He.115 crew of 3./506. March 1940

[bill norman]

In a March 1940 debrief report submitted by a He.115 crew of 3./506, they claimed to have intercepted radio messages from English fishing boats they had overflown while en route to the Yorkshire coast. They detected the repeated sending of ‘sss’ after they were out of sight of the boats and shortly before reaching the English coast they heard ‘bbb’ repeated twice. They went on to state that their aircraft was reported continuously for 20 minutes by fishing vessels on the Dogger Bank. When they were approaching the English coast south of Flamborough Head the alarm signal ‘kkz’ was heard constantly – but not to the north of Flamborough Head. The crew believed that the signals were transmitted by the boats to alert British defences. Can anyone shed more light on this claim?