The SS Cap Arcona was a 27,500 gross ton German luxury ocean liner of the Hamburg-South America line^*. She was named after Cape Arkona on the island of Rügen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Launched in 1927, she was considered one of the most beautiful of the time. She carried upper-class travelers and steerage-class emigrants, mostly to South America.

On December 3, 1928, a seaplane crashed near Cap Arcona as she approached Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The plane carried a dozen Brazilian scientists who were planning to pay a flying welcome to Alberto Santos-Dumont; the aviation pioneer was returning to Brazil aboard the vessel.

In 1940, she was taken over by the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) and used in the Baltic Sea. At the end of 1944, the Kriegsmarine transferred her back to transport use and she was used to transport refugees from East Prussia to western Germany.

She also had a brief stint in the world of cinema. In 1942, she was used as a stand-in for the doomed Titanic in the German film version of the disaster, which would later prove to be a cruel twist of irony.

Sinking

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On April 26, 1945, she was loaded with prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg and, together with two smaller ships, Thielbek and Athen, was brought into the Bay of Lübeck with the intention of destroying evidence of what had happened at Neuengamme by scuttling the ships with the prisoners imprisoned below.

During these days, informed by British Intelligence, Count Folke Bernadotte, vice-president of the Red Cross, gained much goodwill leading a rescue operation transporting west European deportees to hospitals in Sweden, of whom some were French-speakers transported aboard the Cap Arcona.

Four days after Hitler's suicide, on May 3 1945, the Cap Arcona, the Thielbek, and the passenger liner Deutschland (converted to a hospital ship but unmarked as such) were sunk in four separate attacks by RAF planes of 83 Group, 2nd Tactical Air Force: the first by No. 184 Squadron RAF based in Hustedt; the second by No. 198 Squadron RAF based in Plantlünne, led by Group Captain Johnny Baldwin; the third by No. 263 Squadron RAF based in Ahlhorn; and the fourth by Royal Air Force Hawker Typhoons of No. 197 Squadron RAF based in Ahlhorn. The fighters used rockets, bombs, and machine-guns. After the first wave had attacked the ships, the Cap Arcona hoisted the white ensign without any effect. The ships were carrying from 7,000 to 8,000 prisoners from the German concentration camps in Neuengamme, Stutthof and Mittelbau-Dora, half of whom were Russian and Polish POWs, others from 24 nationalities, including French, Danish, and Dutch. Those reaching the shore after the sinkings were shot by SS troops, but about 350 managed to escape from the massacre, others were machine gunned by the British pilots while trying to get ashore.

The Cap Arcona sinking and the Soviet sinkings of the Wilhelm Gustloff and the Goya in the Baltic Sea were sinkings with three of the highest losses of life.

References

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• Roy Nesbit - "Cap Arcona: atrocity or accident?" - Aeroplane Monthly, June 1984
• Benjamin Jacobs and Eugene Pool - The 100-Year Secret : Britains's Hidden World War II Massacre - The Lyons Press, October 2004 ^*

External links

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• History of the tragedy
• Photos of the Thielbek and Deutschland
• Disaster on the Baltic Sea
• Inferno
• Appendix A
• Photo-montage with sound
• Photos of the Cap Arcona *^*
• Scuba diving around the wreck

Ocean liners | Passenger ships of Germany | Shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea

Cap Arcona (Schiff) | Cap Arcona | Cap Arcona | Cap Arcona | SS Cap Arcona | Брод Кап Аркона