“ASHBURTON NAVAL RATING EXPERIENCE ON GERMAN SUBMARINE (Special Correspondent N.Z.PA.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 6. When Petty Officer B. D. Mackay, of Ashburton, left New Zealand nearly three years ago he never imagined he would one day board a German submarine in the South Atlantic and be given a large bowl of chicken broth by the Germans, but that is fact, not fiction. Petty Officer Mackay, who says that his second name should be “Lucky," has been torpedoed twice, and mined once, but came up smiling each-time. His third escape was when he was returning to England from South Africa in a merchantman which was torpedoed at dusk, when eight days outward bound.
“Of 4000 persons aboard it is estimated that only 3000 were saved,” said Petty Officer Mackay. “The torpedo hit the mess deck and killed some 600 Italian prisoners outright. I was playing cards below. I fetched my overcoat and then helped to fling rafts overboard and get the women and children into the lifeboats. Only one woman and one child were lost out of 140.
“That scene in the pitch dark with the cries of the wounded had to be seen to be believed. Many lost their lives when oil flooded the stairs so that they were unable to get up on deck, but went down with the ship. I slid down a rope into a lifeboat and had great difficulty in getting away from the ship because the waves kept washing us against it, but finally, after what seemed to be years, we got away.
“The ship sank about 10 minutes later. We kept hauling men into the lifeboat until it held 96, which was nearly double its capacity. We could see the rafts and lights round us like great glow-worms. A submarine surfaced and shone its searchlight revealing eerily struggling men and wreckage.
“It turned out there was a pack of six submarines, including Italians. They surfaced and took the women and children aboard. For four days they prevented us making for Nigeria, stating that they had radioed for a French cruiser. On the fourth day they returned the women and children to the lifeboats and gave us a feed of chicken broth and also rum and water. We stood on the submarine’s deck drinking the broth, which was excellent.
“Then all the submarines disappeared and just at dusk on the fifth day a French cruiser appeared and took nearly 900 of us aboard. We were battened down and allowed on deck for an hour each day. We were taken to Dakar and then to Casablanca.
“We were put in a barbed wire prison camp and not allowed out. We were torpedoed on September 12 and remained in camp until the Americans landed at Casablanca. We were certainly pleased to see them. They sent us to Virginia and then to New York, where we stayed for a fortnight, having a grand time. We then went to England with a convoy, arriving there last week.
“Petty Officer Mackay was in a destroyer which was sunk in the English Channel in the summer of 1941 after which he swam for an hour. He was in the cruiser Neptune, but left her to take a diver’s course a week before she sank in the Mediterranean. He was in a destroyer which was torpedoed during a Mediterranean convoy and swam for half an hour to reach another destroyer. “I guess ‘Lucky’ is my second name all right," he added. Engine Room Artificer T. C. Farquhar, of Rahotu, who was reported missing last October was in the same ship as Petty Officer Mackay. “I heard he was last seen clinging to a raft," said Petty Officer Mackay.” [Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23840, 8 January 1943, Page 5]
Initially reported missing, Thomas Farquhar, was later reported as “Died of Exposure”, suggesting that he survived the attack, days earlier.
"The Laconia incident was a series of events surrounding the sinking of a British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean on 12 September 1942, during World War II, and a subsequent aerial attack on German and Italian submarines involved in rescue attempts. RMS Laconia, carrying 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers and prisoners of war, was torpedoed and sunk by U-156, a German U-boat, off the West African coast. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the U-boat commander, Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations. U-156 broadcast her position on open radio channels to all Allied powers nearby, and were joined by the crews of several other U-boats in the vicinity.
After surfacing and picking up survivors, who were accommodated on the foredeck, U-156 headed on the surface under Red Cross banners to rendezvous with Vichy French ships and transfer the survivors. En route, the U-boat was spotted by a B-24 Liberator bomber of the US Army Air Forces. The aircrew, having reported the U-boat's location, intentions and the presence of survivors, were then ordered to attack the sub. The B-24 killed dozens of Laconia's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast into the sea the remaining survivors that she had rescued, and to crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
Rescue operations were continued by other vessels. Another U-boat, U-506, was also attacked by US aircraft and forced to dive. A total of 1,113 survivors were rescued; however, 1,619 were killed—mostly Italian POWs. The event changed the general attitude of Germany's naval personnel towards rescuing stranded Allied seamen. The commanders of the Kriegsmarine were quickly issued the Laconia Order by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, which specifically forbade any such attempt and ushered in unrestricted submarine warfare for the remainder of the war.
The B-24 pilots mistakenly reported they had sunk U-156, and were awarded medals for bravery. Neither the US pilots nor their commander were punished or investigated, and the matter was quietly forgotten by the US military. During the later Nuremberg trials, a prosecutor attempted to cite the Laconia Order as proof of war crimes by Dönitz and his submariners. The ploy backfired and caused much embarrassment to the United States after the incident's full report had emerged." [Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident, accessed 25/10/2022]
