The Germans figured out their naval code had been cracked and they also somehow kept launching and crewing subs almost every day right up to November! Unbelievable!
The incident was only a few miles off the coast so it is tragic that the first batch of rescued crew weren’t dumped off nearby by HMS Brilliant and then Brilliant sent back to retrieve the rest!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_L%C3%A9opoldville_(1929)
One of the escort destroyers, HMS Brilliant, came alongside the stricken vessel. Soldiers on the Léopoldville jumped down onto the smaller Brilliant. The destroyer could take only a few hundred of the men and headed for the shore. No further rescue attempt was made, and some 1,200 men were left aboard.[7] USS PC-1225 also rescued survivors.[8] The Léopoldville stayed afloat for two and a half hours after the torpedo hit before finally sinking, stern first.[7]
Woman lost dad she never knew when SS Leopoldville was sunk Dec. 24, 1944
Joy Hayes Norton looks like the father she doesn’t remember.
He was a U.S. soldier named Albert Hayes. He was from Allentown. He could play the piano by ear.
Norton, 72, owes her “classic Irish beauty,” as her daughter calls it, to Hayes. But Norton only knows the few details her family shared over the years, and they were tight-lipped about Albert. Mostly, the man she calls Father is a voice on a dusty phonograph or a guy in fatigues holding a baby in black-and-white photos. His eyes look like hers.
On Christmas Eve 70 years ago, Pfc. Albert Hayes was aboard the SS Leopoldville crossing the English Channel with the Army’s 66th Infantry Division en route to the Battle of the Bulge. Early that evening, as the Leopoldville approached the French coast, a torpedo from a German U-boat slammed into her side.
Read more:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-christmas-eve-leopoldville-20141223-story.html#page=1