Leopoldville disaster

by Stan Lowe, Chairman (retired), Wyoming Veterans’ Commission
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9:26 AM MDT

A recent obituary of Allen E. Sallade, former Rawlins policeman and co-worker from my county attorney days, reminded me that he was on the S.S. Leopoldville, torpedoed and sunk on Christmas Eve 1944 near its destination, Cherbourg, France.

Nearly 800 out of 2,235 men of the 262nd and 264th Regiments, 66th Infantry Division, reinforcements for the Battle of the Bulge, were lost.

Soldiers from 47 of the 48 states died. Wyoming’s was Staff Sgt. Joseph D. Massey, Comp. F, 262nd Infantry, of Casper. His body was never recovered.

The Leopoldville’s wreck has been designated a war grave as 493 bodies never were recovered.

Although the ship sank slowly, a combination of errors, delays, oversights and communication problems increased the losses by several hundred. The disaster was America’s worst tragedy ever to befall an Army Division from an enemy submarine attack.

Adding to the tragedy, the governments of Britain and the United States shamefully conspired for years to cover it up and misinformed the lost soldiers’ families. Survivors were instructed not to write home or talk about it.

The Brits primarily were responsible for the bungling. Embarrassed, they refused to open their records until 1996, more than 50 years later.

The main complicity of the U.S. was not in bungling, but in covering up the great losses. Doing it was rationalized three ways: to avoid (1) boosting U-boat 486’s morale (German intelligence figured it out); (2) straining Allied relations (experts say this has some validity); (3) lowering morale of the home front (this happened less than five months before European fighting ended, and by then, we had lost thousands in single battles, numbing the public).

The U.S. military declassified its documents in 1958-59, but made no effort to inform families of details.

Leopoldville, an 11,500-ton former Belgian luxury liner converted into a troopship under British registry, was never hit by enemy fire while transporting more than 120,000 men in 24 crossings of the English Channel.

However, this crossing, unfortunately, would change that remarkable record.

From the very beginning, this ship’s last voyage out of Southampton, England, was marked by disorganization and miscommunication.

The two regiments, after being hurriedly rousted out of their southern England camp on Dec. 23, only to wait six hours on the docks, began embarking the Leopoldville and another troop carrier, S.S. Cheshire (British), at 2 a.m. Dec. 24.

There was no accurate passenger list or any clear plan. The men weren’t kept together by units aboard either of the ships to maintain command structure for handling the events that occurred.

This also complicated accounting for missing men and contributed substantially to the losses.

The troop ships left their docks at 9 a.m. and sailed in convoy with four escorts: British ships Brilliant (convoy command ship), Anthony, Hotham and Free French frigate Croix de Lorraine, but without air cover.

German submarine activity recently had increased, so extra precautions were taken. After 5½ hours at sea, Brilliant had warning signals of a submarine. Convoy battle stations were called and cancelled a couple times. No submarine was located.

At 5:54 p.m., just 5½ miles out of Cherbourg, a torpedo wake was sighted. It hit the starboard (right) side aft. Three compartments were flooded and ladders (stairs) destroyed. Only a few of the 300 men there managed to escape.

The ship sank 2½ hours later. Approximately 515 soldiers were presumed to have gone down with the ship, and 248 died from injuries, drowning and hypothermia.

During those last couple of hours, stupid blunders multiplied. Examples were: numerous delays in getting help, and Brilliant had to communicate with U.S. forces at Cherbourg through Southampton due to different U.S. and British radio frequencies and codes.

Other examples: Leopoldville dropped its anchor, which stopped tugboats from towing the ship to beach it before sinking; the captain ordered his crew off the ship, leaving the nautically untrained troops to fend for themselves; Brilliant, but no other escorts, took 500 soldiers from the ship and never came back, leaving U.S. small craft from Cherbourg, with limited capacity, to pick up survivors and bodies all night.

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