Half Ahead Together

DESCRIPTION: "Half ahead together, Take her up to thirty feet, Raise the after periscope While the captain has a peep, There's a Jerry cruiser Right on the starboard bow, Let's go up and sink the cow."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1982 (Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy)
KEYWORDS: navy technology derivative
FOUND IN: Britai(England(North))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, p. 115, "Half Ahead Together" (1 text, tune referenced)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Arm in Arm Together" (tune)
NOTES [388 words]: Germany in World War II did not have a large fleet of cruisers -- Worth, pp. 50-53, lists light cruisers Emden, Königsberg, Köln, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Nürnberg, heavy cruisers Admiral Hipper, Blücher, Prinz Eugen, and the panzerschiffe Deutschland/Lûtzow, Admiral Scheer, Admiral Graf Spee. What's more, most of them didn't get out much -- the three heavy cruisers had badly defective engines (Fowler, p. 59), and most of the light cruisers were structurally deficient (Worth, pp. 50-51) -- and Emden, the one exception, was so antique in her design as to be almost useless as a cruiser.
Despite that, they had quite a few encounters with British submarines. The first big encounter was December 13, 1939. The British Salmon (on of the S-Boats that were the subject of "Twelve Little S-Boats"; Bagnasco, p. 110) spotted Köln, Leipzig, and Nürnberg in the North Sea. Lt. Commander Bickford of the Salmon fired one torpedo at long range, which hit the Leipzig. The Germans then turned -- and a torpedo from Bickford's second batch hit the Nürnberg (Becker, pp. 68-69). Both German cruisers survived, but Leipzig's boiler damage was so severe that she never again served as an active combat unit (Fowler, pp. 54-55).
Most of the German fleet was involved in the invasion of Norway, and they suffered for it -- e.g. Blücher was sunk by the Norwegian defenses and Königsberg by British aircraft. On April 10, the very day Königsberg was lost, the British Truant torpedoed the Karlsruhe, destroying her engines and forcing the Germans to scuttle her (Showell, p. 115; Fowler, p. 52). At the same time, Spearfish torpedoed the Lützow, doing to much damage that she had to be towed into port for repairs (Showell, p. 108).
Two years later, on February 23, 1942, Trident damaged the Prinz Eugen so badly that her stern broke off (Bagnasco, p. 119; Fowler, p. 63), although she survived (later to have a collision with Leipzig truly ended the later's career Fowler, p. 55; Prinz Eugen was to be expended after the war in nuclear weapons tests).
And those are just the incidents where the British hit the German ships! No doubt there were other times when British submarines saw German cruisers. I don't know if one of those inspired this song, but obviously one or another incident might have. - RBW
Bibliography

Bagnasco: Erminio Bagnasco, Submarines of World War Two, 1973 (Italian edition); English Language edition 1977 (I use the 1986 Naval Institute Press edition)
Becker: Cajus Becker, Hitler's Naval War, (German edition 1971; English edition 1974 from Macdonald and Jane's; I used the undated Kensington paperback edition)
Fowler: David C. Fowler, A Literary History of the Popular Ballad, Duke University Press, 1968
Showell: Jak P. Mallmann Showell, The German Navy in World War Two, Naval Institute Press, 1979
Worth: Richard Worth, Fleets of World War II, Da Capo, 2001

Last updated in version 5.1
File: Tawn085

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