History
These days, terrorist attacks are…if not common, expected to happen at some point. It’s the crazy world we now live in, but in 1910, it wasn’t quite so common. Nevertheless, on October 1, 1910, there was a massive explosion that destroyed the Los Angeles Times building in the LA’s downtown area. The bombing killed 21 people and injuring many more. Harrison Otis, who was the Los Angeles Times publisher and a bitter opponent of unions, believed that the bomb was directed at him. So, he hired William J Burns, the nation’s top private detective to find out who the culprits were. Otis, in addition to printing numerous editorials against unions, was the leader of the Merchants and Manufacturing Association, which was a powerful group of business owners, all of whom had extensive political connections.
The investigation led Burns to the Bridge and Structural Iron Workers Union and their treasurer, John J McNamara. Burns personally arrested McNamara and his brother in Indiana in April 1911, after Burns got a confession out of Ortie McManigal. It seems that McManigal had allegedly been the intermediary between 
McNamara and two bomb experts. Burns had no legal authority to arrest anyone, but he did so, and managed to get the brothers to California, where they were scheduled to be prosecuted.
As is typical, and even expected, the Union members and left-wing supporters all rallied around the McNamara brothers. They raised a large defense fund, and union representatives pleaded with Clarence Darrow to take the case. Darrow was well known as the best defense attorney in America. He had already managed to get “Big Bill” Haywood, the union leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, off on murder charges in Idaho a few years earlier. After being offered $50,000, Darrow reluctantly took the case. Public opinion supported the McNamara brothers, but the investigation Darrow performed was quickly turning up evidence to prove that the brothers were actually guilty. To make matters worse, members of the defense team tried to bribe the jury, just to keep up with the prosecution’s own bribery tactics. In the end, Darrow worked out a deal with Otis and the prosecutors that the brothers would plead guilty to escape the death penalty, which they did. It was the best he could do for them.
Still, this plan was not acceptable to either side, and Darrow got caught in the middle. Darrow was soon 
charged with bribery, and Otis arranged for Darrow’s prosecution. The union immediately deserted the great defense lawyer…not only did they refuse to pay his fee for the McNamara case, but they also refused to assist in his defense. Thankfully for Darrow, Earl Rogers, who was a notorious drunk, but also a brash, formidable, and effective Los Angeles attorney, took Darrow’s case. True to his reputation, Rogers managed to secure a mistrial for Darrow. Later, Darrow was acquitted after a second trial. Undaunted, Darrow went on to try even more distinguished cases, including the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes evolution trial. Still, I doubt if any trial stood out in his memory quite as much as the trial that almost cost him his freedom.
Trainwrecks can obviously happen at any time, but I think the worst time would be in the middle of the night, when the people onboard…other than the crew…are sleeping, or at the very least, dozing. There is nothing worse than being awakened to impending disaster. On September 30, 1945, a train was on its way from Perth to London Euston. The train was the 15-coach overnight Perth to London Euston express hauled by LMS Royal Scot Class 4-6-0 No 6157 The Royal Artilleryman. Part of the journey was to include a diversion, due to engineering work being done on the Watford tunnel. The train was scheduled to switch from the fast to the slow lines at Bourne End, near Hemel Hempstead. For reason unknown, the engineer failed to slow the train down in response to cautionary signals on the approach to the diversion. As a result, the train entered a 15-mile-per-hour turnout at nearly 60 miles per hour.
They were going far too fast, and the train couldn’t maintain its position on the tracks. The engine and the first six cars overturned and fell down an embankment into a field. When the derailment was over, only the last 
three cars remained on the rails, 43 people were dead, and 65 people were injured. The investigation determined that the cause was driver error, possibly compounded by ambiguous signaling regulations. The fact that the engineer was very experienced with a reputation for being conscientious and had read the notice about the diversion before leaving Crewe, makes the accident that much more odd. It is thought that he may not have appreciated its significance of the diversion. He had worked 26 days consecutively due to staff shortages following the war, so it was possible that he had either momentarily dozed off or that fatigue caused him to momentarily go into “autopilot” mode. Unfortunately, this particular line had not yet been fitted with the Automatic Warning System, which probably could have prevented the accident.
As a train comes up to turns or track changes, the railroad provides advance warning of the turnout by “a color light distant signal showing double yellow, an outer home signal showing green, and two ‘splitting’ semaphore inner homes side by side showing which route was set. The double yellow aspect could have an important extra meaning under Rule 35b(ii), “In some cases, color light signals will exhibit two yellow lights. This indication means – Pass next signal at restricted speed, and if applicable to a junction may denote that the points are set for a diverging route over which the speed restriction shown in the appendix applies.” Because this arrangement is ambiguous, the inspector pointed out that it evidently did not alert the engineer to the 
approaching low speed turnout. It was unclear why he failed to notice the diverging route indication of the splitting inner homes. It’s possible that the low sun shining directly in his face would have made observation tiring, but the signals were still clearly visible.
The accident was first reported by a pilot who had just taken off from Bovingdon Aerodrome. As he took off, he could see the accident, so he immediately notified the railway authorities via the Bovingdon Control tower. Airfield staff also helped significantly with assistance after the crash. With the death toll at 43, this became Britain’s joint seventh worst rail disaster in terms of death toll.
Often when a robbery goes wrong, the would-be robbers decide that the best way out of the situation is to take hostages. The hope is to negotiate a way out of their pending imprisonment. Most hostage takings or sieges last a few hours but on September 28, 1975, The Spaghetti House siege began, and it continued until October 3, 1975. The Spaghetti House was a restaurant in Knightsbridge, London, and when the robbery went wrong, the police were on the scene so quickly that the robbers couldn’t get away. Seeing that they were trapped, the three robbers took the staff down into a storeroom and barricaded themselves in. The three robbers had been involved in black liberation organizations and tried to set the robbery as being politically motivated, thinking that a political standoff might have a better chance of success. The police did not believe them, however, and they stated that this was no more than a criminal act. Finally, they decided that the political ploy was not going to work, so the robbers released all the hostages unharmed after six days. I can’t say for sure that this was the longest robbery siege in history, but if it wasn’t, it ranked right up there. Finally, two of the gunmen gave themselves up, while the ringleader, Franklin Davies, shot himself in the stomach. He survived, and all three were later imprisoned, as were two accomplices. To keep tabs on the situation during the siege, the police used fiber optic camera technology, giving them live surveillance. They monitored the actions and conversations of the gunmen from the audio and visual output. They brought in a forensic psychiatrist to watch the feed and advise the police on the state of the men’s minds, and how to best manage the ongoing negotiations.
There were a number of things that potentially led up to the robbery, not that these things were in any way a good excuse. Post-World War II Britain had a shortage of labor. Due to that shortage, the British decided to bring in workers from the British Empire and Commonwealth countries. These people came from poverty areas, 
and while they were placed in low-pay, low-skill employment, which forced them to live in poor housing, it probably wasn’t much different than what they came from. Nevertheless, economic circumstances and what were seen by many in the black communities as racist policies applied by the British government, just like in other nations. This led to a rise in militancy, particularly among the West Indian community. The people grew angry, and their feelings were exacerbated by police harassment and discrimination in the education sector. The director of the Institute of Race Relations in the mid-1970s, Ambalavaner Sivanandan said that while the first generation had become partly assimilated into British society, the second generation were increasingly rebellious. These robbers were a part of that second generation.
The ringleader, Franklin Davies was a 28-year-old Nigerian student who had previously served time in prison for armed robbery. The two men with him were Wesley Dick (later known as Shujaa Moshesh), who was a 24-year-old West Indian; and Anthony “Bonsu” Munroe, a 22-year-old Guyanese. The men were all involved in black liberation organizations at one time or another. Davies had tried to enlist in the guerrilla armies of Zimbabwe African National Union and FRELIMO in Africa. While Munroe had links to the Black Power movement. Dick was an attendee at meetings of the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Front (BLF), the Fasimba, and the Black Unity and Freedom Party. He regularly visited the offices of the Institute of Race Relations to volunteer and access their library. Sivanandan and the historian Rob Waters identify that the three men were attempting to obtain money to “finance black supplementary schools and support African liberation struggles.”
By the mid-1970s the branch managers started a weekly tradition of closing the London-based Spaghetti House restaurant chain to meet at the company’s Knightsbridge branch. During that time, the outlet would be closed, but managers would deposit the week’s takings there, before it was paid into a night safe at a nearby bank. Of course, that was a well-known fact. So, at approximately 1:30am on Sunday, September 28, 1975, Davies, Moshesh, and Munroe entered the Knightsbridge branch of the Spaghetti House. One carried a sawed-off shotgun, and the others had handguns. The three men burst in and demanded the week’s takings from the chain, which was between £11,000 and £13,000. The restaurant was dimly lit, and it gave the staff a chance to 
hide the briefcases of money under the tables. Now infuriated, the three men forced the staff down into the back, but the company’s general manager managed to escape out the rear fire escape.
He quickly called the Metropolitan Police, who were at the scene within minutes. The getaway driver, Samuel Addison, realized that the plan was going wrong, so he decided that it was every man for himself, and drove off in a stolen Ford. The police entered the ground floor, so Davies and his colleagues forced the staff into a rear storeroom measuring 14 by 10 feet, locked the door, barricaded it with beer kegs. They began shouting at the police that they would shoot if they approached the door. The police surrounded the building, and the siege began. It would finally end on October 3, 1975, with the surrender of the robbers, and later the location and arrest of the two accomplices.
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Imagine finding a ship, sitting fully intact on the bottom of a lake, as if the ship was built there. That is exactly what happened in 2019, when researchers from the marine sanctuary partnered with Ocean Exploration Trust, the group known for finding the Titanic in 1985, and embarked on a mapping expedition. The mission was sparked by the discovery of SS Ohio on the bottom of Lake Huron, in an area known as Shipwreck Alley. They knew that SS Ohio had gone down in the area following a collision with the schooner barge, Ironton, so it followed that if they had found SS Ohio, the Ironton must be nearby. Still, while they expected to find the wreck of the Ironton, what they actually found was…stunning!!
Ironton and SS Ohio, both sank in September 1894, following a collision that claimed the lives of five of the ship’s crew. The facts of the loss were only known because if the first-hand accounts of the wreck’s two survivors. Were it not for these survivors, the location might never have been known. Still, the wrecks sat on the lake floor for over a hundred years, waiting for a time in history when we had the technology and equipment necessary to actually go down and find the wrecks. What everyone who sailed the Great Lakes knows is that they are deep, and can be treacherous, especially in the winter…and “Shipwreck Alley” is an area of Lake Huron well known for its treacherous waters that have claimed the lives of many sailors.
On that fateful September day in 1894, the 190-foot steamer Charles J Kershaw departed Ashtabula, Ohio, on Lake Erie. She was towing the schooner barges Ironton and Moonlight. The vessels sailed empty, and they were destined for Marquette, Michigan, on Lake Superior. Things were going well, until at 12:30am on Sept. 26, while sailing north across Lake Huron under clear skies, Kershaw’s engine failed, leaving the ship without 
power. This was the beginning of disaster. They might have been ok, had it not been for the notorious winds in “Shipwreck Alley.” The Kershaw was a few miles north of the Presque Isle Lighthouse, when a strong south wind pushed Moonlight and Ironton toward the disabled steamer. The crew attempted to avoid the impending entanglement and a possible collision. Moonlight’s crew cut Ironton’s tow line, detaching the steamer from the schooner barges. Still, the winds were not letting up, and now the ship and the barges were at their mercy.
When Ironton was cut loose, the crew suddenly found themselves adrift in the dark fighting the wind and praying that they didn’t hit anything. They fought with all that was in them to regain control of the ship. Under the direction of Captain Peter Girard, they fired up the vessel’s auxiliary steam engine to help set the struggling ship’s sails, but even with their best efforts, Ironton, being propelled by the wind from astern, veered off course into the path of the southbound steamer Ohio. The Ohio, a 203-foot wooden freighter was enroute to Ogdensburg, New York, from Duluth, Minnesota, loaded with 1,000 tons of grain.
The night was dark, so by the time Ironton’s crew spotted the approaching Ohio through the darkness, it was too late to avoid a head-on collision with the steamer. William Wooley of Cleveland, Ohio, a surviving crew member of Ironton, said, “At this time we sighted a steamer on our starboard bow. She came up across our bow and we struck her on the quarter about aft of the boiler house. A light was lowered over our bow, and we saw a hole in our port bow and our stem splintered.”
SS Ohio was found upright in 2017, over 122 years after her sinking in over 200 feet of water off Presque Isle, 
Michigan. It was at this point that the search began for Ironton, which was expected to be nearby. In March, 2023, it was announced that Ironton had been located in 2019. The searchers waited to announce the finding, while they explored the vessel, hoping to discover how she could be in such pristine condition. The cold freshwater of the lake has kept the Ironton intact. According to Michigan Radio’s Jodi Westrick, an anchor is still connected to the ship, as are its three masts. In addition, a lifeboat remains tied to the vessel, a chilling reminder of how the ship’s demise played out on a harrowing night in 1894. It is as if time stood still for 1894 to the present day. Amazing!!
Our government is made up of three branches. The three branches of the United States government are the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. According to the doctrine of separation of powers, the United States Constitution distributed the power of the federal government among these three branches and built a system of checks and balances to ensure that no one branch could become too powerful. This is a long-standing system that has served the United States well, as long as it isn’t being abused.
The judicial branch came into being when The Judiciary Act of 1789 was passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six justices who were to serve on the court until death or retirement. Sometimes I’m not sure how I feel about the “until death or retirement” part, but I’m sure they had their reasons. To me, there are some justices, like some members of congress who far outstay their welcome. Nevertheless, on that day, President Washington nominated John Jay to preside as chief justice. He further named John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson to be associate justices. On September 26, all six appointments were confirmed by the US Senate, and with that, we had our first Supreme Court. 
The US Supreme Court was established by Article 3 of the US Constitution. Article 3 granted the Supreme Court ultimate jurisdiction over all laws, especially those in which their constitutionality was at issue. In addition, the high court was also designated to oversee cases concerning treaties of the United States, foreign diplomats, admiralty practice, and maritime jurisdiction. The first session of the US Supreme Court was held on February 1, 1790, in New York City’s Royal Exchange Building.
The US Supreme Court quickly grew into the most important judicial body in the world in terms of its central place in the American political order. The Constitution allows Congress to set the size of the court…another part of the system that I don’t think I agree with, simply because a corrupt congress could take advantage of that ability by stacking the courts to rule in their favor. I’m sure that Washington and the founding fathers planned for the justices to be honest and trustworthy. I’m sure too, that the fact that they were Supreme Courts justices for life or until retirement, was planned to allow them to make their rulings without fear of being fired. Of course, there is more that one way to get a justice removed, because dead can come by more than one means, including murder. And justices could be threatened or have 
their families threatened, causing them to vote in a specific way. In a perfect world, justices would act according to the Constitution, and vote their conscience, bringing about an honest and fair ruling, but that is not always the case…sadly. The number of justices varied during the 19th century before stabilizing in 1869 at nine. While this number can be changed at any time by Congress, so far, it has not, and I believe that the Constitution should be amended to make the number nine, permanent. In times of constitutional crisis, the Supreme Court has always played a definitive role in resolving, for better or worse, the great issues of the time, and the number nine has worked well. It should not be changed.
In 1945, a Japanese scientist named Shiro Ishii devised a plan of attack on civilians in the United States called Operation PX, also known as Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. The plan was intended to wage biological warfare upon civilian population centers in the continental United States during the final months of World War II. The plan was devious, and heinous. Ishii planned to spread plague-infected fleas over Southern California using airplanes. The original operation was abandoned shortly after its planning on March 26, 1945. Then, with modifications, it was finalized and placed back of the table to be carried out. The plan was to be carried out on September 22nd, 1945. Unfortunately for Japan, their formal surrender date was August 15th, 1945, and the war was over.
Originally, the Japanese Naval General Staff, led by Vice-Admiral Jisaburi Ozawa proposed Operation PX in December 1944. The code name for the operation came from the Japanese use of the code name PX for Pestis bacillus-infected fleas. The navy partnered with Lieutenant-General Shiro Ishii of Unit 731. Ishii possessed extensive experience on weaponizing pathogenic bacteria and human vulnerability to biological and chemical 
warfare, and he was an extremely evil man, willing to use his knowledge for the murders of millions of people, especially if he thought it would bring him more power.
In Ishii’s plan, they would use Seiran aircraft launched by submarine aircraft carriers upon the West Coast of the United States, targeting specifically, the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The attack was to be utilizing weaponized bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, dengue fever, and other pathogens in a biological terror attack upon the population of the United States. The original plan was to have the submarine crews infect themselves and run ashore in a suicide mission. When the operation was shelved in March of 1945, it was because Umezu could see the future ramifications, and conveyed as much, when he said, “If bacteriological warfare is conducted, it will grow from the dimension of war between Japan and America to an endless battle of humanity against bacteria. Japan will earn the derision of the world.”
The idea of suicide attacks was tabled, due to opposition from Yoshijiro Umezu and Torashiro Kawabe, who did not want Ishii to die in a suicide attack and asked him to instead “wait for [the] next opportunity calmly”. It was then that Ishii devised a final plan using of the biological weapons and fleas…an attack that never took place either. The world never knew of the planned attack until long after the war, when Operation PX was first 
discussed in an interview by former captain Eno Yoshio, who was heavily involved with planning for the attack. He first spoke of it in an interview with Sankei on August 14, 1977. According to Yoshio, “This is the first time I have said anything about Operation PX, because it involved the rules of war and international law. The plan was not put into actual operation, but I felt that just the fact that it was formulated would cause international misunderstanding. I never even leaked anything to the staff of the war history archives at the Japanese Defense Agency, and I don’t feel comfortable talking about it even now. But at the time, Japan was losing badly, and any means to win would have been all right.” That interview goes to show how horrible some regimes can be.
Normally, in a monarchy, the successor is determined by bloodline. In a Republic, the successor is determined by an election. There are a number of people who seriously dislike monarchies, and then there are those who prefer it…they think it gives their nation stability and continuity. Be that as it may, when enough people decide to end a monarchy, they can get the job done. Such was the case in Revolutionary France, when the Legislative Assembly voted to abolish the monarchy and establish the First Republic.
Things had been going downhill for King Louis XVI and a year before the Legislative Assembly voted, he has no other choice but to approve a new constitution that stripped him of much of his power. This was the beginning of the end for King Louis XVI. Louis ascended to the French throne in 1774 as all monarchs do, by inheritance. From the 
start, he was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems that he inherited from his predecessors, along with the throne. Unfortunately, not all those who would inherit the throne of a nation are suited for that leadership.
The situation continued to escalate, and in 1789, food shortages and economic crises led to the outbreak of the French Revolution. By August of 1792, things escalated to a boil. At that point, King Louis and his queen, Mary-Antoinette, were imprisoned and in September the monarchy was abolished. Soon after their imprisonment, 
evidence of Louis’ counterrevolutionary activity with foreign nations was discovered. He was put on trial for treason. I don’t know the details of the case for treason, but of course, he could not have been put on trial before the changes that were forced upon him in the changing of the constitution. It is also possible that there were no legitimate charges to used, until they forced the changing of the constitution. I’m sure there are opinions on both sides of the issue.
Louis was convicted and condemned to death by a narrow majority in January of 1793, and on January 21, 1793, he walked steadfastly to the guillotine and was executed. His head was held high, and he proclaimed his innocence to the very end. Nine months later, his queen, Marie-Antoinette followed him to the guillotine. Neither of them ever confessed to the crimes for which they were committed, and I don’t suppose we will ever know the truth about the matter.
When we think of a president of the United States, we think of one each term. In reality, on inauguration years, there are actually two…the outgoing president, and the incoming president. Of course, if the president has won a second term, there would actually be only one in that inauguration cycle. That is the common fact of presidential inaugurations, but could there be three? The answer is actually, yes. There have been two times in history when there were three presidents in one year. I suppose that potentially there could be more than this, but the reasons would almost be too awful to contemplate.
On September 20, 1881, Chester Arthur became one of those two “third” presidents, when he was inaugurated that day, becoming the third person to serve as president in that year. The year 1881 began with Republican Rutherford B Hayes in office. Hayes 
had just completed his first and only term as president, and with the inauguration of James A Garfield, Hayes had officially turned over the reins of government to the new president, who happened to be a close friend of his, in March 1881. Then, the unthinkable happened, when just four months into his term, on July 2, Garfield was shot by an assassin named Charles Guiteau. Guiteau said that he killed Garfield because he refused to grant Guiteau a political appointment. The attack left Garfield with wounds to his back and abdomen. He struggled to recover throughout the summer. Though it appeared he would pull through in early September, Garfield deteriorated by mid-September and finally died on September 19th. An autopsy report revealed that the internal bullet wound contributed to an aneurism that ultimately killed Garfield.
On September 20, 1881…the next day, Vice President Chester Arthur was sworn in as 
president, making him the third man to be sworn in as president in 1881. Garfield’s assassin then actually had the nerve to write to the new president from jail, and actually taking credit for vaulting Arthur into the White House. While President Arthur was president, not everyone felt like he was a good president. Former President Hayes, said of the Arthur administration, that it was best known for “liquor, snobbery and worse.” Of course, Hayes could have been angry about not being elected to a second term, or he could have been making an honest evaluation. that may be a good subject for a future story. Either way, Chester Arthur served only one term from 1881 to 1885.
While this was a very unusual year, it was not the first time this had happened. It was actually the second time in American history that three men served as president in one year. A similar situation occurred in 1841, when Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, and John Tyler all held the office, but that is a different story for another day.
Many people have had to switch from their dominant hand due to an accident, stroke, or amputation, but we rarely think of a president find himself in that position. Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson had to do just that. It can happen to anyone really, but like many a young man, Thomas Jefferson was out to impress a girl. The strange part was that when it happened, Thomas wasn’t a young man. He was, nevertheless, trying to impress a girl. Thomas was 42 years old. He wasn’t the president of the United States yet, but he had been married. He married Martha Wayles in 1772, but she passed away in 1782, so he was alone. He and Martha had six children. Of the six children born to Thomas and Martha, only two survived to adulthood, Martha and Mary. His wife, Martha died four months after the birth of her last child. He had been happy, but his marriage was short. Thomas Jefferson was not perfect, and in fact he made lots of mistakes, and even had children with his slave, but he was a good president…and which of us is perfect, after all.
In 1785, Thomas was in Paris, and he met a woman named Maria Cosway, who was a married woman. Thomas Jefferson took a liking to her, and he was trying to impress her. Well, he shouldn’t have been doing what he did. He knew it, and we know it to this day, but he did try to impress her, by trying to jump over a fence. In the ensuing accident, whereby he fell, Thomas Jefferson broke his right wrist. The surgeon set his wrist, but he didn’t really do a good job of it. After they set his wrist bones, he suffered chronic pain in his left hand for the rest of his life. He was really unable to use his left hand much at all after that. 
The accident forced Thomas Jefferson to stay in his house for a month, during which time, his secretary, William Short, had to write his letters for him. For a few months, he used his left hand to write letters including the famous “Head and Heart” letter on October 12 to Maria Cosway. The broken wrist caused him to have to cut short the planned sightseeing trip with Maria Cosway, and it also cause him to have to postpone his journey to the south of France. In the end, his wrist finally healed, but it was never to the point that he could use it as his dominant hand, so he had to switch out his dominant hand and live the rest of his life as a lefty. I suppose some might have said that his infatuation with Maria Cosway cost him the use of his hand, in a sort of “repercussion for bad behavior” scenario, but I don’t believe in the “God will hit you with a lightning bolt” kind of punishment. I know that it likely wouldn’t have happened if he had left Maria Cosway alone, but I just think God tries for grace first.
Probably one of the deadliest weapons the Nazis ever created, was the German U-Boat. With their code system, it was hard to track a U-boat, and so they snuck up on ships and sunk them. The U-boat wasn’t a ship. It was a submarine, so the ships didn’t know it was there until they saw the torpedo coming at them…if they saw it coming. Often, they didn’t see it coming, it just hit, and it was over. On September 12, 1942, a U-boat sunk the British troop ship, the RMS Laconia, killing more than 1,400 men. The commander of the German sub, Captain Werner Hartenstein, then realized that Italians POWs were among the passengers.
Like many other cruise ships, the Laconia, a former Cunard White Star ship was put to use to transport troops, including prisoners of war during World War II. RMS Laconia was in the South Atlantic bound for England when 
it encountered U-156. The sub attacked, sinking the troop ship and imperiling the lives of more than 2,200 passengers. But as Hartenstein, the sub commander, was to learn from survivors he began taking onboard, among those passengers were 1,500 Italian POWs. Of course, it wouldn’t look good for Hartenstein to be responsible for endangering the lives of so many of his fellow Axis members, so he quickly put out a call to an Italian submarine and two other German U-boats in the area to help rescue the survivors.
Upon hearing of the incident, one French and two British warships rushed 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 wisely assumed it was a trap. With that, 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.” Consequently, more than 1,400 of the RMS Laconia’s passengers, which included Polish guards and British crewmen, drowned. This marked the end of taking POWs from torpedoed ships. There were often men who survived these attacks, but they were given no chance of survival after the attack. I suppose war is war, and death is expected. On March 8, 1943, U-156 was sunk by PBY “Catalina” aircraft from Patrol Squadron Fifty-Three (VP-53), in the Atlantic Ocean, east of Barbados. There were five survivors from U-156.
