Hi All,
Last weekend my wife and I went out to Long Beach, CA. and stayed at the Queen Mary and while touring the promenade deck I came across a section of displays showing some of the history of it's wartime service as a troop ship in WW2 and in the display was a very nicely done diorama of the Queen Mary during an accident with another ship.
October 1942 occurred the worst tragedy of the ship's history. On the last leg of a voyage from the United States to Gourock in Scotland, Queen Mary was met by a small flotilla of Royal Navy vessels assigned to escort the ship across the Irish Sea. The task of guarding the liner from air attack was given to the 4,290-ton light cruiser HMS Curacoa(1918). The cruiser had a maximum speed of 25 knots and the Captain knew the liner would overtake his vessel. He signalled to Captain of the Queen Mary his intention to edge in astern of the liner. Less than two hours later the two vessels collided. People aboard Queen Mary felt no more than a bump, but Curacoa was sliced in half as the liner ploughed through her, and 329 of the 430 crew were lost. The whole incident was hidden under a veil of secrecy until after the war. The most likely cause was found to be interaction between the two ships, which pulled the cruiser into the liner's path.
Here's a link ofpictures I took and the best of the ones that came out...lol
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v229/SonsofAsgard/QueenMarydiorama/
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