Munitions Found on the Lusitania
Wednesday December 24, 2008
On May 7, 1915, the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat during World War I. Of the 1,959 people on board, 1,198 died in this disaster. When the U.S. heard that 128 of the dead were Americans, they were furious. Although the Germans had claimed that the Lusitania was a valid military target because it had been war materials, popular belief at the time was that it was solely a passenger vessel. The sinking of what seemed a completely neutral ship, spurred the U.S. to enter into World War I against the Germans.
Recently, divers explored the wreckage of the Lusitania, situated eight miles off of the coast of Ireland. In the hold of the Lusitania, the divers found approximately four million rounds of U.S.-made Remington .303 bullets. The discovery supports Germany's claim that the Lusitania had been used to shuttle war materials. The find also supports the theory that the second explosion on the Lusitania was caused by munitions on board rather than a second torpedo from the U-boat.
The book Seven Days to Disaster by Colin Simpson explores the hidden munitions argument. Colin Simpson claims that LUSITANIA received a secret modification as well--the installation of twelve 6-inch guns. His principal sources for this are a German named Curt Thummel who served briefly as a steward on LUSITANIA while secretly in the employ of the German military attache in the United States, Franz von Papen. Thummel reported to the German consulate in New York that he had seen four guns on LUSITANIA. Another German, Gustav Stahl, filed an affidavit after the sinking claiming that while helping a friend load baggage on LUSITANIA he had seen concealed guns.
Finally, we have a mysterious "lady whose family to this day forbid her name to be mentioned, possibly because one of them in due course became a President of the United States." Her letter, found in Secretary Lansing's private papers, claims that while she was having tea in London with Clementine Churchill, Admiral Fisher stopped in. She asked the Admiral for help in getting a passage to New York. Fisher told her that she should travel on LUSITANIA or OLYMPIC, because both had a concealed armament. She took LUSITANIA and inquired of a steward about the concealed guns. "The steward, realizing her connections, showed her how the decks could be lifted to reveal the gun rings and confided that it would take about twenty minutes to 'wheel the guns into position.'" While in Simpson's book this woman's story is only one of several on LUSITANIA's armament, in a letter to Life magazine, quoted by Bailey and Ryan, this becomes his accepted version: the guns "were stored in the forward part of the shelter deck, which was sealed off from the rest of the ship by the Admiralty. If the need arose, the guns could be wheeled out of their hiding place and mounted on their rings in 20 minutes.'"
We will probably never know the real truth about the concealed guns but the fact that Lusitania AT LEAST carried 4,000,000 bullets and other explosives (this is uncontroverted) hardly qualified the ship as the luxury liner filled only with safe cargo and passengers that the British would have had everyone believe.
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01-12-2010, 03:59 PM
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