Khedive Ismail (ship)
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The Khedive Ismail was a passenger and cargo steamer put into service in 1922, which initially sailed under the Chilean and from 1935 under the Egyptian flag and was handed over to the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) in 1940 . The ship was under the management of the British shipping company British India Steam Navigation Company and served as a troop transport .
On February 12, 1944, the Khedive Ismail in the Indian Ocean was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-27 and sank in two minutes, killing 1297 crew members , military personnel and nurses . There were 214 survivors. For the sinking is in terms of the number of people killed by the third-heaviest ship's loss on the Allied side in World War II and the greatest loss of female military personnel (77 women) at a ship sinking in the history of the Commonwealth of Nations .
history
Passenger ship under the Chilean flag
The 7,290 GRT steamship Khedive Ismail was built at the Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company ( Scotts for short ) in the Scottish port city of Greenock (hull number 516). The passenger and cargo ship was launched on February 11, 1922 under the name Aconcagua for the Chilean shipping company Compañia Sud Americana de Vapores (CSAV) based in Valparaíso .
The steamer was 128.87 meters long, 17.13 meters wide and had a maximum draft of 9.27 meters. The Aconcagua had an identical sister ship , the Teno (hull number 517), which was launched on September 5, 1922 at the same shipyard. Both ships had two propellers , a chimney, two masts and were powered by four Curtis Brown steam turbines, which were also manufactured by Scotts and could produce 1469 nominal horsepower. The top speed was 17 knots (31.48 km / h).
The Aconcagua and the Teno , both named after Chilean rivers, were built for the expanding passenger and freight traffic on the east coast of North and South America . They could carry 106 passengers in first and 88 in third class and ran from various ports in Chile through the Panama Canal to New York and back. Eight weeks were needed for such a crossing. Both ships were appropriately large and very luxuriously equipped. They had two-bed luxury cabins and spacious lounges, such as a smoking room, a music room, several dining rooms and a gym.
Passenger ship under the Egyptian flag
In June 1931, both ships were withdrawn from service in Valparaíso and then transferred to the Scottish shipping company Lithgows Ltd. based in Port Glasgow . The incident caused an outcry in Chile when national newspapers announced that the shareholders of the Compañia Sud Americana de Vapores had not been informed. The ships were then offered for sale again.
In December 1932 they were laid up in the Kyles of Bute strait at the northern end of the Isle of Bute (Scotland) until they were relocated to nearby Kames Bay in late 1934 and finally came to a safer jetty in the coastal town of Tighnabruaich . In March 1935, both steamers were sold to the Egyptian shipping company Khedivial Mail Steamship and Graving Dock Co. Ltd. for £ 75,000 each (based on the monetary value at the time ). sold, which was based in Alexandria . The Aconcagua was named in this course in Khedive Ismail (after Ismail Pasha , Viceroy of Egypt 1863-1879) and registered in London , while the Teno the new name Mohamed Ali el-Kebir (after Mohamed Ali el-Kebir or Mohamed Aly Al Kebir , Viceroy of Egypt 1805–1848) and was registered in Alexandria.
The two ships were used by their new owners in the Mediterranean service between Alexandria and Marseille and on this route they called at the ports of Piraeus , Naples , Genoa and later also Haifa and Malta . On October 7, 1938, all shares in Khedivial Mail Steamship and Graving Dock Co. Ltd. sold to Pharaonic Mail Line SAE with offices in Cairo and Alexandria. The Khedive Ismail and the Mohamed Ali el-Kebir were also transferred to this shipping company.
After the outbreak of war, the Khedive Ismail only drove from Alexandria to East Africa to avoid long stays in the Mediterranean . The Mohamed Ali el-Kebir was requested by the British Admiralty in March 1940 and was initially used as a supply ship and later as a troop transport . Only a few months later, on August 7, 1940, the ship was sunk off the Northern Irish coast by the German submarine U 38 (Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Liebe ). 96 crew members and soldiers perished.
Troop transport in World War II
In 1940 the Khedive Ismail, like her sister ship, was drafted into military service by the Admiralty and, like many other former merchant ships, placed under the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT). The MoWT put the ship under the management of the British shipping company British India Steam Navigation Company ( British India Line ).
Sinking
On Sunday, February 6, 1944, the Khedive Ismail set off as part of convoy KR-8 from Kilindini Harbor in Mombasa (Kenya) for a crossing to Colombo in Sri Lanka (then still Ceylon). The convoy consisted of five ships. In addition to the Khedive Ismail , these were the City of Paris , the Varsova , the Ekma and the Ellenga . The heavy cruiser HMS Hawkins (Captain John William Josselyn) and the destroyers HMS Petard (LtCdr Rupert Cyril Egan) and HMS Paladin (Lt. Edward AS Bailey) served as escort ships .
On board the Khedive Ismail were 1,511 people including 178 crew members, 996 officers and other ranks of the East African Artillery's 301st Field Regiment, 271 members of the Royal Navy , 19 Wrens (women of the British Women's Royal Naval Service), 53 nurses of the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), led by Head Nurse Eileen Ievers, and nine members of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a British women-only charity. A few civilians were also on board. Captain Roderick William MacAuly Whiteman was in command.
In the early afternoon of February 12, 1944, the Khedive Ismail was found in the Indian Ocean near the Addu Atoll at about 01 ° 25'N 72 ° 22'E by I-27 , a Japanese submarine of the B1 type, attacked. The submarine, which was under the command of LtCdr Toshiaki Fukumura, attacked the convoy in the "One and a Half Degree Channel" south of the Maldives . The steamer was hit by two torpedoes , broke apart, and sank within two minutes. While debris and shipwrecked people floated in the sea, I-27 dived beneath them to hide. The submarine commander Fukumura was known to shoot survivors from ships sunk by him, as happened in the case of the cargo steamer Fort Mumford on March 20, 1943 or the Liberty ship Sambridge on November 18, 1943. In both cases he had machine gun fire opened on the ships' crews.
While the HMS Paladin lifeboats had to water to rescue survivors who took HMS Petard the pursuit of the submarine and tossed among the swimmers depth charges from. This action claimed more lives, but the sinking of the submarine took priority over saving the survivors. The depth charges forced Fumukura to emerge, and I-27 was badly damaged by rams. A torpedo from HMS Paladin finally sank the submarine at position 01.25N 72.22E, killing 99 of the 100 men on board. The only survivor was captured.
The sinking of the troop carrier Khedive Ismail killed 1,297 people, including at least 78 women. Among the dead were Captain Roderick Whiteman, British author and war correspondent Kenneth Gandar-Dower, and ship surgeon Lieut. Commander Leslie Merrill with wife and five month old son. 208 men and six women survived. They were brought on board the Paladin to the Addu Atoll, from where the HMS Hawkins brought them to Colombo on February 17, 1944. The sinking represented the last but also the worst loss of female Allied service personnel in World War II. It is also the third largest Allied shipping disaster in World War II.
literature
- Brian James Crabb. Passage to Destiny. The Story of the Tragic Loss of the SS Khedive Ismail . Paul Watkins (September 6, 1997)
Web links
- Technical and historical marginal information in the Clydebuilt Ships Database (with photo)
- Summary of the sinking in the wreck database
- Further description on flickr.com ( Memento from January 23, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- The Khedive Ismail on a page about ship losses in World War II
- Details on the attack and fall of the Khedive Ismail in Word War II chat
- Incomplete list of names of fatalities and survivors
- List of killed nurses