Unarmed G; Flat Denial of Having Fired Joessingtjord, Feb. 20.
The skipper of the Altmark, Captain Heinrich Dau, today declared that the members of his crew were unarmed and therefore did not at-actly the same food as our crew. They really were not prisoners at all, but were rescued mariners being taken to Germany for internment just as the British have done with our sailors."
The Fourth Officer of the Altmark, Joachim Weichert, said that he believed the British boarding party shot the crew members of the German ship because they were nervous and feared that the Germans would blow up the ship.
"While we were on the bridge, we heard fearful noises and shooting. We saw English sailors armed with automatic pistols shooting indiscriminately at the crew members who were completely unarmed since there were absolutely no weapons aboard the Altmark," he said—United Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.