TROOP TRANSPORT - S.S. KHEDIVE ISMAIL.
(Royal Navy Casualty) World War II.
1939-45 Star, Africa Star, Pacific Star, War Medal.
(With Photograph of Arthur Wall as a Schoolboy)
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Original Condolence slip named to "Arthur Wall"
C/KX 83396, Petty Officer Stoker, ARTHUR WALL. R.N.
(On route from HMS Lanka)
P.O. Arthur Wall was lost with many hundreds of others on 12th February 1944 during the attack on the SS Khedive Ismail by the infamous Japanese Submarine I-27.
(Captain Toshiaki Fukumura)
The SS Khedive Ismail was a troop steamship sunk with great loss of life in 1944.
The 7,513 ton steamship was launched as the Aconcagua by Scotts of Grenock in 1922. The Aconcagua passed into Egyptian ownership in 1935 and was renamed after Isma'il Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt from 1863 until 1879. In 1940 the Khedive Ismail was requisitioned as a British troopship by the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT). On 6 February 1944 Convoy KR-8 sailed from Kilindini Harbour at Mombasa, Kenya to Columbo, Ceylon. The convoy consisted of five troop transports (Khedive Ismail, City of Paris, Varsova, Ekma & Ellenga), escorted by the heavy cruiser HMS Hawkins and the destroyers HMS Petard and HMS Paladin. In the early afternoon of Saturday 12 February 1944, the Japanese B1type submarine I-27, commanded by Lt-Cdr Toshiaki Fukumura, attacked the convoy in the One and a Half Degree Channel, south-west of the Maldives near coordinates. The submarine sank the Khedive Ismail with two torpedoes. The ship was carrying 1,511 personnel including 178 crew, 996 officers and men of the East African Artillery's 301st Field Regiment, 271 Royal Navy personnel, and a detachment of 19 Wrens. Also on board were 53 nursing sisters accompanied by one matron, and 9 members of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. As survivors floundered in the sea, I-27 submerged and hid beneath them. While HMS Paladin lowered boats over her side to begin rescuing survivors, HMS Petard raced in to release depth charges. The destruction of an enemy submarine that might sink more ships took precedence over the lives of the survivors, and I-27 under Commander Fukumura had a history of machine-gunning survivors of ships she had sunk, including the Liberty ship SS Sambridge and the Fort Mumford On Petard’s third run, her depth charges forced I-27 to the surface. Paladin rammed the submarine, in the process causing considerable damage to herself. Finally a torpedo from Petard destroyed the I-27. 1,297 people, including 77 women, lost their lives in the two minutes it took for the Khedive Ismail to sink. Only 208 men and 6 women survived. The sinking was the third worst Allied shipping disaster of WW2 and the single worst loss of female service personnel in the history of the Commonwealth of Nations. Among the dead was war correspondent Kenneth Gandar-Dower.
Includes two boxed medals
ROYAL TOURNAMENT SILVER MEDAL
(1937 Inter-Port Field Gun, CHATHAM STOKERS, A.WALL)
& GENERAL EFFICIENCY MEDAL (New Entries) R.N.B. Chatham. A. WALL
Also includes the Father's WW1 Medals.
1914-15 Trio
To:
793. SPR A.Wall R.E.
The Wall family (Arthur & Sarah Ellen Wall) was from Hebburn-on-Tyne.
Co Durham
A highly emotive casualty group to one of the most infamous actions of WW2 and the inspiration for the famous film " The Cruel Sea"
£695