Authors: Jonathan Eyers
Another ship that the US government should perhaps have acknowledged their forces should not have sunk was the 446ft (136m)
Tsushima Maru
, but being unlit and unmarked the 6,754-ton cargo ship was still a legitimate target. In August 1944 the Pacific war was about to reach the Ryukyu Islands, the most southwesterly point of Japan. The Japanese government knew that the battle for Okinawa would be as pitched as that for Iwo Jima a few months previously, but the difference was that Okinawa had a sizeable population. The Japanese government wanted to evacuate as many children to mainland Japan as possible, but the families had to volunteer to let them go. Teachers were sent to visit them in their homes to convince the parents. The children themselves were gently encouraged to use peer pressure, convincing their friends to go because they were going.
On the morning of 21st August, 767 children were amongst the 1,661 passengers who gathered at the docks. The
Tsushima Maru
was too big to come right up to the dock so anchored offshore, and half a dozen small fishing boats ferried the evacuees to the ship. She seemed to tower over them like a four-storey building, but they still had to climb up rope ladders to reach the deck. The
Tsushima Maru
had been built in Scotland over thirty years before as a cargo ship, and not unlike the hellships, her humid cargo hold was divided into cabins and filled with shelf-like bunks. The crew didn't fill the hold to quite the same density as they did on hellships, of course, and so many children came aboard that some had to stay up on deck. As the ship departed, the children ate the lunches they had brought with them, then took part in an emergency drill, seeing where the white liferafts were located and learning how to use their lifejackets. In the event of needing to abandon ship, they were told, boys should use the ladders to escape the hold, whilst girls should use the stairs.
So many children came aboard that some had to stay up on deck.
The
Tsushima Maru
skirted the edge of a typhoon at about 10pm on her second night at sea, but most of the children slept through it. The submarine USS
Bowfin
was on her sixth patrol mission since being commissioned the year before. Shortly before 10.30pm her crew spotted the
Tsushima Maru
. The dull thud of the
Bowfin
's torpedoes hitting the ship woke most of the children, who awoke the rest as they clambered over them in a panic. The ship was on fire and the lights had gone out, and those on deck could hear the water rushing in below. As the foundering
ship shuddered and groaned, the teachers who had accompanied the evacuees ordered everyone to get ready to jump over the port side. Some started leaping over the deck railing in groups before they were ordered to, but many were still on board, too terrified to jump, as the
Tsushima Maru
went under.
As the children in the water quickly discovered, there was not enough room in the rafts for all of them. With the typhoon descending on their location, the strong currents carried those not on a raft away into the night. The rest had to listen to desperate cries for help coming out of the darkness. Many of them still expected rescue, and sang songs to keep their spirits up, but six days later some were still drifting. Without water, some drank their own urine. Rough seas dispersed the hundreds of survivors, and their numbers dwindled before help arrived.
Some started leaping over the deck railing in groups before they were ordered to, but many were still on board, too terrified to jump.
Only 59 children survived the disaster. Their families heard rumours, but the truth was officially suppressed until after the end of the war. It was decades later before the crew of the
Bowfin
learnt of what they had done. Despite the tragedy that befell the
Tsushima Maru
, those who she left behind in Okinawa didn't fare much better. The battle for the island was just as bad as the Japanese government had feared. Up to a third of the civilian population lost their lives.
The circumstances that led to so many friendly fire deaths in the Pacific were mirrored in Europe, though it was mostly
British rather than American vessels that were responsible. In September 1943, Italy signed an armistice with the Allies. This had been foreseen for months, not least by the Germans, who observed the Allied invasion of Sicily in July and the Italian king's subsequent removal from power of Benito Mussolini, and realised a disarmed Italy would be less threat to the southern flank of the Reich than an Italy that switched sides. Even before the Allies met Italian diplomats in Portugal, Germany sent several divisions across the Alps, telling the Italian government they were coming to shore up Italian defences, but in reality being the spearhead of a German invasion.
Thousands were packed onto unsuitable, unseaworthy, unmarked ships.
Whilst Italian soldiers who had retreated to the mainland to defend against imminent Allied invasion could rely on British support and protection, those in southern France, the occupied Balkans and on Greek islands in the Aegean were quickly overwhelmed. On Rhodes there was a garrison of 40,000 Italian troops, and on Crete another 22,000. The victorious Germans gave the defeated Italians a choice: they could either continue to fight alongside the Germans, or be sent to Germany. Loyal fascists and those afraid of mistreatment chose the former. The vast majority chose the latter. But Hitler considered them traitors, not prisoners of war, and most of them were destined not for prisoner of war camps, but slave labour. Thousands were packed onto unsuitable, unseaworthy, unmarked ships for transport to mainland Greece. These ships were the Nazis' hellships, and they became just as viable targets for unwitting British vessels as Japan's hellships were for American submarines in the Pacific.
The 3,428-ton merchant ship
Gaetano Donizetti
only had room for 700 men in her hold, but at Rhodes the Germans forced between 1,600 and 1,900 Italian sailors and airmen into the bowels of the 15-year-old ship. She set sail from Rhodes on 22nd September with over 200 crew and guards aboard, but the next day the Royal Navy destroyer HMS
Eclipse
spotted her. The
Gaetano Donizetti
had no armour to protect her from the
Eclipse
's volley and capsized almost immediately, sinking within seconds. There were no survivors.
Souda Bay in northwest Crete became the scene of several disasters. In late October the Germans forced almost 2,700 mainly Italian (though also some Greek) prisoners into the cargo hold of the confiscated French cargo ship
Sinfra
. The 4,470-ton vessel was attacked by American B-25s and the RAF's Beaufighters. The distress signal she sent called for rescue boats, but ordered them to save the 200 German soldiers aboard first. Just over 560 survived, 163 of them German. In February 1944 the British submarine HMS
Sportsman
sighted the German merchant ship
Petrella
just north of Souda Bay and torpedoed her, unaware that she carried a human cargo of 3,173 Italian prisoners. The
Petrella
did not sink immediately, but the German guards refused to open the doors and let the Italians escape. They fired on those who tried. Only 500 of the prisoners survived.
The
Petrella
did not sink immediately, but the German guards refused to open the doors and let the Italians escape.
A British submarine may also have been responsible for the loss of the Norwegian steamer
Oria
. The 2,127-ton ship left Rhodes on 11th February 1944, heading for
Piraeus on the Greek mainland. She was carrying 4,046 Italians, most of them soldiers, as well as over 100 German guards or crewmen. On the second night of the journey she sailed through a storm and ran aground on a reef off Cape Sounion. An uncorroborated theory suggests her crew had spotted a submarine and were trying to evade it when they hit the rocks. The
Oria
quickly broke up, her forepart sinking rapidly whilst her afterpart capsized. In the bad weather even those who could make it out of the ship before she went down drowned. Tugs reached the area the following morning and found only a few dozen survivors, most of them Italians. Nearly 4,100 died, making it the Mediterranean's worst maritime disaster.
Sinking fast, there wasn't time to launch many lifeboats. Panic broke out as the fire spread.
Russian prisoners also suffered as a result of British friendly fire, most notably with the sinking of the 3,828-ton Norwegian ship
Rigel
, which had been requisitioned by the occupying German forces in 1940 to transport prisoners of war, German deserters and Norwegian resistance fighters to Germany. In November 1944, the aircraft carrier HMS
Implacable
was involved in Operation Provident, attacking German convoys off the coast of Norway. On the 27th her crew spotted the
Rigel
, which they thought was a troop transport because she was being escorted by two naval vessels. Instead she carried thousands of prisoners of war (some sources claim up to 4,500), most of them Russian but also a few hundred Polish and Serbian soldiers. Fairey Barracuda bombers from the
Implacable
landed five direct hits against the
Rigel
, at least one of which hit a storage compartment holding prisoners, and the rest of
which set the ship ablaze. Sinking fast, there wasn't time to launch many lifeboats. Panic broke out as the fire spread. Before his ship lost the ability to manoeuvre, the captain grounded the
Rigel
on the island of Rosøya. This probably saved the lives of the nearly 300 survivors. Still convinced the ship carried only German troops, the British planes fired on the lifeboats. Norwegians later realised the true nature of the
Rigel
's cargo, and launched rescue efforts, local doctors working for days to save as many of the injured as they could.
The British were also inadvertently responsible for the worst friendly fire incident in history. By the beginning of April 1945 even Germans knew defeat was imminent. Their army was in full retreat, driven back into the fatherland by a now unstoppable Soviet military that had already retaken 1,000 miles of its own conquered territory in the last 18 months. In the remaining concentration camps on the rapidly-shrinking Reich's eastern flank, inmates watched RAF planes fly overhead and knew rescue was getting closer. Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler, who had overseen the machinery of the Holocaust since the beginning, had other ideas. The Russians had liberated Auschwitz in January and Himmler ordered other camps liquidated, the remaining prisoners killed or marched into the heart of Germany, and any trace of what had happened at the sites removed. What remained of Goebbels' propaganda ministry could write off one death camp as a Soviet lie. If the Allies found dozens it would look like policy.
A small fleet of ships were ordered to assemble in the Bay of Lübeck, on the German coast of the Baltic Sea. The civilian
vessels included the 2,815-ton passenger ship and freighter
Thielbek
, which had been damaged in an air raid but was ordered to Lübeck before repairs were completed. The 675ft (205m) ocean liner
Cap Arcona
was also in need of repair, her engine turbines having been worn out through constant use ferrying personnel across the Baltic in the previous few weeks. By the time she reached Lübeck the three-funnelled ship, one of the largest vessels in the German merchant navy, had lost most of its manoeuvrability. The 21,046-ton liner
Deutschland
, meanwhile, had begun conversion to a hospital ship, but the German military had supposedly run out of paint, so the red cross was only painted on one side of the ship.
Their vessels were now under SS jurisdiction, and had been commandeered for a special operation: to transport over 8,000 prisoners in a single journey.
On 17th April the captains of the
Thielbek
, the
Cap Arcona
and another, smaller ship, the
Athen
, were summoned to a conference with the SS. They learnt that their vessels were now under SS jurisdiction, and had been commandeered for a special operation: to transport over 8,000 prisoners between them (and the
Deutschland
) in a single journey. The captain of the
Thielbek
refused and was immediately relieved of his command. The captain of the
Athen
only accepted under threat of capital charges. Only the
Cap Arcona
's captain accepted his orders without making a fuss. He knew the SS would proceed with the mission anyway and his being shot would make no difference to that. But before he left the meeting he categorically renounced any responsibility for his ship.
The first prisoners reached the Bay of Lübeck on 19th April and began boarding the next day. The death marches
across Poland and Germany from the outlying camps in the winter of 1945 had already claimed tens of thousands of lives. Without food and water, shoes, or adequate clothing against sub-zero temperatures, only the knowledge that the Nazis would soon be defeated gave many the determination to carry on. As they were driven into the dark, cold, wet holds of the ships, they didn't know they would have to wait almost two weeks before the last groups of prisoners were crowded aboard and the order for departure received. Most of them were Russian and Polish, but there were prisoners from 28 different nationalities, including Americans, teenage French resistance fighters and German political prisoners. Some had survived five years in various camps, including Auschwitz, so the terrible conditions on board the Nazis' hellships were nothing new. But whilst some prisoners on the
Cap Arcona
were crammed, with only room to stand, into a barely lit storeroom for the ship's provisions, when the holds were full the SS began to fill the rest of the ship too, including the liner's extravagant Victorian banquet hall. Prisoners boarding the ship walked down the main stairwell, which had a beautiful Persian carpet, exquisite mahogany and brass railings, and a brocade tapestry covering the walls.