1941.06.14 “Challenge”
by Ralph Lee (1906-1947)
15 x 23.5 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
Ralph Lee was an editorial cartoonist for the Portland Oregonian. He died suddenly, at 41, in January 1947. His cousin, Art Bimrose, was the editorial cartoonist for the Oregonian for more than three decades. In 1937, the Oregonian hired him part-time to work on printing plates. Following Lee’s death, Bimrose was hired as the Sunday editorial cartoonist.
German submarine U-69 was the first of its kind U-boat during World War II. Compared to previous U-boats, the U-69 could travel further afield for longer, with a payload of fourteen torpedoes, a deck gun for smaller vessels and a flak gun for use against aircraft. The U-69 was very successful at sinking Allied shipping in its two years of continuous service.
In a mission off West African coast in June 1941, the crew mined the seas off Lagos and Takoradi. One victim was the neutral American ship SS Robin Moor, which caused FDR to brand Germany an "international outlaw" and to require Germany and Italy to close all of their consulates in the United States except for their embassies.
Before the sinking, Robin Moor's passengers and crew were allowed thirty minutes to board lifeboats, then the submarine torpedoed, shelled and sank the ship. The survivors then drifted without rescue or detection for up to eighteen days. When news of the sinking reached the US, few shipping companies felt truly safe anywhere. As Time magazine noted in June 1941, "if such sinkings continue, US ships bound for other places remote from fighting fronts, will be in danger. Henceforth the US would either have to
recall its ships from the ocean or enforce its right to the free use of the seas."
U-69 was unusual in that she had two ships' emblems. The first consisted of the word Horrido (Tally-Ho) and the three two-flag signal groups for the letters L M A (German: leck mich am Arsch, lit. 'lick my arse', a reference to Gotz von Berlichingen’s famous retort in the 16th C play by von Goethe). The second came about when the 7th flotilla adopted the U-47’s Capt. Prien's “Snorting Bull” emblem as its insignia. U-69's new first officer, who had not seen the insignia before, found a picture of a cow on a French cheese box, and had that painted on the conning tower, complete with the motto on the box "la vache qui rit" (the laughing cow), and U-69 thereafter became known as the "laughing cow.”
