the highest German military honor, as a recognition of his success in the Mediterranean. In the same year, 1915, he was awarded honorary citizenship of the German town of Bad Kreuznach, and he began to be nicknamed Zerstörer von Schlachtschiffen (destroyer of battleships). The U-21 crew spent a month in Constantinople, due to needed repairs to their submarine. In the Ottoman capital, they received a great welcome and were treated as heroes. Once the repair work was finished, U-21 sortied through the Dardanelles for another patrol. Hersing found the Allied munitions ship Carthage and sank her with a single torpedo on 4 July. Right after that, the submarine was forced to return to Constantinople after bumping an anti-submarine mine that did not cause serious damage. The boat then served briefly in the Black Sea, but with no results. It then returned to the Mediterranean, where in September Hersing found out that the Allies had established a complete blockade of the Dardanelles, using mines and nets in order to prevent enemy submarines to operate in that area. Hersing therefore returned to Cattaro and received orders to help the Austro-Hungarian Navy in her fight against the Italian Regia Marina. U-21 and her crew were commissioned into the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine and the boat received the designation U-36. This was necessary to allow the submarine to operate against the Italian merchant fleet, since Germany was not yet legally at war with the Kingdom of Italy. The boat served under this name until Italy declared war on Germany on 27 August 1916. In February 1916, Hersing sank the British steamer Belle of France, then the French armored cruiser Amiral Charner, intercepted off the Syrian coast, which caused the death of 427 crew members. Between April and October 1916, U-36 sank numerous merchant ships, including the British steamer City of Lucknow (3,677 tons, sunk near Malta on April 30), three small Italian ships (intercepted near Corsica between October 26 and 28) and the steamboat SS Glenlogan (5,800 tons, October 31). In the first three days of November, Hersing's boat, positioned north of Sicily, sank four more Italian ships, for a total of almost 2,500 tons overall. On 23 December, the German submarine met near Crete the British steamer Benalder and hit her with a torpedo, but she managed to escape and reach Alexandria. In 1916, U-36 sank a total of 12 ships for more than 24,000