Final voyage
On 12 September 1942, at 8:10 pm, 130 mi north-northeast of Ascension Island, Laconia was hit on the starboard side by a torpedo fired by U-boat GS U-156 (1941). There was an explosion in the hold and many of the Italian prisoners aboard were killed instantly. The vessel immediately took a list to starboard and settled heavily by the bow. Captain Rudolph Sharp, who had also commanded another Cunard liner, RMS Lancastria when she was sunk by enemy action, was gaining control over the situation when a second torpedo hit Number Two hold. At the time of the attack, the Laconia was carrying 268 British personnel (including many women and nurses), 160 Polish soldiers (who were on guard), at least 87 civilian women and children, and roughly 1,800 Italian prisoners of war.[9]
Captain Sharp ordered the ship abandoned and the women, children and injured taken into the lifeboats first. By this time, the ship's forecastle was awash. Some of the 32 lifeboats had been destroyed by the explosions. According to Italian survivors, many of the POWs were left locked in the holds, and some of those who escaped and tried to board lifeboats and liferafts were shot or bayoneted by their Polish captors.[10] While most British and Polish troops and crew survived, only 415 Italians were rescued, out of 1,809 who had been on board.[11]
At 9:11 pm Laconia sank, bow first, her stern rising to be vertical, with Sharp himself and many of the Italian prisoners still on board. The prospects for those who escaped the ship were only slightly better; sharks were common in the area and the lifeboats were adrift in the mid-Atlantic with little hope of rescue.
When Kapitänleutnant Werner Hartenstein, commanding officer of U-156, realized civilians and prisoners of war were on board, he surfaced to rescue survivors,[12] and asked the Befehlshaber der U-Boote (U-boat Command in Germany) for help. Several U-boats were dispatched; all flew Red Cross flags, and signalled by radio that a rescue operation was underway.
The next morning, a USAAF B-24 Liberator plane sighted the rescue efforts.[13] Hartenstein signaled the pilot for assistance, who then notified the American base on Ascension Island of the situation. Captain Robert C. Richardson III, who later claimed to have been unaware of the Germans' radio message, recklessly ordered that the U-boats be attacked.[14] Despite the Liberator crew clearly seeing the Red Cross flags, they pressed home their attack. The survivors crowded on the submarines' decks and the towed lifeboats, as the B-24 made several deadly attack runs on U-156. The Germans ordered their submarines to dive, abandoning many survivors.
After the incident, Admiral Karl Dönitz issued the Laconia Order, henceforth ordering his commanders not to rescue survivors after attacks. Vichy French ships rescued 1,083 persons from the lifeboats and took aboard those picked up by the four submarines, and in all around 1,500 survived the sinking. Other sources state that only 1,083 survived and an estimated 1,658 persons died (98 crew members, 133 passengers, 33 Polish guards and 1,394 Italian prisoners), though some estimates agree that the death toll was as high as 1,757. More people lost their lives on the Laconia than on the Titanic.[10]
Amongst the French ships involved in the rescue were FRENCH SLOOP Annamite, FRENCH SLOOP Dumont-d'Urville and FRENCH CRUISER Gloire.[15][16]
