40-6-17 RMS Lancastria

RMS Lancastria sinking of St Nazaire, June 17, 1940 .

RMS Lancastria was a British ocean liner requisitioned by the UK Government during World War II. She was sunk on 17 June 1940 during Operation Ariel. Having received an emergency order to evacuate British nationals and troops in excess of its capacity of 1,300 passengers, modern estimates range between 3,000 and 5,800 fatalities—the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lancastria#Sinking

Troopship sinkings:
SS Oronsay was a British ocean liner and World War II troopship. She was sunk by an Italian submarine on 9 October 1942.

Troopships that survived:

Post-war RMS Cameronia was used to transport people emigrating to Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Cameronia_(1920) .

1915-5-7 Lusitania Sinking

1915-5-7 Lusitania Sinking - time > .

1915-5-7 U-20 Sinking of RMS Lusitania - Oceanliner > .

Incredible Career of RMS Lusitania - Oceanliner > .

The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 during WW1, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom which had implemented a naval blockade of Germany.

When Lusitania was built, her construction and operating expenses were subsidized by the British government, with the provision that she could be converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser if need be. At the outbreak of WW1, the British Admiralty considered her for requisition as an armed merchant cruiser, and she was put on the official list of AMCs.

The Admiralty then canceled their earlier decision and decided not to use her as an AMC after all; large liners such as Lusitania consumed enormous quantities of coal (910 tons/day, or 37.6 tons/hour) and became a serious drain on the Admiralty's fuel reserves, so express liners were deemed inappropriate for the role when smaller cruisers would do. They were also very distinctive; so smaller liners were used as transports instead. Lusitania remained on the official AMC list and was listed as an auxiliary cruiser in the 1914 edition of Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships, along with Mauretania.
The ship was identified and torpedoed by the German U-boat U-20 and sank in 18 minutes, and also took on a heavy starboard list. The vessel went down 11 miles (18 km) off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, killing 1,198 and leaving 761 survivors. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany, contributed to the American entry into World War I and became an iconic symbol in military recruiting campaigns of why the war was being fought.

By early 1915, a new threat to British shipping began to materialise: U-boats (submarines). At first, the Germans used them only to attack naval vessels, and they achieved only occasional—but sometimes spectacular—successes. U-boats then began to attack merchant vessels at times, although almost always in accordance with the old cruiser rules. Desperate to gain an advantage on the Atlantic, the German government decided to step up its submarine campaign. On 4 February 1915, Germany declared the seas around the British Isles a war zone: from 18 February, Allied ships in the area would be sunk without warning. This was not wholly unrestricted submarine warfare, since efforts would be taken to avoid sinking neutral ships.

Lusitania fell victim to torpedo attack relatively early in the First World War, before tactics for evading submarines were properly implemented or understood. The contemporary investigations in both the United Kingdom and the United States into the precise causes of the ship's loss were obstructed by the needs of wartime secrecy and a propaganda campaign to ensure all blame fell upon Germany. Argument over whether the ship was a legitimate military target raged back and forth throughout the war as both sides made misleading claims about the ship. At the time she was sunk, she was carrying over 4 million rounds of small-arms ammunition (.303 caliber), almost 5,000 shrapnel shell casings (for a total of some 50 tons), and 3,240 brass percussion fuses, in addition to 1,266 passengers and a crew of 696. Several attempts have been made over the years since the sinking to dive to the wreck seeking information about precisely how the ship sank, and argument continues to the present day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_RMS_Lusitania .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_sunk_by_submarines_by_death_toll .

2022-4-14 Moskva

22-4-15 Why The Sinking Of Russia's 'Moskova' Battleship Matters - MSNBC > .

23-9-10 Battle for Black Sea. R-U: Geopolitics, Grain, Naval Drones > .

23-4-13 Happy Neptune Day (April 13) - [Anniversary of Moskva Sinking] > .

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22-12-4 Humor: Krumblin Presents: The Little Warship (Under the Sea) - UA > .

22-5-28 Sinking of Cruiser Moskva: History, Importance, Consequences - K&G > .

Moskva Cruiser: What You Need To Know - H I Sutton - Covert Shores > .

2o22-2-24+ Special Invasive Operation - Fyrd Færeld >> .

Чорне море - Black Sea Front - αλλο >> .

Moskva (Москва, lit. 'Moscow'), formerly Slava (Слава, lit. 'Glory'), was a guided missile cruiser of the Russian Navy. The ship was the lead ship of the Project 1164 Atlant class and was named after the city of Moscow. She was the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and helped lead the naval assault during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. With a crew of 510, she was the most powerful surface vessel in the region. The cruiser had previously been deployed in several military conflicts, including in Georgia (2008), Crimea (2014), and Syria (2015).

She sank on 14 April 2022 in the Black Sea. Ukrainian officials and the US Defense Department said Ukraine attacked the cruiser with two anti-ship cruise missiles. The Russian Ministry of Defence said a fire caused a munitions explosion. The Russian Navy attempted to tow the damaged ship toward Sevastopol but she sank before reaching port. Moskva is the largest warship to be sunk in combat since World War II.

Ukraine war: Dramatic images appear to show sinking Russian warship Moskva .

22-10-29 Zinking? ..

41-12-10 Repulse, Prince of Wales

.Malaya 1941: The Sinking of Repulse and Prince of Wales > .

The sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse was a naval engagement in WW2, as part of the war in the Pacific, that took place on 10 December 1941 in the South China Sea off the east coast of the British colony of Malaya (present-day Malaysia), 70 miles (61 nautical miles; 110 kilometres) east of Kuantan, Pahang. The Royal Navy battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by land-based bombers and torpedo bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In Japanese, the engagement was referred to as the Naval Battle of Malaya (マレー沖海戦, Marē-oki kaisen).

The objective of Force Z, which consisted of one battleship, one battlecruiser and four destroyers, was to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet in the South China Sea north of Malaya. The task force sailed without air support. Although the British had a close encounter with Japanese heavy surface units, the force failed to find and destroy the main convoy. On their return to Singapore they were attacked in open waters and sunk by long-range torpedo bombers. The commander of Force Z, Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, elected to maintain radio silence and an alert was only sent (by the Repulse) one hour after the first Japanese attack.

With the attack on Pearl Harbor only three days earlier, the Malayan engagement illustrated the effectiveness of aerial attacks against even the heaviest of naval assets if they were without air cover. This added to the importance for the Allies of the three USN aircraft carriers in the Pacific: USS Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga. The sinking of the two ships severely weakened the British Eastern Fleet in Singapore, and the Japanese fleet was only engaged by submarines until the Battle off Endau on 27 January 1942.

1944-8-20 SS Richard Montgomery

.Why Has Nothing Been Done? | SS Richard Montgomery - Casual > . skip ad > .

How A Cargo Ship Helped Win WW2: The Liberty Ship Story > .

Rise and Fall of the Liberty Ship - It's History > .

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SS Richard Montgomery was an American Liberty cargo ship built during World War II. She was named after Richard Montgomery, an Irish officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War.

The ship was wrecked on the Nore sandbank in the Thames Estuary, near Sheerness, England, 20 August 1944, while carrying a cargo of munitions. About 1,400 tonnes (1,500 short tons) of explosives remaining on board presents a hazard but the likelihood of explosion is claimed to be remote.

When Richard Montgomery arrived off Southend, she came under the authority of the Thames naval control at HMS Leigh located at the end of Southend Pier. The harbourmaster, responsible for all shipping movements in the estuary, ordered the ship to a berth off the north edge of Sheerness middle sands, an area designated as the Great Nore Anchorage.

On 20 August 1944 she dragged anchor and ran aground on a sandbank around 250 m (820 ft) from the Medway Approach Channel, in a depth of 24 ft (7.3 m) of water. The general dry cargo liberty ship had an average draft of 28 ft (8.5 m), but Richard Montgomery was trimmed to a draft of 31 ft (9.4 m). As the tide went down, the ship broke her back on sand banks near the Isle of Sheppey about 1.5 mi (2.4 km) from Sheerness and 5 mi (8.0 km) from Southend.

A Rochester-based stevedore company was given the job of removing the cargo, which began on 23 August 1944, using the ship's own cargo handling equipment. By the next day, the ship's hull had cracked open, causing several cargo holds at the bow end to flood. The salvage operation continued until 25 September, when the ship was finally abandoned before all the cargo had been recovered. Subsequently the vessel broke into two separate parts, roughly amidships.

During the enquiry following the shipwreck it was revealed that several ships moored nearby had noticed Richard Montgomery drifting towards the sandbank. They had attempted to signal an alert by sounding their sirens, but without avail because Captain Wilkie of Richard Montgomery was asleep. The ship's chief officer was unable to explain why he had not alerted the captain. A board of inquiry concluded that the anchorage the harbour master assigned had placed the ship in jeopardy, and returned the captain of Richard Montgomery to full duty within a week.