Military history

U-20

SCHWIEGER’S VIEW

“I TOOK MY POSITION AT THE PERISCOPE AGAIN,” SCHWIEGER told his friend Max Valentiner. “The ship was sinking with unbelievable rapidity. There was a terrific panic on her deck. Overcrowded lifeboats, fairly torn from their positions, dropped into the water. Desperate people ran helplessly up and down the decks. Men and women jumped into the water and tried to swim to empty, overturned lifeboats. It was the most terrible sight I have ever seen. It was impossible for me to give any help. I could have saved only a handful. And then the cruiser that had passed us was not very far away and must have picked up the distress signals. She would shortly appear, I thought. The scene was too horrible to watch, and I gave orders to dive to twenty meters, and away.”

In his final log entry on the attack, at 2:25 P.M., Schwieger wrote: “It would have been impossible for me, anyhow, to fire a second torpedo into this crushing crowd of humanity trying to save their lives.”

Schwieger directed his U-boat out to sea. His crew was jubilant: they had destroyed the Lusitania, the ship that symbolized British maritime prowess.

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