REMANTS OF A NAVY

Southland Times, Issue 25670, 12 May 1945, Page 5

REMANTS OF A NAVY

HEAVY "CRUISERS INCLUDED

HISTORIC SCENES AT COPENHAGEN (8.0.W.) RUGBY, 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 by the Royal Navy and submitted only four days after it had been shelling Copenhagen. The last remnants of the German Fleet, including the powerful cruisers, Prinz Eugen and Nuremberg, came under the guns of the Royal Navy in the final surrender at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, writes a naval observer at Copenhagen. With themin Copenhagen harbour were two large destroyers, one small destroyer, two torpedo boats, ten M class minesweepers, thirte’en flak ships, nineteen armed trawlers and two armed merchant ships. British warships, under the command of Captain Herbert Williams in the cruiser Birmingham, had been steaming for two days forcing a passage through German minefields in the Skaggerak and Kattegat to reach Copenhagen following the German surrender. With the Birmingham was the cruised Dido and the destroyers Zephyr, Zodiak, Zealous and Zest. NO CHANCES TAKEN Although our Royal Marine Band was playing on the quarterdeck we were taking no chances and the rest of the ship’s company were on the alert for the slightest hostile movement from the enemy. There was none that mattered. One ship, a merchant ship, had its crew fall in with their backs to us as we steamed by. Another, a torpedo boat,

“The man most responsible for the fall of France is Petain,” said the former French Prime Minister, M. PAUL REYNAUD. Declaring that his resignation in June 1940 was the result of the Petain plot, M. Reynaud added: “I'will give evidence at the trial of Petain, but I do not want to give the details until then. I think the trial is a good thing for France. By exposing Petain we will clear up once and for all the Petain abscess on France.”— (Paris).

passed close to us with her officers looking the other way but that was all. The Prinz Eugen was lying alongside the quay and, although towering above all else in the harbour, was a defeated ship with her guns in wild disorder, some pointing up, 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 Bismarck and Scharnhorst and had run convoys to Russia, were grinning from ear to ear. This was theii - moment but when one of them said: “It’s a pity we could not have sunk them at sea,” he was speaking for the rest. U-BOATS SURRENDER The first U-boat to surrender in British waters has reached Weymouth flying the black flag. She is the U-249 with five officers and forty-three other ratings. The U-249 was met about four miles off the Dorset coast this morning'by a motor-launch carrying Commander N. J. Weir, who had been authorized by the Admiralty to accept the surrender and a Polish naval armed guard launch, carrying a military armed guard with Sten guns at the ready came alongside and boarded the submarine.