On the evening of May 6th, off the coast of Ireland, Lusitania enters the war zone, alone. There was some concern amongst the passengers as to why there was no escort. Any ship that's going to be released for that kind of duty is going to slow her down if she has to keep speed with it.
So actually the best thing for her was to just go in alone. Sailing at full speed, Lusitania would be in Liverpool within the day. Unfortunately, the morning brings with it a thick blanket of fog, making full speed impossible. Captain Turner had been obliged to slow his ship to sound the fog horn. And because of the fog, it left Turner uncertain of his precise position off the Irish coast.
Turner was looking for a land fix on his position to fix it exactly, making sure exactly where he is. What we're looking towards here is the old head of Kinsale, which passengers on board the Lusitania on the morning of 7th May would have seen as the fog lifted. They would have been able to see that green smudge of land on the horizon that was the old head of Kinsale. They knew they were very close to the coast of southern Ireland. That made many of them feel a lot safer.
Nettie always said how happy they were. That morning they saw Ireland for the first time. And it must have been so exciting because they were heading home.
They were going to see all the parents and their brothers and sisters and they were going to show off their grandson for the first time. One o'clock in the afternoon. The U-20 surfaces before beginning its journey home. In the distance, Captain Schwieger thinks he can just make out the four stacks of a steamship.
And here he states that the ship is identified as a large passenger liner and this electrified the crew instantly. It's exactly the prize Schwieger has been waiting for. Around the same time, Captain Turner receives a telegram from the British Admiralty, warning of a U-boat somewhere in the Irish Channel.
When you consider there had been heavy fog that morning and that for some of the day he hadn't actually been sure whether the Lusitania was himself and had had to alter course to try and get a bearing, quite how this was going to be effective, I can't really see. To minimise the danger, Turner orders the ship to increase speed and resume course for Liverpool. A decision that will prove fatal. The passenger liner was turning its course.
To run along the Irish coast, which brought the passenger ship into an ideal position for attack. He simply had to wait in his position to fire the torpedo. 750 yards away, Schwieger is about to attempt the impossible. And it is recorded in here.
Target estimated to run at 22 knots. No other target before had been hit that was running at a speed like this. It needed just one single order to fire the torpedo.
Torpedo loose. Traveling at 40 miles an hour, the torpedo will strike its target in less than a minute.