LINER QUEEN MARY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 233, 2 October 1943, Page 5

LINER QUEEN MARY

VITAL PART PLAYED IN WAR OPERATIONS

Recd. 6 p.m. London, Sept. 30. Although it is common knowledge that the liner Queen Mary has been playing a most important role m a troop transport during the war, the extent of her travels only now’ can be disclosed. She played perhaps the biggest individual part in saving the situation at El Alamein in the summer of 1943. In the same year she transported thousands of American soldiers.

Once she steamed right through a pack of submarines, estimated to number 25, and not one had time to get a torpedo trained on her. She once went out from England with men and stores representing half a fully equipped division. Her passage from England round the Cape and north to Suez, 12,000 miles, wai made in a few weeks. The Queen Mary was one of the most marked ships in the world, and Axis agenta everywhere have done their best to warn the enemy navies of her movements. Once the German pocket battleship Luetzow was specially disnatched, to the Atlantic to destroy her. 1

Last winter, when fully laden with American troops, the Queen Mary ran into a terrific gale and a giant wave swept her broadside on. She listed till her upper decks were awash. Officers afterwards said they were convinced she could never right herself and her safety depended on five Inches. Had she gone thorn inches further the Queen Mary would have been no more.