|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
A Scottish built ship owned by the Italians and a U.S. built ship owned by Norwegians were both sunk on June 9, 1917 by Kapitänleutnant Robert Moraht and SMS U-64 just a few miles off the coast of Spain. Built in 1909 by McMilllan in Dumbarton, Aspromonte was a 5,567 ton freighter owned by
W. F. Becker of Messina, in 1914 she was sold to
Navigazione Alta Italia SA of Genoa and renamed Fert. Bound from New Orleans to Genoa she was stopped and sunk less than a mile off Cape Tortosa, no casualties were reported. Gratangen was built in 1916 by Great Lakes Engineering Works of Ashtabula, Ohio, she was launched as Corona, but renamed before completion. Her owners, A/S Jentofts Rederi of Bergen, Norway apparently offered the crew compensation of 500 kroner a man if the ship were lost to a submarine. Moraht said after the war that the Norwegian crew were quite happy to have been sunk because of the extra money. They were only a few miles from the coast, and made land in their lifeboats. |
70 years ago today, June 9, 1942, the village of Lidice, Czechoslovakia was razed by the Nazis on orders of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The raid was retaliation for the assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (Operation Anthropoid) carried out by Czech patriots trained by the British SOE. The orgy of murder and destruction lasted two days, in the end the village was destroyed, the men had been shot, the women and children deported to concentration camps. In total 193 men, 60 women and 88 children died, most of the women died of mistreatment and disease, the children were murdered at the Chelmno concentration camp. This camp in Poland was not a traditional camp as one might envision, but was rather a location where vans were loaded with live people, the doors shut and driven to a burial location. During the trip in between the two locations the exhaust from the engine, which was piped in to the passenger compartment, slowly killed those inside. A gruesome death 150,000 people faced at the hands of the master race. |
© 2012 Michael W. Pocock MaritimeQuest.com |
2005 Daily Event |
2007 Daily Event |
|
2008 Daily Event |
2009 Daily Event |
2010 Daily Event |
2011 Daily Event |