The Altmark force received extra boarding personnel from a cruiser whose own crew had enough illness that the ship could not sail. Declaring the vessel medically unavailable while dispersing apparently healthy members of the same crew among several other warships created an obvious contradiction. Any hidden infection could have spread across Tribal-class destroyers that the fleet relied upon for demanding operations. Personnel availability and medical readiness could matter as much as weapons or ship numbers.
Notable Point · 30:24-32:30
Altmark preparations exposed a medical-readiness contradiction
Boarding parties were redistributed from a cruiser disabled by illness, prompting a critique of how infection could have incapacitated several elite destroyers at once.