WARTIME DISASTERS World War II

Very high casualties were recorded on the following wartime tragedies that occurred during World War II:

SS Indigirka - Soviet Gulag ship was transporting released scientists to help in the war effort when it sank in a blizzard off the Japanese coast on 13 December 1939, with a loss of 741 lives.

Montevideo Maru - On 22 June 1942, after the fall of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea the Japanese ordered 845 Australian POWs and 208 civilian internees to board the unmarked Japanese ship, Montevideo Maru, for transport to Japan. On 1 July, USS Sturgeon attacked and sunk the ship near the northern Philippine coast. Of the ship's total complement of about 1,140 (including 88 crew), there were reportedly only 18 survivors (all crewmen).

Junyō Maru - a Japanese "Hell ship" sunk by the British in September 1944, 5,620 died: Dutch POWs and Javanese slave labourers

MV Wilhelm Gustloff (Germany) - The German KdF flagship, constructed by the Blohm & Voss shipyards, sank after being hit by three torpedoes fired by the Soviet submarine S-13 on 30 January 1945, with the loss of over 9,000 lives, most of them German refugees – the greatest loss of life in a maritime disaster in history.

Goya (Germany) - The German transport ship Goya was torpedoed and sunk by a Russian submarine on 16 April 1945. An estimated 7,000-8,000 civilians and German troops died with 183 being rescued.

SS Thielbek - sunk by British planes on 3 May 1945 with a loss of 2,750 lives.

Nova Scotia - sunk near South Africa by a German submarine, was carrying 1,000 and had only 192 survivors.