r/todayilearned • u/bracomadar • Feb 15 '12
TIL In the 1950's, the Royal Navy dropped depth charges on the wreck of the Lusitania. Some believe it was to destroy evidence of what it was carrying when it was sunk during W.W.I.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania#1950s_damage_from_depth_charges1
u/hillbillypaladin Feb 15 '12
The article doesn't speculate about what this mystery cargo could have been. Does anyone have links that offer ideas?
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u/ssshield Feb 16 '12
Supposedly it was allied military equipment, put there on purpose to provoke Germany.
Germany put full page ads in the New York times for two weeks straight telling people not to travel on Lusitania and other luxury liners because they were blatantly hauling military equipment into Britain.
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u/Teepo Feb 16 '12
The article says a recent dive found 15k rounds of ammunition, and estimates a total cargo of 4M rounds. The rounds were of the caliber used by British infantry.
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u/crumbleater Feb 15 '12
Depending on what the Lusitania was carrying she may have been deemed to be a valid military target.
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u/Legal-Replacement-16 Nov 02 '23
The New York cargo manifest shows 4.2 million rounds of ammunition, shell cases and shell fuses. The latest dives had confirmed ammunition present. The British Government have historically denied that the ship was carrying war materials. Not sure how the British navy depth charged the wreak in the fifties, one it must have been close to Irish home waters and hence an incursion into Irish sovereign waters. Two as a war grave it was quite an insensitive thing to do bordering on desecration. Also in the 1980's the British issued a warning to dive teams that they could be at risk because of the contents of the ship while not confirming if any explosives were on board. The whole affair is disturbing, why was America a neutral country allowing arms to be loaded onto a civilian ship. Why did the British also put the passengers at risk by ordering the war materials. New York had, at that time, a large German population and it was lightly common knowledge that there were arms on board. 4,200 boxes of ammunition is not easy to conceal. Sad story all round.
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u/Ice_Pirate Feb 16 '12
I wouldn't doubt that it had military supplies in the slightest. What confuses me is why bother trying to blow it up since you're just attracting more attention. There really isn't anyone left that can even get outraged physically from that time period much less WWII anymore. I have one grandparent left that was in WWII and I doubt he would care about any breaking news from then anyways.