Slamat disaster
The three ships sank off the east coast of the Peloponnese during Operation Demon, which was the evacuation of British, Australian and New Zealand troops from Greece after their defeat by invading German and Italian forces.
[2] Slamat and a smaller troop ship, the 7,513 GRT Khedive Ismail managed by British-India Line, were ordered with the cruiser HMS Calcutta and a number of destroyers to Nauplia[3] and Tolon on the Argolic Gulf in the eastern Peloponnese.
However, on 26 April a Junkers Ju 87 Stuka attack disabled Glenearn,[6] so she put her LCAs ashore for use at Monemvasia and was towed to Souda Bay.
En route to Nauplia the convoy was attacked by aircraft and a number of bombs hit Slamat, causing heavy damage on B and C decks, destroying two of her lifeboats and wounding one crewman.
The Germans recognised that the ships would embark troops overnight and leave early the next morning (27 April), so General der Flieger Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, commander of the VIII.
[2] At 2340 hrs on 26 April the light cruisers Orion and HMAS Perth joined Khedive Ismail, Slamat, Calcutta and four destroyers in the Bay of Nauplia.
[2] The attackers mainly targeted the troop ships, but anti-aircraft fire from Calcutta and Diamond at first prevented aircraft from hitting Slamat.
Jung had served in the German navy, and back at Almyros airfield he complained very strongly that people in lifeboats had suffered enough so in future they should be spared.
Slamat was afire from stem to stern, and Diamond fired a torpedo at her port side that sank her in a coup de grâce.
Her Commissioned Engineer, Maurice Waldron, shut down her boilers and brought on deck a wounded Australian officer whom he had been looking after and put him in a Carley float.
[2] Lt Cdr Philip Cartwright, who commanded Diamond, was on a Carley float but gave his place to a sailor who was in the water.
Her four oars were serviceable, so Commissioned Engineer Waldron took command and she set off east past Cape Maleas, towing two Carley floats and their occupants.
[2] The last living survivor from Slamat,[9] Royal Army Service Corps veteran George Dexter, states that after Wryneck was sunk he and three other men were rescued by Orion.
[10] On the morning of 28 April the whaler was about 30 nautical miles (56 km) off Milos in the Aegean Sea, so she set course for the island.
At noon she sighted Ananes Rock, about 13 nautical miles (24 km) southeast of Milos, so Waldron decided to land there as everyone was exhausted.
The rock has a bay, where the whaler found a caïque full of Greek refugees and British soldiers who had set out from Piraeus, were headed for Crete, but were sailing only by night to avoid detection.
On the morning of 29 April the caïque sighted a small landing craft, A6, which had set out from Porto Rafti near Athens.
[2] Vice Admiral Pridham-Wippell held Slamat chiefly responsible of the disaster, asserting that her failure to depart until 75 minutes after she was ordered "resulted in her being within range of the dive bombers well after dawn.
The Dutch historian Karel Bezemer agreed that had Slamat obeyed orders and left on time, the convoy would not have been attacked.
The Germans knew the convoy would spend the night of 26–27 April evacuating troops from Nauplia and would not be far beyond the Argolic Gulf by daybreak.
Frans Luidinga blames the Royal Navy for including troop ships in the evacuation, asserting that only warships had the speed, manoeuvrability and firepower to return from Nauplia under fire.
And had the convoy been 20 nautical miles further south, Vendetta, Waterhen and Wryneck could have met it at 0800 instead of 0915 hrs, increasing both its anti-aircraft fire and capacity to rescue survivors.
The distance from Almyros allowed the same Stukas to make repeated attack runs, although on the flight back to base one stopped at Corinth to refuel.
The Admiralty may have been as concerned at the general risk arising from Allied and civilian ships not following Royal Navy orders, as at any direct loss that Luidinga's delay may or may not have caused.
From HMS Wryneck, Maurice Waldron received the Distinguished Service Cross and George Fuller the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.
The Admiralty took the unusual step of publishing in The London Gazette its citation for Fuller: "who, though badly wounded, fought his gun till the last, and when his ship was sunk, heartened the survivors by his courage and cheerfulness".
In August 1946 Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands wrote to Captain Luidinga's widow, expressing her sympathy for her husband's death, gratitude for his war service and commending him as een groot zoon van ons zeevarend volk ("a great son of our seafaring people").
It was installed in the Sint-Laurenskerk ("St Lawrence Church"), Rotterdam and formally unveiled on the 70th anniversary of the disaster, 27 April.
