Italian submarine fates
Ships hit by Italian submarines
|Date of attack||7 Mar 1942||Time||0512|
2230 GMT/6 (e)
|Fate||Sunk by submarine Enrico Tazzoli (C.C. Carlo Fecia di Cossato)|
|Position of attack||30° 15'N, 67° 45'W|
|Complement||33 (no casualties, 33 survivors)|
|Notes||At 1836 hours on 6th March, a vessel was sighted steering 330° at a distance of 18,000 metres. The submarine trailed her by keeping at a respectful distance to avoid being seen and close after dark.|
At 0502 hours on 7th March, two torpedoes were fired from the bow tubes and hits were claimed after 45 and 48 seconds.
This was the Norwegian Tønsbergfjord (3,156 GRT, built 1930) on a voyage from Bombay to New York via Capetown and Trinidad. She had sailed from Trinidad on 1st March for the last leg of her trip when she was attacked. The survivors reported only one torpedo hit.
At 0512 hours, the Norwegian ship had been abandoned, but she was sinking slowly. The submarine fired 15 rounds to accelerate her destruction. There were no casualties and thirty-three survivors. One survivor was picked up by the Norwegian Arthur W. Sewall in 31°29' N, 67°49' W on 12th March and landed in Halifax on 19th March. Eighteen survivors linked up with thirty-one from Montevideo (sunk in the early hours of 9th March by Tazzoli) and were picked up by the Dutch Telamon on 13th March in 29°29' N, 70°00' W and landed at Jérémie (Haiti) on 16th March, the remainder were picked up the Norwegian Velma.