“Oria” shipwreck, the watery grave of 4,000 POWs in 1944

[pierre-sifnos]

The sinking of the steamship “Oria” in Gaidouronisi, a tragedy in the dark years of the nazi occupation of Greece in February 1944, which resulted in 4,115 drowned Italian POWs, almost three times as many victims as the Titanic, is largely forgotten and kept in the dark drawers of history.

 

[Akimbo]

I had no idea that so many ships went down with so many people near the end of the war (from linked article):

The biggest naval tragedies of the 20th century
Name of ship-Number of victims-Year-Nationality

• Wilhelm Gustloff 9000 1945 German
• Goya 7000 1945 German
• Cap Arkona 4500 1945 German
• Oria 4000 1944 German
• General von Steuben 3500 1945 German
• Titanic 1517 1912 UK

I knew about the Wilhelm Gustloff but not the other wartime loses.

 

[Maverick17]

My hometown barber was a bomber pilot in WWII Pacific theater (yes, he's like 95 and still cutting hair and playing polka music). Once in awhile tells how when he got home, some guys that had been POW's said they had been kept in Japanese ships without any POW markings and the US planes had tried to bomb them a few times. He said he still worries about that to this day, wondering if any of the bombs he dropped were onto POW ships.

Thanks for sharing this.

 

[Akimbo]

Once in awhile tells how when he got home, some guys that had been POW's said they had been kept in Japanese ships without any POW markings and the US planes had tried to bomb them a few times.

I'm pretty sure that Greg "Pappy" Boyington also wrote about this in Baa Baa Black Sheep. A little off topic: He was a POW being shipped (transported is too humane a term) from Truk to Japan. He landed on Truk (Chuuk now) on the first day of Operation Hailstone and was held there before being moved to Japan.

 

[Sam Miller III]

Akimbo
Thank you for the post...very sobering post so early in the California morning.

Yes, a lot of good people perished during WW11. Even today knock on any door in US and the occupants will have a story of some family member who severed and some KIA in WW11---one can only imagine what it is still like in Germany

WW11 was total world war- not partial war as have been the case since that time.

In 1945 the NAZIs under Hitler would not surrender even though the county was effectively destroyed

In my ROTC USAF courses in college we studied the effects of air power and its destructive force. I recall the punitive bombing of Dresden in 1945 and later reading about it in first hand Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter house 5.

I also had a grad student friend & roommate who lived through the punitive bombing of Hamburg Germany, First the RAF bombed with HEs destroying all the infrastructures, the next day the USAAC bombed with incendiaries creating a world class fire storm in which a reported 100,000 perished.

SDM
(Captain USAF -Korea)
.

 

[Akimbo]

I also had a grad student friend & roommate who lived through the punitive bombing of Hamburg Germany,

I spent some time in Hamburg in the early 1970s. There was still a lot of evidence of the War. I remember a night club in a factory for small munitions that more or less survived. It was "decorated" with a few machines and shell casings. I wish I could have read about it but none of us could read German. We all felt very strange, mostly Brits and Yanks.

Sorry for the Hijack

 

[pierre-sifnos]

Thank you all for your comments, here is a story on The Greek ship turned into a Japanese “Hell ship” that took 688 US PoW’s down with her

More than 20,000 Allied POWs died at sea when the transport ships carrying them were attacked by Allied submarines and aircraft.

 

[Jared0425]

It was the fault of the captors that did not mark their vessels with the letters POW or the red cross symbol. The allies in both world wars upheld that while the central and axis did not.