World Wars

1914-1945. Torpedoes, mines, aerial attack. Two world wars on the water produced more shipwrecks than any other thirty-year span in history. From the Lusitania to the Bismarck to the merchant convoys of the Atlantic.

Part of Shipwrecks

66 moments in this segment.

1. 1914 — HMS Good Hope. Coronel, von Spee, no survivors Location: Pacific Ocean, off Coronel, Chile · Coordinates: 36.85°S 73.97°W · Casualties: ~900 · Survivors: 0 · Depth: abyssal · not located · Cause: naval gunfire — Engaged by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee's German East Asia Squadron at the Battle of Coronel on the evening of 1 November 1914. Outranged and outgunned, she was struck by salvoes from SMS Scharnhorst which ignited her forward magazine at 19:50. She disintegrated in seconds. · Fate: abyssal Pacific · Type: armoured cruiser · Drake class · Tonnage: 14,100 tons · Crew: 919 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1901 Drake-class armoured cruiser, flagship of Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock's South Atlantic squadron. Engaged by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee's German East Asia Squadron off Coronel on the Chilean coast at 19:50 on 1 November 1914. No survivors, Cradock included. The first British naval defeat since the American Revolution; the Royal Navy's response, six weeks later off the Falklands, destroyed von Spee's entire force. The Vessel HMS Good Hope was a Drake-class armoured cruiser of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan on 8 November 1902. She was 161 metres long, 14,100 tons standard displacement, armed with two 9.2-inch guns in single turrets fore and aft, sixteen 6-inch guns in casemate mountings, and four 18-inch underwater torpedo tubes. Her design speed was 23 knots on a two-shaft arrangement, placing her among the fastest armoured cruisers in service. The Drake class had been designed to counter Russian fast cruisers operating in Far Eastern waters, specifically against the emerging Russian Pacific Squadron of the 1900s. Their high speed and heavy 9.2-inch main armament gave them a range of engagement capabilities beyond the conventional armoured cruiser. By 1914, however, their design rationale had been overtaken by newer battlecruisers; Good Hope and her sisters were considered obsolete by the Admiralty and were assigned to secondary stations. Her commanding officer in the autumn of 1914 was Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, 52, a senior Royal Navy officer whose command of the 4th Cruiser Squadron had placed him in charge of British naval operations in the South Atlantic and the west coast of South America at the outbreak of the First World War. Cradock flew his flag in Good Hope; his squadron comprised Good Hope, the armoured cruiser HMS Monmouth, the light cruiser HMS Glasgow, and the armed merchant cruiser HMS Otranto. The Disaster The Battle of Coronel opened at 18:50 on 1 November 1914 at a range of 10,400 metres. The sea conditions were critical: the heavy swell caused the secondary armament of Cradock's cruisers (the 6-inch casemate guns mounted along their hull sides) to ship water and become unusable. The main 9.2-inch guns of Good Hope could still engage but at a reduced rate of fire. Scharnhorst's opening salvos found the range almost immediately. At 19:00 on 1 November 1914, a German shell struck Good Hope's forward 9.2-inch turret, destroying it. At 19:05 another German shell penetrated Good Hope's forward magazine through the destroyed turret. The magazine detonated. HMS Good Hope disintegrated at 19:53 on 1 November 1914 at approximately 36°48′S 74°06′W. Her bow and stern sections separated and sank within thirty seconds of the magazine detonation. All 919 officers and ratings aboard died. There were no survivors. HMS Monmouth, her accompanying armoured cruiser, was also destroyed in the same engagement by SMS Gneisenau at 20:55 on 1 November 1914; of Monmouth's 734 crew, all died. The combined British loss at Coronel was 1,653 sailors killed in less than three hours. HMS Glasgow and HMS Otranto escaped the engagement.
2. 1914 — HMS Audacious. Lough Swilly mine, the Olympic stood by Location: off Tory Island, Lough Swilly, Ireland · Coordinates: 55.27°N 7.77°W · Casualties: 1 · Survivors: ~900 · Depth: 67 m · Cause: mine — Struck a contact mine laid by the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Berlin during gunnery exercises off Lough Swilly on 27 October 1914. Flooded in the engine rooms, fires crept toward the magazine over twelve hours. The liner RMS Olympic (sister of the Titanic) attempted a tow that parted; she finally exploded at 21:00. · Fate: upside down · divers visit · Type: super-dreadnought · King George V class · Tonnage: 25,830 tons · Crew: 900 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1912 Royal Navy super-dreadnought, commissioned less than a year when she struck a German mine off Lough Swilly, Ireland, on 27 October 1914. The fire crept toward her magazine over twelve hours; Cunard's Olympic, sister of the Titanic, tried to take her in tow in vain. The only casualty was a petty officer aboard HMS Liverpool hit by a fragment from the final magazine explosion. The Admiralty kept the news secret until after the 1918 Armistice for reasons of naval morale. The Vessel HMS Audacious was a British dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy's King George V class, built at the Cammell Laird yard at Birkenhead between 1911 and 1913 and commissioned on 21 October 1913. She was 182 metres long, 25,420 tons displacement, and armed with ten 13.5-inch primary guns in five twin-gun turrets (three on the centreline forward and aft, two en echelon amidships), sixteen 4-inch secondary guns, and five 21-inch torpedo tubes. Her armour protection included a 305-millimetre main belt of Krupp cemented armour, 279-millimetre turret face armour, and 76-millimetre deck armour. She was, at her commissioning in October 1913, among the most modern capital ships in the Royal Navy. Her specific design represented the final pre-Queen Elizabeth class of British dreadnought battleships: 13.5-inch primary armament (superseded by 15-inch in the subsequent Queen Elizabeth class of 1913-1915), triple-shaft turbine propulsion, and the standardised British dreadnought internal subdivision arrangements. By October 1914, Audacious had been assigned to the 2nd Battle Squadron of the British Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, based at the Grand Fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow (and subsequently at the wartime anchorage at Loch Ewe following the 1914 German U-boat threat). Her operational role was forward-line capital ship service: continuous readiness to engage the German High Seas Fleet at North Sea battle-readiness. Her master on 27 October 1914 was Captain Cecil Francis The Disaster The initial mine explosion penetrated Audacious's outer hull plating and entered her port-side double-bottom spaces. The damage was substantial but not immediately catastrophic: the ship's port wing compartment flooded, her port engine-room began taking on water, and she developed a list of approximately 15 degrees to port. Captain Dampier's initial response was standard mine-damage control. The watertight compartments adjacent to the damaged area were sealed, the ship's pumps were activated, and the damaged engine-room was progressively abandoned as the flooding exceeded pump capacity. Audacious's speed was reduced from 18 knots to approximately 8 knots; she continued under her remaining starboard engines. The second phase of the disaster, and the specific mechanism by which the ship was ultimately lost, was the progressive failure of the ship's structural bulkheads under the continuous flooding load. The specific issue was the failure of the main longitudinal bulkhead between the port wing compartments and the port engine-room: the bulkhead had been compromised by the mine explosion's shock wave and was progressively cracking under the hydrostatic pressure of the floodwater. Over the subsequent 12 hours, Audacious's flooding extended progressively through the compromised longitudinal bulkhead into the port boiler rooms, the central magazine spaces, and eventually into the starboard compartments via cross-bulkhead failures. The ship's list increased from 15 degrees to 25 deg
3. 1914 — SMS Zenta. The first naval loss of the Great War Location: Adriatic Sea, off Bar, Montenegro · Coordinates: 42.08°N 19.09°E · Casualties: 173 · Survivors: ~130 · Depth: 70 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Cornered by the combined French and British Mediterranean fleet at the Battle of Antivari, off the Montenegrin port of Bar, on 16 August 1914. Outnumbered and outranged by battleships of the pre-dreadnought class. Her captain Paul Pachner refused to strike and she sank in forty-five minutes. · Fate: located · Montenegrin coast · Type: protected cruiser · Tonnage: 2,350 tons · Crew: 308 · Flag: Austria-Hungary · Launched: 1897 Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser, patrolling the Adriatic at the opening of the war. Cornered by the combined French and British Mediterranean fleet at the Battle of Antivari off Bar, Montenegro, on 16 August 1914; outnumbered and outgunned, her captain refused to strike his colours. The first naval loss of the First World War. 173 dead; around 130 picked up by Montenegrin fishermen. The Vessel SMS Zenta was an Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser of the Imperial and Royal Navy (k.u.k. Kriegsmarine), built at the Pola Naval Arsenal between 1896 and 1899 and commissioned on 28 May 1899. She was 97 metres long, 2,350 tons displacement, and armed with eight 12-centimetre primary guns (four in casemate positions along her broadside, four in deck positions on her superstructure), ten 4.7-centimetre secondary guns, and two 45-centimetre torpedo tubes. Her armour protection was light: a 25-millimetre armoured deck and minimal turret protection, consistent with her protected-cruiser rather than armoured-cruiser classification. She was the lead ship of the Zenta-class protected cruisers, a three-ship class (Zenta, Aspern, Szigetvár) that had been built during the 1890s as the Austro-Hungarian Navy's contribution to the colonial and trade-protection mission in the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and the eastern Mediterranean. Her operational role before 1914 had been the routine colonial-presence operations of the Austro-Hungarian Navy: visits to eastern Mediterranean ports, coastal survey operations, and occasional diplomatic-presence deployments to the Chinese Treaty Ports (Zenta participated in the international relief expedition during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900). By August 1914, Zenta was 15 years old and substantially obsolete by modern naval standards. Her primary armament of 12-centimetre guns was inferior to the standard 15-centimetre primary armament of contemporary Bri The Disaster Captain Pachner's tactical assessment at approximately 06:45 on 16 August 1914 was that Zenta and Ulan could not reasonably engage the Allied force. The two Austrian ships attempted to retreat northwest towards the safety of the Montenegrin coastal waters and the Austrian mainland. The Allied force pursued. At approximately 07:30 on 16 August 1914, the French cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau and the British destroyer HMS Wolverine closed to engagement range with Zenta, approximately 8 kilometres from the Austrian cruiser. The French battleship Jean Bart was approximately 12 kilometres astern of Zenta and closing. The subsequent engagement lasted approximately 50 minutes. Zenta's speed of 21 knots was inferior to the Allied pursuit force; her primary armament of 12-centimetre guns was substantially outranged by the 19.4-centimetre guns of Waldeck-Rousseau and the 30.5-centimetre primary guns of Jean Bart. Jean Bart's primary guns began engaging Zenta at approximately 08:00 at a range of approximately 9 kilometres; the 30.5-centimetre shells were straddling Zenta within approximately 3 minutes of opening fire. The first Jean Bart 30.5-centimetre shell to strike Zenta did so at approximately 08:15: the shell struck the Austrian cruiser's central superstructure and destroyed her fore-bridge. Two further 30.5-centimetre shell hits within approximately 5 minutes eliminated Zenta's fighting capability. By 08:30 the Austrian cruiser was substantially disabled: her engines were damaged, her p
4. 1914 — SMS Scharnhorst. Falklands, von Spee avenged six weeks late Location: South Atlantic, off Falkland Islands · Coordinates: 52.43°S 56.75°W · Casualties: ~860 · Survivors: 0 · Depth: 1,610 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Engaged at the Battle of the Falklands on 8 December 1914 by the British battlecruisers HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, which had been dispatched specifically to destroy von Spee's squadron after Coronel. Outranged by the 12-inch guns of the battlecruisers. She refused to strike her colours and was battered below the waterline through the afternoon. · Fate: located 2019 · Mensun Bound · Type: armoured cruiser · Scharnhorst class · Tonnage: 12,985 tons · Crew: 860 · Flag: German Empire · Launched: 1906 Flagship of Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee and victor of the Battle of Coronel on 1 November 1914. Five weeks later at the Battle of the Falklands on 8 December, caught by the British battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible with their superior heavy guns. ~860 dead, no survivors, including von Spee and his two sons. Located by Mensun Bound in 2019 at a depth of 1,610 metres. The Vessel SMS Scharnhorst was the lead ship of her class of armoured cruisers of the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy), commissioned at the AG Weser yard in Bremen on 24 October 1907. She was 144 metres long, 12,985 tons standard displacement, armed with eight 21 cm guns in two twin and four single turrets, with a secondary battery of six 15 cm guns and four 8.8 cm guns. Her design speed was 23.5 knots on three-shaft Parsons turbines. The Scharnhorst class represented the peak of the German armoured-cruiser design tradition, commissioned approximately two years before the emergence of the British battlecruiser class rendered armoured cruisers obsolete. By 1914 her class had been overtaken by newer designs but remained in first-line service in specific theatres where the battlecruiser would have been excessive. Her role in the Pacific theatre from 1910 onwards had been as the flagship of the German East Asia Squadron under Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee. Her commanding officer in 1914 was Kapitän zur See Felix Schultz, 42 years old, a career Imperial German Navy officer who had served in the East Asia Squadron since 1912. The squadron's operational base was at Tsingtao on the Chinese coast, the German leased territory on the Yellow Sea, which the squadron had been permitted to use since 1898. The Disaster Unknown to von Spee, the Royal Navy had dispatched a battlecruiser force under Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee to the South Atlantic in response to the Coronel defeat. Sturdee's force (HMS Invincible, HMS Inflexible, HMS Carnarvon, HMS Kent, HMS Cornwall, HMS Bristol, HMS Glasgow, and the armed merchant cruiser HMS Macedonia) arrived at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, on 7 December 1914 for coaling and replenishment. By coincidence, von Spee's squadron approached the Falklands on 8 December 1914 with the intention of attacking the British wireless station there. The two forces made contact at approximately 07:50 on 8 December 1914. Von Spee, observing the British battlecruisers at Port Stanley and correctly identifying them as modern capital ships, turned his squadron to flee south. Sturdee's battlecruisers, faster than the German armoured cruisers by approximately 5 knots, gave chase. The subsequent Battle of the Falkland Islands was effectively a running engagement between two better-armed and faster British battlecruisers and the slower, less heavily armed German squadron. Scharnhorst was engaged by Invincible and Inflexible from approximately 13:00 on 8 December 1914. The opening British salvos fell short; subsequent salvos found the range. Over approximately three hours of intermittent engagement, Scharnhorst was hit multiple times by 12-inch shells from the two battlecruisers. Her superstructure was progressively demolished; her engine rooms were damaged; her
5. 1914 — HMS Aboukir, Hogue & Cressy. U-9, Weddigen, seventy-five minutes Location: North Sea, off the Dutch coast · Coordinates: 52.18°N 3.75°E · Casualties: ~1,459 · Survivors: ~837 · Depth: 30 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed in succession by the German submarine U-9 (Otto Weddigen, commanding) on the morning of 22 September 1914. Weddigen hit HMS Aboukir first; HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy stopped to rescue survivors and were torpedoed as well. All three sank inside 75 minutes. · Fate: continental shelf · protected · Type: armoured cruisers · Cressy class · Tonnage: 12,000 tons each · Crew: 760 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1900 Three Cressy-class armoured cruisers of the Royal Navy, patrolling the southern North Sea off the Dutch coast on the morning of 22 September 1914. Torpedoed inside 75 minutes by U-9 under Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen, who hit the Aboukir, waited for Hogue and Cressy to stop for rescue, and torpedoed them too. 1,459 dead across three hulls. The catastrophe taught the Admiralty that stopping to rescue survivors in a submarine war would kill you. The Vessel The Live Bait Squadron was the popular Royal Navy designation for the three Cressy-class armoured cruisers HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue, and HMS Cressy, assigned in the autumn of 1914 to patrol the southern end of the North Sea between the Dutch coast and the English Channel. They were the fifth, seventh, and eighth ships of the Cressy-class, all three commissioned in 1902 and approaching obsolescence by 1914. They displaced 12,000 tons each, were 136 metres long, and carried two 9.2-inch guns, twelve 6-inch guns, and a complement of 760 men each. Their operational assignment to the southern North Sea in September 1914 was deeply controversial within the Royal Navy. The three ships were manned predominantly by Royal Naval Reserve officers and recently-recalled Royal Naval Reserve ratings rather than by regular Royal Navy personnel; their operating area was known to be within the reach of German submarines deploying from Heligoland; and the Royal Navy's Director of Operations at the Admiralty, Commodore Sir Roger Keyes, had filed repeated written protests against the assignment. Keyes's specific warning, recorded in a memorandum of 21 August 1914, was that the three cruisers would "offer themselves as bait" to German submarines. His memorandum had given the squadron its informal name, which was used among officers before the disaster and was never used by the ships' own crews. The First Sea Lord Prince Louis of Battenberg had reviewed Keyes's concern on 29 August 1914 and had direct The Disaster Captain Drummond of Aboukir, believing his ship had struck a mine, signalled HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy to close and pick up survivors. The two surviving British cruisers accelerated to the scene and stopped at 06:45 to lower boats. U-9 had reloaded her single torpedo tube during the interval. At 06:55 Weddigen fired his second torpedo at HMS Hogue from 300 metres range; it struck Hogue amidships and detonated her forward magazine. Hogue broke in half; she sank in 10 minutes. Captain Nicholson of HMS Cressy, by now aware that he was facing a submarine and not a minefield, ordered full speed ahead and commenced evasive zigzag. U-9 had reloaded her torpedo again; Weddigen fired his third torpedo at HMS Cressy at 07:15. The torpedo missed. Cressy circled to her starboard. Weddigen fired his fourth torpedo at 07:20. This torpedo struck Cressy on her starboard side and opened her hull to the sea. Cressy capsized in 15 minutes. The three Royal Navy cruisers, representing 36,000 tons of warship and approximately 2,280 men, had been sunk by a single German submarine with a single torpedo tube in approximately 75 minutes. Between 1,459 and 1,520 British sailors died. The surviving Dutch merchant ships Flora and Titan, and the British destroyers Lowestoft and Mysore arriving later, rescued 837 men from the debris field over the following four hours.
6. 1915 — HMS Natal. Cromarty, the children's film, the magazine Location: Cromarty Firth, Scotland · Coordinates: 57.68°N 4.05°W · Casualties: 421 · Survivors: ~300 · Depth: 20 m · Cause: magazine explosion — Detonated spontaneously while at anchor in Cromarty Firth at 15:30 on 30 December 1915. The crew had invited civilian guests, including wives and children, aboard for a film screening. The after magazine ignited; she capsized within minutes. Subsequent inquiry blamed deteriorated cordite stored too close to boiler room bulkheads. · Fate: war grave · partly salvaged · Type: armoured cruiser · Duke of Edinburgh class · Tonnage: 13,550 tons · Crew: 704 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1905 Royal Navy armoured cruiser, anchored at Cromarty Firth for the Christmas holiday in 1915. At 15:30 on 30 December, her after magazine detonated spontaneously during a film screening arranged for the crew's children. 421 dead, including the captain's wife and several civilian guests aboard for the afternoon. The cause was traced to deteriorated cordite propellant stored too close to the boiler room bulkheads, the same defect that had destroyed HMS Bulwark thirteen months earlier. The Vessel HMS Natal was a Warrior-class armoured cruiser of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the Vickers Barrow yard on 5 March 1907. She was 154 metres long, 13,550 tons standard displacement, armed with six 9.2-inch guns in single turrets, four 7.5-inch guns in twin turrets, and a secondary battery of twenty 3-inch guns. Her designed speed was 23 knots on four-shaft turbines. The Warrior class of four ships (HMS Warrior, HMS Cochrane, HMS Achilles, HMS Natal) represented a specific phase of Edwardian armoured-cruiser design that attempted to combine heavy firepower with the speed needed to operate with battleships in the fleet scouting role. By 1914, like the contemporary Drake and Duke of Edinburgh classes, the Warriors had been largely overtaken by the emergence of the British battlecruiser and were assigned to secondary fleet roles. Her service between 1907 and 1915 had included extensive Mediterranean and China Station deployments, participation in the 1911 Coronation Fleet Review, and the outbreak-of-war assignment to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron at Scapa Flow. By autumn 1915 she had been operating with the Grand Fleet for approximately a year on North Sea patrol and scouting duties. The Disaster HMS Natal's aft cordite magazine exploded at approximately 15:20 on 30 December 1915. The exact cause of the detonation was never conclusively determined; the subsequent Royal Navy Board of Inquiry identified two possible proximate causes (either unstable cordite propellant that had degraded into a self-igniting state, or a flash-fire from a carelessly-handled 4-inch shell being re-stowed in the ammunition passage). The Board's final finding attributed the cause to cordite degradation rather than to crew error. The magazine explosion vented upward through the superstructure of HMS Natal and produced a pillar of flame and debris that rose approximately 300 metres above the Cromarty Firth. The explosion was heard across Ross-shire and was photographed by a civilian photographer on the Cromarty Firth shoreline. The photograph is one of the most widely-reproduced images of First World War Royal Navy disasters. HMS Natal capsized and sank at 15:24 on 30 December 1915 at Cromarty Firth, in approximately 14 metres of water. 421 of her 704 aboard died in the explosion and the subsequent sinking. The dead included Captain Back, Lady Edith Back, the Back children, approximately 390 officers and ratings of the ship's complement, and approximately 10 civilian guests. The high percentage of civilian casualties among the dead (including seven women and three children) gave the Natal loss a particular public resonance.
7. 1915 — RMS Lusitania. The torpedo that rewrote the Great War Location: Celtic Sea, 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland · Coordinates: 51.25°N 8.33°W · Casualties: 1,198 · Survivors: 761 · Depth: 93 m · Cause: u-boat torpedo — Torpedoed by German submarine U-20 (Walther Schwieger, commanding) at 14:10 on 7 May 1915. A single torpedo struck the starboard bow. A massive secondary explosion followed, the cause of which remains disputed to this day. The ship sank in 18 minutes. · Fate: continental shelf · protected · Type: passenger liner · Cunard Line · Tonnage: 31,550 tons · Crew: 696 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1906 Torpedoed by U-20 off the Old Head of Kinsale. A secondary explosion sank her in 18 minutes. 128 of the dead were American civilians. The sinking hardened U.S. opinion against Germany and pushed Washington toward intervention two years later. The secondary-explosion cause remains disputed to this day. The Vessel The RMS Lusitania was a Cunard Line transatlantic liner, 239 metres long and 31,550 tons, built by John Brown and Company at Clydebank and entered into service in September 1907. She and her sister Mauretania were the response to North German Lloyd's challenge for the Atlantic speed record; both were subsidised by the British Admiralty under a 1903 agreement that allowed her requisition as an auxiliary cruiser in wartime. She was the first quadruple-screw liner of her size and the first to use Parsons direct-drive steam turbines at transatlantic scale, producing a service speed of 25 knots with reserve to 27. She took the Blue Riband on her second westbound voyage in October 1907 and held it against all challengers for five years. Her design was publicly Cunard's commercial flagship; her design drawings, held at the Admiralty, also identified her as a vessel whose hold subdivision and coaling arrangements permitted rapid conversion to a warship. By 1915 she was the only major transatlantic liner still maintaining her Liverpool-New York schedule. The Cunard board had kept her in service over the protest of her master, Captain William Turner, who had argued through 1914 that the speed advantage that had justified her subsidy no longer compensated for the U-boat risk. Her last voyage out of New York was announced for 1 May 1915 in the same newspaper page that carried the Imperial German Embassy's notice warning that any vessel flying the British flag in the declared war zone aro The Disaster U-20 under Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger had been working the western approaches for ten days and had sunk three ships already. At 14:10 on 7 May she fired a single G6 torpedo from 700 metres. It struck the Lusitania's starboard bow just abaft the bridge. A second, much larger explosion followed perhaps fifteen seconds later. The nature of the second explosion has been the central controversy of the sinking ever since. Contemporary theories have ranged from a coal-dust explosion in her partly-empty starboard bunkers (the explanation favoured by the 1993 Ballard expedition), to a boiler rupture (favoured by the original British inquiry), to a detonation of the small-arms ammunition in her forward hold (favoured by German propaganda and, in subsequent decades, by several independent researchers). The effect of the second explosion was catastrophic. The list to starboard was immediate and increased through the eighteen minutes she remained afloat. The port lifeboats could not be launched because they swung inboard against the hull; the starboard boats swung so far out that loading them from the deck was impossible for most passengers. Of 48 boats aboard, six launched successfully. She sank bow-first in 18 minutes, a list so sharp that her masts were underwater before her stern left the surface. 1,198 of the 1,959 aboard died, 128 of them Americans. Turner survived; Frohman, Vanderbilt, Hubbard, and Kessler did not.
8. 1915 — SMS Blücher. Dogger Bank, capsized under cheering gunners Location: North Sea, Dogger Bank · Coordinates: 54.53°N 4.25°E · Casualties: 792 · Survivors: 234 · Depth: 40 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Engaged by British battlecruisers Lion, Tiger, Princess Royal, and New Zealand at the Battle of Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915. Struck by over seventy shells; she listed progressively, then capsized while still returning fire. Sank at 12:07. · Fate: war grave · dispersed · Type: armoured cruiser · Tonnage: 17,500 tons · Crew: 1026 · Flag: German Empire · Launched: 1908 German armoured cruiser, the fastest of her class, caught by the British battlecruiser force at the Battle of Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915. Struck by over seventy British shells across three hours, she listed progressively, burning, but kept firing. She capsized at 12:07 while still shooting; the photograph of her rolling belly-up with her crew scrambling along her keel became the iconic image of naval firepower in the Great War. 792 dead; the British rescue effort was abandoned when a Zeppelin was mis-identified as a bombing attack. The Vessel SMS Blücher was a German armoured cruiser of the Imperial German Navy, built at the Kaiserliche Werft Kiel between 1906 and 1909 and commissioned on 1 October 1909. She was 162 metres long, 17,500 tons displacement, and armed with twelve 21-centimetre primary guns in six twin-gun turrets (one forward, one aft, and four in wing positions), eight 15-centimetre secondary guns in casemate positions, and four 45-centimetre torpedo tubes. Her armour protection included a 180-millimetre main belt of Krupp cemented armour, 180-millimetre turret face armour, and 70-millimetre deck armour. Blücher was a unique design representing a specific historical transition in capital-ship naval architecture. She had been designed in 1905-1906 in response to German naval intelligence reports that the Royal Navy was designing an armoured cruiser armed with 23.4-centimetre primary guns; her 21-centimetre armament was specifically sized to match this assumed British armament. In fact, the Royal Navy's new design was the battlecruiser HMS Invincible armed with 30.5-centimetre primary guns; the German intelligence assessment had been substantially incorrect, and Blücher was built as a substantially underarmed ship relative to the actual British battlecruiser class. The specific consequence was that SMS Blücher, at her commissioning in 1909, was an operationally marginal capital ship: substantially more heavily armed than the older German armoured cruisers (which she was intended to replace) but substan The Disaster The pursuing engagement - subsequently designated the Battle of Dogger Bank - lasted approximately four hours, from 08:00 to 12:00 on 24 January 1915. The tactical configuration was a classic stern-chase: the faster British battlecruiser squadron (27 knots maximum speed) was pursuing the retreating German force (25 knots maximum speed). The critical tactical consideration was the position of SMS Blücher, the slowest ship in the German formation. Blücher's maximum speed of 25 knots was slower than the other three German battlecruisers (Seydlitz, Moltke, Derfflinger all capable of 27-28 knots). As the pursuing British squadron closed the range, Blücher progressively fell behind the main German formation and became the British squadron's primary target. By 09:00, Blücher was approximately 2 kilometres behind the nearest other German ship; by 10:00, the separation had widened to approximately 4 kilometres. The British battlecruisers concentrated their fire on Blücher from approximately 09:30. The progressive shell damage to the Austro-trailing German ship was substantial: British 34-centimetre and 30.5-centimetre shells progressively destroyed Blücher's gun turrets, compromised her steering, and initiated multiple internal fires. By 11:00, Blücher was effectively disabled: her primary armament was substantially inoperative, her speed was reduced to approximately 17 knots, and she was taking on water through multiple hull breaches. Admiral Beatty's subsequent tactical decision was
9. 1916 — HMS Invincible. Jutland, the first battlecruiser, Q turret Location: North Sea, off Jutland, Denmark · Coordinates: 56.82°N 5.93°E · Casualties: 1,026 · Survivors: 6 · Depth: 55 m · Cause: naval gunfire · magazine explosion — Engaged by SMS Derfflinger and SMS Lützow at the Battle of Jutland at 18:33 on 31 May 1916. A German salvo penetrated her Q turret and ignited the adjacent magazine. She broke in half inside ninety seconds; her two halves remained upright on the North Sea floor. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: battlecruiser · Invincible class · Tonnage: 17,250 tons · Crew: 1032 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1907 The first battlecruiser ever built and type-ship of a new class of warship. At the Battle of Jutland on the evening of 31 May 1916 a German salvo from SMS Derfflinger penetrated her Q turret and exploded the adjacent magazine; she broke in half inside ninety seconds. 1,026 dead, six survivors. Rear-Admiral Sir Horace Hood, Nelson's great-great-grandson, died on the bridge. The Vessel HMS Invincible was the lead ship of her class of battlecruisers, the first battlecruiser ever built, laid down on 2 April 1906 at Elswick on the Tyne and commissioned on 20 March 1909. She was 172 metres long, 17,250 tons, and carried eight 12-inch guns in four twin turrets, a main armament equal to contemporary battleships. Her design speed of 25 knots, produced by 41,000 shaft horsepower on four shafts, was approximately 4 knots faster than contemporary Dreadnought-class battleships. She was Fisher's flagship of the battlecruiser concept: fast enough to catch and destroy armoured cruisers, heavily armed enough to engage any other ship of her class, and fast enough to outrun any battleship. The concept traded armour protection for speed; her belt armour of 6 inches was thinner than contemporary armoured cruisers and half the thickness of contemporary battleships. In Fisher's tactical vision, speed would compensate for the armour deficit: an Invincible class ship would engage at ranges beyond any battleship's accurate fire and would close only when the balance favoured her. She entered service in 1909 as the Royal Navy's answer to the emerging German Scharnhorst-class armoured cruisers and to any future German ships of the battlecruiser type. By 1914 she had served in the North Sea and the Mediterranean; her one combat action before Jutland had been at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914, where she and her sister HMS Inflexible, under Vice-Admiral Doveton St The Disaster At 18:33 on 31 May 1916, a salvo from SMS Derfflinger struck Invincible's Q turret, forward of the bridge. The shell penetrated the turret roof and detonated in the cordite handling room. The resulting flash explosion propagated downward through the loading trunk into the forward magazine of Q turret. The forward magazine of Q turret detonated. The fire-flash then propagated aft along the main flash path of her interconnected magazines; within two seconds of the first detonation, the adjacent P turret magazine had also detonated; within six seconds, the cross-magazine connections to her amidships A and X turret magazines had ignited. Invincible experienced essentially simultaneous detonation of three of her four main magazines. She disintegrated. Observers on nearby ships saw her hull lifted bodily from the water and split into two pieces by the blast; the forward piece rose at the stern, the after piece at the bow, and the two ends momentarily stood almost vertical in the smoke before sinking in opposite directions. Photographs taken from HMS Indomitable show the smoke column reaching 300 metres into the North Sea evening, the highest single pillar of smoke recorded in the Battle of Jutland. Invincible was gone inside fifteen seconds of the fatal salvo. Rear-Admiral Hood, Captain Edward Cay, 23 other officers, and 1,001 ratings went down with her. Six men survived, of whom five were from her foretop or masthead: one was the gunnery control officer who had been thrown clear b
10. 1916 — HMS Queen Mary. Jutland, the Derfflinger salvo, ninety seconds Location: North Sea, off Jutland, Denmark · Coordinates: 56.80°N 5.85°E · Casualties: 1,266 · Survivors: 9 · Depth: 60 m · Cause: naval gunfire · magazine explosion — Engaged by SMS Derfflinger and SMS Seydlitz at the Battle of Jutland on the afternoon of 31 May 1916. Two rapid German salvoes found her forward and after magazines almost simultaneously. She blew apart in ninety seconds. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: battlecruiser · Lion class · Tonnage: 26,770 tons · Crew: 1275 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1912 Royal Navy battlecruiser at the Battle of Jutland. Struck by two quick German salvoes on the afternoon of 31 May 1916; her forward and after magazines went up together and she blew apart in ninety seconds. 1,266 dead, nine survivors. Vice-Admiral Beatty, watching from HMS Lion, said to his flag captain, 'There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.' Three British battlecruisers died the same way that afternoon. The Vessel HMS Queen Mary was a Lion-class battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, the third ship of her class (after Lion and Princess Royal), commissioned at Palmers Hebburn yard on 4 September 1913. She was 214 metres long, 27,200 tons, armed with eight 13.5-inch guns in four twin turrets, and designed for 28 knots. Her designer, Sir Philip Watts, had intended the Lion-class to be the answer to the German Moltke-class battlecruisers; at her commissioning, Queen Mary was the fastest and most heavily armed battlecruiser in the world. She was the most modern of the Royal Navy's pre-war battlecruisers at the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. She was assigned to the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty at Rosyth. Beatty's battlecruiser force had been established under Admiral Fisher's late-Victorian doctrine as the "eyes of the fleet": fast ships intended to scout ahead of the main battle line, engage enemy scouting forces, and lead the fleet onto the enemy's main body. The battlecruiser concept had several known weaknesses by 1914. The Lion-class ships had been built with main belt armour of 9 inches and deck armour of 1 inch, substantially thinner than contemporary battleships; the design philosophy traded armour for speed and firepower. Queen Mary's captain at Jutland, Captain Cecil Prowse, had expressed concern through 1915 about the inadequate deck armour against plunging fire at long range; Prowse's concerns had been formally logged wi The Disaster At 16:26, approximately 50 minutes into the battlecruiser action, the German battlecruiser SMS Derfflinger opened fire on Queen Mary from a range of 14,500 yards. Derfflinger's third salvo of 12-inch shells straddled Queen Mary. Her fourth salvo, fired at 16:26, landed two hits at the base of Queen Mary's Q turret. The two shells penetrated the lightly-armoured turret roof and detonated in the 13.5-inch cordite handling room adjacent to the turret. The cordite ignited. The resulting flash explosion propagated downward through the loading trunk into the main magazine below. Queen Mary detonated in a single catastrophic explosion at approximately 16:27 on 31 May 1916. The explosion vented upward through her boat deck and superstructure, producing a column of flame and smoke estimated by observers on nearby ships at 120 metres in height. Her hull broke at the point of Q turret; her bow and stern rose momentarily in the air and then sank in opposite directions. She was gone inside 90 seconds of the fatal salvo. 1,266 of her 1,275 crew died. Beatty, on the bridge of HMS Lion 2,000 yards ahead, watched Queen Mary explode. His remark to his flag captain Alfred Chatfield, preserved in Chatfield's 1942 memoirs, was: "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today." The remark was understated even by the standards of the Royal Navy: in the same 40 minutes of Beatty's battlecruiser action, HMS Indefatigable had also been destroyed by an identical magazine explosion (1,019
11. 1916 — HMS Black Prince. Jutland, the night engagement, all hands Location: North Sea, off Jutland, Denmark · Coordinates: 56.75°N 5.83°E · Casualties: 857 · Survivors: 0 · Depth: 55 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Separated from the 1st Cruiser Squadron in poor visibility during the night phase of the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916. At around 00:10 on 1 June she found herself less than a thousand metres from the German battle line. Destroyed by combined fire from SMS Thüringen, Ostfriesland, Nassau, and Friedrich der Grosse. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: armoured cruiser · Tonnage: 13,550 tons · Crew: 857 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1904 Royal Navy armoured cruiser, separated from the 1st Cruiser Squadron during the night phase of the Battle of Jutland. At 00:10 on 1 June 1916 she blundered into the German battle line at point-blank range. Destroyed in fifteen minutes by combined fire from four German dreadnoughts; no survivors of her crew of 857. The worst-ever Royal Navy loss with no survivors; only HMS Hood the following war would exceed the toll in any single engagement. The Vessel HMS Black Prince was a British armoured cruiser of the Royal Navy's Duke of Edinburgh class, built at the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company between 1903 and 1906 and commissioned on 17 March 1906. She was 154 metres long, 12,595 tons displacement, and armed with six 9.2-inch primary guns in single-gun turrets (one on the forward centreline, one aft, and four in wing positions), ten 6-inch secondary guns in casemate positions, and three 18-inch torpedo tubes. Her armour protection included a 152-millimetre main belt of Krupp cemented armour, 190-millimetre turret face armour, and 38-millimetre deck armour. She was, at her commissioning in 1906, among the more powerful armoured cruisers in the Royal Navy. Her design represented the final generation of British armoured cruisers before the 1906-1907 transition to the battlecruiser concept (the subsequent HMS Invincible of 1908 represented this transition). The specific tactical role of the Duke of Edinburgh class was as heavy scouting and raiding forces: ships that could overwhelm enemy light cruisers and survive engagement with moderate enemy capital ships, operating independently of the main battle-fleet. By May 1916, Black Prince had been assigned to the 1st Cruiser Squadron of the British Grand Fleet under Rear Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, based at Cromarty on the Scottish coast. Her specific operational role was reconnaissance and screening for the Grand Fleet's capital-ship formations. Her complement was approximat The Disaster During the night of 31 May to 1 June 1916, the battle's tactical situation became progressively more confused. The German High Seas Fleet had begun its withdrawal from the main engagement area, retreating southeast towards the safety of the German naval base at Wilhelmshaven. The British Grand Fleet was pursuing, but the pursuit was complicated by restricted visibility (night, with occasional fog banks), by the confused battle situation, and by the limited night-signalling capabilities of 1916 naval communications. At approximately 00:15 on 1 June 1916, HMS Black Prince, apparently navigating independently in the night, blundered into the retreating German High Seas Fleet at close range. Her specific position was approximately 25 kilometres east of the point of the main-fleet engagement; her course was approximately south-southwest; she was approximately 1,500 metres from the German battleship SMS Thüringen. Thüringen identified Black Prince as a British ship within seconds of the encounter and opened fire at approximately 00:16 on 1 June 1916. The German battleship's primary armament was twelve 30.5-centimetre guns; her fire was accurate and sustained. Black Prince's response was insufficient: her own 9.2-inch guns could not effectively engage a battleship at such close range, and her armour was inadequate to protect against 30.5-centimetre shells. The engagement lasted approximately 10 minutes. Black Prince was progressively destroyed by approximately 15 heavy-shell hits fr
12. 1916 — HMS Hampshire. Marwick Head, Kitchener aboard, twelve survived Location: off Marwick Head, Orkney, Scotland · Coordinates: 59.13°N 3.40°W · Casualties: 737 · Survivors: 12 · Depth: 65 m · Cause: mine — Struck a mine laid by the German submarine U-75 off Marwick Head, Orkney, at 19:40 on 5 June 1916. In a force-nine gale, with seas running at five metres, no boats could be launched. She sank in fifteen minutes. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: armoured cruiser · Devonshire class · Tonnage: 10,850 tons · Crew: 655 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1903 Royal Navy armoured cruiser, carrying Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War and the face of the recruiting poster, on a diplomatic mission to Russia. Struck a mine laid by U-75 off Marwick Head, Orkney, at 19:40 on 5 June 1916 in a force-nine gale, and sank in fifteen minutes. 737 dead of 749, including Kitchener; twelve men made it ashore on a coast where the Admiralty had turned local rescuers back until morning. The loss became the centrepiece of British conspiracy theories about the war for a generation. The Vessel HMS Hampshire was a Devonshire-class armoured cruiser of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the Armstrong Whitworth yard at Elswick on 15 July 1905. She was 144 metres long, 10,850 tons standard displacement, armed with four 7.5-inch guns in single turrets and six 6-inch guns in casemate mountings. Her design speed was 22 knots on four-shaft triple-expansion engines. The Devonshire class of six ships (HMS Devonshire, HMS Hampshire, HMS Carnarvon, HMS Antrim, HMS Argyll, HMS Roxburgh) was the Royal Navy's last class of armoured cruiser to be designed with the specific role of fleet-scouting for the main battle line. By the mid-1910s the class had been effectively superseded by the battlecruiser concept and by the modern light cruiser classes. Hampshire was assigned in 1916 to the Grand Fleet's 2nd Cruiser Squadron based at Scapa Flow. Her commanding officer in June 1916 was Captain Herbert Savill, 53, a career Royal Navy officer. Her crew was 655 officers and ratings. The Disaster At 19:40 on 5 June 1916, approximately 1.5 nautical miles off the western coast of the Orkney mainland (specifically off Marwick Head), HMS Hampshire struck a contact mine that had been laid by the German submarine U-75 on approximately 29 May 1916. The mine exploded beneath the forward starboard section of HMS Hampshire's hull. The damage was extensive: the forward engine room and forward boiler room were flooded immediately; her main electrical power was lost; her damage-control systems were unable to respond before the progressive flooding made her loss inevitable. HMS Hampshire listed heavily to starboard within 90 seconds of the mine strike. Her list progressed at approximately 8 degrees per minute. By 19:50 on 5 June 1916 she was at 45 degrees of list. She capsized at 19:55 on 5 June 1916 at approximately 59°10′N 3°24′W in approximately 65 metres of water. The HMS Hampshire loss was catastrophic for her complement. Of her 655 crew and 30 additional passengers (a total of 685 aboard), only 12 survived. Of the 673 dead, essentially all died in the freezing water of the North Atlantic within 30 minutes of the sinking. The weather conditions (force-9 gale, 6-metre swell, water temperature approximately 7°C) made survival in the water essentially impossible except for the few men who had reached life rafts or debris that could support them out of the water. Field Marshal Lord Kitchener died in the sinking. He was last seen on the upper deck in his Army greatcoat, walking tow
13. 1917 — RMS Laconia. Fastnet torpedo, the American women Location: Atlantic Ocean, off the Fastnet Rock, Ireland · Coordinates: 51.37°N 9.55°W · Casualties: 12 · Survivors: ~280 · Depth: 3,300 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by the German submarine SM U-50 (Gerhard Berger, commanding) at 22:30 on 25 February 1917, 160 nautical miles west-northwest of the Fastnet Rock off southern Ireland. Struck by a single torpedo to the engine room; sank two and a half hours later after a second torpedo. · Fate: abyssal · not located · Type: passenger liner · Cunard Line · Tonnage: 18,099 tons · Crew: 217 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1911 Cunard passenger liner, Boston to Liverpool. Torpedoed by SM U-50 off the Fastnet Rock at 22:30 on 25 February 1917, five weeks before the United States entered the Great War. Twelve dead, including two American women lost in the sea that night, Mary E. Hoy and her daughter Elizabeth of Chicago. The specific circumstances of their deaths, reported in the American press with calculated detail, were among the events that pushed the Wilson administration into the war six weeks later. The Vessel The RMS Laconia was a Cunard Line transatlantic liner, 189 metres long, 18,099 tons, built at Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson on the Tyne in 1911. She was the first of the first-generation Laconia-class: a medium-sized liner intended for the Boston-Liverpool and New York-Liverpool intermediate trades rather than for the Blue Riband express service. Her service speed of 17 knots was deliberately modest; her hold volume was unusually generous for a passenger ship of her dimensions, reflecting Cunard's assessment that the profitable segment of the Atlantic trade in the 1910s was the intermediate-speed liner carrying both passengers and cargo. She made her maiden voyage in January 1912 and operated on the Liverpool-New York route through 1914. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 she was taken into Royal Navy service as the armed merchant cruiser HMS Laconia; she served in the blockade of the Cape Verde Islands and in the reconstitution of the Royal Navy's East African squadron between 1914 and 1916. She was returned to Cunard service on the New York-Liverpool route in September 1916 after the Admiralty's review of AMC cost-effectiveness. Her return to passenger service in late 1916 placed her in the primary target zone of the resumed German unrestricted submarine warfare campaign that began on 1 February 1917. She sailed Boston-Liverpool with full passenger and cargo loads through January and February 1917 under the standing Admiralty zigzag orders. The Disaster The torpedo struck Laconia below the waterline in her aft engineering spaces. The engine room flooded immediately; her main engines stopped. Captain W. R. D. Irvine ordered the ship's company to abandon ship. The lifeboats were successfully launched in the relatively calm weather; the evacuation proceeded in a substantially more orderly manner than had been typical of earlier 1917 submarine victims. Berger surfaced U-50 at approximately 23:15 to confirm his kill and, contrary to the routine German practice of the period, offered no assistance to the survivors in the lifeboats. U-50 then fired a second torpedo at 23:25. Laconia rolled onto her port side and sank at 23:30 on 25 February 1917. Twelve people died. The relatively low death toll was the result of the orderly evacuation, the fair weather, and the proximity of the USS Mary F. Scott, a British patrol trawler that reached the scene at 02:00 on 26 February and recovered most of the survivors. Two of the twelve dead, however, were Mary E. Hoy and Elizabeth Hoy, the American women from Chicago; Elizabeth had died in the lifeboat of exposure and Mary had died of a heart attack during the evacuation. The American press coverage of the Hoy deaths was calibrated, amplified, and political. The Hearst and Pulitzer papers, which had been advocating American entry into the war since 1916, carried detailed accounts of the two American women's deaths on the front pages of their 28 February 1917 editions. The New York Times dedicate
14. 1917 — SS Mendi. Isle of Wight fog, the Darro did not stop Location: English Channel, off the Isle of Wight · Coordinates: 50.52°N 1.10°W · Casualties: 646 · Survivors: 267 · Depth: 42 m · Cause: collision — Rammed in heavy fog by the Royal Mail Line's SS Darro off St Catherine's Point at 04:57 on 21 February 1917 while carrying the South African Native Labour Corps to France. The Darro's bow penetrated her starboard side. The Darro did not stop to rescue; the Mendi sank in twenty minutes. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: troopship · British and African Steam Navigation · Tonnage: 4,222 tons · Crew: 90 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1905 British troop transport, carrying the South African Native Labour Corps, 616 black South Africans bound for the Western Front. Rammed in fog in the English Channel by the Royal Mail Line's Darro on the morning of 21 February 1917. 646 dead, mostly men from the Xhosa, Mpondo, Basotho, and Zulu homelands, and the Darro did not stop to rescue. Suppressed by white South Africa for eighty years; today her memorial at Hollybrook Cemetery is the centrepiece of the South African state's war-dead commemoration. The Vessel The SS Mendi was a British passenger and cargo vessel of the British and African Steam Navigation Company (Elder Dempster Line), commissioned at the Alexander Stephen yard at Linthouse, Glasgow, on 20 September 1905. She was 113 metres long, 4,230 gross tons, and had been designed for the Liverpool-Lagos and Liverpool-Calabar West African trade. Her peacetime role had been as a general-cargo and passenger vessel serving the British West African colonies. At the outbreak of the First World War she was requisitioned as a British troop transport and was assigned, from late 1916 onwards, to the specific role of transporting members of the South African Native Labour Corps to France. The SANLC had been established in 1916 as a non-combatant labour unit of the South African Defence Force, specifically for the movement of supplies, the building of defensive works, and general logistic support for the British Army on the Western Front. The SANLC was composed of approximately 21,000 black South African volunteers who had been recruited from across the Union of South Africa, with specific concentrations from the Eastern Cape, Natal, Zululand, and the Transvaal. Her master in February 1917 was Captain Henry Yardley, 52, a career Elder Dempster mariner. The Disaster The SS Darro struck SS Mendi at 04:57 on 21 February 1917. The Darro's reinforced bow penetrated Mendi's starboard side approximately 20 feet below the main deck. The damage was substantial: Mendi's No. 2 hold flooded immediately; her electrical power was lost; she began to list to starboard. Captain Yardley's response was the standard one: sound the abandon-ship signal and lower the lifeboats. The Darro's master, Captain Henry Winchester Stump, did not immediately come to the aid of the stricken Mendi. The specific reason for Stump's delay has been the subject of continuing debate: the British inquiry found that Stump had mistakenly believed Mendi was a warship (a suspicion given some plausibility by Mendi's wartime grey paint and the destroyer escort); others have argued that Stump's reluctance reflected his own damaged ship's condition (Darro had sustained substantial damage in the collision). The delay in rescue was, whatever its cause, substantial. Darro did not begin to lower her boats for the rescue of Mendi survivors until approximately 06:30 on 21 February 1917, an hour and a half after the collision. By that time Mendi had sunk completely. SS Mendi sank at approximately 05:20 on 21 February 1917 at approximately 50°27′N 1°30′W in approximately 42 metres of water in the English Channel. Of her 917 aboard, 646 died: 607 South African Native Labour Corps men, 17 officers, 4 nurses, 2 officers' wives, and 16 ship's crew. The dead were overwhelmingly from the SANLC compl
15. 1918 — SMS Szent István. Premuda, MAS-15, the sinking on film Location: Adriatic Sea, off Premuda Island · Coordinates: 44.27°N 14.37°E · Casualties: 89 · Survivors: ~1,005 · Depth: 66 m · Cause: motor torpedo boat — Ambushed by Luigi Rizzo's Italian motor torpedo boat MAS-15 off the island of Premuda at 03:20 on 10 June 1918. Two torpedoes struck the starboard quarter. Counter-flooding failed; she capsized over three hours on a calm Adriatic morning, the entire sinking captured by motion picture camera from her sister-ship SMS Tegetthoff. · Fate: protected war grave · diveable · Type: dreadnought · Tegetthoff class · Tonnage: 20,000 tons · Crew: 1094 · Flag: Austria-Hungary · Launched: 1914 Austro-Hungarian Tegetthoff-class dreadnought, sailing south to attack the Otranto Barrage. Ambushed by Luigi Rizzo's Italian motor torpedo boat MAS-15 off the island of Premuda at 03:20 on 10 June 1918. She capsized over three hours on a calm Adriatic morning, filmed in full from her sister ship Tegetthoff: the only sinking of a dreadnought ever recorded on motion picture. 89 dead of 1,094. The Vessel SMS Szent István (Hungarian: "Saint Stephen") was an Austro-Hungarian dreadnought battleship of the Tegetthoff class, built at the Hungarian Danube Shipbuilding Company yard at Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) between 1912 and 1915 and commissioned on 13 December 1915. She was 152 metres long, 20,000 tons displacement, and armed with twelve 30.5-centimetre primary guns in four triple-gun turrets (two forward, two aft), twelve 15-centimetre secondary guns in casemate positions, and four 53-centimetre torpedo tubes. Her armour protection included a 280-millimetre main belt of Krupp cemented armour, 280-millimetre turret face armour, and 76-millimetre deck armour. She was the last of the four Tegetthoff-class dreadnoughts completed by the Austro-Hungarian Navy and, at her commissioning in December 1915, among the most powerful capital ships in the Mediterranean. Her specific distinction, beyond her sister ships, was her Hungarian construction: she was the only major Austro-Hungarian capital ship built at a Hungarian shipyard (Fiume) rather than at the Austrian naval arsenal at Pola. Her construction had been the specific political commitment of the Hungarian government in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867; the Hungarian political class had insisted that the Hungarian shipbuilding industry be represented in the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought programme. By June 1918, Szent István had been the Austro-Hungarian fleet's flagship at various points of the First World War. Her operationa The Disaster Capitano Rizzo's tactical response was immediate and aggressive. MAS 15 closed to approximately 300 metres of Szent István and launched her two 45-centimetre torpedoes; MAS 21 similarly engaged Tegetthoff, but Tegetthoff's torpedo strike failed to detonate. The torpedo launches occurred at approximately 03:25 on 10 June 1918. Both of MAS 15's torpedoes struck Szent István on her starboard side. The first torpedo struck at approximately frame 32 (forward of the amidships), below the waterline, and exploded against the ship's starboard side. The second torpedo struck at approximately frame 48 (amidships), also below the waterline, and exploded against the ship's starboard side. The two torpedo impacts produced a single catastrophic breach of approximately 25 metres along the ship's starboard side. The immediate damage control response was systematic but ultimately insufficient. Szent István began to list substantially to starboard within seconds of the impact; her pumps were activated but could not keep pace with the flooding rate; her adjacent watertight compartments were progressively compromised by the continuing structural failure. Captain Seitz's standard counter-flooding response (flooding port-side compartments to compensate for the starboard flooding) was implemented but was substantially inadequate for the specific damage pattern. Over the subsequent two hours, Szent István's list progressively increased from 5 degrees to 10 degrees to 15 degrees to 25 degrees. At appr
16. 1918 — HMHS Llandovery Castle. Hospital ship, the machine guns on the boats Location: Atlantic Ocean, off southern Ireland · Coordinates: 51.00°N 10.75°W · Casualties: 234 · Survivors: 24 · Depth: abyssal · not located · Cause: submarine torpedo · war crime — Torpedoed by the German submarine SM U-86 (Helmut Patzig, commanding) off southern Ireland at 21:30 on 27 June 1918 despite her unmistakable hospital ship markings. Sank in ten minutes. Patzig then surfaced and ran down the lifeboats, machine-gunning survivors in the water to eliminate witnesses to the attack on a marked vessel. · Fate: abyssal Atlantic · Type: hospital ship · Union-Castle liner · Tonnage: 11,423 tons · Crew: 164 · Flag: Canada · United Kingdom · Launched: 1913 Canadian hospital ship, returning from Halifax with medical personnel. Torpedoed by U-86 off southern Ireland on the night of 27 June 1918 despite her unmistakable markings; Kapitänleutnant Helmut Patzig then surfaced and opened machine-gun fire on the lifeboats to eliminate witnesses. 234 of 258 dead. Patzig was named at the Leipzig war crimes trials in 1921 but evaded prosecution by escaping to Danzig. The Vessel HMHS Llandovery Castle was a British hospital ship, formerly a Union-Castle Line mail steamer operating between Southampton and the Cape of Good Hope. She was 152 metres long, 11,423 tons, built in 1914 at Barclay Curle on the Clyde. At the outbreak of the First World War she had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty; in December 1916 she was transferred to the Canadian Naval Service and converted at Halifax to a hospital ship in Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps service. Her hospital ship conversion included the conventional Hague Convention markings of white hull paint, prominent red crosses on her sides and top, a green line along her hull at the waterline, and specific identification floodlights that were to be illuminated at night. She carried a Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps ship's surgeon, approximately 80 nurses and medical orderlies, and approximately 40 ship's crew. Her patient capacity was 622 beds distributed across the former passenger decks. Her service between December 1916 and June 1918 was the standard Western Front casualty-clearing run: she loaded wounded Canadian and British soldiers at Le Havre or Portsmouth and carried them to Halifax for onward transport to hospitals in Canada. She made 11 successful round trips between January 1917 and June 1918 without incident. The Disaster The torpedo struck Llandovery Castle on her port side. She sank in ten minutes, at 21:40 on 27 June 1918. In the ten minutes between the first strike and the sinking, the ship's crew and the medical personnel succeeded in launching six lifeboats with approximately 164 people aboard, out of the 258 total aboard the ship. The remaining 94 people either died in the initial strike or were unable to reach the boats. What followed was the single most documented war crime committed by a German submarine in the First World War. Patzig surfaced U-86 at 21:50 and approached the lifeboats at close range. He demanded to know whether Canadian Army flying officers, whom he apparently believed had been aboard, had been in the lifeboats. The medical officer Major Thomas Lyon replied that the ship had carried only Canadian Army Medical Corps personnel and Merchant Navy crew. Patzig did not accept the reply. U-86 then rammed and sank five of the six lifeboats in succession, firing her deck gun at the occupants of the lifeboats who had been thrown into the water. The attack continued for approximately 30 minutes, during which the U-boat's crew fired 75 machine-gun rounds at the survivors in the water. One lifeboat, the first one into the water, had already cleared the attack area and its 24 occupants survived. The five other lifeboats were destroyed with all 140 of their occupants. 234 of the 258 aboard Llandovery Castle died on the night of 27-28 June 1918. Of the 164 Canadian Army Medical Cor
17. 1918 — RMS Leinster. Irish Sea, four weeks from armistice Location: Irish Sea, off the Kish Lightship, Dublin Bay · Coordinates: 53.30°N 5.85°W · Casualties: 564 · Survivors: ~260 · Depth: 35 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Struck by two torpedoes from the German submarine SM UB-123 off the Kish Lightship at 09:50 on 10 October 1918. First torpedo holed the bow; second, fired after she had turned back for Dublin, struck the engine room. Sank in fifteen minutes. · Fate: continental shelf · protected · Type: mail packet · City of Dublin Steam Packet · Tonnage: 2,646 tons · Crew: 77 · Flag: United Kingdom · Ireland · Launched: 1897 City of Dublin Steam Packet Company mail boat, Dublin to Holyhead. Torpedoed twice by UB-123 off the Kish Lightship at 09:50 on 10 October 1918, in the final month of the war. 564 dead of 771 aboard, including mothers and children returning from visiting soldiers in British hospitals. The worst disaster in the history of the Irish Sea; the Armistice came four weeks later. The Vessel The RMS Leinster was a British mail steamer of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, built by Laird Brothers at Birkenhead in 1896. She was 113 metres long, 2,646 tons, twin-screw triple-expansion steam propulsion, designed for a service speed of 24 knots. She and her three sisters (Ulster, Munster, and Connaught) operated the Kingstown-Holyhead route, the principal Irish-English mail and passenger connection, under a mail contract with the British Post Office. By 1918 the Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) to Holyhead route was the fastest sea passage between England and Ireland, four and a half hours at full speed, operated under wartime conditions with the four sisters in daily rotation and a strict mail-ship schedule. She carried on every outward sailing the British Army mail for Ireland, civilian mail in both directions, and passenger traffic averaging about 400 on each crossing. Her master at the date of her final voyage was Captain William Birch, 62, a veteran City of Dublin Company officer with 35 years of Irish Sea experience. Her crew of 77 included stewardesses, stokers, a postal sorting staff of 22, and a Royal Navy signal party of six. She also carried, on every voyage, a Royal Naval Reserve gunnery crew manning her two 12-pounder defensive guns installed in 1917. The Disaster The torpedo struck Leinster on her port side, forward of the bridge, at 09:50 on 10 October 1918. Captain Birch ordered the helm hard over and the ship turned through 180 degrees to attempt to return to Kingstown at reduced speed. Ramm followed her and at 10:02 fired a second torpedo that struck her amidships. The second torpedo detonated in her engine room; Leinster lost power immediately and began to list heavily to port. She sank at 10:05 on 10 October 1918, fifteen minutes after the first torpedo strike. Her lifeboats, sixteen in number, mostly could not be launched from the listing deck. Of the eight that did launch, four were damaged by the rapid sinking or by the port-side debris. The water temperature that morning was approximately 9°C; survivors who reached the water alive had perhaps 30 minutes of functional swimming before hypothermia began to disable them. The Royal Navy destroyers HMS Lively, HMS Mallard, and HMS Seal reached the site over the following two hours, responding to distress signals from the sinking. They pulled survivors from the water until mid-afternoon and returned to Kingstown with approximately 260 people alive. Over the following week the confirmed death toll grew as more bodies were recovered from the Irish Sea coast; the final figure settled at 564 dead and 207 survivors out of 771 aboard. This was the worst single-day maritime disaster in the history of the Irish Sea, and the largest wartime loss of Irish civilian life of the First World War
18. 1918 — SS Tuscania. North Channel, the first American troopship Location: North Channel, off Rathlin Island, Scotland · Coordinates: 55.55°N 6.50°W · Casualties: 210 · Survivors: ~2,100 · Depth: 123 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by the German submarine SM UB-77 (Wilhelm Meyer, commanding) in the North Channel off Rathlin Island at 17:40 on 5 February 1918. Single torpedo to the engine room. Sank in under two hours. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: troopship · former Anchor Line liner · Tonnage: 14,348 tons · Crew: 384 · Flag: United Kingdom · Anchor Line · Launched: 1914 Anchor Line transatlantic liner converted to a troop transport, carrying American Expeditionary Force reinforcements to France. Torpedoed by UB-77 in the North Channel off Rathlin Island at 17:40 on 5 February 1918. The first American troopship torpedoed in the war. 210 dead, including 166 American soldiers, and the Islay crofters who buried the bodies of the American dead became local heroes. The Vessel The SS Tuscania was an Anchor Line passenger ship, commissioned at the Alexander Stephen and Sons yard at Linthouse, Glasgow, on 15 November 1914. She was 168 metres long, 14,348 gross tons, with triple-expansion steam propulsion on twin screws and a service speed of 17 knots. She was designed for the Anchor Line's Glasgow-New York route, carrying primarily Scottish and Irish emigrants to America in tourist and third-class accommodations. At the outbreak of the First World War she had been requisitioned only briefly by the Admiralty before being returned to commercial service. By late 1917 she had been requisitioned again as an Allied troop transport, specifically for the movement of American Expeditionary Forces to France as part of the United States' late entry into the war on 6 April 1917. Her master in January 1918 was Captain Peter McLean, 54, a career Anchor Line mariner. Her crew was 215 officers and ratings. Her operational role from late 1917 forward was exclusively as a troop transport for the AEF. The Disaster The torpedo detonation breached Tuscania's engine room and ruptured her steam system. Her main engines stopped within 30 seconds of the strike; her electrical power was lost; her pumps were inoperable. She began listing immediately to starboard. Captain McLean ordered the abandon-ship signal at 18:00 on 5 February 1918. The evacuation of the 2,400 troops and crew aboard was conducted in conditions of increasing darkness and deteriorating weather. The specific difficulty was the distribution of lifeboat spaces: the Tuscania had been designed for approximately 1,000 passengers and her lifeboat capacity (sufficient for 1,200) was substantially below her actual troop complement of 2,400. Many of the AEF troops had to enter the freezing water of the North Channel to reach the arriving British destroyers. SS Tuscania sank at approximately 21:20 on 5 February 1918 at approximately 55°30′N 5°58′W in approximately 120 metres of water. Over the following three hours, approximately 2,100 survivors were pulled from the water by HMS Grasshopper, HMS Pigeon, HMS Mosquito, and other British destroyers responding to the sinking. Of 2,397 aboard, 210 died: 166 American soldiers, 44 British ship's crew. The majority of the 166 American dead had died of exposure in the water rather than in the initial torpedo explosion; the water temperature in the North Channel that night was approximately 6°C, and many troops had been in the water for more than 30 minutes before being rescued.
19. 1928 — SS Vestris. Coal shifted, the lifeboats capsized Location: Atlantic Ocean, 200 nmi E of Norfolk, Virginia · Coordinates: 36.37°N 71.30°W · Casualties: ~125 · Survivors: ~200 · Depth: abyssal · not located · Cause: foundered — Caught in a gale on the morning of 10 November 1928 with an overloaded cargo of coal that shifted to starboard. Captain Carey delayed the SOS by eighteen hours while trying to correct the list. Foundered at midday on 12 November after the list crossed the critical angle. · Fate: abyssal Atlantic · Type: passenger liner · Lamport & Holt · Tonnage: 10,494 tons · Crew: 198 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1912 British Lamport & Holt liner, New York to the River Plate. Caught in a gale 200 miles off Virginia on 11 November 1928 with an overloaded coal cargo that shifted to starboard; Captain Carey delayed the SOS by eighteen hours trying to correct the list. Of about 125 lost, all but eleven were women and children; the lifeboats reserved for them capsized under the list as they were launched. The inquiry rewrote American stability and lifeboat regulations. The Vessel The SS Vestris was a British passenger-cargo liner of the Lamport and Holt Line, built at the Workman Clark yard at Belfast between 1911 and 1912 and launched on 16 May 1912 (four weeks after the sinking of RMS Titanic). She was 155 metres long, 10,494 gross tons, and powered by quadruple-expansion steam engines producing approximately 7,800 horsepower. Her design was a hybrid passenger-cargo ship intended for the Lamport and Holt Line's New York to Buenos Aires service via the Caribbean and the Brazilian coast. Her accommodation comprised approximately 280 first-class passengers, 130 second-class passengers, and 200 steerage passengers, plus a crew of 195. Her cargo capacity was approximately 7,500 tonnes, predominantly utilised for general merchandise on the northbound voyage and for Argentine agricultural products (grain, meat, hides) on the southbound return. The Lamport and Holt South American service was, through the 1910s and 1920s, one of the principal passenger-cargo connections between North America and the Southern Cone; Vestris and her sister-ships carried substantial numbers of Argentine businessmen, British and American expatriate residents, and European emigrants to the developing Argentine economy. By November 1928, Vestris was 16 years old and had made approximately 60 round trips on the New York to Buenos Aires route. Her operational history had been largely unremarkable: routine commercial service, with minor incidents related to cargo shifts and weather de The Disaster By the afternoon of 11 November 1928, Vestris was approximately 320 kilometres east of Norfolk, Virginia, sailing through the outer margins of the Atlantic storm system. The wind had risen through the day from force 5 to force 8; the sea state was producing waves of approximately 5-7 metres height; the ship's rolling motion was substantial. At approximately 20:00 on 11 November 1928, the first substantial cargo shift occurred. A portion of the upper-hold automotive parts shifted to starboard under the ship's rolling motion; the shift produced a permanent starboard list of approximately 5 degrees. Captain Carey's response was standard: pumps were activated to counter-flood port-side ballast tanks; the cargo holds were inspected for further instability; the ship's course was adjusted to reduce rolling. The counter-flooding failed to correct the list. Over the subsequent 12 hours, the ship's starboard list progressively increased from 5 to 10 to 15 to 20 degrees. The specific failure mechanism was that the counter-flooding water was entering ballast tanks that were not properly configured for asymmetric loading; the flooded port-side tanks were adding weight without meaningfully shifting the ship's centre of buoyancy to compensate for the starboard cargo shift. At approximately 09:00 on 12 November 1928, Captain Carey transmitted an SOS distress signal via the ship's wireless. Vestris was at this point approximately 400 kilometres east of Norfolk, with a list of approximately 25
20. 1934 — SS Morro Castle. Asbury Park, the captain already dead Location: off Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA · Coordinates: 40.25°N 74.00°W · Casualties: 137 · Survivors: ~412 · Depth: grounded · scrapped · Cause: fire — Fire broke out in a storage locker off the Jersey coast at 02:50 on 8 September 1934. Captain Robert Willmott had died of a sudden heart attack eight hours earlier, leaving the chief officer in command. Crew response and firefighting were chaotic; the fire spread through the vessel in thirty minutes. · Fate: ran aground at Asbury Park · scrapped · Type: cruise liner · Ward Line · Tonnage: 11,520 tons · Crew: 240 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1930 American Ward Line cruise ship, Havana to New York with Labor Day holiday passengers. Captain Robert Willmott died of a sudden heart attack on the evening of 7 September 1934; hours later a fire broke out in a storage locker off the Jersey coast. 137 dead of 549 aboard. The burning hulk drifted onto the beach directly in front of the Asbury Park Convention Hall, where it drew crowds for months and drove the first meaningful American shipboard fire regulations. The Vessel The SS Morro Castle was an American-flag cruise liner of the Ward Line, formally the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company. She was built at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in 1930 and entered service on the New York-Havana cruise route on 23 August 1930 as the principal vessel of the Ward Line's rapidly-expanding Cuban leisure trade. She was 155 metres long, 11,520 gross tons, certified for 489 cabin passengers and 240 crew, with a designed service speed of 20 knots on twin turbo-electric screws. Her commercial premise was the Prohibition-era American demand for legal alcohol: Cuba, a Ward Line's primary Caribbean destination, was a short overnight cruise from New York and operated under laws that permitted the full consumption and sale of alcohol. The Ward Line's 1930 advertising campaign positioned the Morro Castle as the sophisticated American's way around the Volstead Act, and her 72-hour round-trip cruises (two nights in Havana, followed by a return to New York) became an established leisure pattern of the early 1930s. Her master at the date of her final voyage was Captain Robert R. Willmott, 63, a career Ward Line officer who had commanded the Morro Castle since 1931. Her chief officer was William Warms, 46, also a career Ward Line officer. Her radio officer was George Rogers, 33, a recent Ward Line hire with a service record that the subsequent investigation would find suspicious in multiple respects. The Disaster The lifeboat launches were conducted under conditions of severe disorder. Of her sixteen lifeboats, only six were successfully launched; several swung on davits that had been painted shut, and three of the six that launched were boarded mostly by crew rather than by passengers. The radio officer George Rogers delayed the SOS transmission for approximately forty minutes after the fire was first reported, an act that the subsequent investigation treated with significant suspicion. 137 of 558 aboard died. 421 survived. The dead were overwhelmingly passengers, many of them women and children who had been unable to find an operational lifeboat or who had been overcome by smoke in the cabin corridors. The ship burned through the night and the following morning. She grounded, blazing, on the beach at Asbury Park, New Jersey, shortly before 06:00 on 9 September 1934, where she became, by late morning, the largest tourist attraction on the United States Atlantic coast. An estimated 250,000 people visited the burning wreck at Asbury Park over the following week. Postcards of the smoking hull were sold in Asbury Park's boardwalk shops for a decade. The investigation that followed had two tracks. The formal United States Department of Commerce marine board inquiry identified the fire's proximate cause as a lit cigarette in a stack of cleaning rags in the first-class writing room, and the distal causes as crew undertraining, insufficient fire-drill practice, and Warms's decision to mainta
21. 1939 — USS Squalus. The first deep-sea submarine rescue Location: Atlantic Ocean, off the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire · Coordinates: 42.87°N 70.58°W · Casualties: 26 · Survivors: 33 · Depth: 73 m (raised) · Cause: valve failure — Main induction valve failed to close during her fourteenth test dive on the morning of 23 May 1939. Water flooded the aft torpedo room and engine room in seconds. She settled to 73 metres; 26 men drowned in the flooded compartments, 33 were trapped alive forward. · Fate: raised · recommissioned as USS Sailfish · Type: submarine · Porpoise class · Tonnage: 1,450 tons · Crew: 59 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1938 American Porpoise-class submarine on her fourteenth trial dive off the Isles of Shoals on 23 May 1939. A main induction valve failed to close; water flooded the aft compartments in seconds. Twenty-six drowned; 33 trapped alive at 73 metres were lifted out by the first successful deep-sea submarine rescue in history. Raised in September and recommissioned as USS Sailfish, she sank a Japanese aircraft carrier in 1943. The Vessel USS Squalus (SS-192) was an American Sargo-class submarine of the United States Navy, built at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine, between 1937 and 1939 and commissioned on 1 March 1939. She was 94 metres long, 1,450 tons surfaced displacement (2,350 tons submerged), and armed with eight 21-inch torpedo tubes (four bow tubes, four stern tubes) plus one 4-inch deck gun. Her propulsion was a conventional diesel-electric configuration: four diesel engines for surface operation and two electric motors for submerged operation. The Sargo-class was among the most modern US Navy submarine designs of the late 1930s, substantially advanced beyond earlier US submarine classes in habitability, range, and operational endurance. Squalus was specifically designed for the emerging long-range Pacific operational role: extended patrols of 60-75 days' duration, long operational range, and sustained submerged endurance. Her master on her final voyage was Lieutenant Oliver F. Naquin, 35, a career career submariner who had commanded Squalus since her commissioning. Her complement on the final voyage was 56 US Navy crew plus 3 civilian observers from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard - a total of 59 aboard. The specific mechanical issue relevant to the disaster was the main engine air-induction valve system. The Sargo-class submarines were equipped with large main engine air-induction valves that admitted air to the diesel engines during surface operation; these valves were required to close The Disaster The seawater entering through the open induction valve flooded the aft engine room and the aft torpedo room at approximately 30 tonnes per minute. The submarine lost approximately 40 tonnes of positive buoyancy within approximately three minutes of the dive command. Lieutenant Naquin's immediate response was to order emergency blow of ballast tanks and immediate surfacing. The ballast tank emergency blow was executed, but the progressive flooding of the aft compartments exceeded the ballast tank's buoyancy-restoration capacity. The submarine's aft trim progressively increased; her forward section rose while her aft section settled; by approximately 08:45 on 23 May 1939, the submarine was trimmed approximately 10 degrees down by the stern and continuing to sink. Naquin's second response was to abandon the aft compartments and to close the forward watertight bulkhead door, isolating the flooded aft sections from the still-dry forward sections. The bulkhead door was closed at approximately 08:47 on 23 May 1939, trapping 26 of the 59 aboard in the flooded aft sections of the submarine. The 26 trapped personnel drowned over the subsequent minutes as the aft compartments continued flooding. USS Squalus settled to the Atlantic seabed at approximately 08:50 on 23 May 1939 in approximately 74 metres of water, her forward section dry but her aft section fully flooded. The 33 remaining survivors (29 crew plus 3 civilians, including Lieutenant Naquin) were trapped in the forward section,
22. 1939 — HMS Thetis. Liverpool Bay, the tail above the surface Location: Liverpool Bay, Irish Sea · Coordinates: 53.57°N 4.25°W · Casualties: 99 · Survivors: 4 · Depth: 49 m (raised) · Cause: flooded · valve error — On her first dive trials on 1 June 1939. A torpedo tube left flooded during maintenance let the sea into the fore-ends when the inner door was opened. The boat settled stern-up at 49 metres with her tail visible above the surface for nearly twenty-four hours. · Fate: raised · recommissioned as HMS Thunderbolt · Type: submarine · T class · Tonnage: 1,090 tons · Crew: 103 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1938 British T-class submarine, her first dive trials in Liverpool Bay on 1 June 1939. A torpedo tube left flooded during maintenance let the sea into the fore-ends when opened; she settled stern-up at 49 metres with her tail visible above the surface. 99 of 103 aboard died while rescue ships watched the tail above the waterline; the hull-cutting torches took too long. Raised four months later, recommissioned as HMS Thunderbolt, and lost in the Mediterranean in 1943. The Vessel HMS Thetis was a British T-class submarine of the Royal Navy, built at the Cammell Laird yard at Birkenhead between 1936 and 1939 and launched on 29 June 1938. She was 84 metres long, 1,090 tons surfaced displacement (1,575 tons submerged), and armed with ten 21-inch torpedo tubes (six bow tubes, four external tubes) plus one 4-inch deck gun. Her propulsion was diesel-electric: two 2,500-horsepower diesel engines for surface operation and two 1,450-horsepower electric motors for submerged operation. The T-class was the Royal Navy's standard long-range patrol submarine of the late 1930s and through the Second World War, a class of 53 boats eventually built. Thetis was the third boat of the class to be commissioned; her subsequent operational history was expected to be a standard submarine deployment pattern of the late-1930s Royal Navy: commissioning trials, fleet exercises, and operational patrols in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Her master on her final voyage was Lieutenant-Commander Guy Bolus, 37, an experienced career submariner. Her complement on the final voyage was 53 Royal Navy crew, 6 Cammell Laird shipyard personnel (present for trial-voyage technical observations), 2 Vickers-Armstrong armament specialists (present for torpedo-tube observations), 2 Admiralty civilian observers, 1 Admiralty's caterer, 1 Liverpool pilot, plus 38 additional observers from the shipyard and Admiralty - a total of 103 aboard, substantially beyond her design complement of 53. The presence The Disaster At approximately 13:45 on 1 June 1939, the No. 5 torpedo tube's inner door was opened by the embarked Vickers-Armstrong armament specialist. The specialist's operational expectation was that the tube was dry; his observation of the blocked drain hole had confirmed this expectation. When the inner door was opened, however, the tube was fully flooded with seawater, and the sudden inrush of seawater under submerged pressure was uncontrollable. The seawater entered Thetis's forward torpedo compartment at a rate of approximately 30 tonnes per minute. The specific consequence was the rapid flooding of the forward end of the submarine; her bow trimmed down; her stern rose; and within approximately three minutes, the submarine's forward third was substantially submerged below the trim angle at which her ballast-tank operations could maintain trim. Lieutenant-Commander Bolus's immediate response was to blow ballast tanks and attempt emergency surfacing. The flooding forward, however, was substantially beyond the ballast tank's compensating capacity. HMS Thetis settled to the Liverpool Bay seabed at approximately 13:52 on 1 June 1939 in approximately 45 metres of water, her bow buried in mud and her stern approximately 10 metres above the seabed angle. Initial rescue operations were initiated within hours: Royal Navy surface ships were sent to the location, salvage vessels were mobilised, and the submarine's position was marked by the emergency surface buoy that Bolus had released. By
23. 1939 — HMS Rawalpindi. Iceland Strait, a liner against two battleships Location: North Atlantic, between Iceland and the Faroes · Coordinates: 63.25°N 11.50°W · Casualties: 275 · Survivors: 38 · Depth: abyssal · not located · Cause: naval gunfire — An armed merchant cruiser, a P&O passenger liner converted to a patrol ship, intercepted by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the Iceland Strait on the evening of 23 November 1939. Her 6-inch guns were outranged and outgunned by an order of magnitude. Destroyed in 40 minutes. · Fate: abyssal North Atlantic · Type: armed merchant cruiser · ex-liner · Tonnage: 16,697 tons · Crew: 313 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1925 Armed merchant cruiser of the Northern Patrol, a P&O liner requisitioned and fitted with eight 6-inch guns of Great War vintage. Intercepted in the Iceland-Faroes Gap on the evening of 23 November 1939 by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Captain Kennedy's response was to open fire and broadcast the enemy's position on W/T before his ship was destroyed. 275 dead in forty minutes; 38 men were taken off by the Germans before a British cruiser squadron closed the range. The disparity of force made her loss one of the iconic 'last stands' of the Royal Navy. The Vessel HMS Rawalpindi was an armed merchant cruiser of the Royal Navy, converted at the outbreak of the Second World War from the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company's liner of the same name. She was 168 metres long, 16,697 gross tons, built at Harland and Wolff in 1925 for the P&O's London-to-Bombay mail service. Her peacetime role, for fourteen years between 1925 and 1939, had been the principal British imperial liner on the India run, carrying mail, passengers, and bullion between the British capital and the largest component of the British Empire. At the outbreak of the war in September 1939 she was requisitioned by the British Admiralty and converted to an armed merchant cruiser at Liverpool over four weeks: eight obsolete 6-inch guns of 1890s vintage were mounted on her upper decks, two 3-inch anti-aircraft guns added, her public rooms converted to crew accommodation, and her cargo spaces converted to ammunition magazines. Her conversion was typical of the Royal Navy's AMC programme of late 1939: it was cheap, fast, and produced vessels of minimal military capability. The AMC class was intended for distant-station patrol work against a specific and (in the event) largely absent threat: German merchant raiders operating on the world trade routes. The eight 6-inch guns gave her nominal capability against an unarmed merchant vessel and essentially no capability against any German warship of battleship, battlecruiser, or pocket battleship class. Her crew was a mix of The Disaster Scharnhorst opened fire on Rawalpindi at 16:03 on 23 November 1939 at a range of 10,000 metres. Kennedy returned fire with his forward 6-inch guns as he turned to bring his broadside to bear. The range was at the extreme limit of Rawalpindi's gunnery; her shells either fell short or were deflected by Scharnhorst's armour. Scharnhorst's 11-inch shells were not deflected. The engagement lasted 14 minutes. Scharnhorst fired approximately 42 rounds of 11-inch ammunition; Gneisenau, which had closed to engage from a different bearing, fired approximately 15 rounds of her own. Rawalpindi was struck repeatedly. Captain Kennedy was killed on his bridge by a German shell at approximately 16:08. Her wireless was destroyed almost immediately; the senior officers in the forward compartments were killed in succession; her 6-inch guns were put out of action one by one. Rawalpindi sank at 20:05 on 23 November 1939 at approximately 63°40′N 11°30′W. Of her 313 crew, 275 died. 27 were rescued by the Germans (prisoners of war) and transferred to the German battleships for the remainder of Marschall's sortie; another 11 survived in lifeboats and were eventually picked up by HMS Chitral, a sister AMC, two days later. The British Home Fleet, alerted by Rawalpindi's signal, deployed HMS Repulse, HMS Hood, HMS Newcastle, HMS Delhi, and seven destroyers to intercept the German raiders. Marschall, having confirmed by the engagement with Rawalpindi that the Royal Navy was fully alerted, decided to abor
24. 1939 — HMS Courageous. U-29, fifteen minutes, the first RN carrier Location: Atlantic Ocean, SW of Ireland · Coordinates: 50.17°N 14.80°W · Casualties: 519 · Survivors: 697 · Depth: 140 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by German submarine U-29 (Otto Schuhart, commanding) southwest of Ireland at 19:50 on 17 September 1939. Two torpedoes struck her port side amidships. She sank in fifteen minutes. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: aircraft carrier · Courageous class · Tonnage: 22,500 tons · Crew: 1216 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1916 Royal Navy aircraft carrier, converted from a Great War battlecruiser. Torpedoed by U-29 southwest of Ireland at 19:50 on 17 September 1939, two weeks after the war began; she sank in fifteen minutes. 519 dead of 1,216 aboard, the first major Royal Navy loss of the Second World War. The pattern confirmed what the Admiralty feared: the aircraft carrier, without destroyer screens, was a torpedo's natural prey. The Vessel HMS Courageous was a Courageous-class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, converted in 1924-1928 from the cancelled "large light cruiser" of the same name. Like her sister Glorious, she had been one of Lord Fisher's 1915 "Baltic Project" vessels, designed for a war strategy that never materialised, completed after the First World War with a limited operational function, and eventually rebuilt as an aircraft carrier under the 1920s experimentation that converted several larger Royal Navy hulls to carrier service. As reconstructed she was 238 metres long, 22,500 tons, and carried 48 aircraft (typically a mix of Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers and Blackburn Skua fighter-bombers). Her design speed was 30 knots on four-shaft Parsons turbines. Her hangar and flight deck configuration was characteristic of British 1920s carrier conversions: the lower hangar was enclosed and armoured; the upper hangar was open to the weather; the flight deck was planked with narrow-laid Baltic fir. Her interwar service had been predominantly in the Mediterranean Fleet and the Home Fleet, with periodic deployments to the Far East. Her commanding officer in September 1939 was Captain W. T. Makeig-Jones, 52 years old, a career Royal Navy officer with prior carrier service in the 1930s. Her air group was the 811 and 822 Naval Air Squadrons, a composite of Swordfish and Nimrod aircraft. The Disaster Schuhart manoeuvred U-29 to a firing position on Courageous's starboard side. At 19:50 on 17 September 1939 he fired a three-torpedo spread from his forward tubes at a range of 900 metres. Two of the three torpedoes struck Courageous on her starboard side: one at her forward boiler room, one amidships at her engine room. The damage was immediately catastrophic. The two torpedo hits breached her main machinery spaces; her electrical power failed; her damage-control pumps were inoperable. She listed 10 degrees to starboard within 90 seconds and continued listing through the following 12 minutes. Courageous capsized at approximately 20:02 on 17 September 1939, some twelve minutes after the torpedo strike. She sank at 20:07 at approximately 50°10′N 14°45′W in approximately 140 metres of water. Her speed of loss was extraordinary: a 22,500-ton aircraft carrier lost to a single submarine attack in fifteen minutes. Captain Makeig-Jones was on her bridge at the moment of the capsize; he remained aboard and drowned in the bridge as she went over. Of her 1,216 crew, 519 died. 697 were rescued by the escorting destroyers HMS Ivanhoe and HMS Impulsive and by the Dutch merchant ship Veendam, which had been nearby. Courageous was the first Royal Navy fleet carrier lost in the Second World War and the first British capital ship lost to enemy action in the war.
25. 1939 — HMS Royal Oak. Scapa Flow, Günther Prien, thirteen minutes Location: Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands, Scotland · Coordinates: 58.93°N 2.97°W · Casualties: 834 · Survivors: 400 · Depth: 30 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed at anchor in Scapa Flow by German submarine U-47 (Günther Prien, commanding) on the night of 14 October 1939. Prien had threaded the blockship barriers at Kirk Sound to penetrate the base. Four of seven torpedoes struck; she rolled over in thirteen minutes. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: battleship · Revenge class · Tonnage: 29,150 tons · Crew: 1234 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1914 Royal Navy Revenge-class battleship, at anchor in Scapa Flow on the night of 14 October 1939. German submarine U-47 under Günther Prien threaded the blockship barriers at Kirk Sound and fired seven torpedoes; four struck, and she rolled over in thirteen minutes. 834 dead of 1,234 aboard, including 134 boy seamen. Prien returned to Berlin a national hero; the defences at Scapa were rebuilt as the Churchill Barriers. The Vessel HMS Royal Oak was a Revenge-class battleship of the Royal Navy, laid down at Devonport Dockyard in January 1914 and commissioned on 1 May 1916 at Devonport. She was 189 metres long, 29,150 tons standard displacement, with eight 15-inch guns in four twin turrets, a secondary battery of twelve 6-inch guns, and a design speed of 21 knots on four shafts. The Revenge-class had been built to replace the 1905-era pre-dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet's second-line battle squadrons, and Royal Oak served in exactly that capacity from her commissioning through the interwar period and into the Second World War. She fought at Jutland on 31 May 1916 as part of Vice-Admiral Sir Cecil Burney's 1st Battle Squadron; she fired 38 rounds of 15-inch, hit the German battleship Derfflinger once, and emerged undamaged. She served in the Mediterranean through the 1920s, participated in the international naval demonstration at Corfu in 1923, and patrolled the Spanish coast during the Spanish Civil War. She returned to the Home Fleet in early 1939 as one of five Revenge-class battleships then still in first-line service; of that class she was the best-maintained. Her master at the outbreak of the Second World War was Captain William Benn. She had taken on 1,234 officers and ratings, including the unusually high number of 134 "boy seamen" in training, sixteen-year-old Royal Navy recruits on their first sea assignment. By September 1939 she was the flagship of Rear-Admiral Henry Blagrove, commanding the H The Disaster Of Prien's first spread of four torpedoes, one struck Royal Oak's starboard bow at approximately 00:58 on 14 October 1939. The detonation was minor; the bow anchor capstan was damaged but the hull compartments adjacent to the strike were not breached. Captain Benn and Admiral Blagrove both assumed the bang was either a small internal explosion or a collision. A damage-control party was dispatched to the bow. Twenty-three minutes passed between the first strike and the second. Prien, under the assumption that his first spread had failed to cripple the battleship, turned U-47 and fired a second spread of three torpedoes at 01:21. This spread struck true: three torpedoes hit in quick succession, one under the starboard forward funnel and two at the starboard quarter. The second spread breached Royal Oak's torpedo protection, ignited the aft 15-inch magazine, and broke her back. She rolled onto her starboard side and sank in thirteen minutes, at 01:34. 834 of her 1,234 crew died, including Admiral Blagrove, 120 boy seamen, and nearly every man in the forward and aft compartments. 386 men survived, most of whom were rescued from the harbour by the tender Daisy 2, the small boat Supply, and the rescue tug Scott. The sinking was the worst single-ship loss of life Scapa Flow had seen in either world war.
26. 1939 — SS Athenia. Nine hours after war, the first merchant sunk Location: Atlantic Ocean, west of Rockall · Coordinates: 56.44°N 14.05°W · Casualties: 117 · Survivors: 1,301 · Depth: 250 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by German submarine U-30 (Fritz-Julius Lemp, commanding) at 19:40 on 3 September 1939, nine hours after Chamberlain's declaration of war. Lemp mistook her for an armed merchant cruiser. A single torpedo struck her port side. · Fate: located · Type: passenger liner · Donaldson Atlantic Line · Tonnage: 13,465 tons · Crew: 315 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1922 Donaldson Atlantic Line passenger liner, Glasgow to Montreal, crowded with refugees and tourists caught in the war's opening days. Torpedoed by U-30 west of Rockall at 19:40 on 3 September 1939, nine hours after Chamberlain's declaration of war. The first British merchant vessel sunk in the Second World War. 117 dead of 1,418 aboard, including 28 Americans; Germany denied responsibility until 1946. The Vessel The SS Athenia was a British passenger liner of the Donaldson Atlantic Line, built at the Fairfield Shipbuilding yard in Govan, Scotland, and launched on 28 January 1922. She was 160 metres long, 13,465 gross tons, and designed for the Glasgow-Montreal immigrant and general-passenger trade. She carried cabin-class and tourist-class accommodations for 1,550 passengers, with a service speed of 15 knots. She was the second Donaldson ship of her name, the first Athenia (launched 1904) having been torpedoed and sunk by U-53 on 16 August 1917, eight nautical miles south of Inishtrahull. Her interwar service was unremarkable: routine Atlantic passages between the west coast of Scotland and Canadian ports through two decades, with occasional cruises to the Mediterranean and the West Indies. By the summer of 1939 she was one of the oldest passenger liners still in first-line Donaldson service; the company had placed her on a heavily-booked late-August Glasgow-Montreal run carrying American and Canadian nationals, British emigrants to Canada, and European refugees fleeing the deteriorating political situation on the Continent. Her commanding officer for the September 1939 voyage was Captain James Cook, 63 years old, a career Donaldson mariner on his final pre-retirement Atlantic command. Her crew and passenger list, assembled on 1 September 1939 as Germany invaded Poland, included 1,103 passengers and 315 crew, a total complement of 1,418. The Disaster Lemp fired a single G7 torpedo at Athenia at 19:40 on 3 September 1939. The torpedo struck her port side at the engine room. U-30's second torpedo, fired immediately, malfunctioned and circled back toward the submarine itself, forcing Lemp to dive to avoid his own weapon; it eventually ran its course without striking anything. Athenia's engine room was breached by the initial torpedo strike. Her power failed; her pumps could not operate; her watertight doors, partially closed at the moment of attack, could not contain the flooding. She developed an immediate list to port. Captain Cook ordered abandon-ship at 20:10, 30 minutes after the torpedo strike. The evacuation proceeded in relatively good order because the sea was calm and the 26 lifeboats were adequately provisioned for the ship's actual complement. Athenia remained afloat through the night of 3-4 September 1939. Rescue ships reached her position in the early morning of 4 September: the Norwegian merchant ship Knute Nelson, the British destroyer HMS Electra, and the American freighter City of Flint. The three ships worked the scene through the morning, picking up survivors from the lifeboats and from debris in the water. Athenia finally sank at 10:50 on 4 September 1939 at approximately 56°30′N 14°10′W in approximately 250 metres of water. Of her 1,418 passengers and crew, 117 died: 50 were killed in the initial torpedo strike or in the engine room flooding, 10 died on the listing deck or in lifeboat launching accident
27. 1940 — HMS Glorious. Norway, Scharnhorst's 11-inch guns, Ardent and Acasta charging Location: Norwegian Sea, 200 nmi west of Harstad, Norway · Coordinates: 69.00°N 4.25°E · Casualties: 1,519 · Survivors: 42 · Depth: 460 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Intercepted off northern Norway on 8 June 1940 by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in clear weather. Had failed to launch search aircraft, had her boilers cold for economy, and was surprised at 50 nautical miles. Her escorts HMS Ardent and HMS Acasta were destroyed within an hour; Scharnhorst's 11-inch shells then reached Glorious at 24,000 metres. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: aircraft carrier · Courageous class · Tonnage: 22,500 tons · Crew: 1561 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1916 Royal Navy aircraft carrier, returning from the Norwegian campaign with a deck of Hurricane fighters. Intercepted off northern Norway on 8 June 1940 by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in clear weather; her two destroyer escorts charged the battleships to lay smoke but were destroyed, and Scharnhorst's 11-inch shells reached the Glorious from 24,000 metres. 1,519 dead of 1,561 aboard. The last engagement in naval history in which a battleship sank an aircraft carrier by gunfire. The Vessel HMS Glorious was originally a Courageous-class "large light cruiser" of the Royal Navy, laid down at Harland and Wolff in Belfast on 1 May 1915 as part of Admiral Jacky Fisher's late-war "Baltic Project" of ships designed to force the Danish Straits. The Baltic Project never happened; Fisher was replaced; the ships were completed with little operational function. Glorious and her sisters Courageous and Furious were rebuilt as aircraft carriers during the interwar period as the Royal Navy experimented with naval aviation. Glorious's conversion was carried out at Devonport between 1924 and 1930; she emerged as a full-deck aircraft carrier of 22,500 tons, capable of operating 48 aircraft. She served through the 1930s in the Home and Mediterranean Fleets, participating in the International Naval demonstration at Corfu in 1923 and in the Royal Navy Jubilee Review of 1935. She was the fleet's principal carrier in the Mediterranean in the mid-1930s. By 1939 she was one of seven fleet carriers in Royal Navy service, with an operational record of solid but unremarkable peacetime service. Her master at the beginning of the war was Captain Guy D'Oyly-Hughes, a former submarine officer who had transferred to the surface fleet in 1925 and had joined Glorious in May 1939. He had no prior aircraft carrier experience. His relationship with his air staff became a source of friction from the outset: he believed carrier flying was excessively cautious, and he dismissed at sea Commander Slessor The Disaster The two ships were the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, sortieing from Trondheim under Admiral Wilhelm Marschall on Operation Juno, a raiding mission against the Allied evacuation force at Narvik. They had engaged and sunk the British oiler Oil Pioneer and the trawler Juniper earlier in the day. The sighting of Glorious at 17:00 on 8 June 1940 was the moment Marschall had been hoping for: an isolated British carrier at long range, in clear weather. Scharnhorst opened fire from 24,000 metres at 17:30. Glorious was almost immediately bracketed by 11-inch shells. Captain D'Oyly-Hughes had no fighters airborne, no strike aircraft ready to launch, and no tactical option beyond fleeing under smoke. Ardent and Acasta made an attempt to lay smoke between the German battleships and the carrier; the smoke was blown away faster than it could be generated in the fresh conditions. Ardent was overwhelmed by Scharnhorst's 11-inch fire at 18:00 and sank at 18:25 with 152 of her 160 crew lost. Glorious was hit in the hangar deck by the fourth German salvo, ignited her aircraft and their fuel, and was burning uncontrollably by 18:30. She was hit successively on the main deck, in the engine room, and in the bridge; the bridge hit killed Captain D'Oyly-Hughes and most of his staff. She settled by the bow and capsized at 19:10. Acasta, the surviving British destroyer, made a torpedo attack from 15,000 metres as the German battleships were finishing Glorious. Her torpedoes struck Scha
28. 1940 — HMS Glowworm. Norwegian Sea, rammed the Hipper, Roope's VC Location: Norwegian Sea, off Trondheim, Norway · Coordinates: 64.27°N 6.45°E · Casualties: 109 · Survivors: 31 · Depth: abyssal · not located · Cause: naval gunfire · ramming — Intercepted the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and her escort of four destroyers in the Norwegian Sea on the morning of 8 April 1940. Outranged, outgunned, and unable to escape, Lieutenant-Commander Gerard Roope laid smoke, closed the range, and rammed the Hipper. She was then sunk by gunfire. · Fate: abyssal Norwegian Sea · Type: destroyer · G class · Tonnage: 1,345 tons · Crew: 149 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1935 Royal Navy G-class destroyer, screening the British fleet moving north to intercept the German invasion of Norway. Ran into the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in heavy weather on the morning of 8 April 1940; outgunned by a factor of ten. Her commanding officer, Lieutenant-Commander Gerard Roope, laid smoke, closed, and rammed the Hipper amidships before his ship was destroyed by gunfire. 109 dead, 31 survived. Roope received a posthumous Victoria Cross, the recommendation written by the German captain he had rammed. The Vessel HMS Glowworm (H92) was a G-class destroyer of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the John Thornycroft yard at Woolston, Hampshire, on 22 January 1936. She was 98 metres long, 1,370 tons standard displacement, armed with four 4.7-inch guns in single mountings and ten 21-inch torpedo tubes in two pentad (five-tube) mountings. Her designed speed was 35.5 knots on twin Parsons turbines. The G-class was one of the Royal Navy's most numerous interwar destroyer classes: nine ships commissioned between 1935 and 1936, with revised anti-aircraft armament and improved damage-control arrangements compared to the preceding F-class. Glowworm and her sisters served through the 1930s on Mediterranean and Home Fleet assignments, operating principally in the screening of larger fleet units. Her commanding officer from September 1939 was Lieutenant-Commander Gerard Broadmead Roope RN, 34 years old, a career destroyer officer who had served in the Mediterranean Fleet through 1938. Roope was a large-framed man known in the Royal Navy as "Rammer" from an incident during his 1936 command of HMS Garland, when he had accidentally rammed a friendly ship during fleet exercises. His crew called him "Rammer" with affection; the name would prove apt. The Disaster The appearance of Admiral Hipper transformed Glowworm's tactical situation. Against two German destroyers of roughly comparable capability she had been fighting a reasonable engagement; against an 8-inch-gunned heavy cruiser she had no gun that could range her attacker's armour and no prospect of victory. The conventional Royal Navy response would have been to withdraw under smoke and report the enemy's position. Roope chose a different course. He ordered Glowworm to close the range at full speed, laying smoke to conceal his intentions, and fired his remaining starboard torpedoes at Admiral Hipper from approximately 2,000 metres. All five torpedoes missed. Admiral Hipper's 8-inch guns had, by this time, already scored multiple hits on Glowworm: her bridge was destroyed, her forward 4.7-inch mounting was wrecked, her hull was pierced multiple times below the waterline. At approximately 09:00 on 8 April 1940, with Glowworm listing heavily to port and her speed reduced to perhaps 8 knots, Roope ordered the helm hard a-starboard and turned his ship directly into Admiral Hipper's course. Glowworm rammed Admiral Hipper on her starboard bow at a closing speed of approximately 15 knots. The ram produced a 40-metre gash in Admiral Hipper's starboard side, flooding two of her watertight compartments and taking out of action her starboard forward torpedo tubes. Glowworm's bow was crushed. She withdrew from the collision still under power, still firing her remaining after 4.7-inch guns,
29. 1940 — RMS Lancastria. Saint-Nazaire, four thousand dead, Churchill buried it Location: Bay of Biscay, off Saint-Nazaire, France · Coordinates: 47.15°N 2.27°W · Casualties: ~4,000-6,000 · Survivors: ~2,477 · Depth: 25 m · Cause: aerial attack — Bombed by a Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 at 15:50 on 17 June 1940 while loaded with British soldiers and civilians evacuated from Saint-Nazaire in Operation Aerial, the collapse of France. Four bombs struck; one entered a funnel and detonated in the engine room. She rolled over in twenty minutes. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: troopship · former Cunard liner · Tonnage: 16,243 tons · Crew: 330 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1922 Cunard transatlantic liner, requisitioned as a troopship, evacuating British soldiers and civilians from Saint-Nazaire at the collapse of France. Bombed by a Luftwaffe Ju 88 at 15:50 on 17 June 1940; four bombs struck, one down a funnel into the engine room, and she sank in twenty minutes with thousands still aboard. Between 4,000 and 6,000 dead, the worst maritime disaster in British history. Churchill ordered the news suppressed; most Britons did not hear the story until the 1970s. The Vessel The RMS Lancastria was a Cunard Line transatlantic liner, 176 metres long, 16,243 gross tons, originally commissioned in 1922 as the Tyrrhenia for the Anchor Line's Canadian service and transferred to Cunard in 1924 under her new name. She was of moderate size compared to her Cunard fleetmates, designed for a service speed of 16 knots on twin screws, and was a passenger and cargo vessel rather than an express liner: tourist-class and cabin accommodations for 1,830 passengers on the Liverpool-Quebec route. She passed to Cunard-White Star Line on the 1934 merger and was assigned to the company's cruise-ship market, repositioned as a 1930s winter cruise vessel to the West Indies and the Mediterranean. She carried Cunard's economy-class passengers through the last years of the pre-war transatlantic trade. At her requisition by the British Admiralty on 1 September 1939 she was at sea inbound from New York; she diverted to Liverpool on 3 September 1939 and was refitted as a troop transport over the following three weeks at Canada Dock, Liverpool. Her wartime role between October 1939 and June 1940 was the movement of British Army and Royal Canadian Air Force personnel between Britain and France, Egypt, and Malta. She was one of some sixty British passenger liners requisitioned as troop transports for Operation Aerial, the emergency evacuation of remaining British military personnel and British civilians from French Atlantic ports after the collapse of France in May and June 1940. B The Disaster She took on water through the engine-room hit from the moment it struck. She listed to starboard within three minutes. Her port-side lifeboats could not be launched; her starboard-side lifeboats, swung out on a tilting deck, swamped as they reached the water. Between 4,000 and 6,000 people died in the Charpentier Roads between 15:48 and 16:12 on the evening of 17 June 1940. The figure is uncertain because the British government of 1940 could not produce, and has never produced, a complete manifest. Captain Sharp estimated 5,000 dead; the French port authorities estimated 4,000 to 6,000; the British War Cabinet briefing paper of 21 June 1940 used the figure 4,000. The memorial at Saint-Nazaire uses the figure 4,000. The commonly-cited modern figure is 4,000, though the Lancastria Association has lobbied for a figure closer to 6,000. This is the worst single-ship loss of life in British maritime history. It is more than the Titanic and the Lusitania combined. Winston Churchill, by that evening the Prime Minister for six weeks, was briefed on the sinking and ordered a D-notice on the press coverage. No British newspaper was to publish news of the Lancastria until "later news permits it". The specific reason Churchill gave to his War Cabinet on 18 June 1940 was that the country could not absorb another catastrophe on top of Dunkirk and the French collapse. The D-notice was never lifted. By the time British newspapers did begin, hesitantly, to carry the story in mid-July 1940, the
30. 1941 — HMAS Sydney. Indian Ocean, Kormoran's disguise, no survivors Location: Indian Ocean, ~110 nmi WNW of Carnarvon, Western Australia · Coordinates: 26.25°S 111.00°E · Casualties: 645 · Survivors: 0 · Depth: 2,468 m · Cause: naval gunfire · torpedo — Engaged the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran (disguised as the Dutch merchantman Straat Malakka) at close range on the afternoon of 19 November 1941. Both ships opened fire simultaneously; the Kormoran's concealed 5.9-inch guns and one torpedo struck the Sydney's bridge and turret magazines. Both ships were mortally damaged, but the Sydney burned through the night and was not seen again. · Fate: located 2008 · protected war grave · Type: light cruiser · Leander class (modified) · Tonnage: 6,830 tons · Crew: 645 · Flag: Australia · Launched: 1934 Royal Australian Navy light cruiser, intercepting what she took to be a Dutch merchantman off Western Australia on the afternoon of 19 November 1941. The 'merchantman' was the disguised German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran. Both ships opened fire at close range; Sydney's bridge and turret magazines were destroyed in seconds. Both ships were mortally damaged; Sydney was not seen again, lost with all 645 aboard. Her wreck was located in 2008 by David Mearns at 2,468 metres, 22 kilometres from the Kormoran. The Vessel HMAS Sydney (D48) was a modified Leander-class light cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy, commissioned at Portsmouth on 24 September 1935 and transferred to Australia on 4 August 1936. She was 170 metres long, 6,830 tons standard displacement, armed with eight 6-inch guns in four twin turrets, four 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, and eight 21-inch torpedo tubes in two quadruple mountings. Her designed speed was 32.5 knots on four-shaft Parsons geared turbines. The modified Leander-class differed from her British sisters principally in propulsion machinery arrangement: her boiler rooms and engine rooms were separated by fore-and-aft subdivision to improve damage survivability, an Australian improvement that would prove critical to her war service. She was the second ship of her name in the Royal Australian Navy, her predecessor having been the light cruiser HMAS Sydney (II) that had sunk the German raider SMS Emden at the Cocos Islands in 1914. Her Second World War service was distinguished. Under Captain John Collins she had engaged and sunk the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni at the Battle of Cape Spada on 19 July 1940 in one of the opening Royal Navy victories of the Mediterranean campaign. She had escorted the Australian Second Division to North Africa, had participated in the Syrian campaign, and had returned to Australian waters in February 1941 as the most celebrated warship in the Royal Australian Navy. Her new commanding officer from May 1941 was Captain Joseph The Disaster Captain Burnett closed Sydney to 1,300 metres from the supposed Straat Malakka in an attempt to positively identify her through the international signal code. At this range, the two ships were within point-blank gunnery range of each other. Detmers, now unable to maintain his disguise at such short range, unmasked Kormoran's armament at 17:30 and opened fire simultaneously. Kormoran's concealed 5.9-inch guns and her torpedo tubes were fired essentially at the same moment as Sydney's main battery. The first two Kormoran salvos struck Sydney's bridge, director control tower, and main signal-flag arrangement; Captain Burnett was killed on the bridge, and the senior gunnery officers were killed in the director tower. Sydney was, within the first thirty seconds of the engagement, effectively decapitated. The subsequent action lasted approximately 30 minutes. Sydney fought back from her surviving turrets and hit Kormoran repeatedly with 6-inch shells that ignited the German raider's oil tanks and her torpedo magazine. Kormoran was burning and was mortally damaged by approximately 18:00. Sydney, listing heavily to port from the torpedo hits and with uncontrolled fires forward, turned away southeast at 18:05 and disappeared into the gathering dusk with a visible fire still burning. Both ships sank on the night of 19-20 November 1941. Kormoran was scuttled by Detmers at approximately 00:30 on 20 November after her crew abandoned her in her intact lifeboats. 318 of Kormoran's 393 crew
31. 1941 — USS Arizona. Ford Island, 08:06, the magazine Location: Pearl Harbor, Ford Island, Oahu, Hawaii · Coordinates: 21.36°N 157.95°W · Casualties: 1,177 · Survivors: 335 · Depth: 12 m · Cause: aerial attack — Struck by a Japanese Type 99 armor-piercing bomb at approximately 08:06 on 7 December 1941. The bomb penetrated the forward deck and detonated either in or adjacent to the forward powder magazine. The resulting explosion broke the ship in two and sank her in under nine minutes. · Fate: shallow water · memorial · Type: battleship · Pennsylvania class · Tonnage: 31,400 tons · Crew: 1511 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1915 Pennsylvania-class battleship, moored on Battleship Row alongside Ford Island. A Japanese armor-piercing bomb detonated her forward magazine at 08:06 on 7 December 1941; she sank in under nine minutes. 1,177 dead, nearly half the American casualties of the day. Still seeping oil into the harbor eight decades on, beneath the white memorial that spans her submerged hull. The Vessel The USS Arizona was a Pennsylvania-class super-dreadnought of the United States Navy, commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 17 October 1916. At 31,400 tons and 185 metres long she carried twelve 14-inch guns in four triple turrets, a main battery characteristic of the generation of American battleships that followed Oklahoma and preceded Colorado. She served for a quarter-century in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and was the flagship of Battleship Division 1 in the Pacific from 1940. By late 1941 she had been in Pearl Harbor for the better part of the year. Her captain was Franklin van Valkenburgh; her admiral was Isaac C. Kidd, commanding Battleship Division 1 from her flag bridge. Her crew numbered 1,511, including a brass band of twenty-one musicians who had placed second in the annual Battle of Music tournament the previous evening and were scheduled to play again on the morning of 7 December. Most of the crew had returned to the ship on Saturday evening; the morning watch was drinking coffee on the forecastle when the Japanese aircraft came over the Waianae range at 07:55 on the 7th. She was moored on the inboard side of Berth F-7, on Battleship Row, with the repair ship Vestal alongside her outboard side and the battleships Nevada, Oklahoma, Maryland, Tennessee, West Virginia, and California arrayed along the rest of the row. She was among the first ships hit. The Disaster She sank in nine minutes. Her forward magazines had consumed the bow; her after boilers flooded within minutes as she settled onto the shallow harbour bottom. The fires burned for two and a half days, fed by fuel oil from her own tanks and from West Virginia's nearby. The shock of her magazine detonation had battered the repair ship Vestal alongside and set the inboard side of the Tennessee on fire. 1,177 men died aboard her, nearly half of the American dead of the entire Pearl Harbor attack. 335 survived. Whole gun crews, the band, the ship's marines, the officers at breakfast in the wardroom, the deck divisions at colours, the engine rooms that never knew what had happened: the Arizona's losses were the worst single-ship loss of life in the history of the United States Navy to that date, and remain so to this day. Of the 1,177 dead, 337 were recovered in the days and weeks following the attack. The remaining 900 or so are still aboard her, sealed in the compartments that flooded and never drained. In the decades since, survivors of the ship have requested on their deaths to be interred with their shipmates; the Navy has accommodated this, placing the cremated remains of dozens of survivors inside the wreck at dive-accessible compartments.
32. 1941 — USS Oklahoma. Pearl Harbor, rolled 135 degrees, twelve minutes Location: Pearl Harbor, Battleship Row, Oahu, Hawaii · Coordinates: 21.37°N 157.95°W · Casualties: 429 · Survivors: ~900 · Depth: 12 m (raised) · Cause: aerial attack — Struck by between five and nine Japanese aerial torpedoes in the opening minutes of the Pearl Harbor attack on 7 December 1941. Her port blisters failed in sequence. She capsized in twelve minutes, rolling 135 degrees until her masts hit the harbor floor. · Fate: raised 1943 · scrapped 1947 · Type: battleship · Nevada class · Tonnage: 27,500 tons · Crew: 1300 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1914 Nevada-class battleship, moored on Battleship Row alongside USS Maryland on 7 December 1941. Struck by between five and nine Japanese aerial torpedoes in the opening minutes of the Pearl Harbor attack. She capsized in twelve minutes, rolling 135 degrees until her masts hit the harbor floor. 429 dead, trapped below as the compartments flooded and inverted; raised in 1943 at record expense and scrapped in 1947. The Vessel USS Oklahoma (BB-37) was a Nevada-class dreadnought battleship of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Cramp & Sons yard in Philadelphia on 2 May 1916. She was 177 metres long, 27,500 tons standard displacement, armed with ten 14-inch guns in two twin and two triple turrets, and designed for 20.5 knots. She and her sister USS Nevada (BB-36) were the first American "all or nothing" armour-scheme battleships, in which armour was concentrated in the critical zones (turrets, conning tower, main belt) at maximum thickness and the non-critical zones left substantially unarmoured. Her First World War service was unremarkable: she served in the Atlantic Fleet's 6th Battle Squadron with the British Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow from August 1918 through Armistice. Her interwar service followed the established American battleship rotation between the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. By 1941 she was one of eight American battleships assigned to the Pacific Fleet's Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor, Oahu. Her commanding officer in December 1941 was Captain Howard Bode, 53 years old, a career naval officer. Her crew on the morning of 7 December 1941 was 1,300 officers and ratings. The Disaster USS Oklahoma began listing to port within 90 seconds of the first torpedo strike. The list progressed at approximately 3 degrees per minute through the first six minutes. Captain Bode was ashore at the time of the attack; the senior officer aboard was Commander Jesse Kenworthy, the ship's executive officer. The speed of the capsize was extraordinary for a battleship. American pre-war damage-control doctrine had assumed that a battleship struck by multiple torpedoes would remain afloat long enough for counter-flooding and progressive abandonment to save the majority of the crew. Oklahoma's actual behaviour was completely different: she rolled 135 degrees in approximately 12 minutes, coming to rest on her port side with her masts driven into the harbour mud and only her starboard keel above the waterline. She capsized at 08:09 on 7 December 1941, exactly 12 minutes after the first torpedo strike. Of her 1,301 crew aboard at the moment of the attack, 429 died in the sinking. 872 survived, of whom approximately 32 were rescued from the trapped air pockets in the inverted hull over the following 30 hours. The rescue operation for the men trapped inside the capsized hull was one of the most publicised operations of the Pearl Harbor aftermath. American civilian workers from the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, equipped with cutting torches and air compressors, worked through the night of 7-8 December 1941 cutting holes in Oklahoma's inverted keel to admit air and extract men. The survivors h
33. 1941 — HMS Barham. Sidi Barrani, the magazine, the Valiant's camera Location: Mediterranean Sea, off Sidi Barrani, Egypt · Coordinates: 32.35°N 26.30°E · Casualties: 862 · Survivors: 450 · Depth: 148 m · Cause: submarine torpedo · magazine explosion — Torpedoed by German submarine U-331 (Hans-Diedrich von Tiesenhausen, commanding) at 16:25 on 25 November 1941 in the Mediterranean. Three torpedoes struck the port side. She listed sharply; the main magazines ignited; she capsized and exploded in under five minutes. · Fate: war grave · located · Type: battleship · Queen Elizabeth class · Tonnage: 27,500 tons · Crew: 1184 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1914 Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, operating off Sidi Barrani with the Mediterranean Fleet. Torpedoed by U-331 at 16:25 on 25 November 1941; three torpedoes found her port side, her magazines ignited, and she capsized and exploded in under five minutes. 862 dead of 1,184 aboard. The entire sinking was filmed from HMS Valiant; the Admiralty suppressed the footage for three months to prevent German confirmation of the kill. The Vessel HMS Barham was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the John Brown & Company yard at Clydebank on 19 October 1915. She was 197 metres long, 27,500 tons standard displacement, armed with eight 15-inch guns in four twin turrets, a main armament equal to any battleship then in service. She was the fourth ship of her class, the five-ship Queen Elizabeth class that had been the Royal Navy's principal late-First World War fast battleship design. Her First World War service had included the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, where she had served with the 5th Battle Squadron and had been hit by six German shells without serious damage, firing 337 rounds of 15-inch ammunition in return. Her interwar service had been primarily in the Mediterranean Fleet. She had undergone major modernisation refits in 1930 and 1937; by 1939 her propulsion machinery had been completely replaced, her anti-aircraft armament upgraded, and her deck armour strengthened. She was, at the outbreak of the Second World War, the most up-to-date Queen Elizabeth-class battleship in service. Her commanding officer from October 1941 was Captain Geoffrey Cooke, 42, a career Royal Navy officer and graduate of the Royal Naval Staff College. Her Admiralty assignment was to the Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, flagship of the battle squadron operating from Alexandria. The Disaster The torpedo impacts occurred at 16:25 on 25 November 1941. Barham began to list immediately to port, the list increasing at approximately 2 degrees per minute. Her watertight subdivision had been compromised across four compartments, and her damage-control teams had only limited time to respond before the list crossed the critical threshold. At 16:29, four minutes after the torpedo strikes, Barham's main 15-inch magazine detonated. The detonation was recorded on a cinefilm camera aboard the nearby battleship HMS Valiant, operated by a British Pathé News cameraman who happened to be filming a routine Mediterranean Fleet exercise. The resulting footage (approximately 47 seconds of continuous film, released to the British public in 1942 after initial classification) is the only extant moving-picture record of a battleship's magazine explosion in the Second World War; it has become, through repeated use in documentaries and in training films, one of the most widely-seen single pieces of film ever taken of a naval disaster. The explosion destroyed approximately half of the ship's hull and superstructure. The resulting mushroom cloud rose to an estimated 300 metres. Her bow and stern, no longer held together by the ship's midship structure, rose from the water momentarily and then sank in opposite directions. Between the first torpedo strike and her complete disappearance, approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds elapsed. Of her 1,184 crew, 862 died. 320 were rescued by the accompany
34. 1941 — HMS Hood. Pride of the Royal Navy, three minutes, three survivors Location: Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland · Coordinates: 63.35°N 31.87°W · Casualties: 1,415 · Survivors: 3 · Depth: 2,800 m · Cause: naval gunfire · magazine explosion — A shell from Bismarck, fired at approximately 18,000 metres, struck near or penetrated through to the aft 15-inch magazine at 06:00 on 24 May 1941. The resulting detonation broke the ship in two. She sank in under three minutes. · Fate: abyssal · located 2001 · Type: battlecruiser · Admiral class · Tonnage: 47,430 tons · Crew: 1418 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1918 Pride of the Royal Navy for two decades, the largest warship in the world when she commissioned in 1920. In the Denmark Strait on the morning of 24 May 1941, a shell from Bismarck found her aft magazine; she broke in half and sank in under three minutes. 1,415 dead, three survivors, no time to launch a boat. The shock to British morale was the single greatest naval loss of the war. The Vessel HMS Hood was the sole ship of a class of four battlecruisers ordered by the Admiralty in April 1916. Her three sisters, Anson, Howe, and Rodney, were cancelled after Jutland, when the Royal Navy concluded that the lightly-armoured battlecruiser concept had been disproven. Hood was too far advanced in her build to cancel; she was modified during construction with additional deck and belt armour, and was commissioned on 15 May 1920 as a hybrid battlecruiser-battleship, the largest warship in the world. She displaced 47,430 tons, was 262 metres long, and carried eight 15-inch guns in four twin turrets. Her Parsons geared steam turbines produced 151,000 shaft horsepower on four shafts, giving her 32 knots at full speed, faster than any battleship afloat. She was the physical embodiment of interwar British sea power, the pride of the Royal Navy, the ship every British schoolchild knew by name. She spent the 1920s on "Empire cruises" showing the flag, and the 1930s on the Home and Mediterranean stations. Her deck armour remained the vulnerability that Jutland had identified in her class. The Admiralty had planned a full refit to upgrade it, but the refit was deferred four times in the 1930s under Treasury pressure and the priority given to King George V-class construction. She sailed in May 1941 with the armour scheme of a 1920 battlecruiser, designed to survive flat-trajectory fire at standard ranges, not the plunging fire at long range that the new German 38 cm gun could deliver. The Disaster Hood fired her first salvo at Prinz Eugen, having confused the two German ships' silhouettes in the poor dawn light. Prince of Wales fired at Bismarck. Both German ships fired at Hood. Bismarck's first and second salvos straddled her; her third, at 06:00, found her aft. A shell from Bismarck either penetrated Hood's aft deck at a shallow angle and detonated in the 4-inch magazine, or ignited propellant in the 15-inch magazine, or both in sequence. The precise shell path has been the subject of survey after survey of her wreck. The resulting explosion lifted the stern three-quarters of the ship into the air in a single pillar of flame and smoke. She broke in half. The forward section, still moving forward, disappeared under the surface in thirty seconds. The aft section followed at once. The total elapsed time between the fatal salvo and her disappearance was under three minutes. Of her crew of 1,418, three survived: Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn, and Bill Dundas. All three had been on the upper bridge or topside when she blew up and were thrown clear. They were picked up by HMS Electra at 08:00. Admiral Holland, Captain Ralph Kerr, and 1,415 men of the Royal Navy went down with her.
35. 1941 — HMS Prince of Wales. South China Sea, Japanese torpedo bombers, Force Z Location: South China Sea, off the east coast of Malaya · Coordinates: 3.57°N 104.50°E · Casualties: 327 · Survivors: 1,285 · Depth: 68 m · Cause: aerial torpedo — Sunk together with HMS Repulse by Japanese Navy land-based torpedo bombers off Kuantan, Malaya, on the afternoon of 10 December 1941. Multiple torpedoes struck her port quarter, jamming her rudder and flooding the port engine rooms. Capsized at 13:18 after 80 minutes under attack. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: battleship · King George V class · Tonnage: 43,786 tons · Crew: 1612 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1939 Royal Navy King George V-class battleship, flagship of Force Z, sent to Singapore to deter a Japanese advance on Malaya. Sunk together with the battlecruiser HMS Repulse by Japanese aircraft off Kuantan on 10 December 1941. The first battleship in history sunk at sea by aircraft alone, three days after the entry of Japan into the war. 327 dead including Admiral Tom Phillips, who had been warned but had not believed that capital ships could be destroyed by bombers. The loss of her and Repulse ended forever the assumption that the battleship was the backbone of sea power. The Vessel HMS Prince of Wales was a King George V-class battleship of the Royal Navy, the second of her class, laid down at Cammell Laird's Birkenhead yard on 1 January 1937 and commissioned on 19 January 1941. She was 227 metres long, 43,786 tons deep-load displacement, armed with ten 14-inch guns in three turrets, and equipped with the first operational radar fire-control system in the British fleet. She was the most technologically advanced battleship Britain had ever built; she was also rushed into service. Her working-up period at Scapa Flow in early 1941 was truncated to six weeks because the Royal Navy needed her urgently. Her 14-inch guns, a new design, were producing recurrent mechanical failures; her quadruple A-turret had been a particular and ongoing source of trouble. Vickers engineers and civilian contractors were still aboard her, still making adjustments to her main battery, when she was ordered to sea in May 1941 in company with the battlecruiser HMS Hood to intercept the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen breaking out into the Atlantic. The Denmark Strait engagement of 24 May 1941 was her baptism of fire. She fired 55 14-inch shells at Bismarck and scored three hits that would ultimately contribute to the German ship's destruction three days later; she was hit by seven 15-inch and 8-inch shells in return. Her A-turret malfunctioned after three rounds and could not be returned to action during the engagement. She suffered 13 dead and 11 wounde The Disaster The first Japanese strike, 25 Nell bombers carrying torpedoes, attacked from the south at 11:15 on 10 December 1941. Prince of Wales maneuvered hard to port to present her broadside to the incoming aircraft; a single torpedo struck her starboard quarter at 11:44, near the propeller shaft, and jammed her port rudder at 15 degrees. She could no longer steer a straight course. The subsequent waves of Japanese attack aircraft, six groups of Nells and Bettys over the following hour, found her increasingly unable to maneuver. Between 12:45 and 13:00 she was struck by four more torpedoes on her port side, all at or below the waterline. The flooding could not be contained; her list to port grew progressively through the early afternoon. Captain Leach made the decision to order the evacuation at 13:15. The surviving destroyers Express and Electra came alongside to take off her crew under the standing gunfire of the Japanese attack. At 13:20 the Japanese delivered the final strike against Prince of Wales. A 500-kilogram bomb struck her armoured upper deck near X-turret and detonated below. The ship rolled onto her port side at 13:18 and capsized. She sank at 13:20 on 10 December 1941, bow-first, 25 nautical miles east of Kuantan, Malaya. Admiral Phillips, Captain Leach, 24 officers, and 303 ratings went down with her. 1,196 of her crew of 1,523 survived. HMS Repulse was struck by four torpedoes in the same attack sequence and sank at 12:33 on the same afternoon, 40 minutes before Princ
36. 1941 — HMS Ark Royal. Gibraltar, fourteen hours to sink, damage control blamed Location: Mediterranean, 30 nmi east of Gibraltar · Coordinates: 35.93°N 4.67°W · Casualties: 1 · Survivors: 1,487 · Depth: 1,000 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by the German submarine U-81 (Friedrich Guggenberger, commanding) thirty miles east of Gibraltar at 15:41 on 13 November 1941. A single torpedo struck her starboard side. She took fourteen hours to sink; a subsequent inquiry blamed inadequate damage control rather than the torpedo itself. · Fate: located 2002 · Type: aircraft carrier · Tonnage: 22,000 tons · Crew: 1488 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1937 Royal Navy aircraft carrier, veteran of the hunt for Bismarck six months earlier. Torpedoed by U-81 thirty miles east of Gibraltar at 15:41 on 13 November 1941. She took 14 hours to sink, long enough for all but one of her 1,488 crew to be taken off. The Admiralty blamed inadequate damage control rather than the torpedo itself; the wreck was found in 2002 at 1,000 metres. The Vessel HMS Ark Royal (91) was a fleet aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, commissioned at Cammell Laird's Birkenhead yard on 16 November 1938. She was 209 metres long, 22,000 tons standard displacement, and carried an air group of 54-72 aircraft depending on configuration. She had been designed from the outset as a purpose-built aircraft carrier, not a converted battleship or battlecruiser hull; her hull form, hangar arrangement, and flight deck were the product of the Royal Navy's accumulated carrier experience of the 1920s and 1930s. Her design was the most advanced British carrier architecture of the interwar period: twin hangars (one armoured, one not), three aircraft elevators, an armoured flight deck over the hangars, and a starboard-side island superstructure of conventional type. Her designed speed was 31 knots on three shafts; her air group could include Fairey Fulmar fighters, Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers, and (from 1940) Fairey Albacore and Fairey Barracuda strike aircraft. She became, in the popular press of Britain between 1939 and 1941, the most famous single ship of the Royal Navy. Her "sinking" was claimed repeatedly by German propaganda (most notably by the comedian William Joyce, "Lord Haw-Haw", on the German radio propaganda broadcasts of 1940), and her continued survival was used in the British press as evidence of the unreliability of German claims. Her commanding officer from December 1940 was Captain Loben Maund, 53 years old, a career Royal Navy officer. The Disaster Guggenberger manoeuvred U-81 to a firing position on Ark Royal's starboard side. At 15:41 he fired a single G7e torpedo from his forward tube at a range of approximately 2,500 metres. The torpedo struck Ark Royal on her starboard side below the waterline, at Frame 144, between her central and aft boiler rooms. The torpedo hit produced an initial breach of approximately 45 metres in her starboard side. The flooding that followed was, however, slower than might have been predicted from the damage: her damage-control teams contained the immediate inflow to the three adjacent boiler rooms, and her stability at 10 degrees of list was within her design envelope. The ship was not in immediate danger of capsizing. The subsequent 14 hours, however, revealed the cumulative effect of damage-control failures on a large aircraft carrier. Her starboard boiler rooms could not be kept operational against the flooding; her electrical power progressively failed as the flooded compartments affected the switchboards; her damage-control pumps ran out of fuel oil as the auxiliary machinery sequentially failed. At 04:30 on 14 November 1941 the damage-control battle was progressively being lost. The captain ordered abandon-ship at 06:00. HMS Ark Royal capsized at 06:19 on 14 November 1941 and sank at 06:40 at approximately 36°03′N 4°40′W in approximately 1,000 metres of water. She had taken 14 hours to sink after the single torpedo strike. Of her 1,488 crew, only one man died: Able Seaman Edward Mit
37. 1941 — HMS Repulse. South China Sea, alongside Prince of Wales Location: South China Sea, off Kuantan, Malaya · Coordinates: 3.67°N 104.33°E · Casualties: 508 · Survivors: 796 · Depth: 58 m · Cause: aerial torpedo — Sunk together with HMS Prince of Wales by Japanese Navy land-based torpedo bombers off Kuantan, Malaya, on 10 December 1941. Her older, less protected hull folded under five torpedo hits in quick succession. Capsized at 12:33, an hour before Prince of Wales. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: battlecruiser · Renown class · Tonnage: 37,400 tons · Crew: 1304 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1916 Royal Navy battlecruiser of Great War vintage, partnered with HMS Prince of Wales in Force Z. Attacked together with her flagship by Japanese land-based torpedo bombers off Kuantan, Malaya, on the afternoon of 10 December 1941. Five torpedoes struck in quick succession; her twenty-five-year-old hull folded in under twenty minutes, capsizing at 12:33. 508 dead of 1,304. Admiral Phillips's stubborn refusal to call for fighter cover from Singapore remains a disputed command decision in Royal Navy historiography. The Vessel HMS Repulse was a Renown-class battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the John Brown yard at Clydebank on 18 August 1916, during the First World War. She was 242 metres long, 37,400 tons standard displacement, and armed with six 15-inch guns in three twin turrets. She was designed for the high speed characteristic of the battlecruiser concept: 32 knots on four shafts, faster than any contemporary battleship. Her original 1916 design had emphasised speed and armament at the expense of armour; her belt armour of 6 inches was substantially thinner than contemporary battleships. She had been rebuilt between 1933 and 1936 in a significant modernisation that had added approximately 9,000 tons of improved deck armour, a new anti-aircraft armament, and modern fire-control systems. As modernised she was approximately equal in protection to a contemporary battleship and retained her original speed advantage. By 1941 she was one of three surviving Royal Navy battlecruisers (with HMS Renown and HMS Hood), all of which had been heavily modernised in the 1930s. Her commanding officer from February 1941 was Captain William Tennant, 51 years old, a career Royal Navy officer who had commanded HMS Kelly with distinction in 1939-40. The Disaster At 11:15 on 10 December 1941, 85 Japanese naval aircraft of the 22nd Air Flotilla of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service reached the Force Z position. The strike, launched from bases in southern Indochina, comprised Mitsubishi G3M Nell and G4M Betty bombers carrying a mix of aerial torpedoes and 500-kilo bombs. Repulse's initial anti-aircraft response was described by her surviving officers as effective: her modernised 20mm Oerlikons and 40mm pom-poms put up a substantial volume of close-in fire. The first wave of Japanese bombers, eight G4M Bettys, attacked Prince of Wales and scored a single torpedo hit. The second wave, six more G4Ms, attacked Repulse at 11:54 but scored no hits. Repulse had, at this point, conducted evasive manoeuvring of the highest order; Captain Tennant was universally praised in subsequent British naval writing for his ship-handling in the opening phase of the attack. The third Japanese attack wave at 12:30 was the decisive one. Nine G4M Bettys approached Repulse from two directions simultaneously; she could not evade both. Four Type 91 aerial torpedoes struck her port side in quick succession between 12:33 and 12:35. The four hits were distributed along her port side from amidships aft, overlapping her torpedo protection system. Repulse listed to port immediately. Her older hull, even as modernised, had not been designed against the kind of concentrated multi-torpedo attack that was now directed at her. Her port-side watertight subdivision failed
38. 1941 — Bismarck. Germany's largest, three days after Hood Location: North Atlantic, ~300 nmi west of Brest, France · Coordinates: 48.17°N 16.33°W · Casualties: ~2,100 · Survivors: 114 · Depth: 4,790 m · Cause: naval gunfire · torpedo — Crippled by a Fairey Swordfish torpedo which jammed her rudder at 21:05 on 26 May 1941. Unable to steer, she was engaged the following morning by HMS King George V, HMS Rodney, and accompanying cruisers. After an 88-minute gun duel she was finished by torpedoes from HMS Dorsetshire and, by some accounts, scuttling charges set by her own crew. · Fate: abyssal plain · located 1989 · Type: battleship · Bismarck class · Tonnage: 50,900 tons · Crew: 2200 · Flag: Nazi Germany · Launched: 1939 Germany's largest warship, flagship of the Kriegsmarine. Sank HMS Hood on 24 May 1941 in the Denmark Strait; three days later, crippled by a Fairey Swordfish torpedo to her rudder, she was pounded into scrap by the Royal Navy. ~2,100 dead, 114 rescued. Found by Robert Ballard in 1989, four and a half kilometres down, upright on the abyssal plain. The Vessel The Bismarck was a battleship of the new Kriegsmarine, the first of two ordered under the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement and completed in Hamburg in August 1940. At 50,900 tons full load she was the largest warship Germany had ever built, 251 metres long, armed with eight 38 cm guns in four twin turrets, with a secondary battery of twelve 15 cm guns and an armour scheme that could shrug off most contemporary British fire at standard battle ranges. She carried a crew of 2,200. Her design was the product of a German naval staff still working to the last generation's doctrine: a long-range commerce raider as much as a fleet battleship, built to survive single-ship engagements at range and to break out into the Atlantic convoy routes. Her armour was concentrated amidships against flat-trajectory fire, leaving her bow, stern, and steering gear relatively lightly protected. The weakness of her stern armour would be her undoing. Admiral Erich Raeder intended her to sail in company with her sister Tirpitz and the two Scharnhorst-class battlecruisers as a four-ship squadron against the Atlantic convoy system. By the spring of 1941 only Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen were available; Tirpitz was still working up, Scharnhorst was refitting from a broken boiler tube, Gneisenau had been hit by an RAF torpedo in Brest harbour. Operation Rheinübung, her sortie into the Atlantic, was ordered against the urging of both ship captains to wait for the heavier force. The Disaster For a day and a half she ran south-east at twenty-four knots with Force H steaming up from Gibraltar and the Home Fleet closing from the north. The RAF's Coastal Command lost her in heavy weather on the afternoon of 25 May; the Royal Navy lost her too. She had turned south earlier than the British had expected, and the Home Fleet spent that night chasing empty sea. An American-built Catalina of 209 Squadron, flown by a Royal Air Force crew with an American naval officer as co-pilot, relocated her at 10:30 on 26 May, roughly 700 miles west of Brest. She was now within reach of Ark Royal's Swordfish torpedo bombers. The afternoon strike found the wrong target and attacked the British cruiser Sheffield instead; the torpedoes mercifully malfunctioned. The evening strike, launched into worsening weather at 19:10, put a Swordfish torpedo into Bismarck's rudder compartment. Her rudders were jammed twelve degrees to port. She could no longer steer. Through the night she circled into the westerly gale, unable to make for the French coast and unable to turn into the wind. Rodney and King George V closed at dawn on 27 May. The gun duel that followed lasted eighty-eight minutes; the British ships fired 2,876 shells at point-blank ranges and Bismarck was battered to a floating hulk. Rodney's heavy shells penetrated her bridge, her turrets, her boiler rooms; fires burned from end to end. Her crew scuttled her, or so they later claimed, at around 10:35. Dorsetshire's torpedoes finished the
39. 1941 — SS Gairsoppa. 2,817 silver bars, the deepest recovery ever Location: Atlantic Ocean, SW of Ireland · Coordinates: 49.53°N 15.92°W · Casualties: 85 · Survivors: 1 · Depth: 4,700 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Ran low on coal in the North Atlantic and broke away from Convoy SL-64 on 14 February 1941 to attempt Galway alone. Torpedoed by German submarine U-101 (Ernst Mengersen, commanding) three days later, southwest of Ireland. Sank in twenty minutes. · Fate: abyssal · silver recovered 2012-13 · Type: cargo steamer · Hain Steamship · Tonnage: 5,237 tons · Crew: 86 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1919 British Hain Steamship cargo ship, India to Galway with 2,817 silver bars in her holds. Ran low on coal and broke away from her convoy on 14 February 1941; torpedoed three days later by U-101 southwest of Ireland. 85 dead of 86 aboard; Second Officer Richard Ayres reached the Cornish coast in a lifeboat two weeks later. In 2012-13 Odyssey Marine recovered the silver from 4,700 metres, the deepest recovery of precious metals ever attempted. The Vessel The SS Gairsoppa was a British steel-hulled steam-powered cargo ship, built at the Caledon Shipbuilding and Engineering Company yard at Dundee in 1919. She was 125 metres long, 5,237 gross tons, and powered by a triple-expansion steam engine of approximately 1,800 horsepower. She was originally built for the British India Steam Navigation Company for the Calcutta to London trade route; her name Gairsoppa was taken from the Gerusoppa Falls (now Jog Falls) in Karnataka, India. Her subsequent service was predominantly the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean cargo trade, carrying substantial cargoes between India, East Africa, and European ports through the 1920s and 1930s. She was, in 1940, 21 years old and beginning to show her age: her triple-expansion engine was progressively less efficient compared to modern diesel designs, and her hull had been substantially weathered by two decades of saltwater service. By January 1941, she had been requisitioned by the British Ministry of War Transport for wartime merchant-marine service as part of the Battle of the Atlantic supply operations. Her specific mission for the voyage of 4 February 1941 onwards was the transport of strategic cargo from India to Britain: predominantly tea, pig iron, and approximately 240 tonnes of silver bullion from the Indian State Banks, consigned to the Bank of England to support Britain's wartime financial position. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Gerald Hyland, 46, a career British India Steam Naviga The Disaster On 16 February 1941, approximately 48 hours after detaching from Convoy SL-64, Gairsoppa was detected by the German U-boat U-101 under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Ernst Mengersen. The U-101 was on her fifth war patrol in the eastern Atlantic and had been ordered to intercept isolated British merchant ships detached from convoys. At approximately 22:30 on 16 February 1941, U-101 initiated her attack on Gairsoppa. The attack was conducted from approximately 3,000 metres range using U-101's stern torpedo tubes. Two torpedoes were launched at approximately 22:35; one torpedo struck Gairsoppa amidships at approximately 22:38 on 16 February 1941. The torpedo detonation was substantial. The explosion penetrated Gairsoppa's engine room and produced a fatal hull breach. The ship began to settle immediately; her engines stopped; her wireless equipment was destroyed by the shock; her single lifeboat on the starboard side was damaged during the explosion and could not be launched. Captain Hyland ordered abandon ship at approximately 22:42 on 16 February 1941. Three lifeboats were successfully launched: the port lifeboat (with approximately 32 personnel), the port gig (with approximately 12 personnel), and a makeshift raft (with approximately 8 personnel). SS Gairsoppa sank at approximately 22:55 on 16 February 1941 in approximately 4,700 metres of water approximately 500 kilometres west of Ireland. The weather conditions in the immediately succeeding days were the critical factor
40. 1941 — USS Utah. Ford Island west side, misidentified as a carrier Location: Pearl Harbor, Ford Island (west side), Hawaii · Coordinates: 21.37°N 157.96°W · Casualties: 58 · Survivors: 461 · Depth: 11 m · Cause: aerial attack — Hit by two Japanese aerial torpedoes on the morning of 7 December 1941. Japanese pilots mis-identified her low profile as an active aircraft carrier despite her target-ship conversion. She capsized in eleven minutes. · Fate: shallow water · memorial · Type: target ship · former battleship · Tonnage: 21,825 tons · Crew: 519 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1909 American battleship of 1909, by 1941 a radio-controlled target ship. Mis-identified by Japanese pilots as an active aircraft carrier on the morning of 7 December 1941 and hit by two torpedoes; she capsized in eleven minutes. 58 dead, four Medal of Honor citations awarded for men who refused to abandon trapped shipmates. The wreck was never raised, and the Utah Memorial on Ford Island is the quieter twin of Arizona's marble rectangle. The Vessel USS Utah (AG-16), originally commissioned as USS Utah (BB-31), was a Florida-class pre-dreadnought battleship of the United States Navy, commissioned at the New York Shipbuilding Company in Camden, New Jersey, on 31 August 1911. She was 159 metres long, 23,033 tons standard displacement as originally commissioned, and armed with ten 12-inch guns in five twin turrets. She was one of the two Florida-class battleships, the American answer to the British Bellerophon-class dreadnoughts of 1909-1910. Her career followed a progression characteristic of older American battleships of her generation. She served as a first-line battleship from 1911 through the interwar period; was demilitarised under the provisions of the London Naval Treaty of 1930; was converted to a radio-controlled target ship in 1931 (her main battery removed, her hull strengthened to absorb practice bombs and torpedo hits, her designation changed from BB-31 to AG-16); and served as a training asset for Pacific Fleet aviation practice through the 1930s. By 1941 she was, at 30 years of age, the oldest American battleship-hull in active service (though she had ceased to be classed as a battleship a decade earlier). Her specific role was as a target-vessel for practice aerial bombing and for gunnery training. Her upper decks had been reinforced with timber baulks and sandbags to absorb practice bomb impacts. She carried a skeleton crew of approximately 500. The Disaster USS Utah listed to port within 90 seconds of the first torpedo strike. Her list was not gradual; the absence of the original torpedo-protection system and the compromises in her internal subdivision following her 1931 conversion made her particularly vulnerable to sequential flooding. By 08:08 she was at 40 degrees of list. At 08:12 she capsized onto her port side. Among her crew casualties was Chief Warrant Officer Peter Tomich, the engineering officer on watch at the moment of the attack. Tomich remained in the engine room as his ship capsized, specifically to keep the auxiliary steam systems running to allow crew members in the lower compartments to escape through the bilge keels as the ship rolled. His decision cost him his life but is credited with the survival of several dozen crew members who might otherwise have been trapped. Tomich was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his conduct. USS Utah sank at 08:15 on 7 December 1941, approximately 14 minutes after the first torpedo strike. Of her 558 crew aboard at the moment of the attack, 58 died. 500 survived, many by clambering along her exposed starboard hull as she capsized and being picked up by launches from the nearby USS Raleigh. The relatively low death toll (compared to USS Arizona or USS Oklahoma) reflected Utah's reduced operational status: she carried approximately one-third the crew of a comparably-sized fleet battleship, and most of her crew were on the upper decks rather than in lower compartments w
41. 1942 — HMAS Canberra. Savo Island, Mikawa's night attack Location: Iron Bottom Sound, off Savo Island, Solomon Islands · Coordinates: 9.20°S 159.88°E · Casualties: 85 · Survivors: 720 · Depth: 700 m · Cause: naval gunfire · torpedo — Surprised by Vice-Admiral Mikawa's cruiser force at 01:38 on 9 August 1942 at the Battle of Savo Island, the opening surface engagement of the Guadalcanal campaign. Struck by more than twenty 8-inch shells and one torpedo in under two minutes. Scuttled the next morning by USS Ellet. · Fate: abyssal · located 1992 · Type: heavy cruiser · Kent class · Tonnage: 10,000 tons · Crew: 819 · Flag: Australia · Launched: 1927 Royal Australian Navy heavy cruiser, screening the American transports at Guadalcanal. Surprised at 01:38 on 9 August 1942 by Vice-Admiral Mikawa's Japanese cruiser force at the Battle of Savo Island. Hit by more than twenty 8-inch shells in two minutes; her captain and 85 crew were killed instantly. Scuttled by USS Ellet the following morning. One of four Allied heavy cruisers lost in a single 32-minute engagement, the worst Allied surface defeat of the Pacific War. The Vessel HMAS Canberra (D33) was a Kent-class heavy cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy, commissioned at the John Brown & Company yard at Clydebank, Scotland, on 9 July 1928. She was 192 metres long, 10,000 tons standard displacement, armed with eight 8-inch guns in four twin turrets, and designed for 31.5 knots. She was one of the two Kent-class cruisers transferred to Australia under the 1924 naval cooperation agreement between the British and Australian governments (her sister being HMAS Australia), forming the bulk of the RAN's heavy-cruiser strength through the interwar period. Her interwar service was predominantly on the Australia station, with periodic deployments to Singapore and the China station. She had participated in the Spanish Civil War observation patrols of 1937. At the outbreak of the Second World War she was under the command of Captain Frank Getting, a 42-year-old RAN officer and graduate of the Royal Australian Naval College. Her 1942 Pacific war service placed her in Task Force 44 (later Task Force 62), the Allied naval force supporting the American amphibious operations in the Southwest Pacific. She and the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia under Rear-Admiral Victor Crutchley RN formed the core of the Allied heavy-cruiser strength supporting the Guadalcanal invasion of August 1942, the first major Allied ground offensive of the Pacific War. The Disaster HMAS Canberra was the nearest target. Mikawa's flagship Chōkai and the heavy cruiser Aoba concentrated their combined fire on her. Within two minutes, between 01:42 and 01:44, Canberra was struck by an estimated 24 8-inch shells. The hits destroyed her bridge, killed Captain Getting instantly, disabled both her forward turrets, and ignited major fires throughout her superstructure. She also took one or two torpedo hits (the source remains disputed; Japanese records show no torpedoes fired at her by Mikawa's force, suggesting a possible friendly-fire torpedo from USS Bagley, an explanation that has been the subject of considerable post-war controversy). Canberra was effectively destroyed as a combat ship in 90 seconds. She listed heavily to starboard; her electrical power failed; her engine rooms flooded. Her crew fought fires and tended casualties through the next four hours in an attempt to save the ship. By 06:00 on 9 August, with the ship still listing at 10 degrees and with the American destroyer USS Ellet ordered to stand by, the decision was made to evacuate her and scuttle her. Her surviving crew were transferred to USS Patterson; USS Ellet fired five torpedoes into her at 08:00. Canberra sank at 08:00 on 9 August 1942 in approximately 700 metres of water in Iron Bottom Sound. The Battle of Savo Island, of which Canberra's loss was the opening act, cost the Allied navies four heavy cruisers (Canberra, Vincennes, Astoria, Quincy) and 1,077 dead in a single 32-minute eng
42. 1942 — USS Houston. Sunda Strait, the Ghost of the Java Coast Location: Sunda Strait, between Java and Sumatra · Coordinates: 5.90°S 105.92°E · Casualties: 693 · Survivors: 368 · 266 later died as POWs · Depth: 40 m · Cause: naval gunfire · torpedo — Engaged together with HMAS Perth by elements of a Japanese amphibious landing force in the Sunda Strait on the night of 28 February-1 March 1942. Outnumbered by four heavy cruisers and destroyers. Struck by at least four torpedoes and sustained gunfire. · Fate: war grave · protected · partial salvage · Type: heavy cruiser · Northampton class · Tonnage: 9,200 tons · Crew: 1061 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1929 American Northampton-class heavy cruiser, nicknamed 'The Ghost of the Java Coast' by the Japanese who kept reporting her sunk. Caught with HMAS Perth at the Sunda Strait on the night of 28 February-1 March 1942 blundering into a Japanese amphibious force. 693 dead of 1,061 aboard; Captain Albert Rooks was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor. 368 of the survivors were captured and 266 of those died as prisoners of war, many on the Sumatra railway. The Vessel USS Houston (CA-30) was a Northampton-class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company on 17 June 1930. She was 183 metres long, 9,200 tons standard displacement, with nine 8-inch guns in three triple turrets. She was one of the six Northampton-class heavy cruisers, the first American heavy cruiser class built to the Washington Naval Treaty's displacement limit. Her interwar service had been largely ceremonial. She had served as President Franklin Roosevelt's "Presidential yacht" on multiple occasions, carrying him on fishing trips to the Bahamas in 1934 and 1935 and on the 1938 voyage to Pearl Harbor. The association with Roosevelt had made her the best-known American warship of the 1930s; her crew enjoyed considerable prestige within the service. In the Pacific from 1940 she was assigned to the Asiatic Fleet under Admiral Thomas Hart, based at Cavite in the Philippines. The Asiatic Fleet, smaller than the Pacific Fleet, was the American forward deployment in the western Pacific against Japanese expansion. Her captain from September 1940 was Captain Albert H. Rooks, 50 years old, a 1914 Naval Academy graduate with a 27-year career. The Disaster The two Allied cruisers entered the Sunda Strait at approximately 22:30 on 28 February 1942 at 28 knots. At approximately 23:10, lookouts aboard Houston sighted the Japanese landing force at anchor at Bantam Bay, approximately 1 nautical mile to port. The Allied cruisers had blundered into the Japanese Western Attack Force: four heavy cruisers (Mogami, Mikuma, Kumano, Suzuya), one light cruiser (Natori), and fourteen destroyers, protecting a large invasion convoy. Captain Rooks and Captain Waller turned their two cruisers to engage. The subsequent Battle of Sunda Strait, fought between 23:10 on 28 February and approximately 00:45 on 1 March 1942, was the most desperate naval engagement of the Asiatic Fleet's war. Houston and Perth fired their 8-inch and 6-inch guns at every Japanese target in range, engaging simultaneously multiple heavy cruisers and destroyer squadrons. HMAS Perth was struck by four Japanese torpedoes and sunk at approximately 00:25 on 1 March 1942. Her loss did not stop Houston; Captain Rooks continued to fight his ship alone against the Japanese force. Over the following 20 minutes Houston was struck by an estimated eight torpedoes and numerous 8-inch shell hits. Captain Rooks was killed on the bridge at approximately 00:30. Houston, under the command of her executive officer Commander David W. Roberts, continued to engage until her 8-inch guns ran out of ammunition; she then fired her 5-inch secondary guns until those also ran dry. USS Houston sank at app
43. 1942 — Hiryū. Midway, the afternoon survivor, Yamaguchi Location: Pacific Ocean, NW of Midway Atoll · Coordinates: 31.43°N 179.14°E · Casualties: 389 · Survivors: 797 · Depth: 4,650 m · Cause: aerial attack — The only Japanese carrier to survive the American morning attack at Midway on 4 June 1942. Launched the strike that crippled USS Yorktown; caught that same afternoon by aircraft from USS Enterprise. Four bombs struck at 17:05; burned through the night and was scuttled by her own destroyers at 09:10 on 5 June. · Fate: abyssal · not located · Type: aircraft carrier · Tonnage: 17,300 tons · Crew: 1186 · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1937 Fast fleet carrier, the only Japanese carrier to survive the American morning attack at Midway on 4 June 1942; she launched the retaliatory strike that crippled USS Yorktown. Caught that same afternoon by aircraft from USS Enterprise; four bombs struck and she burned through the night, scuttled before dawn on 5 June. 389 dead, 797 survived. Rear-Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, one of Japan's most capable carrier commanders, chose to go down with his ship. The Vessel The Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Hiryū ("Flying Dragon") was the sister ship of Sōryū, commissioned at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 5 July 1939. She was 228 metres long, 17,300 tons standard displacement, and carried the same air group composition as Sōryū (63 aircraft). Her one distinctive feature among Japanese carriers was the port-side island structure rather than the starboard-side arrangement standard on Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, and subsequent Japanese carriers. Her operational service from 1939 paralleled Sōryū's through the early Pacific War. Her captain from September 1941 was Captain Tomeo Kaku, a career naval aviator, and her air group was commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Joichi Tomonaga, one of the most distinguished Japanese aviators of the early war. At Midway on 4 June 1942, Hiryū alone among the four Japanese fleet carriers survived the American dive-bombing attacks of 10:22-10:26. Her position in the starboard column, slightly to the rear of Sōryū, had placed her out of the immediate strike path of VB-3 and she had suffered no damage in the morning attack. The Disaster While Hiryū's second strike was attacking Yorktown, the American forces had identified her as the surviving Japanese carrier and had launched a strike of their own. At approximately 17:00 on 4 June 1942 the dive bombers of USS Enterprise's VB-6 and a scratch contingent from Yorktown's VB-3 (whose pilots had landed on Enterprise after Yorktown had been damaged) reached the Kidō Butai's position. The combined strike of 24 Dauntless dive bombers found Hiryū at 17:03. Four American 1,000-pound bombs struck Hiryū between 17:04 and 17:05. The first three struck her forward flight deck and forward hangar; the fourth struck her island structure. The damage pattern was similar to the other Midway carrier losses: burning aviation fuel from ruptured lines, exploding armaments on the hangar deck, progressive structural failure as the fires burned through internal bulkheads. Captain Kaku was wounded on the bridge but remained in command. Rear-Admiral Yamaguchi, as commander of the 2nd Carrier Division, decided to remain aboard the burning ship. The pattern of Japanese carrier command culture in 1942 placed strong emphasis on the senior officer going down with his ship when the ship was lost; Yamaguchi's decision was received by the surviving Japanese officers as the expected and honourable course. He refused evacuation; his last message to the fleet, transmitted by blinker signal to the destroyer Kazagumo at approximately 02:00 on 5 June 1942, was a request that the Japanese Emperor be in
44. 1942 — USS Hornet. Doolittle's launch, Santa Cruz, the Japanese torpedoes Location: South Pacific, Santa Cruz Islands · Coordinates: 8.63°S 166.70°E · Casualties: 140 · Survivors: ~2,200 · Depth: 5,400 m · Cause: aerial attack · naval torpedo — Repeatedly bombed and torpedoed by Japanese carrier aircraft at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942. Her crew was ordered off. American scuttling torpedoes failed to sink her; the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo finished her in the small hours of the 27th. · Fate: abyssal · located 2019 · Type: aircraft carrier · Yorktown class · Tonnage: 20,000 tons · Crew: 2340 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1940 American Yorktown-class carrier, launched the Doolittle Raid against Tokyo in April 1942. At the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942 she was bombed and torpedoed repeatedly by Japanese carrier aircraft until her crew was ordered off; American scuttling torpedoes failed to sink her and the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo finished her in the small hours of the 27th. 140 dead. Located by Paul Allen's team in 2019 at 5,400 metres, upright and apparently intact. The Vessel USS Hornet (CV-8) was the third and last of the Yorktown-class aircraft carriers of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company on 20 October 1941. She was 251 metres long, 25,600 tons standard displacement, carried 82 aircraft, and designed for 32 knots. Her construction had been accelerated by the 1940 two-ocean navy appropriation; at her commissioning, six weeks before Pearl Harbor, she was the newest American fleet carrier in service. Her commanding officer through her brief 12-month career was Captain Marc A. Mitscher, 54, a career naval aviator who had served on the first American carrier USS Langley in 1923 and who would, after the war, become the principal American carrier force commander of the late Pacific campaign. His Hornet command was his first major sea command. Her first operational deployment is the mission for which she is primarily remembered: the Doolittle Raid. On 2 April 1942 Hornet departed Alameda, California, carrying 16 Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell medium bombers under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel James Doolittle. The aircraft, loaded on her flight deck (no American carrier had ever carried medium bombers on an operational deployment before), were launched on 18 April 1942 at a distance of 650 nautical miles from Tokyo for the first American aerial attack on the Japanese home islands. The Doolittle Raid caused minimal physical damage but had large psychological consequences for Japanese strategic planning; it w The Disaster The Japanese strike reached Hornet at 10:12 on 26 October 1942. Over the following 25 minutes, Hornet was struck by four bombs, three from diving Val dive-bombers and one from a crippled Aichi D3A that crashed deliberately into her stack as a suicide attack. She was also hit by two Type 91 aerial torpedoes on her starboard side, and by a second suicide-crash Japanese aircraft on her flight deck forward. By 10:40 she was listing 8 degrees to starboard, her engine rooms were flooded, her steering was disabled, and she was on fire in her forward hangar. The cruiser USS Northampton took her in tow at 14:30. The second Japanese strike, delivered by nine more Vals from Zuikaku's reserves, reached her at 15:15 and scored two more hits. Hornet was now clearly beyond salvage. At 17:27 on 26 October 1942 Captain Charles Mason (her recently-appointed commanding officer) ordered abandon-ship. The damaged crew was transferred to Northampton and the destroyer Russell; 140 of her 2,340 crew had died in the attacks. Through the evening of 26-27 October 1942, the American task force attempted to scuttle Hornet before she could fall into Japanese hands. Eight torpedoes from USS Mustin and Anderson struck her without sinking her; over 400 rounds of 5-inch gunfire from the same ships set her burning but she did not sink. At midnight on 26-27 October, with Japanese search aircraft reported approaching, the American destroyers withdrew, leaving Hornet still afloat but burning from end to end. Horn
45. 1942 — SS Laconia. Hartenstein's rescue, the American bomber, the Laconia Order Location: Atlantic Ocean, off Ascension Island · Coordinates: 5.05°S 11.38°W · Casualties: ~1,658 · Survivors: ~1,117 · Depth: 4,850 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by German submarine U-156 (Werner Hartenstein, commanding) on the night of 12 September 1942 while carrying 1,800 Italian POWs, British troops, and civilians. Hartenstein surfaced, tied lifeboats to his U-boat, broadcast in English that he would not fire on rescuers, and was bombed mid-rescue by an American B-24. Admiral Dönitz issued the 'Laconia Order' in response. · Fate: abyssal · not located · Type: troopship · former Cunard liner · Tonnage: 19,695 tons · Crew: 436 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1921 Former Cunard liner, by 1942 a British troopship. Torpedoed by U-156 under Werner Hartenstein west of Ascension Island on the night of 12 September 1942. When Hartenstein discovered she was carrying 1,800 Italian POWs alongside British troops and civilians, he surfaced, tied lifeboats to his U-boat, and broadcast in English that he would not fire on rescuers; an American B-24 then bombed the U-boat mid-rescue. The Laconia Order that followed prohibited U-boats from rescuing survivors for the rest of the war. 1,658 dead of about 2,725 aboard. The Vessel The SS Laconia was a British Cunard Line passenger-cargo liner, built at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson yard at Wallsend between 1921 and 1922 and commissioned on 9 May 1922. She was 183 metres long, 19,695 gross tons, and powered by twin quadruple-expansion steam engines producing approximately 12,000 horsepower. Her peacetime accommodation was approximately 350 first-class, 350 second-class, and 1,500 third-class passengers, plus a crew of 475. Laconia had been originally built for the Cunard Line's Liverpool to New York transatlantic service; her subsequent service before the Second World War had included the Mediterranean winter cruise trade and the Boston to Liverpool route. By September 1939, she had been requisitioned by the British Ministry of War Transport and converted to an armed merchant cruiser for the Royal Navy's Northern Patrol operations. The armed merchant cruiser conversion included: addition of eight 6-inch guns; installation of anti-submarine equipment; modification of the passenger accommodation for military use; and addition of basic armour plating at critical points. From 1939 to 1941, Laconia served with the Royal Navy's Northern Patrol in the eastern Atlantic. In 1941, she was reconverted to a troop transport role under the Ministry of War Transport: her role became the transport of Allied personnel between British and Mediterranean theatre destinations. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Rudolph Sharp, 55, a career Cunard Line officer. The Disaster At approximately 22:10 on 12 September 1942, the German submarine U-156 under the command of Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein detected Laconia at approximately 7,000 metres range. U-156 was on her fifth war patrol in the South Atlantic and had been ordered to engage Allied military shipping. Hartenstein's attack was conducted from approximately 2,500 metres range using U-156's bow torpedo tubes. Two torpedoes were launched at approximately 22:22; both torpedoes struck Laconia on the starboard side amidships at approximately 22:23 on 12 September 1942. The torpedo damage was catastrophic. The two torpedoes opened a combined breach of approximately 18 metres along Laconia's starboard hull below the waterline, flooding multiple watertight compartments simultaneously. The ship began to list to starboard within minutes; her wireless equipment was damaged by the explosions and only emergency short-range signals were transmitted; her lifeboat evacuation commenced under rapidly deteriorating conditions. The specific tragedy of the subsequent evacuation was the treatment of the Italian prisoners. The prisoners had been housed in below-deck spaces and were the most difficult category of complement to evacuate. Some of the British guards were reported to have deliberately obstructed the Italian prisoners' access to the lifeboats; others to have assisted. The specific pattern of evacuation substantially disadvantaged the Italian prisoners relative to the British, Polish, and civilian
46. 1942 — HMS Exeter. Java Sea, the second engagement, Nachi and Haguro Location: Java Sea, ~150 nmi NNE of Surabaya · Coordinates: 5.00°S 111.00°E · Casualties: 54 · Survivors: ~651 · Depth: 60 m · Cause: naval gunfire · torpedo — Veteran of the Battle of the River Plate two years earlier, intercepted by the Japanese heavy cruisers Nachi, Haguro, Myōkō, and Ashigara at the Second Battle of the Java Sea on 1 March 1942. Struck in the engine room by a 20.3 cm shell; she slowed and was torpedoed. Scuttled by her own crew after abandoning. · Fate: located 2007 · illegally salvaged 2016 · Type: heavy cruiser · York class · Tonnage: 8,390 tons · Crew: 705 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1929 Royal Navy York-class heavy cruiser, veteran of the 1939 Battle of the River Plate where she had helped run the Graf Spee to ground. Intercepted by four Japanese heavy cruisers on 1 March 1942 at the Second Battle of the Java Sea while attempting to escape to Ceylon. Struck in the engine room by a 20.3 cm shell; scuttled by her crew after sustained torpedo and gunfire attack. 54 dead. Her wreck was located in 2007 and then, shockingly, illegally salvaged for scrap metal in 2016 by Indonesian scrap divers, along with HMS Electra and HMS Encounter. The Vessel HMS Exeter was a British heavy cruiser of the Royal Navy's York class, built at the Devonport Royal Dockyard between 1928 and 1931 and commissioned on 27 July 1931. She was 176 metres long, 8,520 tons displacement, and armed with six 8-inch primary guns in three twin-gun turrets (two forward, one aft), eight 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, and six 21-inch torpedo tubes. Her armour protection included a 76-millimetre main belt, 76-millimetre turret armour, and 38-millimetre deck armour. Exeter was the second ship of the York class, a two-ship class built under the specific armament constraints of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty (which limited cruiser primary-gun armament to 8 inches). Her specific claim to historical significance was her prior participation in the Battle of the River Plate (13 December 1939): as a member of Commodore Henry Harwood's Force G, Exeter had engaged the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee off the estuary of the River Plate. Exeter had sustained substantial damage in the engagement (including a major hit to her bridge that killed approximately 60 officers and crew), but had contributed substantially to the tactical pressure that led to Graf Spee's scuttling at Montevideo four days later. By February 1942, Exeter had been repaired from her River Plate damage and had been assigned to the Allied ABDA (American-British-Dutch-Australian) Command in the Southwest Pacific. Her operational role was cruiser operations in defence of the Dutch East Indies an The Disaster At approximately 07:30 on 1 March 1942, Exeter and her escorts were detected by Japanese reconnaissance aircraft approximately 170 kilometres northwest of Bawean Island in the central Java Sea. The Japanese Navy's covering force - the heavy cruisers Nachi, Haguro, Myōkō, and Ashigara, along with multiple destroyers - had been specifically deployed to intercept Allied escape traffic from Surabaya. The Japanese force was substantially superior to Exeter's three-ship group. The four Japanese heavy cruisers carried a combined primary armament of 40 8-inch guns; Exeter carried only six 8-inch guns (and her forward boiler room damage had reduced her speed to approximately 23 knots, below the 25 knots of the Japanese cruisers). The tactical situation was clear: Exeter could not outrun the Japanese force and could not defeat them in a running engagement. The engagement commenced at approximately 10:20 on 1 March 1942, with the Japanese cruisers opening fire at approximately 22,000 metres range. The engagement continued for approximately four hours, with the Japanese force gradually closing range and delivering sustained heavy-gun fire. Exeter returned fire but her rate of fire was progressively degraded by shell hits and by the continuing deterioration of her boiler-room damage. At approximately 11:20 on 1 March 1942, Exeter sustained her critical hit: an 8-inch shell struck her after boiler room, penetrating to the boiler systems and causing catastrophic steam loss. Her speed droppe
47. 1942 — USS Lexington. Coral Sea, the fuel vapours, Phelps's scuttling Location: Coral Sea, ~500 nmi NE of Townsville, Australia · Coordinates: 15.20°S 155.55°E · Casualties: 216 · Survivors: ~2,735 · Depth: 3,000 m · Cause: aerial attack · secondary explosion — Struck by two aerial torpedoes and two bombs from Japanese carrier aircraft on 8 May 1942 at the Battle of the Coral Sea. Damage control appeared to have saved her by midday. At 12:47 an internal explosion from leaking aviation fuel vapours began a chain of secondary detonations that gutted her by evening. · Fate: abyssal · located 2018 · Type: aircraft carrier · Lexington class · Tonnage: 37,000 tons · Crew: 2951 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1925 American Lexington-class aircraft carrier, 'Lady Lex'. At the Battle of the Coral Sea on 8 May 1942, struck by two Japanese aerial torpedoes and two bombs; damage control seemed to have saved her until vapour from ruptured aviation fuel lines ignited and secondary explosions gutted her. 216 dead, scuttled by USS Phelps. Found intact in 2018 by Paul Allen's team at 3,000 metres with her fighter aircraft still on deck. The Vessel USS Lexington (CV-2) was one of the two Lexington-class aircraft carriers of the United States Navy, converted from the incomplete hulls of the Lexington-class battlecruisers cancelled under the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. She was commissioned on 14 December 1927 at the New York Shipbuilding Company, Camden, New Jersey. She was 270 metres long, 37,000 tons standard displacement, capable of carrying 78 aircraft, and driven by turbo-electric propulsion on four shafts at 34 knots, making her, with her sister USS Saratoga, the fastest American aircraft carrier of her generation. Her design reflected the American Navy's 1920s bet on the aircraft carrier as the capital ship of the future. She was the largest aircraft carrier in the world at her commissioning; her flight deck was longer and broader than any then in service. Her interwar period was spent developing the operational doctrine of carrier aviation: how to launch and recover aircraft at speed, how to coordinate multi-carrier strikes, how to integrate carrier aviation with fleet operations. The 1932 fleet problem at Pearl Harbor, in which Lexington attacked the defences of Pearl Harbor with surprise aircraft launches, had demonstrated at American naval war-game level exactly what the Japanese would achieve against Pearl Harbor ten years later. Her commanding officer at the date of her loss was Captain Frederick C. Sherman, 53, a career naval aviator and one of the most experienced American carrier captains of his generati The Disaster The Japanese attack on Task Force 17 was delivered in a two-wave pattern: high-altitude dive bombers first, followed by low-altitude torpedo bombers. Lexington was the primary target because of her larger silhouette and her position in the American formation. She was struck by two Type 91 aerial torpedoes on her port side (one at 11:20, one at 11:22) and by two 250-kilogram bombs (one on her forward flight deck at 11:27, one on her forward turret at 11:30). Her air group commander, Lieutenant-Commander William Ault, was killed when his aircraft was shot down during the engagement. By 11:45 on 8 May 1942, Captain Sherman's damage-control teams had largely contained the initial damage. Lexington was listing 7 degrees to port; her flight deck was damaged but operable; her forward gun turret was out of action; her aviation fuel system was intact. Sherman resumed flight operations at 12:15, recovering the returning Coral Sea strike aircraft. The damage control situation seemed under control. At 12:47 on 8 May 1942, an internal explosion in Lexington's auxiliary generator space initiated a secondary disaster. The torpedo hits had ruptured her aviation fuel tank vent lines; the ruptured lines had been venting aviation gasoline vapour into her compartment spaces for 90 minutes. The accumulated vapour ignited. The resulting explosion propagated through her fuel system and into her forward aircraft hangar. The secondary fire could not be controlled. Between 12:47 and 17:00 on 8 May 194
48. 1942 — USS Yorktown. Midway, the hinge, Ballard's discovery Location: Pacific Ocean, NW of Midway Atoll · Coordinates: 30.59°N 176.57°W · Casualties: 141 · Survivors: ~2,100 · Depth: 5,070 m · Cause: aerial attack · submarine torpedo — Bombed by Japanese carrier aircraft from Hiryū on the afternoon of 4 June 1942 during the Battle of Midway. Temporarily abandoned but reboarded for salvage. On 6 June she was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-168; she sank the following morning. · Fate: abyssal · located 1998 · Type: aircraft carrier · Yorktown class · Tonnage: 25,900 tons · Crew: 2217 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1936 American Yorktown-class carrier, 'The Fighting Lady', patched in 72 hours at Pearl Harbor after Coral Sea and on station at Midway on the morning of 4 June 1942. Bombed in two waves by Japanese carrier aircraft and torpedoed two days later by the submarine I-168. She sank on 7 June, the day the battle that reversed the Pacific War ended. Found in 1998 by Robert Ballard at over 5,000 metres, bombers still chained to her deck. The Vessel USS Yorktown (CV-5) was the lead ship of the Yorktown-class aircraft carriers of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company on 30 September 1937. She was 246 metres long, 25,900 tons standard displacement, carried 90 aircraft, and designed for 32.5 knots on four shafts. She was the principal American aircraft carrier design of the late 1930s; her successful service record would ultimately produce the Essex-class carriers that would dominate the Pacific War from 1943 forward. Her commanding officer in the Pacific through 1942 was Captain Elliott Buckmaster, 52 years old, a career naval aviator. Her air group, the Yorktown Air Group, was considered the most experienced carrier air group in the U.S. Navy by mid-1942: they had participated in the January 1942 raids on the Marshall Islands, the February Wake Island raid, the March 1942 raid on the Salamaua-Lae invasion force in New Guinea, and the Coral Sea engagement of 7-8 May 1942. Her Coral Sea damage of 8 May 1942 had included a bomb hit that had penetrated her flight deck and detonated in a fireroom, killing 66 men. Normal American Pacific Fleet repair estimates for her damage were three months in dry dock. Under the specific pressure of the approaching Japanese Midway operation, Admiral Chester Nimitz ordered that the repairs be completed in 72 hours. The Disaster Hiryū's first counter-strike reached USS Yorktown at 14:15 on 4 June 1942. Eighteen Aichi D3A Val dive-bombers attacked the carrier despite a heavy American combat air patrol. Three bombs struck Yorktown: one on her flight deck, one in her smokestack, one in the auxiliary machinery space. The hits caused serious damage: her smokestack fire knocked out her boilers, her flight deck was unserviceable, and her speed fell to 6 knots. Captain Buckmaster ordered abandon-ship preparations but kept a skeleton crew aboard to attempt damage control. Her crew's damage-control work was effective. Within two hours of the first attack, her boilers were back on line and she was making 20 knots; her flight deck was partially repaired. At 16:30 on 4 June 1942, Hiryū's second strike (ten Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bombers) reached her. Two torpedo hits on her port side disabled her steering and reopened her flooding; the list increased to 26 degrees. Captain Buckmaster ordered complete abandon-ship at 17:10 on 4 June. 2,270 men were transferred to the escorting destroyers. Despite the heavy damage and the abandon-ship order, Yorktown did not immediately sink. She floated through the night of 4-5 June 1942, still trimmed on her port side but structurally intact. At dawn on 6 June 1942, a salvage party under Commander Clarence Aldrich returned aboard and began pumping her out. Salvage tug USS Vireo took her in tow at 13:30 on 6 June with the salvage party working aboard. At 13:35 on 6 June 1942, t
49. 1942 — Akagi. Midway, one bomb, the flagship of Pearl Location: Pacific Ocean, NW of Midway Atoll · Coordinates: 30.12°N 179.07°W · Casualties: 267 · Survivors: 1,630 · Depth: 5,490 m · Cause: aerial attack — Struck by a 1,000-pound bomb from a single USS Enterprise SBD Dauntless dive bomber at 10:26 on 4 June 1942 at the Battle of Midway. The bomb detonated among fuelled and armed aircraft on her upper hangar deck. Fires consumed the ship for a full day; she was torpedoed and scuttled by her own destroyers on the morning of 5 June. · Fate: abyssal · located 2019 · Type: aircraft carrier · Tonnage: 36,500 tons · Crew: 1897 · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1925 Flagship of the Kidō Butai, the Japanese fast carrier strike force that attacked Pearl Harbor. At the Battle of Midway on the morning of 4 June 1942, a single American Dauntless dive bomber planted a 1,000-pound bomb among her fuelled and armed aircraft; she burned all day and was scuttled the next morning. 267 dead; 1,630 survived. Located in 2019 by Paul Allen's RV Petrel at 5,490 metres. The Vessel The Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Akagi was the flagship of the Kidō Butai, the First Air Fleet that was the principal strategic striking force of the Imperial Japanese Navy through the first six months of the Pacific War. She had been originally laid down in 1920 as the second of the Amagi-class battlecruisers but was converted during construction into an aircraft carrier under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. She was commissioned on 25 March 1927 at the Kure Naval Arsenal. As commissioned Akagi displaced 36,500 tons, was 260 metres long, and carried an unusual three-deck flight arrangement derived from early British carrier practice. The 1935-1938 modernisation rebuilt her with a conventional single continuous flight deck, a starboard-side island superstructure, and improved protection. As rebuilt she carried 66 aircraft (18 fighters, 18 dive bombers, 27 torpedo bombers, plus reserves) and could operate them at 31.5 knots, a standard comparable to the American Lexington-class. She served as the flagship of the First Air Fleet under Vice-Admiral Chūichi Nagumo from April 1941. Her air group led the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor as the lead ship of the Kidō Butai's six-carrier strike force. She subsequently participated in the January 1942 raids on Rabaul, the February 1942 attack on Darwin, the March 1942 operations in the Indian Ocean (sinking HMS Hermes, HMS Dorsetshire, and HMS Cornwall), and the May 1942 support of Operation MO. By June 1942 s The Disaster At 10:22 on 4 June 1942, Lieutenant-Commander Richard Best of USS Enterprise's dive bomber squadron VB-6, piloting a Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber at 6,000 metres altitude, identified Akagi as his target. Akagi's flight deck at that moment held 18 torpedo-armed Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bombers being prepared for launch, along with fully-fuelled aircraft of her combat air patrol. Best's dive attack produced a single bomb hit directly amidships. The single 1,000-pound bomb, striking at a relatively gentle angle of 45 degrees, penetrated Akagi's wooden flight deck and detonated on her upper hangar deck. The detonation occurred among the torpedo-armed, fully-fuelled aircraft being prepared for launch. The resulting chain reaction was catastrophic: aviation fuel from ruptured lines ignited; the aerial torpedoes detonated in succession; the 250-kilogram bombs on the armed aircraft detonated; the fire spread through the hangar deck and downward into the main deck. By 10:30, Akagi was on fire from end to end and was unable to manoeuvre. Admiral Nagumo transferred his flag to the light cruiser Nagara at 10:46 and was evacuated from the burning flagship. Captain Taijirō Aoki remained aboard Akagi with a damage-control party; through the afternoon and evening of 4 June the party attempted to save the ship. The fires could not be contained. At 18:00 on 4 June Akagi's starboard engine compartment exploded. Captain Aoki ordered the ship's company to abandon ship at 19:20. The survivin
50. 1942 — HMS Hermes. Ceylon, Nagumo's raid, the first purpose-built carrier Location: Indian Ocean, off Batticaloa, Ceylon · Coordinates: 7.48°N 82.25°E · Casualties: 307 · Survivors: ~580 · Depth: 54 m · Cause: aerial attack — Intercepted south of Trincomalee on the morning of 9 April 1942 by 85 Japanese carrier aircraft during Admiral Nagumo's Indian Ocean raid. No fighter cover was available; she was struck by approximately forty bombs in ten minutes. Sank in twenty minutes. · Fate: war grave · diveable · Type: aircraft carrier · Tonnage: 10,850 tons · Crew: 664 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1919 The first purpose-built aircraft carrier in history, commissioned in 1924. Intercepted south of Trincomalee on the morning of 9 April 1942 by 85 Japanese carrier aircraft during Admiral Nagumo's Indian Ocean raid: no fighter cover, forty bombs in ten minutes. Sank in twenty minutes, 307 dead. The first aircraft carrier ever sunk by enemy carrier aircraft. The Vessel HMS Hermes was a Royal Navy aircraft carrier, the first warship in the world to be designed and built from the keel as a purpose-built aircraft carrier. She was laid down at Armstrong Whitworth at Elswick in 1918, launched on 11 September 1919, and commissioned on 19 February 1924 after an extended period of interwar delay during which her design features were extensively modified. The long fitting-out period reflected the Royal Navy's continuing uncertainty about carrier design principles. She was 182 metres long, 10,850 tons, and could operate approximately 20 aircraft. Her design incorporated many of the features that would become standard for subsequent carriers: a single full-length flight deck, a starboard-side island superstructure, and a single enclosed hangar. Her design speed of 25 knots, on single-shaft Parsons turbines, was adequate for the interwar period. Her interwar service had taken her across the Empire: she served in the Mediterranean Fleet, the China Station, the West Indies Station, and the Atlantic Fleet successively through 1924-1939. She had been the Royal Navy's principal carrier presence in the Far East for much of the 1930s. Her commanding officer in early 1942 was Captain Richard Onslow, 40 years old, a career naval aviator with pre-war carrier experience. The Disaster At 10:30 on 9 April 1942, approximately 100 kilometres south-southeast of Trincomalee, Hermes and Vampire were sighted by Japanese search aircraft. At 10:35 a strike force of 85 Japanese carrier aircraft (Aichi D3A Val dive bombers and escorting A6M Zero fighters) was launched against the British force. The Japanese strike reached Hermes at 10:50. Approximately 45 dive bombers attacked her in succession over the following ten minutes. The attack was, by the standards of carrier-versus-carrier engagements in 1942, unusually one-sided: Hermes had no fighter cover and no carrier aircraft of her own aloft. Her anti-aircraft armament (six 5.5-inch guns and three 4-inch anti-aircraft guns) was inadequate against a coordinated 45-aircraft dive-bombing attack. Hermes was struck by approximately 40 bombs in 10 minutes. Her superstructure was destroyed; her flight deck was ploughed from end to end; her hangar deck caught fire. She listed to starboard; her damage-control teams were overwhelmed. Captain Onslow ordered abandon-ship at 11:00 on 9 April 1942. Hermes rolled onto her starboard side and sank at 11:00 at approximately 7°30′N 81°50′E in approximately 54 metres of water. HMAS Vampire was also attacked during the engagement; she was hit by four bombs and sank at 11:02. The combined casualty count for Hermes and Vampire was 307 dead: 302 from Hermes, 5 from Vampire. The Japanese air strike suffered the loss of three aircraft.
51. 1942 — Kaga. Midway, four bombs, the hangar oven Location: Pacific Ocean, NW of Midway Atoll · Coordinates: 30.37°N 179.30°W · Casualties: 811 · Survivors: ~1,190 · Depth: 5,400 m · Cause: aerial attack — Struck by four bombs from USS Enterprise's VB-6 in rapid succession at 10:22 on 4 June 1942. The bombs ignited fuelled and armed aircraft on the flight deck; ruptured aviation fuel lines turned the hangar into an oven. Burned all afternoon and sank at 19:25. · Fate: abyssal · located 2019 · Type: aircraft carrier (ex-battleship) · Tonnage: 38,200 tons · Crew: 2016 · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1921 Converted from the incomplete Tosa-class battleship, veteran of the Pearl Harbor attack. At Midway on 4 June 1942, struck by four bombs from USS Enterprise's VB-6 in rapid succession; the ruptured aviation fuel lines turned her hangar deck into an oven. 811 dead, the heaviest Japanese carrier loss of the battle. Located in 2019 at 5,400 metres, split in three and upside down. The Vessel The Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Kaga was, like her sister Akagi, a converted battleship hull. She had been originally laid down in 1920 as the lead ship of the projected Kaga-class battleships, was cancelled under the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, and was converted to an aircraft carrier between 1923 and 1928. She was commissioned at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 31 March 1928. Her conversion produced the largest Imperial Japanese Navy carrier of her generation: 247 metres long, 38,200 tons as completed, and initially fitted with the three-flight-deck configuration. Her 1934-1935 modernisation rebuilt her to single-deck configuration with a 250-metre continuous flight deck, an enclosed island superstructure, and improved propulsion machinery giving her 28 knots. Her air group at the time of her final operations consisted of 63 aircraft (18 fighters, 18 dive bombers, 27 torpedo bombers). She was slower than Akagi but larger, with better internal subdivision and greater aviation fuel capacity. Her operational service from 1932 forward included fleet aviation exercises in the Inland Sea and off China, and from 1937 onward offensive air operations against Chinese shore targets during the Sino-Japanese War. She participated in every major Kidō Butai operation from Pearl Harbor through May 1942. The Disaster The four bomb hits on Kaga between 10:24 and 10:25 on 4 June 1942 initiated a chain of fires that could not be controlled. The second bomb, striking at the island structure, killed Captain Jisaku Okada and most of her command staff on the bridge. The surviving senior officer was Commander Takahisa Amagai, Kaga's air group commander, who assumed command but could not establish effective damage control with her communications destroyed. Kaga's fire behaviour was different from Akagi's and worse. Her larger aviation fuel capacity (2,000 tons of aviation gasoline, approximately 40 per cent more than Akagi's) ensured that her hangar fires were sustained for far longer. Her 1,200 crew, larger than Akagi's by 200 ratings, produced proportionally more casualties as the fires worked through the internal compartments. By 13:00 she was burning along her full length; by 14:00 her stern had begun to settle as the fires burned through her internal bulkheads. She went through three separate periods of severe internal explosions during the afternoon: at 12:45 (when her forward aviation fuel tank exploded), at 13:40 (her after magazine), and at 15:30 (her main boiler room). The 15:30 explosion was the terminal event; after it she began to sink by the stern. Her destroyer escort Hagikaze moved alongside to evacuate her remaining crew. At 16:25 Commander Amagai ordered abandon-ship. Hagikaze and the destroyer Maikaze took off approximately 811 survivors. 811 of her 1,630 crew died, the highest
52. 1942 — USS Juneau. The five Sullivan brothers, forty-two seconds Location: Solomon Sea, off San Cristóbal Island · Coordinates: 10.50°S 161.00°E · Casualties: 687 · Survivors: 10 (6 rescued) · Depth: 4,200 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Damaged by a Japanese torpedo on the night of 13 November 1942 during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Steaming away for repairs when I-26 put a second torpedo into her forward magazine at 11:01 on 14 November. She exploded and sank in forty-two seconds. · Fate: abyssal · located 2018 · Type: light cruiser · Atlanta class · Tonnage: 6,718 tons · Crew: 697 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1941 American Atlanta-class light cruiser, at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Damaged by a Japanese torpedo on the night of 13 November 1942 and steaming away for repairs when I-26 put a second torpedo into her magazine the next morning; she exploded and sank in forty-two seconds. 687 dead, among them the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, whose loss drove the U.S. Navy's Sole Survivor Policy. Only six of the initial ten survivors lived through eight days in shark-infested water before rescue. The Vessel USS Juneau (CL-52) was a light cruiser of the Atlanta-class, commissioned at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company at Kearny, New Jersey, on 14 February 1942. She was 165 metres long, 6,718 tons standard displacement, and carried sixteen 5-inch dual-purpose guns in eight twin turrets; she was designed specifically as an anti-aircraft light cruiser to screen the fast carrier task forces. Her design speed was 32.5 knots. The Atlanta-class was one of the most distinctive American warship classes of the Second World War. The class displaced the traditional light cruiser role onto a specialised anti-aircraft escort platform; the eight twin 5-inch turrets (four fore, four aft) produced a main battery weight of 128 rounds per minute against aircraft, approximately five times the contemporary American heavy cruiser rate and ten times the battleship rate. The class was intended to provide, at each point in a task force formation, an equivalent of 24 additional 5-inch guns on aircraft defence duty. Her commanding officer in November 1942 was Captain Lyman K. Swenson, 49, a career naval officer. She carried among her crew the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa: George (27), Francis (25), Joseph (23), Madison (22), and Albert (19). The five brothers had enlisted together on 3 January 1942 under a specific agreement with the U.S. Navy that they would serve aboard the same ship; the Navy, which had previously discouraged same-family assignments to the same unit under the ass The Disaster At 11:01 on 13 November 1942, the task force was approximately 45 nautical miles southeast of San Cristóbal Island when the Japanese submarine I-26 (commanded by Commander Minoru Yokota) fired a two-torpedo spread at the American ships. One torpedo missed; the second struck USS Juneau on her port side amidships at exactly the location of her forward main magazine. The magazine detonated. Juneau disintegrated in a single catastrophic explosion. Her bow and stern sections, separated by the magazine blast, sank within 42 seconds of the torpedo strike. The explosion was observed by the nearby destroyers and by the cruiser USS Helena, which was approximately 800 metres away at the moment of the blast. Observers on Helena reported that the cloud of smoke from the explosion rose to approximately 300 metres and that no part of Juneau was visible above the water surface once the smoke cleared. The task force commander, Captain Gilbert Hoover of Helena, decided not to stop to search for survivors. Hoover's reasoning, later documented in his post-action report, was that the presence of a Japanese submarine in the area made stopping the task force unacceptably dangerous; the remaining damaged American ships, including San Francisco and Portland, were at risk of being struck by further submarine attack if they halted. Hoover ordered the task force to continue on course. He signalled the American Pacific Fleet headquarters with a report of Juneau's destruction and a note that no survivors
53. 1942 — Sōryū. Midway, three bombs in three minutes Location: Pacific Ocean, NW of Midway Atoll · Coordinates: 30.50°N 179.17°W · Casualties: 711 · Survivors: 392 · Depth: 5,400 m · Cause: aerial attack — Struck by three bombs from USS Yorktown's VB-3 between 10:25 and 10:28 on 4 June 1942. Aviation fuel and ordnance on the flight deck ignited instantly. Abandoned within the hour; USS Nautilus put a final torpedo into her that evening and she sank at 19:13. · Fate: abyssal · located 2019 · Type: aircraft carrier · Tonnage: 15,900 tons · Crew: 1103 · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1935 Fast fleet carrier of the Kidō Butai, veteran of Pearl Harbor and the Indian Ocean raid. At Midway on 4 June 1942, struck by three bombs from USS Yorktown's VB-3 in three minutes. Abandoned within the hour; USS Nautilus put a final torpedo into her and she sank that evening. 711 dead, 392 survived. The Vessel The Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Sōryū ("Blue Dragon") was the lead ship of her class, a pair of medium fleet carriers built to a specific Japanese design philosophy: fast, light, and carrying larger aircraft complements than their smaller displacement would suggest. She was commissioned at the Kure Naval Arsenal on 29 December 1937, 227 metres long, 15,900 tons, capable of 34.5 knots, and carried 63 aircraft (21 fighters, 18 dive bombers, 21 torpedo bombers, 3 reserves). She was the first Japanese carrier designed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier; her hull form had been optimised for aircraft operations rather than converted from a larger warship type. Her sister Hiryū, commissioned in 1939, was the same design but with a port-side island rather than the starboard-side arrangement typical of all other carriers. The two ships operated as a close pair from 1939 onward. Their design emphasis on speed and lightness gave them approximately 35 per cent more operational aircraft per thousand tons than the contemporary Akagi and Kaga, a significant operational advantage for Japanese carrier doctrine. Her service record from 1939 through May 1942 was the most operationally successful of any Japanese fleet carrier. She had led the opening attack on Pearl Harbor as part of the First Air Fleet; had participated in every major Kidō Butai operation; and by June 1942 had sunk, directly or indirectly through her aircraft, more Allied ships than any carrier afloat. The Disaster The three American 1,000-pound bombs struck Sōryū in quick succession between 10:25 and 10:26 on 4 June 1942. The first bomb struck her forward flight deck at Frame 25; the second struck her mid-flight deck at Frame 50; the third struck her stern just aft of the island. All three bombs penetrated the flight deck before detonating on the hangar deck below. The pattern of hits was extraordinarily good: the three strikes were distributed along her full length, ensuring that no single damage-control party could contain the resulting fires. Sōryū's hangar deck was filled at the moment of the attack with re-armed Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bombers, their Type 91 aerial torpedoes (each carrying 204 kilograms of TNT) lying in their bays, and their aircraft fuelled for the second strike. The three bombs, landing among this arrangement, ignited a chain reaction of torpedo and bomb detonations that compressed approximately ten individual aircraft explosions into a six-second sequence. Contemporary American combat photographs of Sōryū from 10:26 show a single continuous pillar of flame rising approximately 1,000 metres above her flight deck. Captain Ryūsaku Yanagimoto, the senior officer aboard, was killed on the bridge within 45 seconds of the first bomb strike. Commander Hisashi Ohara, her executive officer, assumed command. By 10:35, nine minutes after the first strike, Sōryū was on fire from end to end and was unable to manoeuvre. Ohara ordered abandon-ship at 10:40, unusually early i
54. 1942 — USS Wasp. Solomon Sea, I-19, the six-torpedo salvo Location: Coral Sea, SE of San Cristóbal Island · Coordinates: 12.43°S 164.00°E · Casualties: 193 · Survivors: ~2,000 · Depth: 4,500 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Struck by three torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-19 (Takakazu Kinashi, commanding) at 14:44 on 15 September 1942 while covering the Guadalcanal reinforcement convoy. Part of the most damaging single torpedo salvo in submarine history: of the six torpedoes fired, three also hit USS O'Brien and USS North Carolina. Aviation fuel lines ruptured and damage-control pumps failed; she was scuttled by USS Lansdowne that evening. · Fate: abyssal · located 2019 · Type: aircraft carrier · Wasp class · Tonnage: 14,700 tons · Crew: 2167 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1939 American Wasp-class aircraft carrier, covering the Guadalcanal reinforcement convoy. Struck by three torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-19 at 14:44 on 15 September 1942: part of the most damaging single salvo of torpedoes in submarine history, three of six also hit USS O'Brien and USS North Carolina. 193 dead. Aviation fuel lines ruptured and damage-control pumps failed; scuttled by USS Lansdowne that evening. Found in 2019 by Paul Allen's team in 4,500 metres. The Vessel USS Wasp (CV-7) was a reduced-displacement fleet aircraft carrier of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, on 25 April 1940. She was 226 metres long, 14,700 tons standard displacement, approximately 60 per cent the size of the contemporary Yorktown-class carriers. Her reduced size was a specific consequence of the 1936 London Naval Treaty's carrier tonnage limits: the United States had 15,000 tons of remaining carrier tonnage available under the treaty and had built Wasp to fit the allocation precisely. Her smaller size imposed significant compromises. Her air group was 76 aircraft (smaller than a Yorktown's 90); her bunkerage was sufficient for approximately 9,000 nautical miles at 15 knots (shorter-legged than her full-sized sisters); and her armour protection was limited to splinter-proofing against bomb fragments. She was, at her commissioning, the most austere American fleet carrier in service. Her first eighteen months of service were in the Atlantic. She participated in the North African convoy runs of late 1940, the Malta relief operations of April and May 1942 (ferrying 47 British Spitfires to the besieged island), and the 1941 Allied occupation of Iceland. She transferred to the Pacific in June 1942 after the loss of USS Lexington and the damage to USS Yorktown. Her commanding officer was Captain Forrest Sherman, 45, a career naval aviator who had commanded a destroyer squadron before his carrier assignment. The Disaster The six-torpedo salvo fired by I-19 at 14:44 on 15 September 1942 is the most damaging single torpedo salvo in the history of submarine warfare. Three of the six torpedoes struck USS Wasp. Two others continued through the American formation past Wasp and struck the battleship USS North Carolina (one torpedo hit; moderate damage) and the destroyer USS O'Brien (one torpedo hit; eventually fatal damage). The sixth torpedo missed and continued to the horizon. No single submarine in any war has ever inflicted more damage with a single salvo. The three torpedo hits on Wasp struck in quick succession on her starboard side between 14:45 and 14:46: one forward, one amidships, one aft. The hits ignited her forward aircraft-fuel storage, ruptured her damage-control water mains, and produced a series of secondary explosions as the compartments flooded. Wasp's damage control response was comprehensive but her scale had made her vulnerable: with less redundancy than her Yorktown sisters, she had fewer options when multiple systems failed simultaneously. Captain Sherman ordered abandon-ship at 15:20 on 15 September 1942, 35 minutes after the first torpedo strike. The evacuation proceeded in relatively good order because the weather was calm and the escorting destroyers were able to come alongside. 193 of her 2,167 crew died, most in the initial torpedo strikes. 1,974 survived. Wasp burned through the afternoon, steadily flooding; at 21:00 on 15 September the destroyer USS Lansdowne fired fi
55. 1943 — USS Liscome Bay. Makin, I-175, the deadliest US carrier loss Location: Pacific Ocean, off Makin Atoll · Coordinates: 3.38°N 172.58°E · Casualties: 644 · Survivors: 272 · Depth: 1,460 m · Cause: submarine torpedo · magazine explosion — Torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-175 at 05:13 on 24 November 1943 during the Gilbert Islands campaign. The single torpedo struck the after aircraft bomb magazine; the detonation destroyed the after third of the ship. She sank in 23 minutes. · Fate: abyssal · not located · Type: escort carrier · Casablanca class · Tonnage: 7,800 tons · Crew: 916 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1943 American Casablanca-class escort carrier, supporting the Gilbert Islands campaign off Makin. Torpedoed at 05:13 on 24 November 1943 by the Japanese submarine I-175; the torpedo found her after aircraft-bomb magazine. She disintegrated in a single blast that sent debris seven hundred metres into the air. 644 dead, the heaviest American aircraft carrier loss of the Pacific War, despite Liscome Bay being one of the smallest flat-tops afloat. Admiral Henry M. Mullinnix died on the bridge. The Vessel USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56) was a Casablanca-class escort aircraft carrier of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company's Vancouver, Washington yard on 7 August 1943. She was 156 metres long, 7,800 tons standard displacement, capable of carrying 24 aircraft, and designed for 19 knots on two reciprocating steam engines. The Casablanca-class was the most numerous American carrier class of the Second World War: 50 ships commissioned between 1943 and 1944, built in series production to a standardised design that could be launched at approximately one per week from the Kaiser yards. The Casablanca-class had been designed specifically for the American amphibious campaign. Their role was close air support for the Marine Corps and Army landings across the Pacific: anti-submarine patrol, fighter cover, strike aircraft on shore targets. They were not fleet carriers and did not operate with the fast carrier task forces. Their armament was minimal (one 5-inch gun, 16 anti-aircraft guns) and their armour was non-existent. They relied on destroyer screens and on geographic separation from enemy threats for protection. Her commanding officer was Captain Irving D. Wiltsie, 41, a career naval officer. Her senior embarked officer was Rear-Admiral Henry M. Mullinnix, commanding Carrier Division 24, the escort carrier force supporting the Gilberts landings of November 1943. Mullinnix had flown his flag in Liscome Bay from the Casablanca-class's first operational deploy The Disaster The torpedo struck USS Liscome Bay on her starboard side at 05:13 on 24 November 1943. The impact point was abaft her after elevator, at the exact location of her after aircraft bomb magazine. The bomb magazine contained, at the moment of the strike, approximately 200 tons of aerial bombs awaiting distribution to the aircraft on her deck for the day's strike missions. The magazine detonated. Liscome Bay disintegrated in a single explosion. The rising fireball was observed by the other American ships in the task force at distances of up to 30 kilometres; the debris fall from the explosion was reported to have extended 700 metres from her position. Her flight deck, aircraft, island superstructure, and crew on the upper decks were destroyed in the first 0.5 seconds of the detonation. The ship sank at 05:36 on 24 November 1943, approximately 23 minutes after the torpedo strike. Rear-Admiral Mullinnix was killed on the flag bridge in the initial detonation; Captain Wiltsie was also killed. Of her 916 crew, 644 died in the explosion, in the burning water, or in the 30 minutes between the sinking and the arrival of rescue destroyers. 272 survived. The loss of 644 men in a single 23-minute sinking made the Liscome Bay the deadliest American aircraft carrier loss of the Pacific War, despite the Casablanca-class's small size relative to the fleet carriers. She was one of six American escort carriers lost to enemy action in the war; her casualty count exceeded those of the other five co
56. 1944 — Junyō Maru. Sumatra, Javanese rōmusha, the Allied submarine Location: Indian Ocean, off western Sumatra · Coordinates: 2.85°S 101.05°E · Casualties: 5,620 · Survivors: ~680 · Depth: abyssal · not located · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Tradewind at 16:12 on 18 September 1944, 75 nautical miles off the west coast of Sumatra. Carrying 2,200 Javanese rōmusha forced labourers, 1,377 Dutch POWs, 64 British/Australian POWs, and about 300 Japanese guards. Most Javanese were battened below and drowned when she sank in under twenty minutes. · Fate: abyssal · not located · Type: hellship · merchant transport · Tonnage: 5,065 tons · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1913 Japanese merchant ship converted to transport, carrying 2,200 Javanese rōmusha forced labourers, 1,700 Allied POWs, and a few hundred Japanese guards from Batavia to Padang. Torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Tradewind off the west coast of Sumatra on 18 September 1944. 5,620 dead, a casualty toll exceeded only by the Wilhelm Gustloff, the Goya, and the Doña Paz. Few of the Javanese forced labourers, conscripted to build the Sumatra Death Railway, are listed by name anywhere. The Vessel The Junyō Maru was a Japanese steel-hulled cargo ship, built at the Robert Duncan & Co yard at Glasgow, Scotland, in 1913 as the British merchant vessel Ardgorm. She was 124 metres long, 5,065 gross tons, and powered by a triple-expansion steam engine. Her original British service had been as a general cargo ship on the Atlantic and Mediterranean trade routes. She was sold in 1927 to a Japanese shipping company and renamed Hozan Maru; she was subsequently sold again in 1938 to the Baba Shoji Company of Japan and renamed Junyō Maru (Japanese: "Happy Cloud Ship"). By 1942, after 29 years of service, she was an old and progressively deteriorated ship; she had been requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Army for wartime transport service. Her specific operational role from 1942 onwards was the transport of Allied prisoners of war and conscripted Asian civilian labourers (specifically Javanese rōmusha workers) between Japanese-controlled territories in Southeast Asia. The rōmusha labour system involved the conscription of approximately 4 million Javanese civilians for forced labour on Japanese military construction projects; the transport of rōmusha personnel between Java and other Southeast Asian construction sites was a significant operational requirement of the Japanese military administration. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Kiyotake Kamiya, 48, a Japanese merchant marine officer. Her complement on 18 September 1944 was approximately 6,520 persons: approximately 2,3 The Disaster At approximately 14:30 on 18 September 1944, HMS Tradewind detected Junyō Maru at approximately 4,500 metres range in the Sunda Strait, approximately 15 kilometres northwest of Muko-Muko on the Sumatran coast. Maydon's tactical assessment was standard: an unescorted Japanese merchant ship of approximately 5,000 gross tons, making approximately 8 knots on a standard coastal route. Maydon's attack was conducted from approximately 2,000 metres range using HMS Tradewind's bow torpedo tubes. Four torpedoes were launched at approximately 14:42; two of the four torpedoes struck Junyō Maru at approximately 14:45 on 18 September 1944. One torpedo struck the forward portion of the ship; the second struck amidships. The torpedo damage was catastrophic. The combined torpedo impacts opened two substantial hull breaches; Junyō Maru began to settle immediately; within approximately 20 minutes, she was substantially submerged by the bow. The specific tragedy of the sinking was the inability of the prisoners and labourers to evacuate from the below-deck spaces. The Japanese crew had secured the below-deck hatches to prevent the prisoners' escape during the voyage; the explosion damage had compromised some of the hatch systems, but the majority remained sealed. The below-deck passengers, including the approximately 2,300 Allied prisoners and the 4,200 Javanese labourers, were predominantly trapped in the submerging ship's lower compartments. SS Junyō Maru sank at approximately 15:05 on 18 Sept
57. 1944 — Musashi. Sibuyan Sea, nineteen torpedoes, Kurita's flagship Location: Sibuyan Sea, Philippines · Coordinates: 12.83°N 122.37°E · Casualties: ~1,023 · Survivors: 1,376 · Depth: 1,000 m · Cause: aerial attack — Attacked repeatedly by American carrier aircraft of Task Force 38 at the Battle of Leyte Gulf on 24 October 1944 while advancing through the Sibuyan Sea. Struck by 19 torpedoes and 17 bombs over approximately six hours. Capsized at 19:35. · Fate: located 2015 · Paul Allen · Type: battleship · Yamato class · Tonnage: 72,800 tons · Crew: 2399 · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1940 Second and last Yamato-class battleship, flagship of the 2nd Fleet under Admiral Takeo Kurita. Attacked repeatedly by American carrier aircraft of Task Force 38 at the Battle of Leyte Gulf on 24 October 1944 as she advanced through the Sibuyan Sea. Absorbed 19 torpedoes and 17 bombs before capsizing. ~1,023 dead; her loss ended the credible Japanese surface threat in the Pacific. Found in 2015 by Paul Allen at 1,000 metres. The Vessel The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Musashi was the second of the three Yamato-class battleships, the largest battleships ever built. She was laid down at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard on 29 March 1938 and commissioned on 5 August 1942. She was 263 metres long, 72,800 tons at full load, armed with nine 46-cm (18.1-inch) guns in three triple turrets, and carried a crew of approximately 2,400. Like her sister Yamato, she was the product of Japanese naval doctrine of the 1930s that had favoured the construction of a small number of overwhelmingly powerful battleships as the core of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Her commissioning came nine months after Pearl Harbor, in the war that her class had been designed to fight. The strategic shift from battleship-centred to carrier-centred naval warfare that had been demonstrated by the Pearl Harbor attack (which Musashi's air-group equivalent had conducted) had arrived before Musashi reached operational service. She was, from her first day in commission, a ship whose primary strategic role had already been overtaken by a different weapons system. She served through 1942-1944 in a training and flagship role, principally at Truk and in the Inland Sea, without engaging Allied forces directly. Her modernised anti-aircraft armament (by late 1944, 24 twin 127-mm guns plus 150 25-mm triple mountings) represented the Imperial Japanese Navy's best attempt to protect a Yamato-class ship against modern carrier aircraft attack. It would prove ins The Disaster The first wave of American attacks at 10:26 on 24 October 1944 struck Musashi with one bomb and one torpedo. The second wave at 12:07 delivered three more torpedoes. The third at 13:31 delivered four torpedoes and four bombs. The fourth at 14:50 delivered four torpedoes and four bombs. The fifth at 15:29 delivered three torpedoes and two bombs. The final wave at 16:48 delivered four torpedoes and four bombs. Musashi absorbed 19 torpedoes and 17 bombs over approximately six hours. Her design had been calculated to survive 15 torpedo hits before being critically damaged; by the fourth attack wave she had already exceeded this design limit. Her progressive flooding caused her to develop a 15-degree list to port and to lose speed progressively through the afternoon: from 27 knots at the start of the attacks to 12 knots by 14:00, to 6 knots by 16:00, and to 3 knots by 17:00. Her commanding officer, Rear-Admiral Toshihira Inoguchi, directed damage control efforts that succeeded in keeping the ship afloat far longer than could reasonably have been expected. Her anti-aircraft gunners shot down 18 American aircraft during the six-hour engagement. However, by 17:30 on 24 October her steering had failed, her forward guns were inoperable, and her list had increased to 20 degrees. At 17:30 Inoguchi ordered the ship's company to abandon. Musashi capsized and sank at 19:36 on 24 October 1944 at approximately 13°07′N 122°32′E in approximately 1,000 metres of water. Inoguchi remained aboard;
58. 1944 — Ōryoku Maru. The worst American POW atrocity at sea Location: Subic Bay, Philippines · Coordinates: 14.67°N 120.27°E · Casualties: ~1,280 (across three ships) · Survivors: ~350 · Depth: 20 m · Cause: aerial attack — Bombed and strafed by U.S. Navy aircraft from USS Hornet (CV-12) on 14 and 15 December 1944 while carrying 1,620 American POWs in her holds from Manila. Sunk in Subic Bay after the second day of attacks. Surviving POWs were transferred to Enoura Maru and Brazil Maru; both were subsequently attacked by Allied aircraft. · Fate: Subic Bay · war grave · Type: hellship · passenger-cargo · Tonnage: 7,363 tons · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1937 Japanese cargo ship converted to prisoner transport, sailing from Manila with 1,620 American POWs in her holds. Attacked by U.S. Navy aircraft over four days from 14 December 1944; POWs suffocated in the holds between bombings, packed without water in temperatures that drove men mad. Survivors transferred to Enoura Maru and Brazil Maru, both of which were also attacked. Of 1,620 POWs aboard at Manila, fewer than 400 survived to liberation; the worst American POW atrocity of the Pacific War. The Vessel The Ōryoku Maru was a Japanese passenger-cargo liner of the Nippon Yūsen Kaisha (NYK) Line, built at the Nagasaki yard of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1937 and commissioned for the Japan-to-Taiwan passenger service. She was 136 metres long, 7,362 gross tons, and powered by twin diesel engines producing approximately 6,400 horsepower. Her original peacetime accommodation was approximately 150 first-class and 1,000 steerage passengers. From 1941 she was requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Army for wartime transport service. Her initial military role was the transport of Japanese military personnel and supplies between Japan and its occupied Asian territories; from 1944, her role was expanded to include the transport of Allied prisoners of war from the Philippines to Japan for forced labour on the Japanese home-islands construction projects. The Japanese military's policy regarding prisoner transport vessels was, by 1944, substantially compromised by the deteriorating wartime situation. The standard arrangement for prisoner transport - clearly marked as Red Cross protected vessels under the 1929 Geneva Convention - had been abandoned by the Japanese military administration as the war progressed; prisoner transport vessels were being used simultaneously as military transport and as war-matériel carriers, making Red Cross markings inappropriate under international law. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Shin Kajiyama, 46, a Japanese merchant marine officer. Her co The Disaster At approximately 08:30 on 14 December 1944, the Ōryoku Maru was attacked by carrier-based aircraft from the US Navy carrier USS Hornet. The attack was conducted by approximately 12 SB2C Helldiver and F6F Hellcat aircraft in two successive waves between 08:30 and 11:00 on 14 December 1944. The first attack wave at 08:30 damaged the ship's engine room and reduced her speed to approximately 4 knots; the second attack wave at approximately 11:00 delivered additional damage including fragmentation hits to the aft hold (which killed approximately 50 prisoners in the hold) and a direct hit to the ship's bridge. Captain Kajiyama was killed in the bridge hit. The Ōryoku Maru was substantially disabled after the 11:00 attack but remained afloat. She was beached near Olongapo Bay in the western Philippines for emergency repairs. The prisoners below decks, however, remained in extreme distress: the attack damage had exacerbated the ventilation failures; temperature in the holds had risen further; dehydration and panic were escalating. The specific atrocity of the subsequent incident occurred during the beaching period on 14 December 1944. Japanese crew and guards denied prisoners access to water, food, and medical care; multiple prisoners attempted to escape the holds through the damaged hatches and were shot by Japanese guards; a general breakdown of order occurred in the holds with multiple prisoner deaths due to heat stroke, dehydration, assault by panicking fellow prisoners, and summ
59. 1944 — USS Johnston. Samar, charged Kurita's battleships, 6,469 m Location: Philippine Sea, off Samar · Coordinates: 11.50°N 126.30°E · Casualties: 186 · Survivors: 141 · Depth: 6,469 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Led a counterattack against Admiral Kurita's Centre Force at the Battle off Samar on the morning of 25 October 1944. Charged into the Japanese battle line including the Yamato, firing torpedoes and 5-inch guns until destroyed by combined gunfire from four Japanese battleships and cruisers. Sank at 10:10. · Fate: abyssal · located 2019 · Type: destroyer · Fletcher class · Tonnage: 2,050 tons · Crew: 327 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1943 American Fletcher-class destroyer, commanded by Ernest E. Evans, part of Taffy 3's escort screen at the Battle off Samar. On the morning of 25 October 1944 she led the counterattack against Admiral Kurita's Centre Force, charging alone into a battle line that included the battleship Yamato. Fired every torpedo, expended every 5-inch round, and kept going until she was destroyed by the combined gunfire of four Japanese battleships and cruisers. 186 dead including Evans, who received a posthumous Medal of Honor. Located in 2019 at 6,469 metres, the deepest wreck of any ship then on record. The Vessel USS Johnston (DD-557) was a Fletcher-class destroyer of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation on 27 October 1943. She was 114 metres long, 2,050 tons standard displacement, armed with five 5-inch guns and ten 21-inch torpedo tubes, designed for 36 knots. The Fletcher class was the most numerous United States destroyer type of the Second World War, 175 ships built; Johnston was one of the first to be commissioned with the improved director-fire control system that would become the fleet standard. Her first commanding officer, Commander Ernest Edwin Evans, was a Cherokee and Creek Native American from Pawnee, Oklahoma, a 1931 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a veteran of a pre-war South Atlantic deployment. Evans took command of Johnston at her commissioning and held her through her subsequent 11 months of service. His first address to the crew, recorded in the ship's log of 27 October 1943, included the statement that would define his own fate and that of his ship: "This is going to be a fighting ship. I intend to go in harm's way. Anyone who does not want to go along had better get off right now." She sailed to the Pacific in early 1944 and was assigned to Task Force 58 during the Marianas and Palau campaigns. Her combat record through 1944 included anti-aircraft fire support at Saipan, shore bombardment at Guam, and screening duties at Palau. By October 1944 she was assigned to Task Unit 77.4.3 (call sign "Taffy 3" The Disaster Johnston's charge toward Kurita's force commenced at 06:55 on 25 October 1944. Her objective, unstated but evident from Evans's manoeuvre, was to close the range and launch a torpedo attack at the nearest Japanese heavy cruiser. Evans pressed his ship through a wall of 16-inch Yamato shells without taking a hit; his crew, firing back with five 5-inch guns that were effectively pea-shooters against battleship armour, kept up an accurate rate of fire against the Japanese superstructures. At 07:10 Evans launched a full ten-torpedo spread at the Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano. The spread struck Kumano three times; she was forced to retire from the action. Johnston was now out of torpedoes, her 5-inch guns still firing, and alone in front of the Japanese battle line. A 14-inch shell from the battleship Kongō struck her at 07:20 and destroyed her after engine room, reducing her speed to 17 knots and knocking out her after main battery. She continued firing her forward 5-inch guns at every Japanese ship that came within range. Evans, wounded by shrapnel and bleeding from multiple wounds, remained on his bridge, encouraging his crew over the ship's PA system. Between 07:20 and 10:10, a period of nearly three hours, USS Johnston continued to attack Kurita's force alone. Her 5-inch guns fired at Japanese destroyers, Japanese cruisers, and even at the Yamato herself (though the 5-inch shells could not penetrate Yamato's armour). She drew fire away from the escort carriers; she maneuvered
60. 1944 — Shinano. Maiden voyage, seven hours, USS Archerfish Location: Pacific Ocean, south of Honshu, Japan · Coordinates: 33.27°N 137.07°E · Casualties: 1,435 · Survivors: 1,080 · Depth: 4,000 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by the American submarine USS Archerfish (Joseph Enright, commanding) four times between 03:17 and 03:20 on 29 November 1944, seventeen days after commissioning, on her maiden voyage from Yokosuka to Kure. Watertight bulkheads were unfinished; pumps were inadequate. Capsized and sank seven hours later. · Fate: abyssal · not located · Type: aircraft carrier · converted Yamato class · Tonnage: 72,000 tons · Crew: 2515 · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1944 Originally laid down as the third Yamato-class battleship, converted mid-build to an armoured aircraft carrier, the largest warship ever built at the time. Sailed from Yokosuka on her maiden voyage only seventeen days commissioned; torpedoed four times by USS Archerfish on the morning of 29 November 1944. Poor damage control and unfinished watertight bulkheads doomed her. Sank seven hours after her first torpedo, on her first voyage. 1,435 dead. The Vessel The Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Shinano was the largest warship ever built until the commissioning of the American nuclear carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in 1961. She was laid down as the third of the Yamato-class battleships on 4 May 1940 at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, but was converted during construction into an aircraft carrier following the destruction of the four Midway carriers in June 1942. She was commissioned on 19 November 1944. The conversion from battleship to carrier had been approved in June 1942 and began in June 1943 under the immediate pressure of Japanese fleet carrier losses. The resulting ship displaced 72,000 tons, was 266 metres long, and had a flight deck capable of operating 47 aircraft. Her armour scheme was retained from her battleship design: she had the thickest flight-deck armour of any aircraft carrier ever built (190 mm), and her belt armour remained the 410 mm of the Yamato-class. Her operational concept was unusual. The 1944 Imperial Japanese Navy carrier doctrine had, by that stage of the war, evolved toward the use of large carriers as support bases for land-based aircraft rather than as direct strike platforms. Shinano was intended to operate as a forward-deployed fleet carrier that would service, rearm, and refuel carrier aircraft and land-based bombers operating from bases in the Philippines, Formosa, and the Japanese home islands. Her large aviation fuel capacity (3,300 tons) and her ability to carry approximately 120 disas The Disaster Enright fired a full six-torpedo bow spread at 03:17 on 29 November 1944. Four of the six torpedoes struck Shinano on her starboard side, in a cluster between her Frame 120 (the aft engine room) and Frame 180 (her after aviation fuel tanks). The four torpedo hits breached approximately 15 per cent of her hull side protection. Shinano's damage control was catastrophic. Her internal subdivision was incomplete because of her rushed commissioning: the watertight door seals in her engineering spaces had not been fitted to the intended tightness, her counter-flooding pumps had not been fully tested, and her damage-control teams had not been drilled in her specific internal layout. The flooding of her engine rooms, which her design had been calculated to contain, instead propagated through adjacent compartments that should have been watertight but were not. By 06:00 on 29 November 1944 Shinano had a 9-degree list to starboard. By 08:00 the list had increased to 13 degrees. By 09:00 her engine rooms were fully flooded and she was making 10 knots through the remaining engine; at 09:30 this speed dropped to 6 knots as her main boiler room flooded. Captain Abe ordered a course change toward Shiono-misaki, the nearest coast, in an attempt to beach her. The list continued to increase through the following hours. At 10:55 on 29 November 1944, Shinano rolled onto her starboard side. She capsized at 11:00. She sank, stern-first, at 11:17 on 29 November 1944 at approximately 33°07′N 137°04′E
61. 1945 — Wilhelm Gustloff. The largest loss of life on a single ship in history Location: Baltic Sea, off Stolpmünde (now Ustka, Poland) · Coordinates: 55.07°N 17.42°E · Casualties: ~9,400 · Survivors: ~1,252 · Depth: 44 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Sunk by Soviet submarine S-13 (Alexander Marinesko, commanding) on 30 January 1945. Three torpedoes struck. The ship sank in under an hour in freezing Baltic waters. · Fate: continental shelf · war grave · Type: transport · former KdF cruise liner · Tonnage: 25,484 tons · Crew: 173 · Flag: Nazi Germany · Launched: 1937 Sunk by Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic on 30 January 1945, during the evacuation of East Prussia. The dead were mostly civilian refugees and wounded soldiers, including thousands of children. Six times the Titanic's casualties. Suppressed for decades on both sides of the Cold War; most of the world has still never heard of it. The Vessel The Wilhelm Gustloff was a Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) cruise liner, 208 metres long and 25,484 tons, built at Blohm and Voss in Hamburg and launched on 5 May 1937. Named for the Swiss Nazi Party leader assassinated in Davos the year before, she was designed as a classless cruise ship for German workers, the visible face of the National Socialist leisure programme. Between 1938 and 1939 she carried more than 65,000 passengers to Madeira, the Norwegian fjords, and the Italian Mediterranean, each voyage photographed and broadcast as proof of the prosperity the regime had delivered. She was requisitioned as a hospital ship on 1 September 1939 and spent a year painted white with red crosses, supporting the occupation of Norway. In November 1940 she was stripped of her hospital markings and assigned as a floating barracks for the 2nd Submarine Training Division at Gotenhafen (now Gdynia). She remained in that role, essentially immobile, for four years. In January 1945 the Red Army's Vistula-Oder offensive pushed German civilian populations westward across the Baltic coast of East Prussia. The operation to evacuate them by sea, Operation Hannibal, was directed by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. Among the ships designated to carry refugees was the Gustloff. The Disaster The three torpedoes struck in sequence. The first hit the forepeak; the second destroyed the drained swimming pool and the Women's Naval Auxiliary quartered around it; the third penetrated the engine room and stopped the generators, leaving the ship in darkness. She began to list to port within minutes. The lifeboats, frozen into their chocks in the minus-eighteen-degree air, would not release; davits refused to swing out; rope ladders had been cut up for makeshift cargo lashings weeks earlier. Of twenty-two boats carried, only nine were launched intact. The ship capsized to port at 23:48, forty-four minutes after the first strike. She slid under twelve minutes later, at 00:00 on 31 January, leaving about a thousand people in the freezing water. Freighters and escorts arrived within the hour: Löwe, T-36, Göttingen, Gotenland, and the torpedo boat TF-19. The Baltic that night was minus eighteen Celsius at the surface and one Celsius in the water. People who had jumped and kept afloat on debris died of cold inside five minutes. The freighters worked the debris field for hours. 1,252 people were pulled out alive. The confirmed toll was 9,343. Historians have since settled on a range of 9,000 to 9,400 dead, the largest loss of life in the sinking of any single ship in human history, six times the Titanic, twice the Doña Paz. The victims were overwhelmingly civilian: women, wounded men, and children.
62. 1945 — USS Indianapolis. Delivered the bomb, then the sharks Location: Philippine Sea, between Guam and Leyte · Coordinates: 12.03°N 134.80°E · Casualties: ~880 · Survivors: 316 · Depth: 5,500 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-58 (Mochitsura Hashimoto, commanding) at 00:15 on 30 July 1945, four days after delivering components of the Hiroshima bomb to Tinian. Two torpedoes struck; she sank in twelve minutes. Of approximately 890 men who entered the water, only 316 were rescued four days later; the remainder died of injuries, exposure, drowning, and shark attack. · Fate: abyssal · located 2017 · Type: heavy cruiser · Portland class · Tonnage: 9,950 tons · Crew: 1196 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1931 Heavy cruiser. Delivered components of the Hiroshima bomb to Tinian, then torpedoed four days later by Japanese submarine I-58 in the Philippine Sea on 30 July 1945. Of 890 men who went into the water, only 316 were alive four days later when the silence was finally noticed; the sharks had taken an estimated 150 to 300 of the rest. Captain Charles McVay became the only U.S. commander court-martialed for losing his ship in combat, and Congress exonerated him posthumously in 2000. The Vessel USS Indianapolis (CA-35) was a Portland-class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 15 November 1932. She was 185 metres long, 9,950 tons standard displacement, with nine 8-inch guns in three triple turrets and a designed speed of 32 knots on four shafts. Her class had been designed to the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty as the American answer to the Japanese Myōkō class, sharing a hull form with the preceding Northampton-class. She served as the flagship of Scouting Force 1 through the 1930s and as the Pacific Fleet's flagship under Admiral Raymond Spruance from August 1943. By July 1945 she had ten Pacific War battle stars, had taken a kamikaze hit at Okinawa on 31 March that put her into San Francisco for repairs, and had emerged from the Mare Island Naval Shipyard refit on 14 July 1945. Her master was Captain Charles Butler McVay III, a 46-year-old career officer, son of an admiral, holder of the Silver Star from Solomons action two years earlier. Her assignment on 16 July 1945 was a secret: to transport from Hunter's Point, California, to Tinian, Marianas, the U-235 enriched uranium core and the casing components of Little Boy, the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima three weeks later. The cargo was delivered on 26 July. Her delivery was the last significant operational act of her career. The Disaster The distress message that McVay's chief radio officer had ordered transmitted in the moments before the sinking had gone out, but was not received. The Navy's communications procedures for unescorted ships in transit were under-developed; the Indianapolis's arrival at Leyte was not logged as overdue, and her non-arrival was not noticed. She had simply vanished. The 880 men in the water entered an environment for which they had almost no preparation. Many had life jackets; most had no life rafts. The water temperature was 28 degrees Celsius and the weather fair, which meant that drowning was slower than it would have been in the North Atlantic but that exposure would take longer to act. The principal killers through the following days were dehydration from saltwater ingestion, drowning from exhaustion, and oceanic whitetip shark attacks. Over four days an estimated 150 to 300 men died from shark attack, the largest known incidence of shark-inflicted deaths in human history; most historians have settled on the figure of approximately 200, from an initial survivor population of 880 reduced to 316 by the time rescue arrived on the morning of 2 August. The rescue itself was by accident: a patrol plane on a routine Japanese-submarine search sighted the men at 11:00 on 2 August, 83 hours after the sinking. The pilot, Lieutenant Wilbur Gwinn, reported survivors and diverted the nearest rescue ship. Of the 1,195 aboard at Tinian's departure, 316 survived. 879 died. The shark figure of
63. 1945 — Yamato. Operation Ten-Go, the one-way voyage Location: East China Sea, SW of Kyushu, Japan · Coordinates: 30.75°N 128.05°E · Casualties: 3,055 · Survivors: 277 · Depth: 340 m · Cause: aerial attack · magazine explosion — Sent on a one-way mission to Okinawa in Operation Ten-Go on 6 April 1945 with fuel for only half the voyage. Intercepted the following afternoon by 386 American carrier aircraft of Task Force 58. Struck by approximately ten torpedoes and nine bombs over two hours; her forward magazine detonated at 14:23. · Fate: located 1985 · protected · Type: battleship · Yamato class · Tonnage: 72,800 tons · Crew: 3332 · Flag: Empire of Japan · Launched: 1940 Flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the largest battleship ever built alongside her sister Musashi. Sent on a one-way mission to Okinawa in Operation Ten-Go on 6 April 1945 with fuel for only half the voyage, intercepted by 386 American carrier aircraft the next afternoon. Her forward magazine detonated after ten torpedoes and nine bombs; the mushroom cloud was visible from Kyushu, 200 kilometres away. 3,055 dead of 3,332 aboard; the Imperial Japanese Navy never sortied again. The Vessel The Yamato was the lead ship of her class, the largest and most heavily armed battleships ever built by any navy. She was laid down at the Kure Naval Arsenal on 4 November 1937 under the strictest secrecy in the history of Japanese warship construction: even the senior naval officers who oversaw her construction did not have complete drawings, and the Kure construction docks had been covered with roofs to prevent aerial reconnaissance by foreign powers. She was commissioned on 16 December 1941, nine days after Pearl Harbor, displacing 72,800 tons at full load, with a principal armament of nine 46-cm (18.1-inch) guns in three triple turrets, each gun firing a 1.46-tonne shell to 42,000 metres. Her displacement, her gunnery, and her armour were all records that have never since been exceeded. Her sister Musashi was her equal; a third sister Shinano was converted mid-construction into an aircraft carrier; a fourth, projected as Warship Number 111, was never laid down. The three Yamato-class battleships represented the Imperial Japanese Navy's central bet on the dreadnought concept at a moment when the rest of the world's principal navies were moving decisively toward aircraft carriers. Yamato was the largest capital-ship commitment the Japanese naval staff ever made, and she was commissioned into a war in which her primary theoretical opponents were aircraft. She served as the flagship of the Combined Fleet under Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto from February 1942 until his death in Apr The Disaster The first American carrier strike reached Yamato at 12:32 on 7 April 1945. Mitscher's Task Force 58 deployed 386 aircraft from eight carriers (Hornet, Bennington, Belleau Wood, San Jacinto, Essex, Bunker Hill, Hancock, Bataan): 280 torpedo, dive, and fighter aircraft, supported by 106 additional fighter escorts. Yamato's defensive armament consisted of 150 anti-aircraft guns of six calibres, her fire controllers directed by four radar sets, a formidable defensive battery against any contemporary attacker. Against 386 aircraft operating from horizons in three directions, it was insufficient. The American strike developed in waves over two hours. The first wave (12:32-12:50) concentrated on her starboard side and delivered five torpedo hits, jamming her starboard steering and starting a 5-degree list. The second wave (13:35-14:00) delivered a further five torpedo hits on her port side and three 500-pound bomb hits on her amidships superstructure. The third wave (14:00-14:15) attacked through the smoke of the first two and added three more torpedo hits. Yamato was, by the end of the third wave, listing 28 degrees to port with her deck edge under water, her main fire control disabled, and her torpedo-protection systems exhausted. At 14:23 on 7 April 1945, the combined hydrostatic pressure on her already-shattered forward magazine bulkhead exceeded the structural limit. Her forward magazine detonated. The explosion generated a mushroom cloud approximately 6 kilometres high that wa
64. 1945 — General von Steuben. Baltic, Marinesko again, four thousand lost Location: Baltic Sea, off Stolpmünde · Coordinates: 55.07°N 16.30°E · Casualties: ~4,200 · Survivors: ~300 · Depth: 70 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by Soviet submarine S-13 (Alexander Marinesko, commanding) off Stolpmünde in the Baltic at 00:55 on 10 February 1945, eleven days after Marinesko had sunk the Wilhelm Gustloff. Two torpedoes struck her starboard side. She sank bow-first in twenty minutes in freezing water. · Fate: protected war grave · Type: refugee transport · ex-liner · Tonnage: 14,660 tons · Crew: 160 · Flag: Nazi Germany · Launched: 1923 Former North German Lloyd liner, by 1945 a refugee transport in Operation Hannibal. Torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S-13 (Alexander Marinesko, commanding) off Stolpmünde in the Baltic at 00:55 on 10 February 1945, eleven days after Marinesko had sunk the Wilhelm Gustloff. Approximately 4,200 dead of ~4,500 aboard. Along with Goya and Wilhelm Gustloff, she is one of the three German refugee ships Marinesko's boats destroyed in a single winter. The Vessel The General von Steuben was a German passenger liner of the Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd) Line, originally built as the München at the Vulcan shipyard at Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) between 1922 and 1923 and commissioned on 14 June 1923. She was 168 metres long, 14,690 gross tons, and powered by quadruple-expansion steam engines producing approximately 17,500 horsepower. Her original peacetime accommodation was approximately 177 first-class, 288 second-class, and 284 third-class passengers, plus a crew of 330. She was renamed General von Steuben in 1930 after Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the German military officer who had assisted the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Her principal peacetime service was the Hamburg to New York transatlantic route, carrying predominantly German emigrants to America and American tourists to Germany. Through the late 1930s she had been reconfigured as a more up-market ship with reduced emigrant accommodation and increased first-class capacity. From 1940 she was requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine for wartime service. Her principal wartime role from 1940-1944 was as a hospital ship (Lazarettschiff) serving the German Baltic fleet's medical evacuation requirements. From late 1944 onwards, her role was expanded to include the evacuation of German military personnel and civilian refugees from the eastern Baltic before the advancing Soviet forces. By February 1945, the German military situation in the easter The Disaster At approximately 00:30 on 10 February 1945, the Soviet submarine S-13 detected General von Steuben at approximately 4,500 metres range in the central Baltic at approximately 55 degrees north, 15 degrees east, approximately 25 kilometres north of the German island of Stolpmünde. Marinesko's tactical assessment was that General von Steuben was a high-value military target. The ship's silhouette in the winter night was substantially visible; her size suggested that she was a major military transport (which was correct); the specific Red Cross markings that General von Steuben was supposed to be carrying were not visible in the darkness. The specific determination of whether Marinesko knew that the ship was a hospital ship remains historically disputed. Marinesko's attack was conducted from approximately 2,200 metres range using S-13's bow torpedo tubes. Two torpedoes were launched at approximately 00:52; both torpedoes struck General von Steuben on the starboard side amidships at approximately 00:55 on 10 February 1945. The torpedo damage was catastrophic. The two torpedoes opened a combined breach of approximately 15 metres along General von Steuben's starboard hull below the waterline. The ship began to settle immediately; her engines stopped within minutes; her wireless equipment was damaged; her watertight bulkheads failed progressively as the flooding spread through adjacent compartments. The specific tragedy of the sinking was the extreme vulnerability of the wounded milit
65. 1945 — Goya. Pomeranian coast, four minutes, six thousand dead Location: Baltic Sea, off Rixhöft · Coordinates: 55.13°N 17.60°E · Casualties: ~6,700 · Survivors: 183 · Depth: 76 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by the Soviet submarine L-3 (Vladimir Konovalov, commanding) off the Pomeranian coast at 23:52 on 16 April 1945 in Operation Hannibal. Two torpedoes struck amidships; she broke in half. Sank in four minutes in freezing Baltic water. · Fate: protected war grave · Type: refugee transport · former Norwegian freighter · Tonnage: 5,230 tons · Crew: 200 · Flag: Nazi Germany (prize) · Launched: 1940 German transport, evacuating refugees from East Prussia in Operation Hannibal. Torpedoed by the Soviet submarine L-3 off the Pomeranian coast at 23:52 on 16 April 1945; two torpedoes struck and she broke in half in four minutes. ~6,700 dead, 183 rescued. The second-deadliest single-ship loss of life in history, after her fleet-mate Wilhelm Gustloff. The Vessel The Goya was a Norwegian motor cargo-passenger ship, built at the Akers Mekaniske Verksted yard at Oslo in 1940 for the Norwegian shipping company Johan Ludwig Mowinckel. She was 146 metres long, 5,230 gross tons, and powered by twin diesel engines producing approximately 5,500 horsepower. Her original peacetime accommodation was approximately 170 passengers plus a crew of 100; her cargo capacity was approximately 3,500 tonnes. She had been seized by Germany in April 1940 during the German invasion of Norway; she was subsequently placed in Kriegsmarine service as a general cargo and passenger transport for the German Baltic operations. Her wartime name was retained as Goya throughout the war. By April 1945, Goya was conducting evacuation operations for the Operation Hannibal evacuation of East Prussian civilians and military personnel before the Soviet advance. She had already made multiple evacuation voyages between the eastern Baltic ports (primarily Pillau, Gotenhafen, and Hela) and the western Baltic ports (primarily Kiel and Lübeck) during the preceding three months. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Joachim Plünnecke, 45, a Hamburg-based merchant marine officer. Her complement on 16 April 1945 was approximately 6,380 persons: approximately 1,500 German military personnel (including wounded and withdrawing units); approximately 4,500 German civilian refugees (predominantly East Prussian women, children, and elderly); approximately 200 Kriegsmarine personnel; and The Disaster At approximately 23:40 on 16 April 1945, the Soviet submarine L-3 detected the convoy including Goya at approximately 6,000 metres range in the central Baltic at approximately 55 degrees 05 minutes north, 17 degrees 55 minutes east (approximately 50 kilometres north of the Polish coast at Rügenwalde). Konovalov's tactical assessment was immediate. The convoy was substantial; Goya was the largest ship in the formation; the attack approach was favourable. L-3's attack was conducted from approximately 1,400 metres range using her bow torpedo tubes. Two torpedoes were launched at approximately 23:50; both torpedoes struck Goya at approximately 23:52 on 16 April 1945. One torpedo struck the ship's stern; the second torpedo struck amidships. The torpedo damage was catastrophic. The two torpedoes produced a combined hull breach of approximately 20 metres along Goya's port side, opening multiple watertight compartments simultaneously. The ship's stern broke away immediately; she began to settle rapidly; her bow rose substantially as her stern filled with water; her engine room and machinery spaces were compromised within approximately 60 seconds. The specific tragedy of the sinking was the extreme rapidity of the foundering. Goya broke up and sank in approximately four minutes from the initial torpedo impact - substantially faster than the sinking times of comparable Baltic evacuation disasters (Wilhelm Gustloff at approximately 50 minutes; General von Steuben at approximately 25 min
66. 1945 — Cap Arcona. 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