Losses German Bight 18.12.1939

[Larry Hickey]

John et.al.,

One last note here. I've sent to Marius the translation of the Heinrich Weiss manuscript account of the Heligoland Bight action on 18.12.39. Heinrich compiled from every source available to him AND FROM THE GERMAN PERSPECTIVE, a detailed summary of this action. While noting discrepancies with some of the German reports, his account is entirely consistent with what has been put forward here as the events of that day. He concluded that the discrepancies were due to over-claiming and erroneous reporting. He found no reason to create an alternative story of what happened. Keep in mind that this is a very experienced researcher who compiled a 6000+-page manuscript on LW operations in the west from the beginning of the war to mid-1941. You don't get much more experience working with the source documents and information than that.

If Marius doubts the conventional story of what happened I think that it is up to him to produce the evidence. When and if he has this, I think that we will all take his objections to the conventional story very seriously. Otherwise, there isn't anywhere else we can take this other than pure speculation, which gets us nowhere.

Regards,

Larry Hickey
EoE Project Coordinator