WW1 - Forgotten maritime disaster

that's because all the guys who died were south African blacks!

Plus its a bit embarrassing isnt it?

Ship hundreds to the great war and crash their boat and sink before they get there.

Its not as bad as that other major f uck up of the second world war but still pretty bad, where they were practicing landing in prep for Normandy only to be picked off like fish in a barrel by German U boats, that one has to be the worst one of them all.

Lots of ****-ups in WW2; sometimes it's surprising we won.

When the Americans joined in, they did not use convoys and their merchant ships would sail up the coast, silhouetted against the lights onshore from America's coastal cities and be picked off by U-boats. We killed thousands of French sailors when we sunk the French navy in port, after France had fallen to the Nazis. Come to think of it, we started the war to defend Poland from Nazi invasion and ended up with Poland under Soviet rule.

Jeremy Clarkson's documentary: PQ17 An Arctic Convoy Disaster

https://vimeo.com/95372252

Was that the bombing of Marseille?
That was intentional though, might not have been nice.

The Lancastria was our worst - maybe 5,000? Who remembers that? Not you. Embarrassing times? Wilhelm Gustloff still the winner. Others all rather second rate. Good to see 'diversitee' making an appearance.  Sorry - non-whites were collateral damage during our urge to kill each other.

"We killed thousands of French sailors when we sunk the French navy in port, after France had fallen to the Nazis."
That wasn't really a **** up. It was horrible but had to be done.
The Germans used anything they could if they copuld, do you think they wouldn't have used world class top mark french navy if allowed?

They even reused the british stuff left at dunkirk, just gave it a german name and trundled it off to shoot some other b*ggers.

I didn't quite explain:

The french navy thing was not done without notice, they were told something like:
"Give us the ships, or let us take you to a neutral country, or we will sink you, we cant let hitler take you" and a time to decide.
It was entirely about stopping the nazis taking the ships, thats it.
They at the time decided to fight. If the french had said "we'll sail with skeleton crew with you" not a shot would have been fired.

The british were 100% right then, and still are.