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Altmark Incident
Topic Started: Feb 16 2015, 01:54 AM (158 Views)
Basil Fawlty
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Post Tenebras Lux
Why didn't the British just intercept the ship long before it got to the North Sea?
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Simon Darkshade
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Nefarious Swashbuckler
They had to hunt it down and find it first.
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Basil Fawlty
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Post Tenebras Lux
But it came all the way from the South Atlantic where the Graf Spee was! :P

I guess it's possible, just seems odd, proceeding right into a close quarters zone.
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Matthew
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I think that was the last available shot they had at it before it would have gotten away, or whatever the case was. The oceans are a big big place, especially for non-combatant ships that were not going out of their way to attack other ships. A warship is much more noticeable to commercial traffic, in quite a few ways.
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Delta Force

How did it make it past the Royal Navy without being spotted and intercepted earlier though? Was it due to the focus being more on ships attempting to enter the Atlantic Ocean, as opposed to trying to get in?

Also, the Altmark Incident might play a role in a Lovecraftian horror story (perhaps even novel) I've been thinking about for a few months.
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Simon Darkshade
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Finding a single ship in the Atlantic that isn't acting suspiciously and that isn't a merchant raider would take a lot of assets. The initial focus of merchant cruisers was on the Northern Patrol in 1939 and 1940, rather than roaming the trade routes independently. This was in part due to the less than optimal numbers of cruisers that the RN could deploy in 1939/40; the 70 cruiser figure was the lower end of what was required.

Lovecraftian horror? You have my attention.
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