Video: 'The Laconia Incident'

(Saturday, September 12, 1942, 10:07 p.m. Central European Time; during the Laconia incident, part of the Atlantic Campaign of World War II) — The RMS Laconia, a British troop ship which was carrying Italian prisoners of war, British soldiers and civilians, was torpedoed by U-156, a German submarine, tonight off the West Africa coast, killing more than 1,600 people.

The Laconia, a former Cunard White Star ship put to use to transport troops, including prisoners of war, was in the South Atlantic bound for England when it encountered U-156. The German sub attacked, sinking the troop ship and imperiling the lives of more than 2,200 passengers.

But as Capt. Werner Hartenstein, the sub commander, was to learn from survivors he began taking onboard, among those passengers were 1,500 Italian POWs. Realizing that he had just endangered the lives of so many of his fellow Axis members, he put out a call to an Italian submarine and two other German U-boats in the area to help rescue the survivors.

Video: '160 - Stalingrad Falls? - WW2 - September 18, 1942' (The Laconia incident at 15:11)

In the meantime, one French and two British warships sped to the scene to aid in the rescue. The German subs immediately informed the Allied ships that they had surfaced for humanitarian reasons. The Allies assumed it was a trap.

Suddenly, an American B-24 bomber, the Liberator, flying from its South Atlantic base on Ascension Island, saw the German sub and bombed it, despite the fact that Hartenstein had draped a Red Cross flag prominently on the hull of the surfaced sub.

The U-156, damaged by the air attack, immediately submerged. Admiral Karl Donitz, supreme commander of the German U-boat forces, had been monitoring the rescue efforts. He ordered that “all attempts to rescue the crews of sunken ships…cease forthwith.”

A total of 976 to 1,083 people were eventually rescued; however, 1,658 to 1,757 were killed, mostly Italian POWs.