Posted by Jan Olof (jan-olof.hendig@telia.com) in early March, 2001 - transferred from old forum:



Great site you have made. It was mentioned on uboat.net the other day and i decided to have a look. Very good material. I was looking for information about the fate a a norwegian ship named 'Hydra II', but I see that you haven't got to the letter H yet. so I guess that I will have to wait.



I found a couple of errors while looking around:



* In your description about the vessel 'Atle Jarl' you mention a collision with a british submarine. It was a british sub but the name was 'Unity'. You can read more about this incident here:

[www.rnsubmus.co.uk]



* While telling the story about the vessel Borgland you write about the fate of U47. The fate of this sub has been reassesed in recent years, see

[uboat.net] for more information.



Keep up the good work.

Regards Jan-Olof Hendig



Siri's reply:

Thank you, I'll add that info. to my list. Here's some information on the D/S Hydra II:



Owned by Bruusgaard, Kiøsterud & Co. Drammen, built in 1919 - 2000 dwt. (The captain at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was Lars Røed). On Dec. 8-1941 she was 100 n. miles off Varella Lighthouse in Cochin-China on a voyage from Koh-Sichang to Hongkong with 2000 tons rice and salt. The 6 Norwegian officers decided to go to the neares Island in the Philippines, and en route she was stopped by a British destroyer advising them to continue to Manila. She arrived just outside (2 n. miles) of Manila on the evening of Dec. 12, engines were stopped, all lights turned off, the intention was to go in early the next morning. This was 2 days after the Japanese had landed forces at Luzon, and the situation in Manila was very tense. Around 21.40 a torpedoe detonated in the ship, and she sank within 2 minutes. The captain, 1st mate and 1st engineer (machinist?) were killed (some drowned while running to the lifeboats), along with 38 Chinese crew. Only three officers and 6 Chinese managed to cling on to some debris from the ship and were rescued the next day by the Swedish M/S Columbia, which took them to Fremantle. It's believed the torpedoe came from an American submarine, misjudging the nationality of the ship.



This is all I can find for the time being - if I come across anything else I'll let you know.

Siri





Visje's (visje@tref.nl) respons:



The torpedo was fired by S-38



Siri's response:

See the entry starting with "Submarine S 38" for Dec. 12 on this site: [www.ibiblio.org]