Cap Arcona

1945

Lübeck Bay, Neuengamme prisoners, the RAF Typhoons Location: Bay of Lübeck, Baltic coast · Coordinates: 54.00°N 10.85°E · Casualties: ~5,000 · Survivors: ~350 · Depth: 25 m · Cause: aerial attack — Bombed and strafed by RAF Typhoons of 83 Group on the afternoon of 3 May 1945, six days before the German surrender. Carrying approximately 4,500 concentration camp prisoners from Neuengamme, with SS guards. Swedish Red Cross intelligence that the ship was a floating prison had reached the RAF but did not reach the squadrons in time. · Fate: scrapped 1949-50 · Type: former liner · concentration-camp ship · Tonnage: 27,561 tons · Crew: 76 · Flag: Nazi Germany · Launched: 1927 Former North German Lloyd liner, by May 1945 a floating prison for concentration camp inmates in the Bay of Lübeck. Bombed and strafed by RAF Typhoons of 83 Group on the afternoon of 3 May 1945, six days before the German surrender. Swedish Red Cross intelligence that the ship was carrying KZ prisoners had reached the RAF but not the squadrons in time. Approximately 5,000 dead, most of them Neuengamme inmates, many killed as they swam toward shore. The Vessel The Cap Arcona was a German passenger liner of the Hamburg Süd-Amerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft (Hamburg South American Steamship Company), built at the Blohm & Voss yard at Hamburg between 1926 and 1927 and commissioned on 29 October 1927. She was 206 metres long, 27,561 gross tons, and powered by twin steam turbines producing approximately 24,000 horsepower. Her peacetime accommodation was approximately 575 first-class, 275 second-class, and 465 third-class passengers, plus a crew of 630. Cap Arcona was designed specifically for the Hamburg to Buenos Aires passenger service, a premier transatlantic route of the late 1920s that carried predominantly affluent passengers between Germany and the substantial German-speaking communities in Brazil and Argentina. She was, at her commissioning, the largest and fastest of the German South American liners, and she was marketed as "the Queen of the South Atlantic" through the 1930s. From 1940 she was requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine for wartime service as a troop transport. Her principal wartime role was the transport of German military personnel and civilian refugees from the eastern Baltic ports (Danzig, Gdynia, Königsberg) during the 1944-1945 German evacuation of East Prussia and Pomerania before the advancing Soviet forces. Through late 1944 and early 1945, she made multiple evacuation voyages between the eastern Baltic ports and the western Baltic (primarily Lübeck and Kiel). By April 1945, the military situation had The Disaster At approximately 14:30 on 3 May 1945, British Royal Air Force aircraft of the 2nd Tactical Air Force began a series of coordinated attacks on shipping in Lübeck Bay. The attacking force comprised approximately 180 aircraft (Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers and Short Stirling bombers) from multiple RAF squadrons, operating from bases in northern Germany and the Netherlands. The attack orders had been issued by Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commander of the 2nd Tactical Air Force, based on the specific intelligence that Cap Arcona and her adjacent vessels were military transports carrying German troops. The RAF attack on Cap Arcona began at approximately 14:45 on 3 May 1945. Multiple Typhoon fighter-bombers strafed the ship with cannon fire and rockets; subsequent aircraft delivered bomb hits to the ship's superstructure and upper decks. The attacks continued for approximately 60 minutes. The specific tragedy was the impossibility of evacuating the 4,500 prisoners from the below-deck spaces. The prisoners were held in locked holds; the SS guards initially attempted to prevent evacuation; the ship's crew was paralysed by the attack; and the prisoners themselves were too weakened to successfully evacuate through the blocked passages and locked hatches. Cap Arcona burned for approximately three hours before capsizing and sinking in Lübeck Bay at approximately 18:00 on 3 May 1945. The ship sank in approximately 20 metres of water, with her superstructure partially above the