| SS GOYA (April 16, 1945)
A passenger/cargo ship (5,230 tons) built in Norway for the Hamburg America Line, it was taken over by the German Navy to help in the evacuations from the Hela Penninsula in the Bay of Danzig. It had taken on board the remnants of the 35th Tank Regiment and thousands of pleading refugees. When sixty miles off the port of Stolpe near Cape Rozewie, she was attacked by the Russian submarine L-3 commanded by Captain Vladimir Konovalov. Two torpedoes were fired, hitting the Goya amidships. Immediately the ship broke in half and sank in about four minutes. Of the estimated 6,385 people on board, only 183 were rescued. For this episode, Konovalov was awarded the medal, ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’.In spite of the huge losses suffered during the evacuations (Operation 'Hannibal' and often referred to as Germany's Dunkirk) around two million people, including 700,000 soldiers, were saved, thus avoiding capture by the Red Army.
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On weald of Kent I watched once more
Again I heard that grumbling roar
Of fighter planes; yet none were near
And all around the sky was clear
Borne on the wind a whisper came
'Though men grow old, they stay the same'
And then I knew, unseen to eye
The ageless Few were sweeping by
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