SS Léopoldville was a passenger liner of the Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo. She was converted for use as a troopship in the Second World War, and on December 24, 1944, while sailing between Southampton and Cherbourg, was torpedoed and sunk by the . As a result, about 763 US soldiers and 56 of the ship's crew died.
Description
Léopoldville was long, with a beam of . She had a depth of and a draught of . Her tonnages were and until 1936, when they were revised to and .
She had of refrigerated cargo space.
The ship was built with two 1,019 nhp 4-cylinder quadruple-expansion steam engines which had cylinder diameters of diameter by stroke. The engines drove twin screw propellers.
In 1936 two Bauer-Wach low-pressure exhaust turbines were added, each driving one of the shafts via double-reduction gearing and a Föttinger fluid coupling. Each turbine ran on exhaust steam from the piston engine on the same shaft. The turbines increased Léopoldvilles total power to 1,197 NHP.
Service
She was built for the Compagnie Maritime Belge as the fifth to bear the name Léopoldville and initially served on the route between Belgium and its African colony, the Belgian Congo. Her Belgian Official Number was 120. Her code letters were MLTP until 1933–34, when they were superseded by the call sign ONLB.
When Belgium entered the second world war on 10 May 1940 with the German invasion of Belgium, the Léopoldville was returning from Matadi. She was diverted to La Pallice in France and remained there until 30 May. When the fall of France approached the ship left for Matadi where she arrived on 19 June. On 30 July Léopoldville left for New York, arrived on 17 August and the next month she left for Liverpool. In Liverpool she ws modified into a troopship. On 11 November Léopoldville started her career as a troop transport with three trips to Saint John, New Brunswick with a thousand Royal Air Force recruits which will receive training in Canada. The ship was not fit for North-Atlantic conditions and suffered damage in each journey. Léopoldville was reallocated to the South-Atlantic and transferred troops between Freetown, Cape Town, Durban, Mombasa and Suez. On each trip she had on average 2,000 troops on board. Between November 1942 and January 1943 Léopoldville was operating between Glasgow and Algiers, ferrying troops for the North African campaign. From 29 January 1943 on, she was back on the routes between Suez and Africa. In July 1943 she participated in the Allied invasion of Sicily. Until April 1944 Léopoldville remained in the Mediterranean Sea, transferring troops between Gibraltar, Algiers, Bône, Augusta, Port Said and Suez. End April Léopoldville is back in Glasgow for a refit in preparation for Operation Overlord. On D-day Léopoldville left Southend-on-Sea for Portsmouth in convoy. On 8 June she unloads troops at the beaches in Normandy. Between 7 June and 24 December Léopoldville made 24 trips between The Solent and Normandy, transferring 53,217 troops. During the war she transported a total of 124,220 troops.
Sinking
Léopoldville was hastily loaded for the Battle of the Bulge with 2,223 reinforcements from the 262nd and 264th Regiments, 66th Infantry Division of the United States Army. The soldiers' regimental command structure was fragmented by loading troops as they arrived rather than according to their units. A 24-man DEMS detachment manned defensive guns. The ship's Belgian crew, including 93 Africans from the Belgian Congo, received orders in Flemish. Captain Charles Limbor, who assumed command in 1942, spoke no English. There was an insufficient number of life jackets, and few troops participated in the poorly supervised lifeboat drill as Léopoldville sailed from Southampton at 09:00 24 December as part of convoy WEP-3 across the English Channel to Cherbourg. Léopoldville was in a diamond formation with four escorts; the destroyers and , the frigate , and the French frigate , and another troopship, Cheshire.