Talk:RMS Laconia (1921)

This page states the following:

"the Italian prisoners tried to rush those that remained. The efforts of the Polish guards were instrumental in controlling the chaotic situation on board and certainly saved many lives."

The actions of the Polish guards can hardly be called heroic. They refused to open the doors for the Italians to reach the lifeboats. In a sinking ship, this is essentially the same as condemning the Italians to death by drowning. When it became clear to the Italians that the only way to survive the sinking was to storm the doors, a number of Italians broke down the doors in a successful attempt to leave the ship.

The Laconia had enough lifeboats for all of the people aboard, including the Italians, but due to the sharp angle that the ship took soon after being torpedoed, it was not possible to launch all the lifeboats.

As per challenges made above (verifiable in secondary sources, which lamentably go as yet uncredited), I have placed a disputed neutrality template on the article. Due to the current NPOV nature of portions of the article, future revisions should be careful to cite sources and refrain from POV commentary. See Laconia incident for a guide to future revision. Ogthor 05:43, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Number of Italian POWs

The Laconia incident article states that 1,500 Italians were on the ship.. this one -450. Which is the correct figure? -- maxrspct ping me 17:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Who's in charge?

The article says "U.S. command". I understood the bombers were Coastal Command aircraft. Trekphiler (talk) 12:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality Issue

The article says that the US "ignored" the Red Cross flags. However, the Red Cross flags were in contravention of the Geneva Convention, which doesn't permit a ship to switch between military and civilian activities and requires a Red Cross boat to be painted white with a red cross, not merely draped with a flag. The statement of the article makes it look like genuine attack on people abandoning ship, when really it was an attack on a legitimate warship. Not saying it was the best choice in hindsight but you're only painting half the picture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.185.113.125 (talk) 18:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

It is true that the conventions don't allow vessels to switch between military and civilian status but the truth is that the naval forces had always helped survivors until this incident. It was the unwritten law that the goal of navies was to destroy ships, not to kill men. All warships had always been taking on survivors; and u-boats, while not having enough room for survivors had always been giving supplies of food and water to them and showing them the course to nearest land or calling other ships to pick them up. This tradition of humanity had always been respected by military sailors. The commander of U-156, Kapitänleutnant(later Korvettenkapitän) Werner Hartenstein, even transmitted an uncoded message to all the allied ships saying that he was willing to hold fire and cooperate with the allies on saving the survivors from RMS Laconia. Not only the U-156 took part in the rescue operations, even U-506 (commanded by Kapitänleutnant Erich Würdemann) and U-507 (commanded by Korvettenkapitän Harro Schacht) joined the rescuing after receiving radio messages from U-156. Kptlt Hartenstein saved 400 people by taking them onboard and by towing several lifeboats behind his u-boat. You can say what you like but the Americans screwed this up and all those people who had been left to die after the Laconia order payed for it with their lives.

Here is a picture of U-156 loaded with survivors: [1] --88.100.44.252 (talk) 17:38, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Coordinates?

Does anyone know the coordinates of the wreck site? It would be good information to add for the article. --24.21.148.212 (talk) 06:04, 13 March 2009 (UTC)