Destroy This Message > All of it is TOTAL FRAUD!

reply to RARPSL

Re: All of it is TOTAL FRAUD!

The British didn't so much as send the Lusitania into harms way, more as they knew it was in harms way but failed to do anything to protect it. Winston Churchill himself was reported to have said something along the lines of "If the Lusitania is sunk by the U-boats it will help bring the US into the war on our side" prior to it happening. It was also known that the Germans knew the ship was carrying war materials and had been modified to carry naval guns and so was a legitimate target of war.

The Lusitania was hit by one torpedo and sank incredibly quickly--- at that time, despite the warnings of U-Boats, nobody had ever thought of the idea of closing inner doors and hatches within the ship. Basically, all the coal storage bunkers were open, all the hatches and doorways that ran the length of the ship and engineering spaces were all latched open, etc etc. The water was free to flood every compartment of the ship without resistance, leading to the extremely rapid sinking (12 minutes from time of torpedo impact till ship went completely under). Given the size of the ship, nobody believed it could have sunk so quickly. There was a second explosion, and even the British Admiralty had thought the German torpedo had caused a secondary explosion in the contraband munitions which blew out the Hull and caused the rapid sinkage. It has since been proven that that isn't true--- the munitions never exploded, the second explosion was actually a boiler exploding as the cold sea water hit it.

In many ways, the Lustinana disaster is much like the Titanic. There are a lot of "If Only's" ie "If only such and such had been done, then it would of never happened..." etc. Example: If the coal bunker door had been closed (The bunker was empty, and so the door being open was unnecessary... it was just standard practice that noone ever bothered to close them when they were emptied) the ship would not have even sunk.

Simulations reveal that if the coal bunkers were closed, the ship would at a minimum taken 4 torpedoes, evenly spaced along the length of the ship to sink it... and even then it should have taken more then an hour to sink, enough time to launch the boats and for rescuers arrived (remember she sank in sight of the English Coast). 11 miles offshore, I believe.

A few years after the disaster policies were changed so that ships at sea would keep hatches and doors shut when not in use. Someone finally figured out having them all open made it a lot easier to sink.

Wow, that was a nice ramble...