MV Wilhelm Gustloff

For her third voyage she left Hamburg on 1 April 1938 under the command of Carl Lübbe to join the KdF ships Der Deutsche, Oceania and Sierra Cordoba on a group cruise of a North Sea.[9] A storm developed on 3 April with winds up to 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) that forced the four ships apart. On 2 April the 1,836 gross ton coal freighter Pegaway had departed Tyne under the command of Captain G. W. Ward with a load of coal for Hamburg. The storm washed cargo and machinery from her decks and as the storm increased in intensity she lost manoeuvrability. By 4 April, it was taking on water and slowly sinking. At 4 am, the captain issued an SOS when the ship was 20 miles northwest of the island of Terschelling in the West Frisian Islands group off the coast of the Netherlands.[9] The closest of the ships that answered the distress call was the Wilhelm Gustloff which reached the Pegaway at 6 am. She launched her Lifeboat No. 1 with a crew of 12 under the command of Second Officer Meyer. The oar-powered lifeboat was unable in the heavy seas to come aside the Pegaway and looked in danger of needing rescuing. Lifeboat No. 6 with a crew of ten under the command of Second Officer Schürmann was then lowered. As it had a motor, it was better able to handle the waves. After first assisting their shipmates in lifeboat No. 1 to head back towards the Wilhelm Gustloff, Schürmann was able to reach the Pegaway. One by one the 19 men on the Pegaway jumped into the sea and were hauled onto Lifeboat No. 6, with both them and the crew of the lifeboat back at the Wilhelm Gustloff by 7:45 am.[9] By now a Dutch tugboat had arrived but was unable to save the Pegaway, which soon rolled to port and sank. Lifeboat No. 1 had been so badly damaged by the waves that after its crew had climbed up via ladders to the safety of their ship it was set adrift to later be washed up on the shores of Terschelling on 2 May.

On 8 April 1938 the Wilhelm Gustloff under the command of Captain Carl Lübbe departed Hamburg for England where she anchored over three miles offshore of Tilbury so as to remain in international waters. This allowed her to act as a floating polling station for German and Austrian citizens living in England who wished to vote on the approaching plebiscite on Anschluss (Union of Austria with Germany). During 10 April, 1,172 Germans and 806 Austrian eligible voters were ferried between the docks at Tilbury to the ship where 1,968 votes were cast in favour of the union and 10 voted against.[10]

Once the voting was complete, the Wilhelm Gustloff departed, reaching Hamburg on 12 April.

After undertaking a further voyage on 14 to 19 April 1938, she went on an Osterfahrt (Easter Voyage) before her actual official maiden voyage, which was undertaken between 21 April to 6 May 1938 when she joined the Der Deutsche, Oceania and Sierra Cordoba on a group cruise to the Madeira Islands. On the second day of her voyage, the 58-year-old Captain Carl Lübbe died on the bridge from a heart attack. He was replaced by Friedrich Petersen, who after commanding the ship for the remainder of this cruise left the ship until he returned to command it on the ship's final voyage.[11]

Between 20 May to 2 June 1939, she was diverted from her pleasure cruises. With seven other ships in the KdF fleet, she transported the Condor Legion back from Spain following the victory of the Nationalist forces under General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

German soldiers wounded at Narvik being transported back to Germany on Wilhelm Gustloff in July 1940.

From 14 March 1938 until 26 August 1939, the Wilhelm Gustloff took over 80,000 passengers on a total of 60 voyages, all around Europe.[7]

The ship was soon sighted by the Soviet submarine S-13, under the command of Captain Alexander Marinesko. The submarine sensor on board the escorting torpedo boat had frozen, rendering it inoperable, as had Wilhelm Gustloff's anti-aircraft guns, leaving the vessels defenseless. Marinesko followed the ships to their starboard (seaward) side for two hours before making a daring move to surface his submarine and steer it around Wilhelm Gustloff's stern, to attack it from the port side closer to shore, from whence the attack would be less expected. At around 9 pm (CET), Marinesko ordered his crew to launch four torpedoes at Wilhelm Gustloff's port side, about 30 km (16 nmi; 19 mi) offshore, between Großendorf and Leba. The first was nicknamed "for the Motherland", the second "for Leningrad", the third "for the Soviet people", and the fourth, which got jammed in the torpedo tubes and had to be dismantled, "for Stalin".[14] The three torpedoes which were fired successfully all struck Wilhelm Gustloff on her port side. The first torpedo struck Wilhelm Gustloff's bow, causing the watertight doors to seal off the area which contained quarters where off-duty crew members were sleeping. The second torpedo hit the accommodations for the women's naval auxiliary, located in the ship's drained swimming pool, dislodging the pool tiles at high velocity, which caused heavy casualties; only three of the 373 quartered there survived. The third torpedo was a direct hit on the engine room located amidships, disabling all power and communications.

Reportedly, only nine lifeboats were able to be lowered; the rest had frozen in their davits and had to be broken free. About 20 minutes after the torpedoes' impact, Wilhelm Gustloff listed dramatically to port, so that the lifeboats lowered on the high starboard side crashed into the ship's tilting side, destroying many lifeboats and spilling their occupants across the ship's side.[17]

The water temperature in the Baltic Sea at that time of year is usually around 4 °C (39 °F); however, this was a particularly cold night, with an air temperature of −18 to −10 °C (0 to 14 °F) and ice floes covering the surface. Many deaths were caused either directly by the torpedoes or by drowning in the onrushing water. Others were crushed in the initial stampede caused by panicked passengers on the stairs and decks. Many others jumped into the icy Baltic. The majority of those who perished succumbed to exposure in the freezing water.[20]

Less than 40 minutes after being struck, Wilhelm Gustloff was lying on her side. She sank bow-first 10 minutes later, in 44 m (144 ft) of water.

German forces were able to rescue 996 of the survivors from the attack: the torpedo boat T36 rescued 564 people; the torpedo boat Löwe (ex-Gyller), 472; the minesweeper M387, 98; the minesweeper M375, 43; the minesweeper M341, 37; the steamer Göttingen, 28; the torpedo recovery boat (Torpedofangboot) TF19, 7; the freighter Gotenland, two; and the patrol boat (Vorpostenboot) V1703, one baby.[17]

All four captains on Wilhelm Gustloff survived her sinking, but an official naval inquiry was only started against Wilhelm Zahn. His degree of responsibility was never resolved, however, because of Nazi Germany's collapse in 1945.[21]

The figures from Heinz Schön's research make the loss in the sinking to be "9,343 men, women and children".[22] Schön's more recent research is backed up by estimates made by a different method. An Unsolved History episode that aired in March 2003,[4] on the Discovery Channel, undertook a computer analysis of her sinking. Using maritime EXODUS software,[23] it was estimated 9,600 people died out of more than 10,600 on board. This analysis considered the passenger density based on witness reports and a simulation of escape routes and survivability with the timeline of the sinking.[24]

In German

The most prolific German author and historian on the subject of Wilhelm Gustloff is Heinz Schön, one of the shipwreck's survivors, whose books (in German) include:

• Der Untergang der "Wilhelm Gustloff". Tatsachenbericht eines Überlebenden. (The sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff". Factual account of a survivor.) Karina-Goltze-Verlag K.-G., Göttingen 1952;
• SOS Wilhelm Gustloff. Die größte Schiffskatastrophe der Geschichte. (SOS Wilhelm Gustloff. The biggest shipping disaster in history.) Motorbuch Verlag Pietsch, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-613-01900-0;
• Die Gustloff – Katastrophe. Bericht eines Überlebenden über die größte Schiffskatastrophe im Zweiten Weltkrieg. (The Gustloff catastrophe. Account of a survivor of the biggest shipping disaster in the Second World War.) Motorbuch Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-613-01027-5;
• Die letzte Fahrt der Wilhelm Gustloff. Dokumentation eines Überlebenden. (The last trip of Wilhelm Gustloff. Account of a survivor.) Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 3-613-02897-2.
• Günter Grass: Im Krebsgang, which has also been translated (by Miguel Sáenz) from German to Spanish as A Paso de Cangrejo. Alfaguara – Santillana Ediciones Generales, S.L. 2002 (Madrid), ISBN 9788420464589.

In English

Recent years have seen increased interest in Wilhelm Gustloff disaster in countries outside Germany, with various books either written in or translated into English, including:

• Ruta Sepetys: Salt to the Sea, Philomel Books, Penguin Random, New York, 2016, ISBN 9780399160301. Salt to the Sea is an account of several fictional young adults who were upon the Gustloff during its sinking.
• Cathryn Prince: Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2013, ISBN 978-0230341562
• Christopher Dobson, John Miller, and Ronald Payne: The Cruellest Night, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1979, ISBN 0-340-22720-6.
• A.V. Sellwood: The Damned Don't Drown. The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1973, ISBN 1-55750-742-2 (fiction). In Sellwood's own words, this is a "reconstruction of the tragedy", with material drawn from "interviews with some of the survivors and official documents".
• Günter Grass: Im Krebsgang, which has been translated into English as Crabwalk. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-88243-800-2 (fiction). Combines historical elements, such as the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, with fictional elements, such as the book's major characters and events.
• Clive Cussler & Paul Kemprecos: Polar Shift, Puttnam, New York, 2005, ISBN 978-0399152719. Novel containing lengthy sequences set on the Gustloff.
• John Ries: "History's Greatest Naval Disasters. The Little-Known Stories of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the General Steuben and the Goya". In the controversial Journal of Historical Review, 1992, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 371–381.
• Philip Sayers: "The Search for Baltic Gold", 2012, novel, Desperation, disaster and discovery - the secret of Hitler's doomed flagship. ISBN 978-1-905492-27-5
• Guy Saville: The Madagaskar Plan, 2015, ISBN 978-1-444-71068-7. In this alternate history novel, the Gustloff is salvaged after being torpedoed and moored off the coast of Madagascar. It has become the depository for the records of the Jews deported to the island. An extended sequence is set on the ship.
• Roger Weston: Fatal Return, 2012. Novel linked to the history and sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.
• Philip Kerr: The Other Side of Silence, one of his Bernie Gunther novels, includes the tragedy of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff woven into the fabric of the novels' fictionalized heroes and other characters.
• Roger Moorhouse: Ship of Fate: The Story of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff (Kindle Single) Kindle Edition. Endeavour Press, 2016. ASIN: B01E7EEGG8. Ship of Fate: The Story of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff explains the history of the ship from its construction in 1930 until the sinking in 1945.

In French

• Eric Dupont: La Fiancée Américaine, Ed. Marchand de Feuilles, 2012, ISBN 9782923896151.

• Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen (Night fell over Gotenhafen), feature film, 1959
• Die Gustloff (The Gustloff), two-part telemovie by Joseph Vilsmaier, 2008 (Ship of No Return: The Last Voyage of the Gustloff, Australian title)

• "Killer Submarine," an episode of History's Mysteries, 1999.
• Die große Flucht. Der Untergang der Gustloff (The Great Escape. The sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff), 2001.
• "The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff", The Sea Hunters (television program), 2002.
• "Wilhelm Gustloff: World's Deadliest Sea Disaster", Unsolved History (television program), 2003.
• Ghosts of the Baltic Sea, 2006.
• Sinking Hitler's Supership, 2008. National Geographic documentary using extensive footage from the 2008 German miniseries.
• Sinking the Gustloff, 2009
• The Nazi Titanic (television program), 2010.