Rohna was sunk in the Mediterranean in November 1943 by a Henschel Hs 293 guided glide bomb launched by a Luftwaffe aircraft.

[1] On 31 October 1927, Rohna was moored to a buoy in Madras Harbour in India when a weather signal and falling air pressure warned of the approach of a tropical cyclone.

[5] By 0700 hrs on 1 November, a heavy swell was running within the harbour, at times lifting the four-ton mooring buoy completely out of the water.

[6] Weighing anchor would take about 20 minutes, so in the meantime Carré had Rohna get under way to avoid being run onto the harbour breakwater.

[6] Eventually Rohna was able to make for the harbour mouth and put to sea and head 20 miles south to where the storm was less severe.

[8] On 15 March 1940 Rohna returned through the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean, where she operated unescorted between Bombay, Rangoon, and Colombo until June.

The day after the Iraqi coup d'état in April 1941 Rohna was ordered to Karachi, whence she took some of the first elements of Iraqforce to Basra in Convoy BP 2.

From March 1942 Rohna spent a year criss-crossing the Indian Ocean between Bombay, Karachi, Colombo, Basra, Aden, Suez, Khorramshahr, Bandar Abbas, Bahrain, and Âbâdân; sometimes in convoys, but much of the time unescorted.

About 17:15 or 17:25 an He 177A piloted by Hans Dochtermann released a glide bomb that hit Rohna on her port side at the after end of her engine room and Number Six troop deck.

[3] The impact was about 15 feet (5 m) above the water line, but it flooded the engine room, knocked out all electrical equipment including her pumps, and set the ship ablaze.

The Auk-class minesweeper USS Pioneer and cargo ship Clan Campbell fell behind the convoy to rescue survivors, protected by the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Atherstone, which made a smokescreen and gave anti-aircraft cover.

[3] After night fell, Atherstone switched from anti-aircraft cover to rescuing survivors and the tug Mindful arrived from Bougie and joined the operation.

By February 1944 the US Government had acknowledged that more than 1,000 soldiers had been lost in the sinking of an unnamed troopship in European waters, but it hinted that a submarine was responsible.

The use of an "aerial glider bomb" was first reported publicly on 14 November 1945 in an account of the battle in the Salt Lake City Tribune.

On 9 March 1947 the Chicago Tribune published a complete account of the attack including the use of a "radio-controlled [sic] glider bomb."

In 1948 a history of British India Line in the Second World War was published stating "the missile was one of the new glider bombs guided by wireless.

"[11] The US Government officially released the remaining details of the incident, specifically that a radio-controlled glide bomb had been used, in 1967 after the passing of the Freedom of Information Act.

[13] In 1962, the traffic median of the Esplanade[14] in Bronx, New York, at the corner of Astor Avenue, was named in memory of Private Sidney Weissman, a local resident killed in the sinking of the Rohna.

[16] In 1998 Dr James G. Bennett, who lost a brother in the sinking, published a book, The Rohna Disaster, through the self-publishing service Xlibris.

In it he alleges that the heavy loss of life was due to the incompetence and cowardice of the Rohna's lascar crew and faulty safety procedures and equipment aboard.

Wartime reports by the lieutenant colonel in command of the US troops aboard, and by Rohna's second officer and other survivors, contradict Bennett's allegations.