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Re: Ubersee Sud - Sinking of the Cruiser BahÃa
Posted by:
geoffreybrooks
()
Date: December 24, 2007 02:10AM
In order to understand the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the Brazilian light cruiser "BahÃa" on 4 July 1945, the following five facts must be grasped initially, and remembered:
(1) Depth charges are so manufactured that they will not detonate if a bullet or 20-mm shell is fired into them, even at short range. This is obvious, for otherwise depth charges on the poop would be the immediate target of enemy aircraft and surface vessels.
(2) Depth charges were supplied by the US armaments manufacturer to the Brazilian Navy under warranty and guarantee repeated in all manuals that the depth charges supplied could not be detonated by small arms or machine-gun fire.
(3) As the result of the US armaments manufacturer supplying to the Brazilian Navy a batch of depth charges which were defective in that respect, a tragedy occurred in which 332 Brazilian and 4 US servicemen aboard "BahÃa" lost their lives.
(4) The United States therefore faced the possibility of claims in the civil courts against their arms manufacturer for compensation in 336 cases of wrongful death, and in the criminal courts of 336 cases of negligent homicide.
(5) It was therefore essential for the United States to misrepresent the circumstances of the disaster as far as possible and so protect the US armaments manufacturer.
(6) THE SINKING OF THE BAHÃA - 1
Heinz Schäffer, commander of U-977, admitted under interrogation by Argentine naval intelligence at Mar del Plata on 19 August 1945 that he was on the Equator at 30ºW and within a few miles of where the "BahÃa" was sunk on the morning of 4 July 1945. In his book he stated that U-977 was surfaced, disguised as a fishing vessel and had the flak manned: "I will return fire if fired upon," he wrote, "I will not allow my boat or men to be captured."
(7) Ten of the 36 BahÃa survivors who had been on the starboard side of the cruiser at the time of the disaster stated that at 0910 hrs the captain, Pires Carvalho e Alburquerque, having identified a strange fishing vessel on the starboard quarter as a submarine, ordered a burst of Oerlikon 20-mm fire ahead of the vessel to bring her to a stop. No 7 Oerlikon nearest the poop responded to the order. The witnesses stated that as the crew of the submarine hurried to enter the submarine by the conning tower, a gun immediately abaft the tower (aboard U-977 this was the 37-mm) replied and the cruiser blew up immediately, sinking within five minutes.
(8) It would seem the most consistent explanation that, in a brief exchange of fire, which on the part of U-977 was intended to gain time for submergence, by bizarre mischance one of the rounds from the 37-mm impacted the depth charges stacked on the poop of the cruiser, exploding them. Schaäffer did not know that the depth charges were defective, and therefore did not have the intention to sink the cruiser with the flak gun.
(9) THE SINKING OF THE BAHÃA - OFFICIAL VERSION (2)
The proximate cause of the loss of the BahÃa was the defective depth charges. If they had not been defective they would not have exploded on deck. The liability of the US armaments manufacturer in civil and criminal law was therefore clear. What needed to be done from the point of view of the US Navy was influence the Brazilian enquiry to represent the cruiser's officers and men as a slovenly, incompetent and ill-disciplined mob.
(10) Captain Alburquerque was the second son of a Government minister. Decorated by the French in WWI he had also served on USS Wyoming at Norfolk Virginia. After the outbreak of the Second World War he trained with the US Navy as a submariner and commanded two Brazilian submarines between 1940 and 1942. After a period as liaison officer at the Noth American Naval Mission in Rio, he was given command of BahÃa. This old light cruiser was a continuing thorn in the side of the U-boat Arm, and was known to be a well-run ship.
(11) Besides the 332 Brazilian crew there were four USN radio operators aboard: Willima Joseph Eustace, Andrew Jackson Pendleton, Emmet Peter Sallas and Frank Benjamin Sparks. NARA - NWCTM (Modern Military Records) state that nothing is known of Sallas, the other three were declared "dead in action" a year and a day after being missing. The US Navy Department states that it has no information that any US servicemen were aboard the cruiser "BahÃa".
(12) The suspicion here is that if the families of any of these four US servicemen discovered the circumstances of the sinking of "BahÃa", they would be likely to sue, which would open the flood gates in Brazil for 332 similar actions. For this reason one suspects that their presence aboard the cruiser has always been denied.
(13) The official version of the tragedy appears in "A tragedia do BahÃa" by Vice-Admiral Saldanha da Gama, Historia Naval Brasileira, Vol V, Book II, Servicio de Documentaçao de Marinha, Rio de Janeiro, 1985, p.412.
(14) The enquiry decided not to admit into evidence any eye-witness testimony. The sole deposition accepted into evidence was the report of Lt (Eng.) Torres Dias who at all material times had been in the engine room of the cruiser and had not seen anything material.
(15) "Just before 0900 I received the order to stop the ship briefly to allow a target float to be lowered into the water to exercise the 20-mm Oerlikons. At 0910 hrs I received the order to put the engines slow ahead - it was necessary to leave the target float 2000 metres astern.
"At that moment No 7 Oerlikon, well back on the poop, started to fire. I counted off five rounds and then a terrible explosion shook the ship and the engine room began to flood quickly."
(16) The "No U-boat" theory was based on the above statement. After discarding the possibility of mine, torpedo and magazine explosion, the enquiry determined the following:
(i) No 7 Oerlikon must have been left unattended.
(ii) It must have been left unattended and cocked, a court-martial offence. It must have been left cocked because it required 80lbs pressure to cock it and it could not have been cocked by accident.
(iii) The training stop to prevent the gun being trained inboard must have been removed at some time in the past. "In the past" because it required technical and mechanical knowledge to disengage the stop and could not have been done accidentally by a passer-by. To remove the stop was also a court-martial offence.
(iv) An unauthorized sailor must have come along, taken control of the gun, depressed it, swung it inboard to face asteern and squeezed the trigger.
(v) One or several rounds of the burst from the Oerlikon impacted the depth charges and detonated them.
(vi) The ship was destroyed due to the dereliction of duty and negligence of ship and crew.
(18) Lt Torres Dias concluded: "The elevated tribute in lives was the consequence of various causes but above all the failure aboard ship to take the necessary security precautions respecting the weaponry which originated the tragedy." In other words, the commander and his officers were a bunch of utter incompetents, exactly the result best suited to the interest of the United States, and no mention of the defective depth charges.
(19) The Brazilian admirals, including Saldanha da Gama who authored the official report, dissent from it and state their conviction that a German submarine was responsible for sinking the "BahÃa".
(1) Depth charges are so manufactured that they will not detonate if a bullet or 20-mm shell is fired into them, even at short range. This is obvious, for otherwise depth charges on the poop would be the immediate target of enemy aircraft and surface vessels.
(2) Depth charges were supplied by the US armaments manufacturer to the Brazilian Navy under warranty and guarantee repeated in all manuals that the depth charges supplied could not be detonated by small arms or machine-gun fire.
(3) As the result of the US armaments manufacturer supplying to the Brazilian Navy a batch of depth charges which were defective in that respect, a tragedy occurred in which 332 Brazilian and 4 US servicemen aboard "BahÃa" lost their lives.
(4) The United States therefore faced the possibility of claims in the civil courts against their arms manufacturer for compensation in 336 cases of wrongful death, and in the criminal courts of 336 cases of negligent homicide.
(5) It was therefore essential for the United States to misrepresent the circumstances of the disaster as far as possible and so protect the US armaments manufacturer.
(6) THE SINKING OF THE BAHÃA - 1
Heinz Schäffer, commander of U-977, admitted under interrogation by Argentine naval intelligence at Mar del Plata on 19 August 1945 that he was on the Equator at 30ºW and within a few miles of where the "BahÃa" was sunk on the morning of 4 July 1945. In his book he stated that U-977 was surfaced, disguised as a fishing vessel and had the flak manned: "I will return fire if fired upon," he wrote, "I will not allow my boat or men to be captured."
(7) Ten of the 36 BahÃa survivors who had been on the starboard side of the cruiser at the time of the disaster stated that at 0910 hrs the captain, Pires Carvalho e Alburquerque, having identified a strange fishing vessel on the starboard quarter as a submarine, ordered a burst of Oerlikon 20-mm fire ahead of the vessel to bring her to a stop. No 7 Oerlikon nearest the poop responded to the order. The witnesses stated that as the crew of the submarine hurried to enter the submarine by the conning tower, a gun immediately abaft the tower (aboard U-977 this was the 37-mm) replied and the cruiser blew up immediately, sinking within five minutes.
(8) It would seem the most consistent explanation that, in a brief exchange of fire, which on the part of U-977 was intended to gain time for submergence, by bizarre mischance one of the rounds from the 37-mm impacted the depth charges stacked on the poop of the cruiser, exploding them. Schaäffer did not know that the depth charges were defective, and therefore did not have the intention to sink the cruiser with the flak gun.
(9) THE SINKING OF THE BAHÃA - OFFICIAL VERSION (2)
The proximate cause of the loss of the BahÃa was the defective depth charges. If they had not been defective they would not have exploded on deck. The liability of the US armaments manufacturer in civil and criminal law was therefore clear. What needed to be done from the point of view of the US Navy was influence the Brazilian enquiry to represent the cruiser's officers and men as a slovenly, incompetent and ill-disciplined mob.
(10) Captain Alburquerque was the second son of a Government minister. Decorated by the French in WWI he had also served on USS Wyoming at Norfolk Virginia. After the outbreak of the Second World War he trained with the US Navy as a submariner and commanded two Brazilian submarines between 1940 and 1942. After a period as liaison officer at the Noth American Naval Mission in Rio, he was given command of BahÃa. This old light cruiser was a continuing thorn in the side of the U-boat Arm, and was known to be a well-run ship.
(11) Besides the 332 Brazilian crew there were four USN radio operators aboard: Willima Joseph Eustace, Andrew Jackson Pendleton, Emmet Peter Sallas and Frank Benjamin Sparks. NARA - NWCTM (Modern Military Records) state that nothing is known of Sallas, the other three were declared "dead in action" a year and a day after being missing. The US Navy Department states that it has no information that any US servicemen were aboard the cruiser "BahÃa".
(12) The suspicion here is that if the families of any of these four US servicemen discovered the circumstances of the sinking of "BahÃa", they would be likely to sue, which would open the flood gates in Brazil for 332 similar actions. For this reason one suspects that their presence aboard the cruiser has always been denied.
(13) The official version of the tragedy appears in "A tragedia do BahÃa" by Vice-Admiral Saldanha da Gama, Historia Naval Brasileira, Vol V, Book II, Servicio de Documentaçao de Marinha, Rio de Janeiro, 1985, p.412.
(14) The enquiry decided not to admit into evidence any eye-witness testimony. The sole deposition accepted into evidence was the report of Lt (Eng.) Torres Dias who at all material times had been in the engine room of the cruiser and had not seen anything material.
(15) "Just before 0900 I received the order to stop the ship briefly to allow a target float to be lowered into the water to exercise the 20-mm Oerlikons. At 0910 hrs I received the order to put the engines slow ahead - it was necessary to leave the target float 2000 metres astern.
"At that moment No 7 Oerlikon, well back on the poop, started to fire. I counted off five rounds and then a terrible explosion shook the ship and the engine room began to flood quickly."
(16) The "No U-boat" theory was based on the above statement. After discarding the possibility of mine, torpedo and magazine explosion, the enquiry determined the following:
(i) No 7 Oerlikon must have been left unattended.
(ii) It must have been left unattended and cocked, a court-martial offence. It must have been left cocked because it required 80lbs pressure to cock it and it could not have been cocked by accident.
(iii) The training stop to prevent the gun being trained inboard must have been removed at some time in the past. "In the past" because it required technical and mechanical knowledge to disengage the stop and could not have been done accidentally by a passer-by. To remove the stop was also a court-martial offence.
(iv) An unauthorized sailor must have come along, taken control of the gun, depressed it, swung it inboard to face asteern and squeezed the trigger.
(v) One or several rounds of the burst from the Oerlikon impacted the depth charges and detonated them.
(vi) The ship was destroyed due to the dereliction of duty and negligence of ship and crew.
(18) Lt Torres Dias concluded: "The elevated tribute in lives was the consequence of various causes but above all the failure aboard ship to take the necessary security precautions respecting the weaponry which originated the tragedy." In other words, the commander and his officers were a bunch of utter incompetents, exactly the result best suited to the interest of the United States, and no mention of the defective depth charges.
(19) The Brazilian admirals, including Saldanha da Gama who authored the official report, dissent from it and state their conviction that a German submarine was responsible for sinking the "BahÃa".
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