In one or two of the Horatio Hornblower stories (see the first couple minutes ofthis), Hornblower violates “the Articles of War” by sneakily flying French colors rather than British, so that the French ships think he’s a friend, allow him to get close and then of course BLAM! He opens fire and wins the fight.
Now, does anyone here know if this tactic was actually used, and did the perpetrator get hauled in front of a review board, or maybe the gallows? Wouldn’t there be political repercussions? I mean, all’s fair in war, but he’s cheating!
The German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran sunk the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney through exactly this kind of tactic in 1941. Disguised as a Dutch merchant ship she lured the larger ship within range of her smaller guns, dropped her disguise and opened up. Despite being only armed and armoured as a merchant raider she sunk the Sydney with all 645 hands, losing only 70 of her own 400 crew (but they were forced to abandon ship and beach due to damage suffered).
No, there were no political repercussions. But this was WWII Germany we’re talking about here, not exactly a high point in military gallantry.
If he’d been captured he would have been executed as a spy, and if he’d done nothing he’d have been court martialled. If brought before the Admiralty he would have simply claimed that abandoning the Indefatiguable was unthinkable and in the heat of battle his crew had more important things to do.
“My dear chap, that was a most regretable oversight. Please ensure it never happens again and here is your promotion”
It was not uncommon in Nelson’s time (Hornblower being loosely based on Nelson). False flags were lowered and the true colours raised just as the guns were about to fire, so it was legal, and both sides did it.
Nonsense. As I said above, it was a legally valid tactic used by both sides. Show me a cite for any captured Naval officer being tried (let alone executed) for “spying” because of a false flag operation during the Napoleonic wars.
In the Hornblower books, as opposed to the series, he used false colors as well. It was a standard tactic. There were some rules - you had to fly your own colors before opening fire, and you weren’t allowed to fly an “in distress” flag falsely. Since every one knew the rules, it wasn’t that big a deal - any warship knew to treat another ship as a potential enemy regardless of flag until you confirmed it’s identity.
I’ve only done a quick perusal of the subject, but it appears that it is legal for soldiers to disguise themselves in the uniform of the enemy, so long as they do no actual fighting while in that uniform. If this is correct, then the Hornblower Gambit is legal. Fly whichever flag you wish to deceive the enemy, but make sure your true colours are raised before ever you fire the first shot.
IIRC, if one were to fire on enemy ships whilst one is flying no colours (or colours signifying no internationally recognized nation) is an act of piracy.
In David Glantz’s book on the Battle of Kursk, he recounts the opening moves of Army Detachment Kempf which involved a night road march of a German column led by the captured T-34s. In the darkness, they passed multiple Soviet checkpoints fooling the defenders, at least for a little while.
It was pretty much standard practice to try and buy a few minutes hesitation from approaching ships. This goes so far for British commanders ordering their crews to adjust sails in a ‘sloppy’ fashion to further the allusion that they were not a well trained British crew.
However, an experienced seaman could easily identify a ships nationality of origin by simply looking at it from a reasonable distance. Different countries built ships with reconizable builts, and they set their sails different. Paint schemes could also be revealing. Consequently captured ships that were later brought into a foreign countries service could pass the deception better than home built ones.
Even in the modern age, it’s advantageous to be able to identify vessels based on their profile.
When I was a submarine officer, we used to get ship profile quizzes from the XO during morning training. We were expected to be able to identify the most common warships out there from their silhouette, including submarines on the surface.
To take this a little further, the British in WWI operated decoy ships disguised as small commercial vessels, to lure in U-boats seeking an easy target. The Brits wore civilian clothes and put on elaborate charades, including running about in apparent panic when torpedoed (these “Q-ships” carried special buoyant cargoes to make them hard to sink). When the Germans moved in on the surface for the coup de grace, all of a sudden the Q-ship’s crew would unlimber concealed guns and blow the U-boat out of the water.
In modern warfare, at least, there’s the notion of “recognition codes”, where one ship can challenge another with a code, and expect to get the appropriate response. Nowadays, this would be done with computers and asymmetric public-key encryption, but was there some lower-tech equivalent used before computers? Alternately, did ships carry books of lists of legitimate vessels, so if an unknown vessel claimed to be the Dutch-registry merchantman Tulip, say, you could at least verify that there was a Dutch ship by that name?
In both the Aubrey/Maturin and the Hornblower books, there was a private signal - you’d hoist say a blue signal flag at the foremast and 2 red flags at the mizzen, and the other guy was supposed to respond with 2 blues on the mainmast. They’d do a similar thing with lights at night. It wasn’t foolproof of course - they had signal books that told them what the private signals would be for the next several years, and even though they were supposed to go overboard in case of capture, they did fall into enemy hands on occasion. And mistakes could easily be made by an incompetent or drunken sailor or mid.
