Military Passenger Ship Sank In The Baltic Sea Killing 9,400

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Military Passenger Ship

Dear Mfame readers,

Yesterday, we published the article Finally Disappearance Of Navy Ship Mystery Solved which is discovery of a USS Conestoga (AT 54) after 95 years.  Today, we will see another largest shipwreck in history that killed 9,400 people before 70 years in 30 January 1945.

The MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German military passenger ship which was sunk on 30 January 1945 by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German civilians, officials and military personnel from Gdynia (Gotenhafen) as the Red Army advanced.

A small fleet of ships and boats arrived on the scene and managed to pluck a few survivors from the icy waters and rescued many of those on the lifeboats.  Over a thousand were rescued but, an estimated 9,400 people died, half of them children – six times the 1,517 that died on the Titanic in 1912, which makes it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history.

Source: Wikipedia