U-BOAT CRIMINALS.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1919, Page 7

U-BOAT CRIMINALS.

g r »h % Is HO 8 [ a l a I s sS I SB 8 P i ;g

The Morning Post recently described some of the more notorious crimes and the ultimate fate of four of the hundred and fifty German submarine commanders who have been killed or captured by our naval forces.

liapitan-Leutnant Schwiegier, commander of "U"-20 and later "U"-88, was responsible for the torpedoing of the Lusitania. He entered the German navy in 1903, and was thirty-five years of age at the time he committed his gTeat crime. He lost his life by being mined in the North Sea in November la9t>

THE LUSITANIA. ' It appears that his attack upon the Lusitania was not of his own initiating; he was selected by his superiors as a suitable officer to carry out a plan devised and prepared as a part of the deliberate policy of the German' Admiralty —that is to say, of the German Government. According to the evidence which is available his success appalled him rather than otherwise; the world's Outcry of horror was audible even in Berlin, and upon liia return there he showed himself little—possibly by order of his superiors. Even his reward was stealthily conferred; it took the form of the Order of the House of Holienzollern, the Kaiser's personal decoration. "U"-20 finished obscurely, she stranded in a fog on the Danish coast iD November, of 1916, and was blown up by her own crew. A year later, Scliwieger, now in command of "U"-BS, was groping submerged throubh a minefield, in company with another "U"-boat. The crew of the second submarine suddenly heard an explosion and felt the jar of it in their own vessel. They tried, with their special signalling devices, to get into communication with "U"-88. but failed and she never returned to her base.

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RICHLY DESERVED DOOM. The officer who torpedoed the Sussey in Marc-h of 1916 was Oberleutnaut-sur-See Herbert Pustkuchen, commanding "U-B"-20. He was younger than the others nentioned above, having entered the .Navy only in 1908, but he had had time, in his brief service, to earn for himself the Iron Cross of the First Class and the Order of the House of Hohenzollern of the Third Class. _He afterwards was given command of "U.C-60, and wa3 lo3t to his country in June of last year, when a trawler sighted the jumping wires of a partially submerged submarine, which was proceeding at four to five knots. The trawler immediately headed for the submarine, which disappeared below the surface of the water. A depth charge was dropped and found its mark, for a series of heavy explosions followed, one in particular causing an upheaval three times the height of the others. Tn the meanwhile, other trawlers had joined in the fray, and had dropped depth charges. Then there was a great silence, not a sound ,vas heard by the eager listeners on the trawlers, but a mass of oil on the surface bore witness to the fact that the submarine had met the doom that she richly deserved.