The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

HMS Bluebell, Another U-711 Victim

From Wikipedia.

The U-711 only sank two Allied ships during its operating career.  The most significant was the HMS Bluebell which was mentioned in the Hans-Gunther Lange (the U-711's commander) obituary.

  I had previously not heard of the HMS Bluebell.

The HMS Bluebell was a Royal Navy corvette laid down 25 October 1939 and launched 24 April 1940.  It served primarily protecting convoys in the Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean.  It took part in the invasions of Sicily and France.  At D-Day, it escorted LSTs and follow-up convoys to France.

On 17 October 1940, it rescued all 39 officers and men from the SS Scoresby which had been torpedoed.

 On February 17, 1945, while on a convoy to the Soviet Union, the U-711 fired a homing acoustic torpedo at the Bluebell which hit it in the stern and caused the depth charges to explode.  The ship sank in 30 seconds and only one of its 88-man crew was saved, Albert Holmes.

--GreGen


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