SS Robert L Vann sunk by a mine

[jon_norstog]

This is a really good, primary document, first-person story about a minor action in WW II - the sinking of a US merchant ship.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/magazine/ww2-merchant-marine-sinking.html

No kidding, this is a great story!

jn

[kj47]

That was a great story, thanks for posting.

[bruce]

Thank you for this post. Sincerely. bruce.

[Sunray]

The merchant marine guys would go to bed wearing different stuff depending on what they were carrying. PJ's if it was explosives, oil or the like. Fully clothed if it was not. It was about how fast the ship would sink.

[Art]

Interesting account. It reminded me of something in my wife's family.

My wife's uncle, Clyde Landry died when the M/V Benjamin Brewster, a small Esso tanker was torpedoed while anchored for the night off the South Pass of the Mississippi River on July 10, 1942. The U-Boat was U67, a big Type IX ocean going boat. U678 was sunk in the Sargasso Sea in 1943 by an Avenger from the escort carrier USS Core. This boat, commanded by Gunter Muller-Stockheim, was a real menace, accounting for over 100,000 tons of allied shipping.

The USS Core had a very long life, it was converted to a helicopter escort carrier in the 1950s and finished its career ferrying aircraft to Vietnam in the 1960s before being scrapped in 1971. I remember my Aunt Alta Belle taking me to see it when It was docked in Orange, Texas when I was a small child.

Connections, connections.

The internet is a wonderful thing when it comes to connecting with your families past.