When the big German guns at Calais fired on us, we realized, we had been strafed by Spitfires from the RAF during working up exercises for the invasion, accidentally attacked by the USN off Normandy after D-Day and shelled by the British Army in the English Channel. It was about time the enemy took a few shots at us too! " Jack Harold, RCNVR, SignalmanHMCS TRENTONIANChapter 9, White Ensign Flying -The Story of HMCS TRENTONIAN.Roger Litwiller
About This Quote
The story of HMCS TRENTONIAN is a classic example of the mistakes that can be made when men are in charge of fighting wars. The story begins with the British Navy pursuing the German battleship Bismarck during the Battle of the Atlantic. The TRENTONIAN was a corvette but her size gave her a great advantage over the larger ships of the German fleet. She didn't have a large crew and she didn't have a large gun battery.
Her guns were only four inch caliber but they were mounted in light rapid fire mounts. Her target was to be the Bismarck, an enormous ship with heavy armament and a big crew. But, because the Bismarck was so large she was able to escape from shore based anti-aircraft fire by hugging the coastlines instead of trying to outrun them as she had been doing before.
When TRENTONIAN attacked she had to take a long route through open water. The Bismarck's guns were waiting for her and fired first. When that happened, TRENTONIAN took a direct hit on one of her engine rooms and began to sink rapidly. The captain ordered abandon ship but there were no lifeboats available from which the crew could safely make their escape.
The crew transferred to one of three rafts which had been launched earlier for another purpose and which now served as an emergency lifeboat. TRENTONIAN sank stern first and quickly began to agitate as it went down into cold water at night far away from support that could rescue them if they made it ashore alive. The rafts held only twenty men and there was no way they could hope to save all twenty men before they drifted out of range of any ship that might be able to help them survive until morning. On board TRENTONIAN, there were two officers and twenty-two other ranks who became hopelessly lost at sea without navigational equipment or any means of saving themselves once they were officially declared lost at sea.
They were forced to live off their rations and their small stock of food until they made contact with other ships months later that rescued them from certain death on the open ocean after months spent drifting in despair without food or water without hope for rescue or rescue teams sent out by Canada, Britain, or even other countries who would normally send search parties out after ships were reported lost at sea without supplies aboard and without navigation equipment aboard because none was available after war time losses had depleted those
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