Goya (ship)
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The Goya was a German transportation ship, carrying more than 6,000 Wehrmacht troops, many injured and refugees , which was ambushed and sunk by a Soviet submarine in 1945. Most of the passengers drowned, and the sinking of the Goya is considered one of the biggest maritime catastrophes ever.
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[edit] History of the Ship
The Goya was originally built as the freighter Akers in Oslo in 1940. The ship was 131 m long and and 17 m wide, and had a top speed of 18 knots. Following the German occupation of Norway, the ship was seized by Germany.
[edit] The Escape
In 1945, Goya was disguised as a refugee ship while it carried Wehrmacht troops from the Eastern Baltic to safety in the west. On 16 April 1945, the Goya was sailing from the Hel Peninsula, across the Baltic Sea to western Germany, overloaded with German troops fleeing from the Red Army, including the 35th Tank Regiment. The list of passengers documented 6,100 peoples on board, but it assumed that hundreds more, including civilians, boarded the ship, using every space available on the ship.
[edit] The Ambush
As the ship passed the Hel peninsula at the exit of the Danziger bay, it was sighted by the Soviet minelayer submarine L-3 which also carried torpedos. At around 23:52, the commander of L3, Captain Vladimir Konovalov, gave the order to fire.
Within only seven minutes of being torpedoed, the Goya sank to a depth of approximately 78 m, with the loss of more than 6,000 people drowned or frozen to death in the icy waters. The exact number can probably never be determined. Only 165 passengers were saved. It is probably the second worst maritime disaster by number of casualties inflicted on Germans during WWII (after the Wilhelm Gustloff).
Soviet Captain Konovalov was awarded the Soviet Union's highest military decoration, the honorary title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
[edit] Re-Discovery of the Wreck
Exactly 58 years after the sinking of the Goya, the wreck was discovered on 16 April 2003 by an international expedition under the direction of Ulrich Restemeyer with the help of 3D-Sonar scanning. The wreck lay at a depth of 76 m depth below the Baltic Sea and was in remarkably good condition.
[edit] References
- Mark Shteinberg, "Evrei v voinakh tysiachiletii." Moscow, Jerusalem: Gesharim, 2005, p. 302.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The expedition searching for the wreck of the Goya between the 12 – 22 April 2003 with the MS Fritz Reuter and a MDR-Team (in German)
