"caught fire and was scrapped in 1941. During the conflict, and provided distinguished service as troopships. Many liners were sunk with great loss of life; in World War II the three worst disasters were the loss of the Cunarder in 1940 off Saint-Nazaire to German bombing while attempting to evacuate troops of the British Expeditionary Force from France, with the loss of more than 3,000 lives; the sinking of , after the ship was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, with more than 9,000 lives lost, making it the deadliest maritime disaster in history; and the sinking of with more than"
"including the writer John Renshaw Starr. Sinking of The Lancastria On 17 June 1940 an estimated 9,000 British Army soldiers were embarked aboard the Clyde-built cruise liner, later converted to troopship, , which was attacked and sunk by German Junkers Ju 88 bombers, mainly from Kampfgeschwader 30, taking with her around 4,000 victims. This is the worst disaster in British maritime history and the worst loss of life for British forces in the whole of World War II. Winston Churchill banned all news coverage of the disaster on learning of it and it remains largely forgotten by history. A ""Lancastria"""
"RMS Lancastria RMS ""Lancastria (later HMT ""Lancastria) was a British Cunard 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 fatalities—the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history. The sinking of HMT ""Lancastria"" claimed more lives than the combined losses of the (1,517 passengers and crew) and (1,198 passengers). The ship was launched in 1920 as ""Tyrrhenia"" by William Beardmore and Company of Dalmuir"
"RMS Lancastria RMS ""Lancastria (later HMT ""Lancastria) was a British Cunard 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 fatalities—the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history. The sinking of HMT ""Lancastria"" claimed more lives than the combined losses of the (1,517 passengers and crew) and (1,198 passengers). The ship was launched in 1920 as ""Tyrrhenia"" by William Beardmore and Company of Dalmuir"
"port of Narvik, and in June assisted in Operation Aerial, evacuating troops from the French ports of Brest and Saint-Nazaire, at the latter, the troopship ""Lancastria"" was bombed and sunk on 17 June with the loss of at least 2,888 lives. Between July and September 1940, she sailed to Iceland and then to Halifax, Nova Scotia to transport Canadian soldiers. ""Georgic"" then made a variety of journeys from Liverpool and Glasgow to the Middle East via the Cape, along with journeys between Liverpool, New York and Canada. Between May 1940 and July 1941, ""Georgic"" transported around 25,000 troops, mostly to"
"""Lancastria"" Association names 1,738 people known to have been killed. In 2005, Fenby wrote that estimates of the death toll vary from fewer than people although it is also estimated that as many as 6,500 people perished, the largest loss of life in British maritime history. Rudolph Sharp survived the sinking and went on to command the , losing his life on 12 September 1942 when that ship was torpedoed and sunk off West Africa. The immense loss of life was such that the British government suppressed news of the disaster through the D-Notice system, but the story was broken"
"the bombing of RMS ""Lancastria"" in the estuary of the River Loire during Operation Ariel. The ship's boat picked up many survivors from the water while German aircraft bombed and machine gunned them. ""Cambridgeshire""s Lewis gunners claimed to have shot down one of the attacking planes. ""Cambridgeshire"" rescued an estimated 800 people; one of them was Lord Inverclyde. Three members of ""Cambridgeshire""s crew received decorations for their conduct. Later that night, ""Cambridgeshire"" received orders to evacuate the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke, and his staff to England because the destroyer allocated was no longer available. There"
"but twenty seven from the ship. Fearing the flames from the ships would attract U boats, ""Duchess of York"" and ""California"" were sunk by Royal Navy torpedoes in position in the early hours of 12 July. According to the regimental records of my fathers regiment, the 675 Artisan and Works R.E., on the 16th of June 1940 they embarked on the SS. Duchess of York from ST Nazaire during the evacuation of France. The next day on the 17th of June RMS Lancastria was sunk off St Nazaire with the loss of over 4,000 lives, the biggest loss of life"
"aboard ""Hood"", only three survived its sinking. Over 3,000 people were lost when the converted troopship ""Lancastria"" was sunk in June 1940, the greatest maritime disaster in Britain's history. There were however also successes against enemy surface ships, as in the battles of the River Plate in 1939, Narvik in 1940 and Cape Matapan in 1941, and the sinking of the German capital ships ""Bismarck"" in 1941 and ""Scharnhorst"" in 1943. The Navy's most critical struggle was the Battle of the Atlantic defending Britain's vital commercial supply lines against U-boat attack. A traditional convoy system was instituted from the start"
"evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk and prior to victory in the Battle of Britain. The darkest moment is usually considered to have been 10 May 1940, when over 1,500 civilians died in Luftwaffe bombing raids on London alone. Although the British Empire was the only major power fighting the Germans and Italians during the period, it was not the only major power fighting the Axis as a whole. China had been engaging the Japanese since 1937, after the Japanese launched an all-out invasion. Some minor powers were also fighting the Germans and Italians: Greece fought the Axis powers"
"German bombers, which also dropped flares on patches of oil and burned alive some of the shipwrecked men. While ""Lancastria"" was on its side, the hull was covered by men who could not swim, singing ""Roll Out the Barrel"" until they sank with the ship, about fifteen minutes after the bombing. As time passed, exhaustion and despair led people in the sea to give up and slip underwater. About were rescued but more than women and children were killed. La Pallice, the ""grand port maritime de La Rochelle"" is the commercial, deep water port of La Rochelle. A senior British"
"Lancaster Memorial (Netherlands) The Lancaster Memorial in Beuningen, Netherlands is a Memorial that commemorates the crew of the British Avro Lancaster LM325 SR-J that crashed on the spot during the night of 22 to 23 June 1943 in World War II. The bomber belonged to No. 101 Squadron RAF. Six of the seven crew lost their lives. The Lancaster was part of a formation of 557 planes that were heading to the Ruhrgebied for a large-scale attack on the war industry around the German city of Mülheim. In this attack, Mülheim was destroyed for two-thirds. The plane took off in"
"at least made the disaster the greatest loss of life in a British ship, which the British government tried to keep secret on the orders of Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister. Some equipment was embarked on the evacuation ships but lack of reliable information about the progress of the German Army towards the coast, rumours and alarmist reports, led some operations to be terminated early and much equipment was destroyed or left behind. The official evacuation ended on 25 June, in conformity with the terms of the Armistice of 22 June 1940 agreed by the French and German authorities"
"evacuated from St Nazaire. Inverclyde was on board the RMS ""Lancastria"" when she was sunk off St Nazaire on 17 June 1940. He was rescued by the crew of HMT ""Cambridgeshire"", a 443-ton anti-submarine trawler, which had been requisitioned by the navy in August 1939, she was then given a 4 inch gun, machine guns and depth chargers, she herself surviving the war and, after returning to peacetime trawling in 1945 as the ""Kingstone Sapphire"", was scrapped in 1954. After returning to England, Lord Inverclyde presented each of his rescuers with a round rosewood box full of cigarettes, each box"
"military service personnel from Great Britain, Belgium, Canada, and, very unusually, Nazi Germany, many of whom took part in some of the most famous incidents in World War I and World War II, including: the Gallipoli Campaign, the Battle of the Somme, the 1918 Zeebrugge Raid, the Battle of Dunkirk, the Battle of the Denmark Strait and sinking of , the Battle of Britain, and the more modern tragedy of the Deal barracks bombing in September 1989. It also contains 66 local civilian war dead from World War II killed by German bombing and shelling between 1940 and 1945, 127"
"between 31 May and 1 June 1916 during World War I. 250 warships were engaged in battle, in this test of strength between the British Royal Navy and the German Kaiserliche Kriegsmarine. 25 ships were sunk during the battle and more than 8,600 sailors lives were lost. The goal of this memorial park is to bring its victims to light and to remember those who died during the battle. In doing so, this will create one of the largest war memorial, located on the west coast of Jutland close to where the battle took place. The memorial consist of 26"
"action (including the Lancastria disaster), for a total casualty figure of 68,111 men; about 64,000 vehicles destroyed or abandoned and 2,472 guns destroyed or abandoned. RAF losses in the campaign from 10 May – 22 June, amounted to 931 aircraft and 1,526 casualties. The British also lost 243 ships to Luftwaffe bombing in ""Dynamo"", including 8 destroyers and 8 troopships. Belgian losses were 6,093 killed and wounded; some 2,000 prisoners of war died in captivity and more than 500 were missing. Those captured amounted to 200,000 men. Belgian wounded amounted to 15,850. They also lost 112 aircraft. Polish losses were"
"Operation Chastise Operation Chastise was an attack on German dams carried out on 16–17 May 1943 by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, later called the Dam Busters, using a purpose-built ""bouncing bomb"" developed by Barnes Wallis. The Möhne and Edersee Dams were breached, causing catastrophic flooding of the Ruhr valley and of villages in the Eder valley; the Sorpe Dam sustained only minor damage. Two hydroelectric power stations were destroyed and several more damaged. Factories and mines were also damaged and destroyed. An estimated 1,600 civilians – about 600 Germans and 1,000 mainly Soviet forced labourers – died. Despite"
"can be seen. Descendants of those buried there go to visit the graves of their ancestors. The dam was breached in World War II by bouncing bombs dropped by British Lancaster bombers of No. 617 Squadron RAF as part of Operation Chastise. The early morning raid of 17 May 1943 created a massive wide and deep breach in the structure. Water emptied at the rate of into the narrow valley below, producing a flood wave which roared as far as downstream. By the time it diminished in the widening floodplains of the lower Eder, into the Fulda and into the"
"people of Saint Nazaire and surrounding districts who saved many lives, tended wounded and gave a Christian burial to victims"". The missing British military dead from the sinking of the ""Lancastria"" (those whose bodies were not recovered or were unable to be identified) are commemorated on a number of Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorials (those identified were buried in cemeteries and are marked with Commission headstones). Around 700 missing of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) are commemorated on the Dunkirk Memorial. The missing dead who served in the Navy are commemorated on the naval memorials at Chatham, Plymouth and Portsmouth,"
"Laconia incident The ""Laconia"" incident was a series of events surrounding the sinking of a British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean on 12 September 1942 during World War II, and an attack on the subsequent rescue attempts. , carrying some 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers and prisoners of war (POWs), was torpedoed and sunk by , a German U-boat, off the West African coast. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the commander, ""Korvettenkapitän"" Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations. ""U-156"" broadcast their on open radio channels to all Allied forces in the area, and were joined by"
"major warship ever sunk in war by air attack and the first major warship ever to be sunk by dive bombing. Lucy later also became a fighter ace flying the Skua. These two mostly-Skua squadrons suffered heavy losses during an attempt to bomb the German battleship Scharnhorst at Trondheim on 13 June 1940; of 15 aircraft in the raid, eight were shot down and the crews killed or taken prisoner. Among the latter were both squadron commanders, Captain R. T. Partridge (RM) and Lieutenant Commander John Casson (RN). Although it fared reasonably well against Axis bombers over Norway and in"
"Sinking of the RMS Lusitania The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS ""Lusitania"" occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 during the First World War, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom which had implemented a naval blockade of Germany. The ship was identified and torpedoed by the German U-boat and sank in 18 minutes. The vessel went down 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"
"England via Gibraltar and that civilians left the Channel Islands from Brodhurst gave figures of troops and civilians evacuated. Although much equipment was lost, cycles. of ammunition, of stores, of petrol, and were recovered during Operation Aerial and the earlier evacuations. German submarines could have sunk British ships in the Bay of Biscay, many of the troopships being unescorted and out of range of England-based fighters but the seven in the area did not intervene. The ""Luftwaffe"" managed to sink ""Lancastria"" but German operations against Aerial showed a lack of co-ordination between the ""Luftwaffe"" and ""Kriegsmarine"". Brodhurst wrote that the"
"2012, fresh calls were made for ""official recognition"" of the loss of the ""Lancastria"" by the British Government. The day of the 75th anniversary of the loss of ""Lancastria"" was marked in the Westminster Parliament on 17 June 2015 at Prime Minister's Questions by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who was standing in for the Prime Minister. Osborne said of the sinking; ""It was kept secret at the time for reasons of wartime secrecy, but I think it is appropriate today in this House of Commons to remember all those who died, those who survived, and those who"
"Italian targets. Together with the Bofors guns of No 2 Troop, 162 Bty, of 54 LAA, the regiment's 13 remaining 3-inch guns provided the AA defence for HADDOCK FORCE. 158 Bty was evacuated with 12 AA Bde from St. Nazaire, and a party was on board HMT ""Lancastria"" when she was sunk with heavy loss of life on 17 June. By 17 June it was clear that France was about to surrender, and plans were made to evacuate HADDOCK FORCE by sea from Marseille. The AA detachments under command of 53 Regt were assigned to the SS ""Alma Dawson"". A"
"Nazaire on 18 June, when it dumped its disabled guns in the dock and boarded SS ""Glenaffric"" and was evacuated to Plymouth. On 17 June 348 and 349 Companies destroyed their remaining equipment and moved from Rennes and Cherbourg to the ports at Brest, St Malo, and St Nazaire from where 37th (TEE) AA Bn was evacuated to Southampton, one of the last British units to leave France. Some of its personnel were aboard the ""Lancastria"" when she was sunk off St Nazaire with heavy loss of life, but all except two of the party were rescued. On arrival in"
"the battlecruisers , which had been sunk by ""Bismarck"", and and the battleship , both of which were sunk by Japanese bombers in late 1941. The Royal Navy provided critical cover for the British and French troops during the Dunkirk evacuation and rescued the bulk of the troops, the remainder being evacuated by a fleet of small ships. Later the Navy provided cover for the Dieppe Raid catastrophe, that saw 3,623 of the 6,086 men who made it ashore killed, wounded, or captured. In the summer of 1941, the Soviet Union entered the war on the side of Britain. Although"
"status and protection it deserves."" All service personnel killed during the Second World War are recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and where known that they lost their lives on the ""Lancastria"". 1,816 burials are recorded, over 400 of them in France. After the war, the ""Lancastria"" Survivors Association was founded by Major Peter Petit, but this lapsed on his death in 1969. It reformed in 1981 as The HMT ""Lancastria"" Association and continues the tradition of a parade and remembrance service at the Church of St Katharine Cree in the City of London, where there is a memorial"
"17 April 1945, near the end of the Second World War, a 57 Squadron Lancaster was being loaded with bombs when a fully armed 1,000 lb bomb was unintentionally dropped onto the tarmac. Because the bomb had had its fuse inserted it detonated, setting off the rest of the Lancaster's bombload. A massive explosion killed three airmen, injured 16 others, wrote off six other Lancasters beyond repair and badly damaged a nearby aircraft hangar. The final wartime raid from East Kirkby was flown on 25 April 1945. In total, 212 operations were carried out during the war, from which 121"
"failure and a waste of resources. Operation Chastise Operation Chastise was an attack on German dams carried out on 16–17 May 1943 by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, later called the Dam Busters, using a purpose-built ""bouncing bomb"" developed by Barnes Wallis. The Möhne and Edersee Dams were breached, causing catastrophic flooding of the Ruhr valley and of villages in the Eder valley; the Sorpe Dam sustained only minor damage. Two hydroelectric power stations were destroyed and several more damaged. Factories and mines were also damaged and destroyed. An estimated 1,600 civilians – about 600 Germans and 1,000 mainly"
"preventing further damage and losses. Operation Bristle Operation Bristle was a British Commando raid over the night of the 3/4 June 1942 during the Second World War. The target of the raid was a German radar site, at Plage-Ste-Cecile between Boulogne and Le Touquet. The raiding force which was provided by No. 6 Commando was defeated by the strong German defences. During the return voyage at around dawn the naval force was attacked by German fighter aircraft which damaged two Motor Launches and one Motor Gun Boat, killing one Commando and two naval personnel and wounding another 19; only the"
"detachment lost seven men on the ""Lancastria"" when it was sunk at St Nazaire. One more went ""missing, presumed dead"" during the destruction of the British dump near St Nazaire and another died of wounds sustained at Boulogne. There was concern that the Germans might attempt to capture the large British-owned oilfield at Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Although far from the war zones, the Germans were interested in the region. There were pro-Nazi factions in Iraqi politics, German aircraft had reached Baghdad via Vichy Syria (see Anglo-Iraqi War), and some German special forces had been planning to establish bases in"