Rangantine~ 27 November 1940

Liner sunk by German raiders off East Cape

Found at www.nzhistory.net

Survivors of the Rangitane

The 16,712-ton New Zealand Shipping Company liner MV Rangitane was sunk by two German auxiliary cruisers (armed merchant raiders), Orion and Komet, 550 km off East Cape.

The British-owned vessel was the largest Allied merchant ship to be sunk by a German surface vessel during the Second World War (German submarines and aircraft sank many larger ships).

On 25 November the Orion and Komet (cruising with an unarmed supply ship, the Kulmerland) had sunk the little steamer Holmwood off the Chatham Islands, taking its 17 crew and 12 passengers prisoner. At 3:40 a.m. on the 27th the German flotilla intercepted a far bigger prize, the Rangitane, three days out of Auckland bound for the United Kingdom via Panama. The liner had a crew of 201 and was carrying 111 passengers, including Fleet Air Arm recruits and radar specialists on their way to Britain, and a group of British women who had escorted 477 child evacuees to New Zealand aboard SS Batory. A trainee airman, Alan Jones, recalled the attack:

"Half past three in the morning, the clanging of sirens was going, and there were big crashes…. I went up on deck, and there was one of the raiders on each side of us, and the supply ship in front. You could see some of the shells ricocheting off. To hell with that, so we went down below again. I was a bit scared, a bit bewildered. Then there was another salvo and one of the saloons was on fire…. There was the smell of cordite, and the ship would shudder every so often when it was hit."

Seven passengers were killed or mortally wounded, including four of the female child escorts. Eight crew members also lost their lives, including two stewardesses and two brothers who were both engine-room hands. (Many sources erroneously claim there were only 11 deaths, but it was closer to 17) The other 297 passengers and crew were taken aboard the German ships before the Rangitane was sunk.

Most of the captives were later landed on Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago (near Papua New Guinea), from where they were repatriated to Australia in January 1941. A number of merchant seamen and servicemen, including Alan Jones, were taken to Germany and interned.

The Rangitane Riddle, A new book by Trevor Bell

“A rip-roaring yarn, all the better for being true”

The Rangitane was a large, fast, majestic, two-funnelled ocean liner; an icon of the golden age of sea travel. Early in the Second World War she was intercepted at night and sunk by two small, slow, scruffy German raiders disguised as Japanese merchant traders, far from the main theater of war. Why and how did this happen? Was it true that they knew the wherabouts of Rangitane? Were there really secret agents feeding the Germans with information? Had British secret codes been compromised? Why did the raiders sail over a thousand miles out of their way to release the majority of the survivors on a remote British island while others were shipped back to POW camps in Germany? 

This is the riddle of the Rangitane.

The Rangitane Riddle is the true story of the intrigue surrounding the capture and sinking of RMS Rangitane, based on the personal accounts of those involved. It follows the drama of the conflict and the subsequent amazing acts of humanity to the survivors. Described at the time as a ‘rip-roaring yarn‘, it proves that adversity can bring out the best in most people. Or can it? Read how two survivors made enemies of everybody.