[Rainer]

Do you know the details of his criticism of the orders given to B-1 by the Admiralty? Was it the route itself or other instructions given to him? Almost every Allied warship commander had concerns about orders given to them by Naval Authorities, some of them were justified others not because they weren't told the big picture - only what they had to know to do their job.

The Soviet submarines were instructed to follow a certain corridor during their transfer and the Coastal Command was informed of this area, so the air crews knew where they were obliged to properly identify a submarine prior to an attack. However, the crew of Liberator V/86 made a navigational error and was unaware that they carried out their attack within the restricted area.

I wonder what you are trying to tell us, Alex? That the crew of V/86 attacked B-1 intentionally because it was a Soviet submarine? Or they even had orders to do so?

On 27 August 1944 four British minesweepers were attacked in broad daylight by two Squadrons of Typhoons - after the RAF pilots asked their controller four times for confirmation of the attack order as they had doubts about the identities of the ships. The reason for this tragedy was no mystery or conspiracy. At some stage of processing the orders for the minesweeping flotilla the flag officer responsible for their operational area was omitted as recipient, so the controller was not aware of friendly ships operating in the area.

Sometimes a simple error can have disastrous consequences - be it the omission of a recipient on a radio message or the faulty navigation that led a Liberator to a position of an Allied submarine instead of the U-boat they were searching for.

PS: There was no rescue attempt because it was not realized that B-1 had been lost until it failed to arrive at its destination.