The Sinking of the SS Athenia | WW2 Hell Under the Sea

NARRATOR: As the opening day of World War II fades, Lemp struggles to identify the ship before him. CHRISTIAN JENTZSCH: In his opinion, she behaves like an auxiliary cruiser because she zigzags and is obscured. And even imagine having seen weapons platforms. NARRATOR: In Lemp's opinion, that's enough proof that she is some kind of armed enemy ship that can be attacked without warning. With the torpedoes ready-- NARRATOR: --shortly before 8:00 PM Lemp fires the first torpedoes at submarines of World War II. A hydrophone operator monitors them by the sound of their propellers. One accelerates towards the target. But there is a problem with the second one.

She should be getting weaker, but instead she is getting stronger. Fearing that it will retreat and hit them, Lemp orders the submarine to go further in. It is a scenario they train for, even in times of peace. The standard procedure is to dive below the depth a torpedo would pass. NARRATOR: She might be tight. The U-30 is more than 210 feet long. And as the bow tilts down, the stern rises. They must get the entire submarine out of danger. They have no way to visually monitor the threat. Your only source of information is what the hydrophone operator can hear.

When the noise finally fades, the torpedo no longer poses a threat. Relieved, Lemp surfaces to investigate. When darkness falls, he walks over to get a closer look. The first torpedo had hit the ship. But as Lemp examines the damaged ship, he realizes something is wrong. He compares the silhouette of the large ship to Lloyd's Register of Ships. When he saw the action scene, he realized that he was wrong. She was not an auxiliary cruiser. She was a steamer with many civilians in the water. NARRATOR: An intercepted radio transmission confirms his fears. He identifies the ship as the passenger liner SS Athenia bound for Canada.

Lemp has made a huge mistake. His orders were clear. He only sinks enemy warships, troop ships and merchant ships. Hitler and the German government are still hoping for some kind of agreement with Britain. And that's why they don't want to irritate the British any more than necessary. NARRATOR: Now, on the first day of the war, Lemp sank a passenger ship without warning. Comparisons are immediately made to the

sinking

of the RMS Lusitania by a submarine in World War I, an act that helped end American neutrality and brought the United States into war against Imperial Germany: the exact scenario Hitler expected.

Avoid with your strict instructions. Now the

sinking

of the Athenia unleashes a new political storm. Many of the 1,103 passengers on board are Canadians, Americans or European refugees escaping war. 118 civilians have died. Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, vehemently deny German responsibility for the attack. The person responsible for Hitler's headache is 26-year-old Fritz-Julius Lemp. CHRISTIAN JENTZSCH: He was born the son of an army officer in China before the First World War. He entered the Navy in 1931. And he moved to the newly created submarine arm in 1936. NARRATOR: He was assigned command of his own submarine U-30 in 1938.

Lemp recognizes the possible consequences of his mistake. He does not report the sinking by radio and continues his patrol. He has to keep it a secret. And he decides to stick exactly to underwater protocol for future attacks on him.