I have decided to make a separate episode of the Queen Mary’s service during WW2. Although it is general knowledge that she served as a troopship the detail and consequences of her service are not widely known. This is due to the extremely high level of security surrounding her service during the war and the fog of years after that when things to do with the war were preferably forgotten or became irrelevant.
Her service during WW2 could only be described as stunning. Winston Churchill stated that she, along with her sister ship Queen Elizabeth, shortened the war by a whole year.
Adolf Hitler was equally aware of her importance to the allied war effort. He posted a reward to the skipper of any U-boat that torpedoed her of 1 million Deutschmarks and the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. No U-boat captain ever came close to winning the prize.
In August 1939 war in Europe was imminent. Queen Mary was nearing the end of her normal Atlantic crossing from New York when she was escorted by the battleship HMS Hood for the last leg. Once there she loaded again and embarked for New York. In the midst of that voyage war was declared and she was ordered to remain in New York. The USA was a neutral country at the time and far from the dangers of German bombers.
RMS Queen Mary arriving in New York harbour during World War II
At the same time,Queen Elizabeth was completed at John Brown’s Shipyard in Scotland and her sea trials were to be conducted en route to Southampton where her maiden voyage would begin. The Germans knew of this timetable and U-boats congregated at the approaches to Southampton.
On leaving Clydebank, the captain was handed a sealed envelope with strict instructions not to open it until he was in the open sea. When he opened it he read a new set of orders that the ship was to sail at top speed on a zig zag course to New York and remain there to await further orders.
On the day she was due to arrive at Southampton, a pack of U-boats was waiting but by that time she was half way to New York. On March 7th, 1940 she steamed up the Hudson River and settled in her berth next to Queen Mary. Also berthed alongside was the French liner Normandie and thus for a brief period the three biggest and fastest ships in the world were berthed together for what turned out to be the first and last time.
From a welding accident while undergoing repairs at her berth, Normandie caught fire. A crewman who was familiar with the ship’s layout suggested that they open the sea cocks, flood the ship and let her settle on the bottom so that the water flooding in would douse the fire. His advice was discarded. “This is a job for the Navy” said the officious officer in charge of the firefighting vessels. The Navy poured thousands of gallons of water onto the ship, she became top heavy then capsized at her berth and was lost forever.
Queen Mary was no stranger to the ravages of war. During her last peace time voyages in 1938 and 1939 she carried many Jewish refugees to the safety of North America. Her cabin space had been altered to increase the carrying capacity from 2,500 to 5,000. On that last fateful peace time voyage war was declared on 3rd September, 1939 and immediately the captain ordered all port holes to be painted black and all external lights doused at night. She arrived safely in New York on 5th September, 1939.
During the voyage a noted celebrity, Bob Hope was a passenger. The captain persuaded Bob to put on a show to ease the tension among the passengers who were now travelling on a moving target. Bob readily obliged and put on his show not just for the 1st Class passengers but for 2nd and 3rd Class as well.
John Pierpont Morgan, the great financier was also a passenger. He gave up his 1st Class cabin so that some 3rd Class passengers would not have to sleep in the corridors.
From that point on the ship was under orders from the British Admiralty but under operational control of Cunard with Cunard crews. She was never commandeered by the Royal Navy, was always RMS and never an HMS. Her orders were to paint the entire ship battleship grey like all Royal Navy vessels. Her ship’s crew were repatriated to England and joined the Royal Navy leaving only a skeleton crew to maintain the ship and carry out orders. She acquired a new nick-name, the Grey Ghost. While the repainting was underway all of the ship’s interior fittings and luxury equipment were removed onto safe land storage. The works of art were all removed and the magnificent wood panelling was covered with leather for its protection.
She was to be converted to a troop transport as was her sister ship. On 21st March, 1940 she quietly slid down the Hudson River, made a sharp turn to starboard to avoid the packs of U-boats waiting just beyond US territorial waters and was on her way to Singapore for refitting as a troop ship via Trinidad, the Cape of Good Hope and Trincomalee in Ceylon (Now Sri Lanka) for re-fuelling.
On arrival in Singapore all of her internal fittings were removed, 11 rocket launchers and 33 ack-ack guns were fitted together with extra wooden lifeboats and other wartime ship’s equipment. She was also fitted with a degaussing strip to reduce her magnetic field and avoid setting off any nearby mines. She was then re-floated and set sail for Sydney, Australia for further fitting out.
On 4th May, 1940 she left Sydney with 5,000 Aussie troops on board together with their equipment bound for Scotland escorted by ships from the Australian Navy as part of a fleet but she soon outran the escorts and demonstrated her most valuable form of defence; sheer speed to outrun anything else afloat. After she reached open water escort vessels left her to her own devices. Nobody other than the captain and the Admiralty knew what her orders were but one of these orders was that she was to NEVER stop for ANYTHING. Her zig zag courses were predetermined so that enemy vessels could not anticipate what her course would be or what her destination was.
In those early voyages she was transporting troops to England, Scotland and the Suez Canal where the Australians and British Armies were defending that lifeline. As the fighting in North Africa intensified it became too dangerous for her to enter the Red Sea so her last two cargoes of troops were offloaded at Bombay and shuttled to Suez in smaller groups on smaller ships.
In June, 1942, Rommel had the British 8th Army cornered near the town of El Alamein. At the critical moment the Queen appeared over the horizon carrying the Australian 9th Division complete with all of its equipment and 12,000 fresh troops. This turned the tide of battle and it is now a part of history how the 9th Division, which was given control of the right flank of the line, got around the beaches and into the German rear to win this famous battle.
To accommodate up to 15,000 troops on a voyage put great strains on the available space. Men were stacked 12 to a cabin originally designed for two and the solution was “hot beds”. Men were given 6 hours to sleep in a bunk. Then they had to change places and allow another group to use them. Conditions were hot as the ship was not equipped with air conditioning in these areas so many men went up on deck and slept there in the open which was much cooler. Meals were eaten in six shifts twice per day with 45 minutes between sittings. The ship was the favourite of all who travelled on her because her vast refrigerated storage space allowed fresh meat and produce to be used for meals rather than the canned food served on lesser ships.
To keep the ship in balance it was divided into three sections with an identifying colour for each. Every soldier was given a coloured badge corresponding with his place on the ship and he had to stay within his allocated colour area. This placed a huge burden on the troops as the ship was being used mainly in tropical waters. Many suffered from heat stroke and there were some deaths although the exact number has never been disclosed. The lack of air conditioning was aggravated by the concentration of bodies all giving off heat in the crowded lower decks.
Until the USA entered the war both Queens were engaged in transporting Australian troops. After Pearl Harbour Japanese activity in these seas increased and the ships were then transferred to the North Atlantic carrying American and Canadian troops to England.
In April, 1942 a plan called Operation Bolero was conceived by the Pentagon. The plan was to transfer over 2,000,000 troops from North America to England for building up a force large enough to invade Europe. The entire Cunard fleet was handed over to American control for this purpose with the two Queens each carrying over 15,000 troops to Clydebank in Scotland and returning with 5,000 prisoners confined to the forward holds.
One of the most hazardous parts of these trips was passing across the northern tip of Ireland as the ships slowed down preparatory to entering the Clyde River in Scotland. U-boats concentrated in this area and escort vessels were sent out to meet the approaching transports. On one of these trips the Queen Mary collided with her escort vessel, the cruiser HMS Curacoa, cutting it in two with the loss of 338 men. As the Queen was under orders never to stop for anything she just kept going. The incident was never disclosed to the public until well after the war ended. The accident was caused by a misunderstanding. The skipper of Curacoa thought he had the right of way being approaching to starboard of Queen Mary which was the standard rule of the sea. The skipper of the Queen knew he had right of way over all shipping regardless of maritime conventions but the skipper of the cruiser did not realise or did not know of that rule until it was too late and his ship was sliced in half, both halves sinking within minutes. Sailors thrown into the water were sucked under by the 18 foot diameter propellers of the Queen and chopped to pieces.
Queen Mary sustained damage to her bow but her watertight compartments confined the damage to that area. Once at Clydebank and having discharged her cargo of troops the damage was inspected and it was decided that she would be too vulnerable to German bombing attacks to put her into dry dock for repair so she set sail once again and limped back across the Atlantic to Boston where the repairs were carried out.
In December, 1942 another near disaster occurred. She was carrying a load of 16,000 troops when a very severe storm struck. The ship was ploughing through waves up to 65 feet high and as she slid backwards into a trough between two of them a rogue wave 90 feet high hit her on the starboard side. The ship rolled to an angle of 52 degrees from the vertical. Had she gone another 3 degrees she would have capsized with the loss of all on board. However the power of her engines and strength of her rudder slowly enabled her to right herself. Those on board thought she had been hit by a torpedo and some mild panic ensued before the crew were able to placate the troops. This was the only near death experience the ship had in all her time afloat.
One regular passenger on these trips was an officer named Colonel Warden. It was common practice for senior personnel to travel to the USA for planning conferences but they were always done in great secret. Colonel Warden boarded the ship at 4.00 am unseen. He always used the same cabin and conference room. His name in real life was Winston Churchill and he made these trips quite frequently unknown to all but a very, very few right up until the decision was taken for the invasion of Normandy.
On 25th July, 1943 she carried her biggest load ever. 16,683 souls bound for Scotland were on board when a huge explosion occurred about 300 yards off the port bow. The cause was never known but it is thought that the ship had set off a mine.
On a critical journey to the USA in August 1943, Churchill arranged for models of his plan for the Mulberry Harbours to be used on D Day to be brought to his cabin. Together with one of his admirals they experimented with the models in his bathtub until the design was perfected, the ship’s motion providing the waves in the bathtub. It was on this voyage that Churchill and his fellow allied planners finalised the plans for the last great battles of the war.
The transporting of such large numbers of men posed a risk of vandalism on the ship. At the start of each voyage the commander addressed the men with a request that they do not carve their names on any of the internal woodwork or fittings. Instead he allocated a 6 metre strip of the handrail where they could carve their names if they wished. These requests were always honoured by the troops on board and at war’s end Cunard wanted to preserve that section of rail as a tribute to the thousands of men who were transported on her. Unfortunately during her restoration after her wartime services ended the rail was cleaned up and the carved names lost but Cunard did preserve one 6 foot section and presented it to the US Army Archives.
When the war in Europe ended in May, 1945 the two Cunard Queens were still not finished. Thousands of American and Canadian service men and women had to be brought home.Queen Elizabeth carried the Canadians to Halifax. Queen Mary took the Americans to New York. In January, 1946 Queen Mary underwent another refit. This time was to carry thousands of war brides and their children to America to join their husbands. Her funnels were repainted in traditional Cunard format but the hull remained grey. On completion of this final task, the two Queens were handed back to their owners to undergo a refit for civilian passenger travel. The refit took 9 months with many more modern improvements, her furnishings and art objects and crockery were returned.
For 6 years the Queen Mary had served the allied cause with great distinction. She had evaded every attempt that the Germans made to torpedo her but due to the very strict censorship about her movements the general public were largely unaware of the outstanding service she rendered. Without the service provided by the two Queens the war in Europe would not have ended when it did. The build-up of men and materials needed to undertake the invasion of Normandy would not have been achieved in that timetable. If the invasion did not occur in the summer of 1944 the onset of the northern winter would have deferred it until the summer of 1945. Who knows what effect that would have had on the thousands of GI’s who were already in England waiting for the great day. Morale is a difficult thing to maintain when troops are idle and that extra year may well have meant the difference between success and failure.
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