Divers Claim Lusitania Carried Arms

[unhappycamper]

Divers Claim Lusitania Carried Arms
December 23, 2008
The Sunday Mirror

Divers have blown a hole in the history books after claiming the Lusitania passenger liner may have been an arms carrier.

The ship was sunk by a German U-boat eight miles off the Cork coast during World War I in 1915 amidst claims it was a legitimate target because it was smuggling guns.

Almost 1,200 lives were lost, including 128 Americans, when the Cunard vessel was travelling from New York to Liverpool on May 15.

There was outcry at the time as the Americans claimed the liner was a passenger vessel and should have never been attacked.

The sinking of the ship, which also had more than 100 children on board, sparked the Americans to join the war with the British and French.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/divers-claim-lusitania-carried-arms.html?col=1186032310810

[acmavm]

1. You betski. 3 million rounds of bullets sure justifies killing all

those civilians. :sarcasm:

And fucking shame on whoever/whatever was responsible for putting armaments on a civilian passenger liner. They killed those people if this is true.

[Gman]

2. They should have never made those passengers targets

by loading the ship with ammunition. After all, it was WWI.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Looks like wiki already updated

30. ^ Included in this cargo were 4,200,000 rounds of Remington 0.303 rifle cartridges, 1250 cases of 3 inch (76 mm) fragmentation shells, and eighteen cases of fuses. (All were listed on the ship's two-page manifest, filed with U.S. Customs after she departed New York on 1 May.) However, the materials listed on the cargo manifest were small arms and the physical size of this cargo would have been quite small. These munitions were also proven to be non-explosive in bulk, and were clearly marked as such. It was perfectly legal under American shipping regulations for her to carry these; experts agreed they were not to blame for the second explosion. Allegations the ship was carrying more controversial cargo, such as fine aluminium powder, concealed as cheese on her cargo manifests, have never been proven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania