Dampfschiff General von Steuben
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- For other meanings see the disambiguation page Von Steuben
DS General von Steuben |
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| Class | Ocean Liner |
|---|---|
| Launched | |
| Fate | Sunk February 10, 1945 |
| Displacement | 10,600 tons |
The Dampfschiff (DS) General von Steuben[1] (formerly called the München (after Munich), but renamed in 1938) was a German luxury passenger ship which was turned into an armed transport ship in World War II. She was named after Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus Steuben, a famous German officer from the 18th century.
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[edit] The sinking of the General von Steuben
The 14,600-ton liner set sail from Pillau in the bay of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) on February 10, 1945, her destination being Swinemünde. On board were 2,800 injured soldiers, 800 refugees, 100 returning soldiers, 172 navy hospital crew including doctors and nurses, 12 Red Cross nurses, 64 crew for the ship's anti-aircraft guns, 61 navy seamen, radio operators, signal men, machine operators, and administrators, and 165 navy crewmen, for a total of 4,267 people. Just after midnight, two torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 hit the Steuben. According to survivors, she sank within about twenty minutes. When it became apparent the ship's fate was doomed, one female survivor remembers hearing the sound of "popcorn popping." After walking down the hallway where the sound was coming from, she realized to her horror it that she was hearing the sound of wounded German soldiers, committing suicide with their pistols. One told her they did not want to take the lifeboat space from the women and children.
Approximately 4,500 people died in the sinking of the General von Steuben; there were 659 survivors.
National Geographic ran a detailed story on the Russian sinking of the von Steuben in its February 2005 issue.
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[edit] Footnotes
- ^ This article is about the World War II German auxiliary cruiser "General von Steuben". For the World War I German auxiliary cruiser that was interned by the Americans and renamed in 1917 as the "Baron Von Steuben", please see the article on the ship Kronprinz Wilhelm, and for other uses please see the disambiguation page Von Steuben
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