German Fleet Remnants Surrender

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 111, 12 May 1945, Page 5

German Fleet Remnants Surrender

SUBMISSION AT COPENHAGEN LONDON, May 10. After World War I the German fleet steamed in surrender into Scapa Flow. This time what little was left of the fleet of the Third Reich was sought out hy the Royal Navy and submitted only ✓ four days it had been shelling * Copenhagen. The last remnants of the German fleet, including the powerful cruisers Prinz Eugen and Nurnberg, came under the guns of the Royal Navy in final surrender at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, writes a naval observer in Copenhagen. With them in Copenhagen harbour were two large destroyers, one small destroyer, two torpedo-boats, 10 M class minesweepers, 13 flak ships, 19 armed trawlers, and two armed merchant ships. The British warships, under the command of Captain Herbert Williams in the cruiser Birmingham, had been steaming for two days in forcing a pas sage through the German minefields in the Skaggerak and the Kattegat to reach Copenhagen, following the Ger man surrender.. With the Birmingham was the cruiser Dido and the destroyers Zephyr, Zodiak, Zealous, and Zest. “Although our Royal Marine band was playing on the quarter-deck,” says the correspondent, “we were taking no chances, and the rest of the ship’s com pany were on the alert for the slightest hostile movement from the enemy. There was none that mattered. THOROUGHLY BEATEN “The masts of all the German ships were bare. The crews were leaning over the rails in a motely mixture ol uniforms. They were as thoroughly beaten as the rest of the Herrenvolk One ship, a merchant ship, had its crew fall in with their backs to us as we steamed by. Another, a torpedo-boat passed close to us with her officers looking the other way, but that was all “The Prinz Eugen, lying alongside a quay, although towering above all else in the harbour, was a defeated ship, with her guns in wild disorder, some pointing up and others down, some trained one way and the rest another The Nurnberg, lying at another quay, was a similar picture of dejection. Our sailors, many of whom had fought the Bismark and the Schamborst and bar* run convoys to Russia, were grinning from ear to ear. This was their mom ent, but when one of them said: 'lt is a pity we could not have sunk them at, sea,’ he was speaking for the rest.”