Just Finished Reading: Hunt the Altmark by Richard Wiggan (FP: 1982) [159pp] 

With war approaching, Germany knew that an effective way to degrade Britain’s ability to fight would be the disruption of its global trade network. They intended to do this by using commerce raiders – heavy cruisers and ‘pocket’ battleships – operating independently on the world's oceans sinking merchant ships and avoiding contact with the Royal navy were possible. One such raider was the Admiral Graff Spee which was dispatched in the weeks before war was declared. In support was the armed fast cargo ship Altmark which carried everything Graf Spee needed to continue her mission on the high seas. 

Initially all went well, and the Graf Spee succeeded in sinking a number of British merchant ships. But what to do with their crews? In those early days, with the old fashioned ‘Rules of the Sea’ still applying the Graff Spee couldn’t simply sink the merchant ships from range and leave the crews to their fate. So, time was given for the crews to abandon ship and they were taken onboard the battleship until they could be deposited on the Altmark and take up (hopefully temporary) residence in the emptying cargo holds. So far, so good. Until that is the Graf Spee was cornered by the Royal navy and its captain scuttled her rather than have her taken. For the Altmark this presented a problem: What was she to do now? The only logical thing, it seemed to Altmark’s captain, was to sail back to Germany, off-load the prisoners, and be assigned to another commerce raider. But how to get back undetected? 

There were only a few ways to get back to German territory and back Altmark and the British hunting her knew this. Finally, Altmark decided that the best course would be via still neutral Norway. She almost made it, except that the Admiralty in London had been alerted to her presence in Norwegian waters and plans were made to intercept her. But there was a problem – Norwegian neutrality meant that British warships could not enter her territorial waters without permission and certainly couldn’t operate there against her German enemies. There was really only one answer to that conundrum – the Royal navy would do it anyway and to hell with the diplomatic consequences! The ‘Altmark incident’ certainly soured relations between Norway and Great Britain and quite possibly increased the pressure on the German forces to take Norway before the British decide to. Certainly, the taking of Norwegian ports was being considered and mines were already being dropped in Norway's coastal areas to force German shipping into areas where the Royal navy could engage them. But the subsequent German lightening invasion of Norway put both the British and Norwegians on the same page. They would fight together. 

I knew a little about the Altmark incident going into this, but it was good finding out so much more here. About the only criticism I had was that the book was rather ‘thin’ and not just the page count. I would’ve liked to see more emphasis on what the Royal navy was doing to find the Altmark, what the Kreigsmarine was doing to get her back, some more background about the commerce raider programme and, finally, more background to the Norwegian diplomatic difficulties surrounding the incident. But saying that, this was still pretty informative and managed to fill in a small gap in my early war knowledge. Reasonable.  

Oh, I almost forgot... The Royal navy ship that released the merchant crews was HMS Cossack - the same destroyer that took part in the attack on Narvik and was later in at the kill of Bismarck. No wonder I built a model of her in my youth. BUSY little ship!