The U-Boat Captain's First-Person Account of Sinking the RMS Lusitania (1915)

JF Ptak Science Books  Overall Post 5318

The sheets presented here¹ are very early photographs of the original war diaries of Captain Walter Schwieger, the captain of the German submarine SM U-20 who sank the RMS Lusitania in 1915.

The period of coverage for these leaves extends from 30 April 1915 to 13 May 1915, the attack on the Lusitania coming on 7 May (which receives 1.5 leaves of coverage), and delineates the action by the hour. The periods before and after the Lusitania attack are highly documentary, well written, and descriptive. The story of the Lusitania itself is forensic but not without some reserved excitement, including the decision of not launching a second torpedo for the sake of not sending through many hundreds of survivors already in the water.

A summary of the attack day—7 May—details that at 2:20p.m. Schwieger reports on tracking a possible target and then sees "four funnels" ("Schornsteine"), identifying the target as a large passenger steamer. Schwieger positions his boat and fires one torpedo "in the side close behind the bridge" followed by an "extraordinarily" large detonation, stopping the ship immediately and causing a severe listing. Schwieger then states that he sees "Lusitania" written in gold on the side of the ship.

And then, at the end of the description of the attack on the Lusitania, when the ship was foundering, Schwieger writes that he could've sent a second torpedo to absolutely finish the ship, but didn't because he didn't want to shoot through a sea with survivors. "I would not have been able to shoot a second torpedo in this crowd of people who were saving themselves." ("Auch hätte ich einen zweiten Torpedo dies Gedränge von sich rettenden Menschen nicht schiessen können." pg viii 3:25 pm.)

The Lusitania sunk in 18 minutes, with a loss of 1198 of the 1995 on board.

The U-20 was launched 1912 and grounded in November 1916 when her crew attempted to destroy her. Their efforts were not complete, and I assume that Schwieger's war diary was retrieved by the Royal Navy at that time. Schwieger commanded another boat—he met his fate against a mine, the boat sunk and the crew killed in 1917.

The interpretation of the sinking of the Lusitania has been studied for a hundred years and the story is well known—it really isn't necessary to repeat it here.

I do not know who made the annotations—they appear on the documents that were photographed and not the photos themselves. Perhaps this will be useful for someone.

Notes:

1. (LUSITANIA) Schwieger, Walter, Kommandant Kapitanlieutenant (1885-1917), U-20. Kriegstagebuch S.M.U.-Boot "U-20" fur die Zeit vom 30.IV bis 13.V.15. 9 leaves, image on one side only, early photographs of the diary pages (ca. 1920's-1030's?). A copy of photographic sheets of Schwieger's diary appeared in a traveling show of "Eyewitness, American Originals from the National Archives", and also appears in a catalog for the show.