German warship floats down Thames while playing Darth Vader’s theme

The FGS Braunschweig is a German naval corvette made for stealthy littoral (shoreline) operations, but the Braunschweig ditched the stealth completely while transiting up the Thames this week on a training mission to London. Instead, the ship turned out its enlisted men to stand on deck in light blue shirts and dark pants while the boat blasted a recording of “The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)” from Star Wars as it floated past Tower Bridge.

Coming eight decades after Londoners lived through the German “blitz” in World War II and then spent years waiting for a German naval invasion that never materialized, playing the Big Bad Guy’s theme from Star Wars films was certainly a bold choice. But a German naval spokesperson assured the BBC that the music had “no deeper message” and added that it was not some sort of commentary from the German naval staff. Rather, the boat’s commander “can choose the music freely.”

The little spectacle did show two things. One—assuming this was, in fact, a joke—it put the lie to the old stereotype that the Germans have no sense of humor, a stereotype which has led to the production of actual BBC headlines like “Why people think Germans aren’t funny.”