ss alexis ship 1940 sinking

World War II: The auxiliary minesweeper (150 GRT) was scuttled at Lorient, France. The Sinking of the Lancastria Stan Scislowski On Monday, June 17, 1940, the Cunard Liner, Lancastria, pressed into war service as a troopship was anchored . Sbastien Roblin holds a masters degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. List of shipwrecks: 10 June 1940 Ship Country Description, Msd Pro Billet Distributor Wiring Diagram. The 17th June 1940 saw one of the most horrific events of World War II and the single worst maritime disaster in British history. It was like sitting in a giant bathtub full of freezing water, he recalls. We have details of 11 people who were on board. But Colin Ryder Richardson, snug in his bunk, saw no reason for alarm. She was subsequently salvaged by the Germans and re-entered service as. Archive List > World > North Atlantic and Arctic. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Naval Historical Foundation 1306 Dahlgren Avenue, SE Washington Navy Yard, DC 20374 1-202-678-4333 info@navyhistory.org. In June 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to a new trans-Atlantic evacuation scheme. Most likely rammed and sunk Oct. 4; 1940 by Antonietta Costa (Italian Cargo ship) 60 NM ENE of Bari . http://www.british-merchant-navy.co.uk/TOWER.htm. These decisions proved fatal, as that same day, the German Kriegsmarine dispatched surface forces including the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on Operation Juno, a sortie redirected to interdict Allied evacuation ships. The destroyers 4.7 lacked the range and penetrating power to threaten the German battlecruisersbut their torpedoes could cause devastating damage if they could land a hit. As Colin recalls, his mothers attitude was: Least said, soonest mended.. Some families, such as the Grimmonds from Brixton, South London, faced an almost unimaginable loss: five of their children Violet, Connie, Lennie, Eddie and Gussie had perished. The 224-meter long vessel still could only carry a smaller air group of forty-eight aircraft compared to larger U.S. fleet carriers. World War II: The cargo ship (873 or 909 GRT, 1904) struck a mine off Cape Granitola, Italy and sank. It was there that, suddenly, he began to relive the horrors of the sinking. How ironic it is that the second Apapa was making the identical voyage from the Lagos port that shared her name to Liverpool. web page as long as you cite American Merchant Marine at War, www.usmm.org, She looked at me and said: What have you done with all your clothes? he says. Palm Springs residents sue to remove 25-foot Marilyn Monroe statue depicting her iconic My Daily Horoscope: What does 2nd March hold for MY star sign? Afterwards, he turned his attention to the woman beside him. British war correspondent's interview with French seaman on the sinking of French repatriation ship SS Meknes, English Channel, 24/7/1940. Required fields are marked *. Stephen Wynn, a retired police constable with 30 years service in Essex, began writing prior to his retirement. Then he caught a whiff of the telltale smell of explosives. Contributed on: 30 March 2004. A pre-war photograph of the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff in Hamburg. Just seven minutes later, the Scharnhorst opened fire on the investigating Ardent, busting open a boiler. I was just waiting for someone to say: What are you doing in your pyjamas at this time in the morning? But no one even looked at me.. World War II:The auxiliary minesweeper (628 GRT) was scuttled at Le Havre, France. They included Pioneer and Royal Army Service Corps, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Royal Engineers, and Royal Air Force personnel, some Polish and Czech troops, civilian refugees, embassy staff, employees of Fairey Aviation of Belgium and their families. Other Nazis are planning to escape to America. Just two weeks after being set up, it received more than 200,000 applications from worried parents. Owners and gross tonnage (G.T.) What had happened was that Id lain there, grieving away, and my blood had stopped flowing. World War II: The cargo ship (2,155 GRT, 1902) was torpedoed and sunk in the, World War II: The cargo ship (6,694 GRT, 1917) was bombed and damaged in the English Channel off. It was time to evacuate their precious son to safety and that had to be beyond British shores. For any other comments, please Contact Us. List of shipwrecks: 3 March 1940 Ship Country Description Arucas Germany World War II: The passenger ship (3,369 GRT, 1927) was intercepted in the Atlantic Ocean east of Iceland by HMS York ( Royal Navy) and was scuttled by herTen crew members were lost at sea. Some survivors claimed that a bomb had gone straight down a funnel, others thought bombs hit No, 4, 2, and 3 holds. Enough was enough, his parents decided, as the bombs began to fall. However, on June 8 DOyly-Hughes received permission to depart independently for Scapa Flow escorted by just two destroyers. This attack however sank the HMS Triad. Like many boys of his era, Colin had been circumcised, and they knew that if the Germans invaded, he risked being wrongly identified as a Jew. At 02.15 hours on 10 Aug 1942, U-510 fired torpedoes at the Alexia and observed three hits in sequence and thought after 10 minutes that the tanker had sunk, but the ship was again salved. The loss of the LANCASTRIA was also the most . Measuring some 697 feet (212 metres) in length, it could carry . Initiated in 1889and then revised in 1911, 1920, and 1939it sets out offences related to spying, sabotage, and related crimes. Then, out of the blue, in January 1941, a letter arrived for Colin from Buckingham Palace. It was no ordinary jacket. There were only 11 survivors. A2477018. It was his mother who came to collect him. Her captain, Guy DOyly Hughes, a decorated submariner in World War I, also ordered her Swordfishes to launch raids on land targets, but air group leader J.B. Heath refused, arguing they lacked clear targets and that the pokey biplanes would be shot to pieces by flak. The Glorious then was assigned to pick up the fighters she had just dropped off. All morning, Colin continued to heave corpses away from his boat. Under the Official Secrets Act, the report on the Lancastria cannot be published until the year 2040. While the British sighted the ships fifteen minutes later, Captain DOyly didnt call action stations and begin having Swordfish bombers lifted to the flight deck until 4:20 p.m.. Crucially, the German battlecruisers were fastbut Glorious could nearly match their speed at thirty knots, once her boilers built up enough steam. Chapter 4 Secret Session Speeches by Churchill provides extracts of five speeches made between June 20th 1941 and December 10, 1942, including one made in response to the sinking of HMT Lancastria on June 17, 1941. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. An elderly nurse beckoned him to her side, so he switched places. The date was September 17, 1940. A4103056. Already 600 miles out to sea, the SS City of Benares was carrying Colin and 89 other child evacuees to the U.S. and Canada, where they could wait out the end of the war in safety. Another day nearer America! he remembers thinking. There was no emotional farewell. If 10 Historical Prophecies That Actually Came True 10- RMS Titanic Disaster. The RAF Hurricanes of No.46 squadron were relatively fast and lacked arrestor hooksbut by tying on sandbags, the pilots managed to weigh their tails down and pull off short carrier landings. She was later salvaged by the Germans and entered service as. 'This is the most ridiculous thing I've seen!' World War II: The cargo ship (1,684 GRT, 1920) was bombed and sunk in the English Channel off Le Havre, France by Luftwaffe aircraft. Naval Institute is maintaining and preserving the former Naval Historical Foundation website so readers and former NHF members can still access past issues of Pull Together and other content. They were in their dressing-gowns, with no life-belt, clutching teddy bears. World War II: The cargo ship (2,975 GRT, 1906) struck a mine and sank in the Mediterranean Sea north of Pantelleria. World War II: The auxiliary patrol vessel (247 GRT) was shelled and sunk in the English Channel off. Only Colin stood out, because he was dressed in a bright red jacket. At 4 p.m. on June 8, 1940, the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious was cruising west across the Norwegian Sea towards the British naval base of Scapa Flow . Enclosed was a certificate, signed by Churchill, that commended him for brave conduct in the Merchant Navy. But a carrier could deploy over a hundred airplanes that could strike targets hundreds of miles away with torpedoes and bombs. Franconia was assigned to Lorient while Lancastria continued toward St. Nazaire but because of the tidal channel on the Loire estuary Lancastria had to anchor in the Charpentier Roads about 5 nm (nautical miles) southwest of the actual port. The D-notice, or Defence Notice, also called DA-notice (Defence Advisory Notice), was a unique British government instruction devised in 1912. Colin acted quickly. 'Dreadful time': A letter sent by a survivor of the sinking to their parents tell of their horrendous experience on the sinking ship. Details of the British ships sunk during July - December 1940. She was responsible for the sinking of the HMS Curacoa in 1942 but the Queen Mary survived the war without sinking. Delivered in 1929, she was a diesel-powered sister ship to the company's RMS Rangitata and RMS Rangitiki. At 5 PM a shell slammed into the Gloriouss bridge, killing DOyly and most of the command crew. On September 12, the children assembled at the dockside in Liverpool clutching small suitcases and their gas masks. Battleships accompanied by other surface warships did directly engage carriers one more time in World War II during the Battle of Samar, though this time the U.S. carriers air wings participated in the fight leading to a very different, though no less dramatic outcome. World War II: The water carrier (107 GRT) was scuttled at Lorient, France. Merchant ship movement card (catalogue reference: BT 389) In the top left corner of the record is the ship's name. For decades, the Royal Navy offered a vaguely exculpatory account of the disaster, but in the 1980s historian Stephen Roskill published an article holding poor command culture by Captain DOylyy responsible for the tragedy. Lancastria was attacked, apparently by five Junkers Ju 88 dive bombers, and the ship capsized, and sank within twenty minutes mid-afternoon on June 17 off the French port of St. Nazaire. U-123 was to be his last front line command,. Captain Rudolf Sharpe later lost his life when the ship he commanded, the Laconia, was sunk. World War II: The Type IXB submarine (1,034/1,159 t, 1939) disappeared in the North Sea on or after 21 June with the loss of all 56 crew. 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