Sunk in the Black Sea, the exact location of the wreck is still a mystery and for years, the question remained – was a hospital ship, identified by a Red Cross, a legitimate target?

A stricken city

Designed for 980 passengers and crew, over seven times that number had surged onto the ship in the Crimean port of Yalta that fateful night of 7 November 1941. The reason was blind panic. The Nazi war machine, which had invaded the Soviet Union less than five months before, had overrun the Crimean peninsula and was bearing down on Yalta. People expected the city to fall within a matter of hours. The only possible means of escape for its stricken population was by sea – the roads outside the city having been sealed off by the Germans.

Built in Leningrad in 1928, the double-decker Armenia began its career as a passenger ship. In August 1941, following the outbreak of war, it was pressed into military service as a hospital ship. The day before its sinking, the Armenia had left the port of Sevastopol having taken civilian evacuees and the occupants of several military hospitals. Crammed with up to 5,000 passengers, the ship made for Tuapse, a town on the northeast coast of the Black Sea, about 250 miles east. But the captain, Captain Vladimir Plaushevsky, received orders to pick up extra people from nearby Yalta.

More civilians and wounded soldiers, some severely, crammed onto the ship amid scenes of chaos and utter panic. No register was taken, no names recorded of these additional two thousand passengers. Captain Plaushevsky then received orders to remain in port until escort vessels were at hand to chaperon him out. The delay frustrated the captain, he had to get going; they were cutting it too fine.

Torpedoed

The next morning, seven o’clock, the Armenia finally set sail, escorted by two armed boats and two fighter planes.

The escorts were unable to prevent a German torpedo bomber, a Heinkel He-111, swooping-in low and firing two torpedoes at the ship. It was 11.29 am, the ship was 25 miles into its journey. The first torpedo missed but the second one scored a direct hit, splitting the ship into two. The Armenia sunk within just four minutes. All but eight of the 7,000 passengers died, the survivors being picked up by a patrol boat.

The tragedy lay in the postponement of its departure. If Captain Plaushevsky had not lost those precious hours, the ship may well have arrived at its intended destination.

Lying at a depth of about 480 metres, the location of the Armenia wreck remains unknown despite the efforts of oceanic explorer, Robert Ballard, discoverer of several historical wrecks including the aforementioned Titanic and Lusitania.

A legitimate target?

Was the Armenia a legitimate target? As a hospital ship, it was clearly marked with the Red Cross, both on its sides and, clearly visible to the German pilots, on the deck. But it had a military escort, and it had two of its own anti-aircraft guns, so under the rules of war, it was a perfectly acceptable target.

But this doesn’t detract from the catastrophe of its sinking and today we should remember, if only momentarily, the forgotten tragedy of the Armenia.

Rupert Colley.

See also the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

Read more about the war in The Clever Teens Guide to World War Two available as an ebook and 80-page paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

The post The Sinking of Hospital ship Armenia first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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The ‘Great War’ was still less than a year old. On 18 February 1915, in response to Great Britain’s blockade of Germany, the Germans announced that it would, in future, be operating a policy of ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’. In other words, German U-boats would actively seek out and attack enemy shipping within the war zone of British waters. Even ships displaying a neutral flag, they announced, would be at risk – the Germans being aware of the British habit of sailing under a neutral flag.

The Lusitania was certainly not the first victim of Germany’s new policy – on 28 March 1915, the British ship RMS Falaba was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat off the coast of southern Ireland. 104 people were killed, including one American.

Liable to destruction

Wealthy passengers boarding the Lusitania, a 32,000-ton luxury Cunard liner, in New York saw an advertisement issued by the US German embassy warning them of the risk:

Vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. 

Yet any concern passengers may have harboured were brushed aside in the belief that the Germans would surely not target a civilian cruise liner. And also, with a top speed of 21 knots-per-hour, far higher than any other ship at the time, the Lusitania could easily outpace a German U-boat with a top speed of a paltry 13 knots.

Carrying 1,959 people (1,257 passengers and 702 crew), the Lusitania left New York on its 202nd Atlantic crossing on 1 May 1915. The British, knowing of the potential danger as the ship approached Ireland, gave the captain, William Thomas Turner, specific instructions. He was told that as he approached the coast he should sail at top speed and in a zigzag fashion, hence making it far more difficult for a U-boat to score a direct hit. But with thick fog and poor visibility, and wanting to save fuel, Captain Turner sailed at only 15 knots per hour and, fatefully, in a straight line. He was also told to avoid Ireland’s jutting coastline. Yet here he was, on the 7 May, within eleven miles off the coast of southern Ireland, within sight of the Old Head of Kinsale Lighthouse.

U-Boat

Lurking beneath the waters was the U20, captained by Walter Schwieger. The U20 had already downed a few smaller vessels and now, in the early afternoon of 7 May, it spotted the Lusitania at a distance of about 700 metres. At 14:09, the U20 fired a torpedo, hitting the Lusitania on the starboard side. Panic ensued. Seconds later a second explosion from deep down was heard. This, the second explosion, was what doomed the ship to its fate. It was assumed to be a second torpedo but this was not the case. Captain Schwieger always maintained that he had only fired the one, claiming: “It would have been impossible for me, anyhow, to fire a second torpedo into this crowd of people struggling to save their lives”.

The ship listed so severely to the side that the lifeboats on the port side were unreachable. Those that were dropped from the starboard side fell into the water at such a distance from the ship that people were forced into making a terrifyingly long leap in order to reach them.

The ship sank quickly – in just eighteen minutes. It sank in a mere 90 metres of water. At the point the bow hit the sea bottom, the stern was still sticking out of the water.

Rescue ships were dispatched from the Irish port of Queenstown and arrived on the scene within two hours, and, unhindered by further attacks, managed to pick up 761 survivors. But 1,198 lives were lost, including 128 of the 197 Americans on board. 59 children and 35 babies were among the dead.

A legitimate target?

So what had caused the second explosion? Records showed that down in its hold, among all the cargo and baggage, the Lusitania had been carrying ammunition for over 4,000 small arms – some four million American-made bullets. It was the unforeseen detonation of all this live ammunition that caused the greatest damage. The Germans certainly maintained this was the case but the British and the Americans denied it. History has revealed that the Germans had been right, and therefore, by carrying ammunition, the ship was, under the laws of war, a legitimate target.

Nonetheless, with the US president, Woodrow Wilson, outraged by what he saw as an atrocity, the German high command rescinded its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, although, two years later, on 1 February 1917, they re-introduced it. The British government condemned the ‘barbarian’ Germans as indeed they would five months later following the German execution of British nurse, Edith Cavell.

Historians have debated whether the Lusitania had been purposefully allowed to fall into a German trap and sunk as a means of persuading the US into joining the war. Up to this point, the US had firmly remained isolationist. In the event, it would be another two years, 6 April 1917, before the US joined the Allies but the sinking of the Lusitania and the killing of American citizens certainly played a large part in swaying the opinion of both the president and American public opinion.

Captain Turner

Captain Turner remained on the bridge of the ship until it was submerged. He then clung onto a chair in the swirling Irish waters for two hours before being rescued. He died on 23 June 1933, aged 77.

Rupert Colley.

Read more in The Clever Teens’ Guide to World War One, available as ebook and paperback (80 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

The post The Sinking of the Lusitania – a brief summary first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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Built in Germany in 1935 the 800-foot long Zeppelin airship, the Hindenburg, was considered the height of sophisticated travel. It may only have travelled at 80 mph yet it still provided the fastest means of crossing the Atlantic – twice as fast as the speediest ship. It was akin to being on a luxury liner and had already made dozens of journeys across the Atlantic from Germany to Brazil or America and back. Of course, it wasn’t cheap – a one-way ticket across the Atlantic cost about US$400 (about US$7,000 / £4,500 in 2016).

With the Nazi swastika on its fins, it was named after the last president of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, who had appointed Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933, and who died in August 1934. Joseph Goebbels had, apparently, wanted the airship to be named the Adolf Hitler but the owner of the Zeppelin Company, Hugo Eckener, a known anti-Nazi, refused.

But before it became a transatlantic airship, the Hindenburg began its life as a tool of the Nazi propaganda ministry, run by Goebbels. In March 1936, ahead of a German plebiscite to rally support ratifying the re-occupation of the Rhineland, the Hindenburg was used to drop propaganda leaflets while blaring out loud patriotic music and slogans from huge loudspeakers and broadcasting political speeches from a temporary onboard radio studio. (The plebiscite returned a 99.8 percent vote in favour). On 1 August 1936, the Hindenburg made a special appearance flying above the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics trailing an Olympic flag in its wake.

The Hindenburg‘s last journey

On its 63rd and last, fateful journey, the Hindenburg departed from Frankfurt on May 3, 1937, and was due to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on the morning of May 6. But poor weather had delayed its landing by about twelve hours. The captain, Max Pruss, kept his passengers entertained by flying over New York City. (Pruss survived the disaster, dying aged 69 in 1960). The Hindenburg had a capacity for about 70 passengers but on this trip, there were only 36 passengers plus 61 crew.

At 7.25 p.m. the Hindenburg was trying to land by docking onto a 270-foot high mooring mast, from where it could be winched down to the ground. The flight was the first North Transatlantic trip of the year and TV and radio crews had gathered to record its arrival.

Radio reporter, Herbert Morrison (pictured), was describing the events when inexplicably the airship exploded into flames. The tail of the ship was soon engulfed but the Hindenburg remained level for a few more seconds before the tail began to drop. As the ship tilted, passengers and crew and bits of furniture were thrown against the walls; one passenger remembered being hurled 15 to 20 feet against a dining room wall and being pinned there by several others.

The Hindenburg continued to lurch as the flames spread at almost 50 feet per second. Many on board were able to jump for their lives. ‘Oh, the humanity,’ wailed Morrison, a phrase that entered the lexicon of American culture. Within just 37 seconds the Hindenburg had been utterly destroyed. ‘Approaching Lakehurst,’ reported British Pathé News in a bit of poetic reportage, ‘the Hindenburg appeared a conquering giant of the skies. But she proved a puny plaything in the mighty grip of fate. It almost seemed as if fate had set the stage for the horrible tragedy. A graceful craft sailing serenely to her doom.’

Casualties

Of the 97 people onboard, 35 died: 13 passengers and 22 crew, plus one ground crew member. But 62 did survive by jumping at the right time and running to safety. It wasn’t the first or worst airship disaster but the Hindenburg tragedy effectively brought the brief age of the airship to an abrupt end. Despite many theories, the exact cause of the fire remains a mystery but is generally believed to have been caused by an electrostatic discharge – in simpler terms, a spark that ignited leaking hydrogen.

Morrison’s commentary was married up to the film footage and flashed across the world. The two mediums ran at slightly different speeds so Morrison’s voice had to be speeded up to match the film, adding to its emotional intensity.

Here, is Herbert Morrison’s commentary with the accompanying footage on YouTube.

And, here. the text:

“It’s burst into flames! It burst into flames, and it’s falling, it’s crashing! Watch it! Watch it! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It’s fire… and it’s crashing! It’s crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It’s burning and bursting into flames and the… and it’s falling on the mooring mast. And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is the one of the worst catastrophes in the world. Its flames… Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it… it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It’s smoke, and it’s in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity! And all the passengers screaming around here. I told you; it—I can’t even talk to people, their friends are out there! Ah! It’s… it… it’s a… ah! I… I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it’s just laying there, mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. Lady, I… I… I’m sorry. Honest: I… I can hardly breathe. I… I’m going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that’s terrible. Ah, ah… I can’t. Listen, folks; I… I’m going to have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”

Herbert Morrison died, aged 83, in 1989.

Rupert Colley.

The post The Hindenburg Disaster – a summary first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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Exercise Tiger

It was at one such training exercise, one that involved the use of live ammunition, that tragedy struck. 23,000 American troops, the entire invading force of Utah beach, and 300 vessels were rehearsing on Slapton Sands in South Devon on 27 and 28 April 1944 in an exercise codenamed Tiger designed to acclimatize troops as accurately as possible to what they could expect at Utah during the real thing, right down to a number of pretend dead bodies strewn around. Six villages in the area had seen the evacuation of their 3,000 inhabitants. They’d been told they would, one day, be allowed back. But when, no one knew. (Pictured: US troops in training for the Normandy Landings.)

30,000 acres of land around Slapton Sands, chosen because of its similarities to the intended target area of Utah beach, had been sealed off with barbed wire and sentries. On the 27th, during Exercise Tiger, poor communication resulted in a number of troops being fired upon by their own ships.

28 April 1944

The following day, even greater casualties occurred when a patrol of nine German torpedo boats bumped into a convoy of American landing craft, LSTs, quite by accident. The convoy was being escorted by a British corvette (a small warship specifically designed for escort duties) but the main escort, a destroyer, had been involved in a collision the day before and was temporarily out of action while receiving repairs in Plymouth. At 01.30, The German patrol began firing on the LSTs. Some of the American soldiers mistook the German attack for part of the exercise. Many troops, aboard LSTs, having not been instructed on how to fasten their inflatable life jackets, and laden down in full battle dress, drowned. Fuel caught fire and many men suffered terrible burns. Between the two events, 946 servicemen were killed and some 200 wounded.

Aftermath

The tragedy of Exercise Tiger was kept hidden, the dead swiftly buried, and survivors sworn to secrecy, lest it should damage morale. Doctors, treating the wounded, were told to ask no questions. The full extent of the disaster was not fully known until the 1970s. Ten of those declared missing, presumably dead, were of high enough rank to be carrying highly secret instructions and plans. The commanders feared that some of these men might have been picked up by the Germans and taken prisoner. Had such a scenario manifested, the whole D-Day operation would have been in serious jeopardy. Much to all-round relief, divers accounted for all ten corpses.

(Pictured: A Sherman tank raised from the sea bed in 1984 which today acts as a memorial to those who lost their lives during Exercise Tiger).

On D-Day itself, 6 June 1944, 23,250 US troops landed in France via Utah beach for the cost of 210 men killed or wounded, considerably less than the casualties sustained during Exercise Tiger exercise on Slapton Sands.

Rupert Colley.

Rupert Colley’s enthralling novel, set in Nazi-occupied France, The White Venus, is now available.

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A small fleet of ships and boats arrived on the scene and managed to pluck a few survivors from the icy waters and rescued many of those on the lifeboats. Over a thousand were rescued but… an estimated 9,343 people died, half of them children – six times the 1,517 that died on the Titanic in 1912.

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff remains the biggest maritime disaster in history.

We have all heard of the Titanic. A century after that fateful night, the disaster remains within our global consciousness. Even before James Cameron’s epic 1998 film, we knew of the iceberg, the “women and children first”, and the band that played on.

But how many of us have even heard of the Wilhelm Gustloff?

The Luxury Liner

The ship was named after the assassinated leader of the Swiss Nazi Party (yes, Switzerland in the 1930s had its own Nazi Party), murdered in his own home in February 1936 (Wilhelm Gustloff, pictured).

The ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, weighing 25,000 tons and almost 700 feet in length, was an impressive sight and could carry almost 2,000 passengers and crew. Launched in 1937, it began its life as a luxury cruise liner for the German workers of Hitler’s Third Reich, and, until the outbreak of the Second World War, had sailed over fifty cruises.

Wartime

For the first year of the war the Wilhelm Gustloff served as a hospital ship before being held in dock in the port of Gotenhafen on the Baltic coast (modern-day Gdynia) where, until early 1945, it served as barracks for U-boat trainees.

Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941 and the German juggernaut had fought all the way to within sight of Moscow. But then the tide of war turned against the Nazis, and Stalin launched his own counterattack.

By October 1944, the Soviet Union’s Red Army had fought the Germans out of the Soviet Union and broken through into East Prussia.

The Red Army Approaches

With the apocalyptic Red Army bearing down on them, the German civilians of East Prussia, desperate to get away, fled to the Baltic ports hoping to be evacuated. Many of those caught in the maelstrom of the Soviet advance were murdered and raped.

The Wilhelm Gustloff, along with any other serviceable ship in the area, was pressed into service to aid the evacuation of German civilians. With forty-eight hours’ notice before departure, the scenes in frozen Gotenhafen were of panic as people, frantic for a place, fought on the dock and surged aboard the ship.

Evacuation

By the time it left, on 30 January, 10,582 people (40% of whom were children) had crammed onto a ship designed for less than 2,000. Of the three designated military escorts, two broke down, leaving only one torpedo boat to accompany the huge liner. The ship had four captains who argued over the best course to take – shallow or deep waters, a straight line for speed or zig-zags to help avoid detection. Poor visibility, heavy snow and freezing temperatures further hampered progress.

When the captains were informed of a German minesweeper convoy coming toward them, they decided, after much argument, to switch on the navigation lights to avoid colliding with the convoy, but by doing so the ship also became visible to a Soviet submarine lurking nearby.

Hit

The submarine fired three torpedoes, each hitting its target. The ensuing scenes of panic cannot be imagined. Most of the lifeboats had frozen onto their davits, leaving only a few that could be put into use. As the ship listed to one side, some were trapped below decks, and others were crushed in the stairways, while many fell into the freezing waters. Children drowned in lifejackets too big. People fought and clubbed each other to get onto the few available lifeboats, while many jumped to their deaths.

It was, coincidentally, the birthdate of Wilhelm Gustloff, born on 30 January 1895. The day the ship sunk would have been his fiftieth birthday. It was also the twelfth anniversary of Hitler coming to power.

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff on 30 January 1945 remains the greatest maritime disaster to ever have taken place. But why, when the tragic story of the Titanic is so known to us, does the Wilhelm Gustloff remain a forgotten catastrophe?

To help answer this, I quote the late David F. Krawczyk. Below I paraphrase some of his observations:

1. The disaster occurred during wartime

Many view wartime disasters as less “tragic” than those occurring during peacetime.

2. The victims were on the “losing” side

Although the passengers were predominately civilians, they were German, and post-war sympathy for Germany was not overly forthcoming.

3. German war guilt has repressed the disaster

A nation’s war guilt and repression of memory have served to push the Wilhelm Gustloff into obscurity. German writer and Nobel Prize Winner, Gunter Grass, wrote of the disaster and the preceding assassination of Gustloff in his 2002 novel, Crabwalk.

4. Russian retribution for Nazi occupation

When the Nazis broke their pact with Stalin and invaded Soviet Russia in 1941, their tactics were often brutal. Hitler himself made it clear that this was a war different from that waged in the West, calling it a “war of extermination”. When the tide eventually turned against Germany and the Soviets were marching towards Berlin, the Red Army showed no mercy – and exacted horrific revenge. Since the Soviets were in control of the Bay of Danzig both near the end of the war and for many years after, the Polish civilians were not allowed to mourn the loss of life on a German ship.

5. World sentiment regarding Nazi atrocities

As the world learned more about Nazi war crimes and systematic genocide, subdued global reaction to a disaster on this scale was perhaps understandable. Under other circumstances, 4,000 innocent children dying in a single disaster would certainly be mourned by almost anyone in a “friendly” or “enemy” nation.

6. Ship was named after a prominent Nazi leader

Wilhelm Gustloff was the leader of the Nazi Party in Switzerland. David Krawczyk, on his site, wonders if the profile of the ship might have been higher if it had been named after a city or non-Nazi figure.

7. Demise of so many refugees (mostly women and children)

For months, the disaster remained largely unreported both inside and outside Germany. Inside the imploding Nazi Germany, Hitler wanted to suppress awareness about the death of so many. The Western Allies avoided it too; it would not have made for a popular news story where one of its allies had caused a disaster that had claimed the lives of so many women and children.

8. There is no American connection or Hollywood profile

Since comparisons are inevitable, we can see how the Titanic profile was raised even higher worldwide with an Academy-Award-winning movie from Hollywood. Unlike the Titanic, the Wilhelm Gustloff was not sailing towards America, nor did it have any American passengers on its decks.

9. There were no rich victims on board

In another inevitable comparison to the Titanic, none of the Wilhelm Gustloff passengers on the fateful voyage were rich or of society’s elite. They were refugees simply trying to escape a terrible situation.

Rupert Colley.

The post The Wilhelm Gustloff – the Worst Maritime Disaster In History first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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