SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: As Your Lordship pleases.
[Turning to the defendant.] Now I want to deal just for one moment with a passage in your own document book which Dr. Kranzbühler put to you yesterday. It is Volume II, Page 92, Exhibit 42. Before I ask you a question about it, there is one point that I would like you to help me on. In your interrogation you said that on 22 October that about two months after that order of 17 September you issued orders forbidding U-boats to surface at all. Is that right? You gave orders forbidding U-boats to surface, is that right?
DÖNITZ: So far as it is possible for a submarine not to do so at all. We were always making changes, day and night, and it depended upon the degree of danger and weather conditions whether we gave orders for the U-boats to surface and recharge when on the move.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: They were not to surface after attacks, were not to surface at all before or after attacks; is that not the effect of your order?
DÖNITZ: Of course submarines, for example at night, had to be on the surface for attacks, but the main thing was to avoid every risk when on the move.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Then two months later there was an order that they were to surface as little as possible, and you tell me it was your order?
DÖNITZ: As far as possible they were to try by all means to avoid danger from the air.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Did you give orders as to surfacing?
DÖNITZ: I gave them quite a number of orders, as I have already said, according to the weather, according to what part of the sea they were in, and whether it was day or night. The orders were different according to these factors, because the danger depended on these elements and varied accordingly. There were changes too; if we had bad experiences, if we found that night was more dangerous than day, then we surfaced during the day. We had the impression that in the end it was better to surface during the day, because then one could at least locate beforehand the aircraft attacking by direction-finding, so we changed.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But it is a fact that quite soon after this order the Allied air cover became so heavy that—I quote your own words; you say, “Two months later submarines were no longer in a position to surface.” That is, as I understood it, surfacing became very difficult in view of the heavy nature of Allied air attacks, is that right?