boarders away,” rang out for one of the few times in World War Two. Lt Bradwell Turner, RN, leader of the boarding party, proceeded to leap onto the Altmark.

In his memoir Vian described the scene: “Petty Officer Atkins, who followed him, fell short, and hung by his hands until Turner heaved him on deck. The two quickly made fast a hemp hawser from Cossack’s forecastle, and the rest of the party scrambled across. Turner, his men at his back stormed onto the bridge of the Altmark and found the engine telegraphs set to full speed in an endeavor to force HMS Cossack ashore. When Turner appeared, the Captain and other officers surrendered and Turner rang the engine telegraphs to ‘stop engines’.”

Flag-draped coffins containing German dead are brought ashore for burial after the Altmark Incident in Jøssingfjord, Norway. The six Germans died during a gun battle with the British boarding party. 16 February 1940.

But the captain of the Altmark had not told the armed guards placed on his ship by the Graf Spee to surrender. As the boarding party carefully made their way through the German ship, one of the sentries opened fire and hit one of the British sailors, who fortunately was not killed. With that, the German armed guards went over the side fled across the ice toward the shore. Outlined by the white of the snow, they foolishly began firing at the Royal Navy boarders who returned fire, killing six Germans and wounding six more.

Admiral Vian continues the story in his memoirs:
“Resistance overcome, Turner was able to turn to the business of the day. The prisoners were under locked hatches in the holds; when these had been broken open Turner hailed the men below with the words, “Any British down there?” He was greeted with a tremendous yell of: “Yes! We’re all British!”

“Come on up then,” said Turner, “the Navy’s here.”
This last became one of the most famous phrases in Great Britain during the war. HMS Cossack took aboard 13 British merchant ship masters, and 286 officers and men.

HMS Cossack arrives at Leith, Scotland with her load of British Merchant Captains, Officers and crews, February 17 1940, after their dramatic rescue from the German Altmark.

It is worth noting here from my research into my novel, An Honorable German, that Captain Langsdorff of the Graf Spee had treated all prisoners with great courtesy and allowed them all they were due under international laws and conventions. Captain Dau of the Altmark was a vicious man, a convinced Nazi and a man who despised the British. Once the British prisoners had been transferred to him from the Graf Spee, his treatment of them was brutal and inhumane. When rescued, all of the British merchant mariners were half starved and malnourished although the Altmark had a huge amount of food in her cargo holds.

Vian had no specific orders about what to do with the German officers. He had rescued all the imprisoned British merchant mariners and since the situation seemed complicated enough as it was and HMS Cossack had violated the neutrality of Norway, he simply left the German officers aboard the Altmark.

He sums up the experience in his memoirs in classic British understatement:
I received many letters from the public after this affair: a number wrote to say that, as I had failed to shoot, or hang, the Captain of the Altmark, I ought to be shot myself.
[Source: Action this Day: A War Memoir by Philip Vian. Images courtesy of the Blitzwalkers, UK Imperial War Museums, Wikipedia, and Ahoy, Mac’s Web Log.]

Tag: Altmark

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