The Silent Queen

Having made 'Europe First' the cornerstone of its World War II policy, the United States was faced with the massive problem of transporting more than a million troops from ports of New York and Boston to Great Britain.The key ships were RMS Queen Elizabeth and her sister ship RMS Queen Mary. Owned by Cunard Lines and chartered to the British Admiralty, each of them were capable of carrying an entire infantry division of 15,000 troops across the North Atlantic in six days. Their movements were among the most clandestine of the entire war.For months, an argument raged over the manner in which the Queens would travel. Alone, they could maintain more than thirty knots. In a convoy, they would have the protection of escorts, but they would then be limited to the speed of the slowest ship in the group, too frequently less than seven knots. The final decision was to let them run alone and use their speed to avoid the menace of submarines.On 27 September 1942, Queen Mary left New York crammed with 15,000 troops of the 29th Infantry Division bound for Greenock, Scotland. Following prescribed procedure, she zigzagged alternately left and right, never spending more than ten minutes on a particular leg.Five days later, off the coast of Ireland, she was met by escorts sent to see her safely into the Firth of Clyde. Still maintaining her evasive maneuvers, she collided with HMS Curacao, a light cruiser designed to provide anti-aircraft cover for her final run to port. Within three minutes, the shattered halves of Curacao sank while Queen Mary continued to Scotland. Of the 410 crewmen aboard the cruiser when she left port, only 72, including her Captain, survived.The security lid was slammed tight under the penalty of death, but was it too late? We can imagine a panicked voice revealing the collision, a voice heard by a listening post in occupied France.The Chief of German Submarines might believe he now knew enough to risk an attack resulting in the greatest naval victory of the war, a maritime disaster twelve times that of Titantic. First, he had to find an attacker, and he had to pinpoint the Queen's next port of call in North American.There was one submarine on its way to America. True, it had a problem caused when it failed to make contact with a refueling submarine. Still, it was carrying a special passenger who could provide the extra margin needed to make an attack successful, someone who could locate the particular port and provide the necessary communications to make it work.The Grossadmiral might have envisioned a concerted defense by a large country with immense resources, but he would have been comforted to know the final obstacles would be a railroad employee who had been rejected for military service, a navy Commander who had been put on the beach with a bad heart, and a Coast Guard cutter with empty depth charge racks. There was a grand lady from Clyde, Her royal name a symbol of pride. But, stripped of ermine and sable Her gray frock knew no label, While in torn oceans she hastened to hide.