Would've been a great story if there had been no misunderstanding between the U-boat and the US bomber which stopped rescues like this happening ever again
Further reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident
The Nazi with a heart: U-boat skipper who ruthlessly torpedoed a British ship then defied Hitler to rescue survivors. But a BBC drama reveals a terrible twist to the tale
On the bridge of the Laconia, Captain Rudolph Sharp watched the sun set over the western horizon. The Atlantic Ocean stretched out before him in all its vast, empty beauty. But beneath the waves, he knew killers were lurking.
Aboard his ship, once a luxury Cunard liner, now converted to a troopship, were 2,700 people, mostly Italian prisoners of war guarded by Polish troops, along with dozens of injured British soldiers and other military personnel and 87 women and children — mainly families of servicemen.
The ship was on its way from Egypt to Britain — going the long way round Africa because the Mediterranean was largely controlled by the Axis powers — reaching Cape Town at the beginning of September 1942 before sailing up the West African coast.
Captain Werner Hartenstein of U-156 torpedoed the Laconia, but emerged as a very unlikely hero
By September 12, the Laconia was roughly 900 miles south of Freetown, the British naval port in Sierra Leone, and 250 miles north-east of Ascension Island.
The ship was shabby and in dire need of maintenance. Its hull was festooned in barnacles that slowed it down, and its funnel belched black smoke which was visible for miles.
Captain Sharp was painfully aware that his vessel, sailing without a convoy and with only a few guns, was highly vulnerable to a U-boat attack.
But many of the passengers, relieved to be going home, had begun to relax, despite the regular lifeboat drills.
In the cabin she shared with her parents and ten-year-old brother, Alec, 14-year-old Josephine Frame was climbing onto the top bunk as her parents were leaving the cabin to go to a dance in the ballroom upstairs.
Suddenly there was, she remembers, ‘a horrendous noise. Then a deathly silence’. The ship rocked violently. Then another terrible explosion and the ship began listing to its starboard side.
The Laconia had been struck by two torpedoes, one at 8.07pm, the other 30 seconds later. They had been fired by a German submarine, U-156, part of a U-boat wolf pack hunting for Allied ships.
Hitler was determined to prevent the build-up of men and munitions in Britain that would enable the Allies to invade Occupied Europe. His U-boat captains had orders to sink any ships carrying troops or armaments.
Captain Werner Hartenstein of U-156 had sighted the Laconia earlier that day. A U-boat ace, he had already sunk just short of 100,000 tonnes of Allied shipping during the war. By sinking the 20,000-tonne Laconia, he would reach that total, making him eligible for the German military award, the Ritterkreuz.
Deadly mission: Laconia survivors being ferried from one U-boat to another
But the events of the coming days were to prove that Captain Hartenstein was far from a ruthless Nazi killing machine. Indeed, in one of the most extraordinary episodes of World War II, he was about to emerge as a very unlikely hero.
The story of the Laconia incident, as it became known, has been made into a drama, as well as a documentary, to be shown on BBC2 for the next three nights. It portrays some German submariners, not as the callous monsters of British wartime propaganda, but as courageous, humane men whose behaviour contrasted starkly with that of some of our allies.
For the remaining survivors of that terrible night, the events remain painfully clear nearly 70 years on.
Josephine Frame (now Pratchett, a retired teacher living in Northamptonshire), recalls the panic when the ship was hit.
‘It was carnage. People were screaming, there were bodies everywhere. The ship was listing so badly they could not get the lifeboats clear of the side at first.’
Josephine watched in horror as another family tried to get into another lifeboat with their three young sons.
‘As Mrs Lindsay put the baby into the boat, it tipped over. The baby fell into the sea and was drowned. Mrs Lindsay was screaming, it was terrible.’
Women and children were given priority in the lifeboats. Many of the men jumped off the side of the ship, some injuring themselves badly.
The U-boat submariners ignored Hitler's orders and rescued survivors of the Laconia
Down in the hold, where the two torpedoes had struck, hundreds of Italian PoWs were killed instantly. Others struggled to escape as water poured in. As they came on deck, Polish and British soldiers held them back from the lifeboats at bayonet point.
Doris Hawkins, a nursing sister, had been looking after a 14-month-old baby girl for her parents. She finally found a place in the lifeboat only for it to capsize just as the baby was handed to her.
‘I lost her,’ Doris wrote afterwards. ‘I did not hear her cry even then, and I am sure that God took her immediately to Himself without suffering. I never saw her again.’
Some of the lifeboats were launched in such haste that the bungs for the drain holes had not been inserted, so they filled with water and sank.
The ship’s officers left the Laconia last. Those who survived the leap into the sea clung to debris, and watched the Laconia’s stern rear out of the water before she sank below the waves with a hiss and a roar. Captain Sharp went down with his ship.
Next came another terrifying explosion as the Laconia’s boilers burst, covering the sea, and everyone in it, with oil.
Soon, ominous black shapes began to join the survivors in the water, attracted by the smell of blood: screams rent the air as sharks and barracuda began to attack the living and dead.
Then, came the unmistakable rumble of a U-boat’s engine — terrifying for those still clinging to life, as Allied propaganda had depicted U-boat commanders as Nazi fanatics who would machine-gun survivors in the water.
Hitler himself had decreed: ‘Since foreign seamen cannot be taken prisoner . . . the U-boats are to surface after torpedoing and shoot up the lifeboats.’
Instead, the Laconia survivors’ fear turned to amazement as they saw the Germans on the U-boat’s deck begin dragging victims from the water.
Hearing the cries of the Italians, Hartenstein assumed he had just torpedoed a ship full of Germany’s allies — then he saw with horror that women and children were among the survivors. So he decided to rescue everyone, regardless of nationality.
Soon the entire deck of the submarine was crowded with men, women and children.
They were taken below, given dry clothes, warm tea and bread.
To ease the overcrowding on the tiny submarine, the unharmed men were put back into the lifeboats, which were then tied together or lashed to the U-boat with lifelines.
All that night and the following day, Hartenstein’s men worked tirelessly, pulling people from the sea and shepherding the flotilla of lifeboats and rafts.
Doris Hawkins had endured a terrible 24 hours since the Laconia had sunk. After losing the baby, Sally, she had been hauled aboard a life raft to which she, along with nine men, clung all night — shivering with cold.
The following day, they had drifted beneath the fierce tropical sun, their skin blistering painfully, their limbs swollen by saltwater and their throats burning with thirst. By the time they were spotted by the U-boat that evening, one man had already died.
They were taken on board and treated with ‘great kindness and respect’, the German officers giving up their bunks to the exhausted survivors.
To her joy, she found on board a friend she had made on the Laconia, Mary, the wife of an Army officer based in Egypt, who was going home to see her two young sons. What Doris did not know was that Mary was pregnant with another child, by her lover, a Fleet Air Arm lieutenant, Peter Medhurst, also travelling on the ship.
The Cunard liner Laconia leaves Southampton docks in 1922 with the help of a tug. She was later converted into a troopship
Onboard U-156, there were now 193 survivors and a further 200 in the lifeboats that clung to it. Approximately 1,100 other survivors floated in lifeboats nearby.
Hartenstein had radioed U-boat command, shortly after picking up the first survivors, informing them of the presence of the Italian PoWs and asking for instructions.
Admiral Donitz, head of the German U-boat fleet, ordered two other
submarines in the area to assist the rescue and the Italian navy sent its nearest submarine. Vichy France — ostensibly neutral but largely pro-Axis — also sent three ships from a naval base in North Africa.
But Hartenstein knew that Allied shipping, or planes, might sight his U-boat and attack it, unaware of who was on board. He needed the survivors to be rescued.
He therefore took an unprecedented step. Using an open radio frequency he broadcast a message in English: ‘If any ship will assist the wrecked Laconia crew, I will not attack her, provided I am not attacked by ship or aircraft. I have picked up 193 men.’
He then gave his co-ordinates, signing off: ‘German submarine.’
If any British listening stations in Africa picked up this offer of ceasefire, there is no record of it. It is possible that it was heard, but dismissed as a trick.
The 2nd class saloon of the ocean-going liner Laconia, before her conversion for wartime duties
If it was intercepted, then no one thought to pass it on to Ascension Island 250 miles away, the site of a secret American airfield where planes could refuel mid-Atlantic.
The Americans were merely told that the Laconia had sunk and that two British ships were being sent to look for survivors. They were requested to provide air cover, but no mention was made of Hartenstein’s rescue or his ceasefire offer. So American planes began combing the Atlantic for U-boats, primed to attack them.
Meanwhile, the rescue continued. Josephine Frame and her family had been floating in a lifeboat awash with blood and vomit for four appalling days, surrounded by dead bodies and sharks, before the U-156 found them.
They staggered on board, stupefied with exhaustion and sunburn. But their salvation was all too brief.
On Wednesday, September 16, Captain Hartenstein saw an American B-24 bomber approaching. Assuming the plane was part of a rescue effort, his crew spread out a large Red Cross flag on the deck, and signalled their peaceful intentions with lamp and morse code.
Unfortunately, the pilot, Lieutenant James Harden, didn’t understand the signals. He radioed back to Ascension Island to report what he had seen and ask for orders.
Airfield commander Captain Robert Richardson deliberated. Though the ship was flying a Red Cross flag, it was an enemy submarine and therefore a danger both to the airfield and to Allied shipping. He gave the order: ‘Sink the sub.’
Back on the U-156 passengers and crew watched the bomber curiously, then with horror as the bomb doors opened and two bombs were released. They both missed, but Harden returned for a second and then a third attempt. Several lifeboats were hit, killing dozens. The U-boat was slightly damaged.
Hartenstein had no choice but to save his submarine, so he ordered the 93 Laconia survivors overboard. They jumped into the shark-infested waters and swam for the remaining lifeboats as U-156 headed away from the danger zone.
Fortunately, just hours later the Vichy French ships arrived and picked up most of the survivors and took them to Dakar, West Africa, from where they were sent to internment camps.
Josephine Frame and her family ended up in an internment camp near Casablanca: ‘It was pretty awful; dysentery was rife. But it was wonderful to be back on dry land.’
They were liberated by Allied forces several weeks later.
But in the confusion, the French ships had missed two of the lifeboats. Lifeboat 9, with 68 people on board including Doris Hawkins, Mary and Peter Medhurst, was left to row for the African coast, 600 miles away.
By the time it reached land 27 days, later, 16 people had died, including Mary and her lover Peter, who, after she passed away, slipped overboard into the sea. The other lifeboat was discovered by a British trawler after 40 days at sea. Only four of its 52 occupants were alive.
Altogether, of the 2,725 passengers that had embarked from Cape Town, only 1,500 had survived the tragedy.
The repercussions of the Laconia incident were far-reaching. On September 17, the day after the bombing of U-156, Admiral Donitz sent a message to all U-boat commanders that became known as the Laconia Order, forbidding any attempt to help survivors of sunken ships.
After the war, many Laconia survivors remained bitterly angry towards Captain Richardson, believing the bombing of U-156 was a criminal act. But he was never prosecuted, and went on to serve a long career in the U.S. Air Force. He died, aged 92, last Sunday.
Werner Hartenstein, the hero of the Laconia incident, died with his men when his U-156 was sunk by a U.S. bomber in the Atlantic in March 1943.
Laconia survivors were saddened to learn of his death. ‘He was a good man,’ says
Josephine Pratchett. ‘He was doing his job torpedoing our ship, but by rescuing us he showed great courage and humanity.’
* The Sinking Of The Laconia, tonight and tomorrow, 9pm, BBC2. The Sinking Of The Laconia: Survivors’ Stories, Saturday, 7.30pm, BBC2.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ed-Hitler-rescue-survivors.html#ixzz1AE7ZXmjC
Further reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident
