Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 92: SS Leopoldville

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

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Hello and welcome to well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him Okay, I am I am Alice called well Kelly. I am the person talking now my pronouns are she and her. Yeah, Liam Yeah, Liam, buddy. Thanks, Alice My name is Liam Anderson. My pronouns are he and him and I'm going to burn this fucking ground For good reason Pharmacies, yeah

Darned out early with the actionable threats. I see right to the ground, buddy Right to the ground It's it's a very special holly jolly tinsel covered Merry Christmas episodes of well, there's your problem I want to be very clear that if if and when Jesus comes back from the second time, we will be putting him down We will not fuck that up twice. That's that's more appropriate for Easter, Liam Well, dude Listen

I am pleased to announce my diarrhea from last episode has straightened itself out Oh, yeah, we are we're now back to being a regular podcast in Like battle movements if not in release schedule Uh, we'll never we'll never be one of those podcasts I got my Got my covid boaster this morning. So, you know, I'm feeling great and happy Yeah, I've been up way too long and I'm tired as hell and Liam is homicidally angry more than usual Oh, yes. Yeah, uh, I

I gotta accompany my mother to the pharmacy tomorrow to pick up her her meds Uh, which they just the decided not to fill for the last two weeks My mother needs that medication and so, uh What I'm gonna do is I'm going to get a some sort of howitzer And strapping up to the gti

Yes, and then I and then I will ask them is this a technical as they are burning running screening for their lives Well, no, that will likely be trailer mounted artillery Yeah, and then as I as I as I plunder the the Walgreens for all of their skittles Hopefully they have the skittle smoothies variant Uh, I will I will then uh, I will I will take the pharmacist and I will march him into the square For being very rude to my mother You know, you really you really are making me, you know, really use that bleeper right now. Absolutely. Yeah And on top of on top of all of this

Uh, fucking Spotify has seen fit to like to assassinate us To extrajudicially assassinate our podcast from its airwaves I have some theories as to why this occurred, but I have no idea Well, we'll we'll we'll fix it through a process of uh yelling at people until someone gives us what we want I don't think you can yell at people. It's an algorithm. It doesn't respond to intimidation Well, that that just means that the intimidation hasn't been devised yet And I have faith that if anyone can intimidate the algorithm as Liam That's me, baby

That's me, baby Um Okay, uh get your booster if you can uh, don't see anybody everyone's dead. Uh, Fuck this government, uh as always Yeah Doesn't matter anymore. Oh, yeah I still wear a mask wear a mask wear a like a A KN 95 or whatever if you can find one you can afford it. If not, just you know, do your best

Because what you see on the screen in front of you is a boat Mm-hmm. I see this I see the boat It's from belgium Oh No, yeah, well, that's why it's called the leopold bill the the racist boats They might as well just have put the n word in real big stencil font. Oh, that's that too. That's yeah the other side of the boat. Yeah Yes, we see it's bilingual. They have to have in like uh flow motion while own Yes, this is this is the ss leopold bill

Which was a belgium liner Which was pressed into service as a troopship in war two For the second most racist country on earth the bridge That's right back-to-back racism champs. Yes And and today we're gonna learn about what befell it Yeah, a magical story about the power and the true meaning of christmas And and normally we don't do like military incidents. We're like, you know, oh the boat that's my other podcast Yeah, that's liam's other podcast, but this one this one was definitely a crisis of organization

And just general it was it was sort of a all around a uh, a clusterfuck Yeah, sort of like completely unnecessary This is like hostile action part of this is not the part that we're interested in as an engineering disaster the fucking The like the nazi part of this worked perfectly as far as they were concerned. This is true. Yes operated to design But first we have to do the goddamn news Well, we have something good we can like boost all of our moods. Yes uh, because the chilean presidential election

Which was between a a nice uh democratic socialist progressive who likes trees and climbing trees Um and has kind of like a bromance with pedro pascal Uh versus a guy whose dad was literally a nazi whose brother was literally uh in pinnish's government And who you know, it's basically a nazi himself Um, we're the boric our guy won the good guy Yes, well good things can happen. Yeah, good things can happen. It wasn't even close. Um

I was I was getting nervous because the polls going down to the election were getting really really close There was one that was literally 50 50 like point zero But no in in in this case, um, uh, Jose Antonio Castes, uh conceded It was you know Not I would say like a landslide, but it was a more resounding victory than anyone thought and a lot of chileans are Very very happy as well. They should be They're going to rewrite the constitution to you know, possibly make it more of a democracy, which will be nice um

And you know people are thinking maybe this is like the the sort of the herald of the second Coming of like the pink tides that's going to sweep in because because lula's probably going to become Uh president of brazil absent any surprises It's been a couple of other elections. Uh, we're we're socialists and progressive have won. I think uh on duras and Can't think of the other one, but yeah, no, so I I don't know how optimistic to be about this But the good news is um, they might have a harder time

assassinating our guy bodice Uh, because now all of the cia have Havana syndrome that they've given themselves. Good point. Yeah That's a really great opportunity for green energy because they can hook a dynamo up to, uh, augusto pinochet's corpse spinning in his grave Well, I I'm just enjoying the sort of like uh the the cope and the seeds from people who are like, uh, you know This is a left-wing extremist who has defeated, uh, moderate, uh Moderate sort of investor friendly and then at that point what you do is you go to jose Antonio cast's wikipedia page Then you find his dad go to his wikipedia page

Save the photo of his dad, which is him and his nazi uniform Post that in their replies and go yo, who's dad is this? I like the one where the bbc decided we're going to interview the man in the street And the man in the street Yeah, it just happened to be His name was pinochet Not just his name like you don't you do a joke about like no relation, but he was related to him Now we found just a random guy he happened to you know, there's loads of these guys in uh chile

I like to uh pinochet's Enforcement of prima nachta Well, I mean boric and his like um his Congratulations speech. He said something I I liked where he said neoliberalism was born in chile and it'll die in chile. It'll be It's graveyard Yeah Uh, and if you if you want to get very sentimental about this because if if you're not familiar, uh, augusta pinochet The fascist dictator of chile for many years was uh was swept into power in a sort of cia

organized and backed military coup that assassinated the elected marxist president salvador aende And as aende gave his like final sort of speech is that the air force was bombing the radio stations. He says Workers of my country. I have faith in chile and its destiny Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail and uh Yeah, it turns out that other men are like sensitive tree chads. Yes

God bless our sensitive tree chad president boy. Mm-hmm. Absolutely Long may he reign is this The slide i'm looking at please tell me this is actual campaign campaign material Yes You can tell but yes, you can tell by the watermark somebody did it. I thought I saw the water rocket. I was like, yeah, okay, like He's he's he did he ran a very meme heavy campaign or it will make uh anime real Yes, yes

I do want to say on a serious note Uh By the time this goes up the birds will have played the dastardly and awful washington football team Sports are all going to be canceled. But before that happens fuck dan snider For uh obstructing an investigation into Accusations that he sexually assaulted someone. Hmm and trying to get her not to talk to a dc detective Uh, that's my bad. Jew of the week

I don't think we should make that a regular segment. No, I don't think so Because it would just be dan snider every week If 57th consecutive back to back to back No, you can you can go do that on uh 10 000 losses. Uh, yeah, I got the hell out of here with this Stick to sports. Yeah All right So that that was the news about orich Now you gotta talk about

Bad stuff bad stuff bad stuff Right off the bat. Have you read king leopold's ghost? I have not that should be uh, I want to plug that book Uh, that opened my of that. Uh, my dad when I was in the ninth grade Uh threw it at my head and told me to read it Uh, so I could and I'm quoting directly here make myself less stupid I I love the little like vignettes of liam's dad we get in these podcasts Yeah, my my dad, uh He collects stamps and so

Uh instilled in me very young a hatred of the belgians for which I am eternally grateful Well, what has to do the other I'm not sure but Yeah, so we're talking about the belgian congo, which is possibly the purest form of uh of colonialism and also like The most like in the hearts of men. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely And it sort of starts in a dumb way, right leopold the second of belgium He wanted a colony for belgium. He's like we're big boys. We need a colony, right? We wanted a colony for himself and he ran uh, he ran a parliamentary or a constitutional monarchy, right? So the civil government wasn't there with him, right? Right. Um, so leopold the second sort of

decided to negotiate his way into a meeting About partitioning africa. I think it was in berlin. I forget when it was The boy conference 1880. Yeah, what I want to say the original like scramble for africa All right. Well, actually like the second wave of it And he managed to secure for himself not for belgium, but for himself 905,000 square miles of central africa, which uh Was shortly thereafter named the congo free state, right? Because the belgians love irony

Yes And 1884 to 1885 by the way, so I was a little Leopold the second was an absolute monarch in this colony as opposed to a constitutional monarch back home Right. So of course he goes he goes and goes ahead and's like, well, we need to exploit all these resources, right? Let's uh, let's enslave and terrorize the population. That's a good idea Yeah, the resource here is mostly rubber, which was becoming more and more valuable every day But which also required a shitload of like arduous manual labor to extract Yeah, and they thoroughly like exploit the land all the national natural resources

They brutalize everyone who gets in the way of this You know punishment was all nasty brutal people got tortured mutilation was very common people get their hands cut off Yeah, any old thing Incredibly incredibly gruesome stuff. We can't really say enough How bad all the shit was on even for a colonial africa? Yeah And the thing is uh leopold swung this at the berlin conference by suggesting that it was a like a humanitarian Yes, he did. Yes, initiative. Yeah

Again, you begin to see why uh, particularly in um, uh, in africa a lot of people are very suspicious of uh, NGO's doing philanthropic and humanitarian work. History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme um So in 1904 a guy named roger acement. He was irish he went to the belt the the congo free stay and sort of reported on all the uh Horrific crap that was going on down there, right? Yeah, and of course this ended all of the abuse because and sort of a you know

Um What's the fucking aron sorkin show about how about the fucking press the newsroom at the newsroom? Yeah, he he roger casement did the newsroom on on the congo free state and everything got better, right? Well The report when it came out was so bad that there was actually a lot of international pressure on the belgians to do something about this, right? Um, and what they decided to do was in 1908 They formally annexed the congo free state and it became the belgian congo, right? Yeah, they they took away leopold's sort of like, uh, you know toy murders a rector a rector genocide set. Yeah, exactly Yeah, um, and and this sort of marginally improved conditions in the country, but most of the same people were in charge

Um, a lot of the same, you know, the same economy was there Maybe you weren't cutting off as many people's hands, but it still was an unpleasant place to be, right? I thought we had learned that marginally improving was all we could ever do. Yeah, and then incidentally We should be grateful for the scraps, right? Yeah goes back to island Sort of incidentally takes part in the easter rising and is then executed by us the british. So Oh, congratulations. Mm-hmm. Yep and um, and so, uh the congo remained part of, um

belgium until 1960 when they managed to get independence Right and now they're the democratic republic of the congo, right? Yes So now with that being said when you have a colony you need means to access that colony So a whole bunch of coastal liners were being built for that purpose Among them The leopoldville Yes

Named after because he imaginatively named the capital of his little like torture erectus set after himself What a natural wreck Yeah, but you you see the the shape of the congo free state it has Like this like like little like sea corridor, but also the congo river Uh, which is very navigable and therefore you just fucking, you know driver ship right up there take the rubber ship it back Is it that navigable? I believe so. Yeah, okay. I wasn't sure about that. It's very large. This is true. Yes So, yeah leopoldville is now, uh, kinshasa

Um, it's still the capital of the democratic republic of the congo Right, but this is one of the boats that would you know go between belgium and the congo You know back and forth they'd carry, you know, it was it was sort of it was a passenger liner But also had large cargo holds, right? So, you know, it was also refrigerated, which is interesting Um, well african is hot ross through And you may be moving protus um, all right, uh

470 feet eight inches long 62 foot two inch beam 25 feet of draught um You know and and and so it's it's it's not super huge. It's not super small either, right? Yeah, so it's a respectable sort of like jack of all trades ocean going Like steamer. Yeah. Yes used for doing racism Absolutely the racism boat

Yes of many And so That's the history of the boat. I don't know much about the career before Uh events transpired and that event transpiring was Um, world war two The fucking little hearts of iron noise just going off here You may be familiar with this event from popular uh popular culture or video games

Yeah, you may think it was just something that happened in a video game, but it actually happened Yeah, they actually based the video games on a real thing, which is the uh, a little austrian guy Did not get into build out of art school or didn't get into art school Exactly through a temper tantrum and genocide and a whole bunch of people about it And forced me to say that the soviets won world war two. Yes. Yeah I mean, I arguably you can pin it more on world war one than you can on not getting into art school Yes, he also didn't get into art school. So all there is a there's that xkcd About him not getting into art school. It's fine moving on

And you know eventually the united states gets dragged into this war and they start sending They start up the draft. They start drafting troops. They send them across, you know It mobilizing them is a whole big thing, right? You know, because you got to like you got to like Draft a kid and put them from Nebraska You got to ship them by rail. You got to train them somewhere and then ship them again Ship them by port and then you take them across the ocean in something called a troop ship Right We have a picture of one. That's one of the ocean going ones

And it's it's fucking miserable. This is one of the least crowded photos I could find These are often like very hastily adapted And like all together as being a little generous Yeah, and of all sizes of all makes like you had like Victory ships and Liberty ships that were designed for that purpose. You had requisitioned like gigantic ocean liners Which were just like painted entirely gray and like stuffed full of these and you had shit like the Leopoldville where the The British Admiralcy just like stole it

Yeah, nice technically they I don't think they've requisitioned it. I think they had to pay someone for it. Are we eminent remainder? You know, okay, we we paid yap von Rassism's duer for his for his boat So in 1939 they they grabbed the Leopoldville, right and they converted it to a troop ship, right and and This is this one was designed for they wanted to do short distance halls with this one So they didn't put bunks in it was mostly just benches, right?

I think they filled the whole cargo hold with benches. Yes um You know, so you're just you're just there you sit down, you know, you wait you wait for the short trip to be over I mean, it's about a day long trip, right? Yeah, they're shipping cross cross channel because by this point d-day has happened There's already a beach head and then like Ports are seized so you can just ship from like Southampton to Sherbourg or Antwerp or whatever Yeah, and they made about 24 uh trips with this uh ship without incident, right?

They had a few guns on there, but that was about all the defenses, right? Um, and it still had its same crew, right? Mm-hmm. Um, so And this Belgian they were Belgians Yes So the captain Charles Limbore Did not speak English

Right and neither did most of the crew, right? You speak like 19 languages in your dumb country and English just isn't one of them. Mm-hmm All the orders were given in Flemish. Uh, some of the crew were Belgian. Some of the crew were Congolese Okay, fair enough. Yeah, sure. But like I'm out of the Congolese to be That's not that's not their fault, but I am very mad at anyone whose idea is like Yeah, like understanding Flemish at the best of times is not easy Understanding Flemish over like a public address system on a sink on like a sinking ship. Yeah I I I gotta say I heard um

Well, I guess I'm thinking of Dutch and not Flemish, uh, but I heard I heard a video of some like, uh, like really Like a Dutch you ever seen the video where the Dutch guy shows how he parks his car in his small garage? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely And it doesn't sound so much like he's speaking Dutch. It sounds like he's speaking really weird garbled English Yes That's like half and half English and German but with a throats infection thrown in there Exactly. I was like, but he's got the same. He somehow has like a working-class English accent, but speaking Gobble the hook. I'm confused I think I think the working-class aspect is largely because he's wearing a flat cap in that video. I think that'll abuse you

Yeah, yeah, you just suddenly done all of a sudden you are a um, you have become um Bears Yes, absolutely All right, so we got to talk about uh submarine warfare. Yes Uh, which is deeply tied up with both the conduct of the war and also the internal politics of Nazi Germany. Um Because you know hitler liked to encourage conflict within institutions And he also liked to like sort of uplift various cronies and consequently like like the the seers guy

Yeah, very much like the seers guy um, and the way that he did this with the german navy was to uh, As sort of sideline all-surface ship effort in favor of in favor of u-boats in favor of submarines um, which had you know also been a german tactic in the first world war and had been sort of broadly pretty successful um And the point of a u-boat here is to be a commerce radar, right? It doesn't like attack warships It attacks, uh You know fuel food. Yeah, exactly

At this point we're past the point of being able to like starve britain to death because like the u.s Is in the war the soviets like pressing on east and front But what they can do is just hang out in the channel, uh, because the submarine pens at lorion haven't been captured yet Um, so they can just sail up from the french coast into the channel and just kind of wait for Yeah, just be dicks and try and like, you know, strangle the invasion force on the continent This is u 486 here. Um And this is like a good example of like a late war u-boat. It has to like albaric anechoic Tiling system on it. So it's you know more

Uh difficult to detect on on sonar and also it has the schnorkle We've mentioned the schnorkle before Uh, but the schnorkle is actually a dutch design Uh, which allows you surprise It allows you to keep a diesel electric. Um Submarine submerged for much longer because you don't have to like fucking, you know purge the thing and charge the yeah charge the batteries Yeah, and another another fun fact about u 486 is this was the last u-boat before the pentium series Yeah, you don't want to get anywhere close to that. Uh, oh, I was thinking of pentium four

Yeah, and then remember the tdps those things threw off I don't know what a tdp is. Uh, I forgot to say this over how much wattage uh A chip uses Intel just kept boosting the wattage of the pentium fours We like no no everything's fine never mind the fact that this thing needs 230 watts When power supplies are only going up to like 350 that would give you a whopping 170 megahertz Yeah, well no those we were in gigahertz by then. Oh, okay

I remember I had a pentium four that was clocked at 2.4 gigahertz Damn Well, my friend had a pentium d Uh, that was clocked to like three two or something and I was very envious of him Why were you buying u-boats liam? Don't don't worry about it Yeah, talk about actionable threats liam is out here about to do some commerce rating Get a commerce rate of wargreens. Yes, and then the radio to cross the street

Um, so what's happening in the conduct of the war at this point? We have uh exemplified with with this little diagram, uh, because we're talking about the battle of the bulge Um, and the battle of the bulge is uh, sort of the the vermax last drive. It's last real like offensive operation um through the arden and belgium Um And this this takes the u.s. Army very much by surprise Catches them unprepared. It leads to a lot of uh u.s troops being surrounded which leads to

One general antony macauliffe seen here being asked to surrender and replying simply nuts back, which is Yeah, and apparently I I've read uh general mackerel fee. I think apparently he never swore And so like that was very typical of him and the german had to ask Uh, what does this mean essentially? Uh, and general mackerel fees aid said in plain english go to hell Yeah, so this is this is not like this is a fairly desperate position and uh, like the the troops They're are waiting for really from pattern of all people who is having difficulty getting there because the weather won't clear Uh, yeah, he's been he's busy being anti-semitic. Yeah, absolutely Watch the like last third of battle band of brothers, you know in in fairness the nazis were also being anti-semitic

Yeah, pat. I've said it before I think on the show and I'll say it again Patton's only objections to the death camps were that uh, the nazis are doing them when we weren't Yeah, and also they didn't have more tanks in them Man just love tanks. He loved them. Love that shit. He did So that's your like that that's your like historical context is the battle of the bowl just happening Uh, the the us army is embroiled in a situation and you don't ever want to be embroiled. No, yes And so what what what they need badly is reinforcements. Yeah, they they they badly need reinforcements of infantry And so that's what they're getting or are supposed to be getting

from these guys Uh, the uh, the 66th infantry division the black panther division Nice, uh, not not as cool or as black as that name suggests that they did have a cool patch Yes This would be the I want to say uh, 260 second and 260 fourth regiments thereof Uh, and like there's no photos of this is how obscure this disaster is there's no photos of them like embarking Very few. Yeah, there's very few photos of the boat. I think there's just like the one Um, you know and they're you know, we're talking about these reinforcements are coming

from, uh England, right Southampton and Southampton in particular, right? Um, all these all these troops are you know, they're fresh off the boat They've just come directly from the farm in Nebraska or Kansas or whatever Right, and you know, they're waiting to be deployed Yeah, they've been issued a call first owner and they've been taught how to fire a garrison Yes, uh, and and now they got to get in the boat And so it's december of 1944. It's uh, december 23rd in fact

And they're having an early christmas dinner because i'm pretty sure they're they're gonna have the order to move out right soon And while the dinner was being prepared they got the order to move out So they didn't Running with like a turkey leg in your mouth Oh, shit. I'm late for war with a like slice of toast This is the uss west point in this photo by the way because this is the best photo I could find for like guys getting on troop ship And so these two regiments are troops, you know, they get out to the dock And they stand there for six hours

Yep, hurry up and wait, baby. Yeah, never never the army never changes No, no, there's like two thousand of them in total. Yeah, two thousand two hundred and twenty three You can find paleolithic carvings actually of what is clearly a general Saying we have to be here at zero six hundred sharp Yes, the enemy will be there shut up They started loading troops on the leopold villa at two o'clock in the morning. You should you should see see people's army tiktoks And the loading was somewhat haphazard, right? Rather than, you know, organize, you know, the troops and units We can't believe the military would do something haphazard like yeah, it's like getting a booster shot in pennsylvania

Yeah, he's alive folks. He's alive You just um, you know, rather than Loading the troops on the boat as units. Do they know where the commanding officer is and stuff like that? And they know where their buddies are They just you know as people as as you arrive you are loaded on the boat Right first come first served exactly Because it'll be I don't know they have to save the time that they lost by waiting for six hours um

Once again armies man, they're just like this. Yeah Sergeant george atperson writes in his diary. The ship was was a bucket. It had a smell of death about it Great Probably on account of it having made trips back and forth from the belgian congo. Yeah, it's haunted. It is haunted and right So I want to say A bunch of vengeful congolese ghosts just very confused that the people they're getting vengeance on aren't belgians Yes It's collateral ghost damage. It's it's really like it's it's a sad story, but it's not their fault

We have some typical issues that plague uh troopships. Um, this ship was built in 1928 You know, that's post titanic. So the safety standards are a little better The thing is of course they're packing it full of so many people that doesn't matter Right less good. Yeah, so they they don't have enough life jackets Um, they have life boats not enough for everyone Right. No one came to the lifeboat drill because it was in Flemish Great perfect. Yes. And and if the the ship sinks you you you stand on the honk here and Yeah, sure. Okay. And and this is um, you got to keep in mind these are these are infantry, right?

You know, so most of these most of the kids on the boat probably Had never been on a boat in their lives. Certainly not one this big Yeah, apart from having gone over the Atlantic in the first place So having spent from 2 a.m. To 9 a.m. Loading the boat E-Feshet, I know, right? Um, they set sail from Southampton Docks at 9 a.m. For the whopping most of a day long journey to Cherbourg in France Hi, it's Justin So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to

People are annoyed by these so let me get to the point We have this thing called patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month And we give you an extra episode once a month Uh, sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for Um, it also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes So you can learn about exciting topics like guns pickup trucks or pickup trucks with guns on them The money we raise through patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month

Join at patreon.com forward slash Wtyp pod Do it if you want or don't it's your decision and we respect that Back to the show Right, they're in a little convoy for protection convoys called Wep3 Uh, and it's it's only a little one because it's you know, it's not that you don't need like a huge atlantic convoy sort of thing

um So two british destroyers. I want to say off the top of my head the hms brilliant and antony um, a french one quadra loren And another troop ship. Yes Um, and this began as a relatively uneventful journey as most of the journeys for the ship had been in the past Of course, you know, relatively disorganized if you were a troop on there Right, it's very crowded. Everyone has seasickness

A lot of people go up above deck In order to relieve their seasickness those were the smart guys um You don't want to stand like you know up to your knees and vomit like in a sort of cargo hold But it's also late 1944. So the um, the u-boats are getting a little more feisty, right? Right. Yeah, this is the schnorkl Yes So the captain of the hms brilliant Makes the order for the whole convoy to start zigzagging because there's u-boats in the area, right?

Uh, this uh did not prove to be enough though Yeah, as we see here with this uh, little drawing which is again Because this is the level of obscurity that we're talking about these these are the sources that we have to work with here is uh So they get almost the whole way across the channel They're five miles from shareborg, right? It's 5 54 p.m They got I don't know 30 minutes till they reach uh the harbour, right? It's a glorified ferry

You're basically there you're more worried about having to go and like fucking fight in the war when you get there Yeah, this is uh, you know A german u-boat shot a torpedo at ss leopoldville Yeah, this is u 486 which we saw earlier. Yes. Yes. Just uh, yeah The direct hit starboard side aft Uh instantly killed about 300 men in that particular compartment Yeah, sure. You're just you're just sitting on the bed. It's like covered in vomit and you're just like, oh, I'm just fucking killing The monkeys

So this um, the explosion killed around 300 men. There were three compartments that started flooding Um, and most of the ladders to the upper decks were destroyed. So men were trapped inside the watertight compartments Nope. No. No. No, not like that. They're not good Um, all right, so they know they've been hit Um, and this is when the loudspeaker comes on so the captain can direct the crew and of course it's um The the announcements are both contradictory and in Flemish Flemish, right helpful helpful people Yeah, it just goes that is it is 554 british time. You will apply your shoe polish Oh

I'm slandering the Flemish there if it's just a dutch thing. I'm being very vague about the slow about the low countries here Yeah, they're all they're all basically the same, you know, okay The first announcement said the ship is not sinking. We're going to get a tug to bring us into harbour, right the ship Okay, we got this big hole on the side though. Don't worry about that. Yeah, 300 dudes have just been fucking mulched and you're like gravy, yeah In fairness saves weight In fairness at this point the ship was not sinking Right. Oh, yeah at this point. No. Okay. No disaster has happened yet

Like the Nazis the Nazis have gone entirely according to their plan and other than that, you know Who cares whatever exactly fix the post The initial plan was to have a tug tow the ship into the harbour Or alternatively the men would be transferred to other ships Right. In the meantime, they'd lost power from the engines and the ship was drifting towards a minefield, right? So the captain of hms brilliant ordered ss leopold to drop anchor which they did. Okay, so now they're stuck Okay, that seems counter productive, but all right

At least you're not at least you're not stuck in the minefield, you know, true. Yeah So about about 30 minutes later. It was clear that the ship, you know, it's probably sinking, right? And uh captain charles limber gave the abandon ship order Which went unheeded by american troops who couldn't understand him and had wait wait wait wait wait What the fuck is abandon ship in flemmish because like oh, it's uh, no, don't worry. This is real Really part of our heritage just American from like Nebraska going what the fuck is a shoot? And and this is I was a little confused here because it seems like a lot of the crew just gets in the lifeboats and leaves

Uh, yeah, because he said abandon ship. Yeah Yeah But but the uh, the trips are just there standing on the deck Just milling around confused. Oh god, these poor bastards Um now keep in mind they're in a convoy. There's Four other ships there, right? So the crew of hms brilliant saw the ship was stricken They tried to radio telephone or otherwise signal

Sherberg to get some rescue vessels out and they had several problems Yeah, they also start dropping the like scrambling nets over the side so that if you can swim to brilliant Which is such a fucking british name for a destroyer by the way, hms brilliant Um, you can like climb up and be rescued, but that will also have some problems. However Uh, let's we forget this is a holly jolly christmas episode from our family to yours It is christmas eve. Yes I do it And oh boy, which pod is this? Why so it's christmas pod

So there there were several All right settle down By humbug i'm very easily amused So now the americans who would set up a base in sherberg They were operating radios on different frequency from the british Right and you know so calls for help went unheard Instead the british had a radio back to port smith And then port smith had to telephone sherberg

right And and just getting stuck in a fucking like automated like press one if your call relates to Like fucking your balance ass system Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold Ah All right instruction in spanish But not flemish not flemish. No

So they tried basically every method they had to contact sherberg Uh, except they forgot about their semaphore's Um, you know in the meantime Who remembers those to be honest the meantime of the americans and sherberg had seen the convoy had stopped when they shouldn't have They were trying to signal the convoy with their semaphores and light signals and stuff like that And no one saw them right but they're a bit respond. Yeah So I wasn't until 625 that the message leopold hit need assistance reach sherberg And without any kind of clarification about what kind of assistance was required. Yeah just says how

Yeah, health And this was compounded by the fact that everyone was at christmas parties Right. Mm-hmm. Don't don't don't don't they're a real they're a danger to to ally shipping. Yes, absolutely Sherberg's harbor was full of uh, you know capable vessels which could have been used for rescue operations You know, we're talking like ships tenders. We're talking naval tugs. We're talking about there had been a prompt response Yeah, yeah, you rescue shit. Absolutely. If there had been a prompt response They probably could have just towed the ship into the harbor and beached it, right? Yeah, and now we're getting into the disaster because

Everybody who should have been like available to go and man those Is you know wearing a lampshade on their heads. Yes At the fucking office christmas party because despite the fact that you're fucking Five years deep into world war two the christmas party is absolutely Inviolent you have to have it if you don't have the christmas party and like in liberated france The nazis are basically one already Yeah, you have to go do like a good old-fashioned american, you know, uh 1940s christmas party Which is you know, mostly sexual assault

You have to drink between like five and six glasses of bourbon Like do some light arson some sex crimes So all these boats were uncrewed or had minimal crews None of them could be started up and sent to sea quickly right because everyone's at christmas The engines are cold, right? Yeah, for two reasons one everyone's a christmas parties and two it's the it's fucking late december Yes, it's like it's christmas eve at this point. I think So since since they are having difficulty getting the message around hms brilliance

Crew and captain take it upon themselves to do some of the rescuing, right? They pulled up alongside the leopoldville, which is the way here boys. Yeah, by the way involved crushing two empty lifeboats Arriving arriving like just like absolutely You're welcome Um So they pull up alongside the leopoldville, but there's an issue which is that the seas are pretty rough the weather's not great, right? Um, don't be a fussy the boats are they being pushed apart and then push back together again And then pushed apart and push back together again. And this is a problem

Because they're not trying to get the soldiers to jump from one boat to the other A world's worst game of frogger Yeah, I I signed up to be in a first person shoes and not a fucking platformer and um and and uh hms brilliance deck was a good 30 feet lower than leopoldville's Jump jumping from one wet surface to another wet surface for a good luck boys at different angles Encouraged only by the screams of a bunch of Flemish dudes running away

Yes So a lot of people who jumped made it right they it's a lot of them sustained injuries But they made it but some people fell between the two boats Yeah, like that Yeah, so that so then when the boats, you know, they got pushed back together again He got turned into a pancake Yes Not good

So at 7 20 p.m The hms brilliant left having taken on about 500 men And they figured the rescue vessels coming from sherbet could take the rest Right, they could see the rescue vessels coming at this point, right? The other two armed boats in the uh convoy the frigate and the other destroyer. Yeah, we're actually in corda lorraine Yeah, yeah, they were looking for the u-boat right missed it by the way Yes The point isn't really to like killers to drive it off, but still yeah

um Now around 8 p.m. The boats from sherbet finally showed up to take on the men, right? But uh, you know, there were there are 1200 troops still aboard There were 25 belgian crew and 10 british officers, right? Oh, jeez Captain limber 50% evacuated at this point. Yeah, something a little less than 50% After I want to say three hours Yes, and keep in mind It's actually not 50% evacuated because in that figure are the 300 people who were previously killed. Oh, Jesus christ. Okay. Yes

Very christless everybody. Mm-hmm. So captain limber was still also aboard and he gave the order To the remaining officers and crew to abandon ship and he'd stay back to coordinate the rescue operation which Proved to be a mistake Okay So the loudspeaker was no longer operational, right? Captain limber was marching around the deck. He was shouting orders and french and Flemish It's like who the fuck is this guy? What what this is the least helpful thing I could imagine

Yeah, uh, he was he was he was shouting to to these troops who had no not only did they not understand the language They said they'd never been on a boat in their lives. They don't know how to handle any sort of like, you know, naval equipment of any kind And like he's he's presumably speaking like naval english So he's fucking like saying not only in like Flemish But he's saying the Flemish equivalent of like hoist the fucking like lovers or whatever. What the fuck is that? So I mean this is this is a horrible case of naval officer brain And the thing I've noticed about naval officers particularly in world war two is that they fucking love killing themselves They absolutely cannot help it in every navy like that

Like people always talk about like, uh, the imperial japanese navy had this like culture of honor And it's like no everybody fucking did this the italian navy had so many destroyer captains Go down with the ship when they could have just stepped off of it and been rescued that they had to put out a formal order that was like Do not go down with the ship. You don't have to do that. You are more useful alive and they still ignored it Remind me that we need to do the Andrea Doria soon So sometime just after eight a navy rescue tug arrived, right? but No one on board knew how to secure the tow rope

I've already evacuated It's one very angry Flemish man who has to do this himself They did eventually find out someone who knew uh, something about knots They figured out it's finally bondage jim comes through How do you call a bondage jim? Listen, listen getting drafted and like having an interest in shibari It's you know, you think it's not going to be useful and yet who's laughing now Exactly bondage jim bondage jim. Yeah

Now, okay, so they got the tow rope secured. Let's let's try and tug it back to harbour. I mean the ship was you know Fairly stable at this point. It was going down, but you know, maybe you could drag this thing five miles or at least a shallow or waters. Well About 830 A pair of large explosions were heard from below deck. Oh, there we go Yeah, all the hatches blew off and the boat suddenly went from relatively stable to rapidly sinking and capsizing simultaneously Do we know what exploded? I don't think we do it was a troop ship. It didn't have like a magazine. Um, yeah That's true. Yeah, I guess if you're carrying troops, you probably have to carry all of their like weapons

A bunch of shit with them, but but I I don't know what exploded. It could have been a boiler explosion for all I know Um, you know, if they if they've just been unattended for so long um, oh, that's a good point so The men had not been ordered to prepare to enter the water They had not even been told how to prepare to enter the water should such an eventuality be a possibility I guess the calculus of risk looks a little different when you're a couple of months out from having done fucking Omaha beach Yeah, yeah

You know, and also it's like it's just crossing the channel. It's fine But yeah, nobody's nobody's firing an mg 42 at you. What are you a pussy? Yeah So most of them had improperly secured life jackets right And since these are falls off No, no, no, no if you jump off the ship into the water the the life jacket snaps your neck Oh, yeah, they haven't improved it since the titanic apparently Uh, that's that's that's not a very good life jacket designed. Yeah. Yeah, that's more of a death jacket actually

Yeah Most of them were wearing their heavy winter gear under their life jackets, right? Yeah, because they'd been abundantly supplied with that because one of the biggest problems in the Battle of the Bulge was that US troops were catastrophically under supplied with winter gear So they compensated for that and they're like, oh, no, you'll definitely have like a heavy like great coat for the belgian winter and Yeah And they had their packs. They had their ammo. They had their boots. They had their rifles

They had entrenching tools, which is the military word for shovel um And it was of course fucking freezing as well, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah So, you know, some people they jump into the water And they sink like a stone, right? Some people they jump into water. They die instantly because they're next to get snapped Some people sort of climb over the railing and walk down the side of the capsizing ship It's always the smartest option. It seems Yeah, just just step off just yeah. Yeah, just platform it. Yeah, you just sort of step off the boat, you know

those people I think Bared the best You know, you also had once you were in the water you had to sort of rid yourself of all the heavy shit, right? Right Um, yeah, this is like world war two webbing. It's not like there's a fucking quick release buckle. Anyway, you got to like unhook all of that shit Yeah, so we have our typical After shipwreck scene everyone's screaming for help. They're drowning. They're dying of hypothermia But in this case there were at least boats actively plucking people out of the water Right. It's mostly dead people

Uh, they picked out a lot of live people actually You had a better than 50 50 chance of surviving this one. Wow New record for us. I think I know right Bunch of guys who have just come fresh from the office Christmas party. They're wearing the fucking Santa hats Yeah Don't do Santa con Reaches reaches out to you to like pull you into the boat, but he's holding one end of a Christmas cracker Yeah, exactly. You was uh, didn't you pull it and you get the shorthand?

At least I get to read this joke before I down before I fucking drown Oh, no, the waters made the ink run One of the problems about the recovery effort though is they I misidentified some of the living for dead Right. And they took all the dead and they heat them in a big pile in shareburg Where the people who were alive and they're all died of exposure Jesus Yep, again, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone Building a big snowman out of like frozen corpses

So overall of these uh 2223 troops 763 were killed officially Jesus One belgian crewman and three congolese crewmen were killed being suicidal captain limber of course went down with the ship I mean, I love doing it. Why why there was no reason Oh Great. Okay. Well, that's that's a good return for the Nazis on one torpedo. That's about to say. Yeah, they uh, they really uh

They really knocked it out of the park with that one Hmm. Well, sometimes you just get lucky, I guess But we got to talk about the uh, the aftermath of this which uh, I I've chosen this this frame from the movie the hunt for red october To describe very fucking perfect Great movie. Uh, you you heard that torpedo hit the hole and and I was never here Because we're talking about a fucking cover-up. Yes Because this is a very embarrassing way to lose so many people Absolutely, absolutely. And you don't want the Nazis to find out about it either if you can help it

So first of all, it's just isn't announced like anywhere. There's no press coverage of this which is you know fair enough. It's wartime Blackout, yeah, uh, but like all of the letters home from that division immediately censored um This the soldiers of the 66th infantry division ordered not to tell anybody about this incredibly traumatic thing that has just happened to them Um, and and this persists for some fucking reason I cannot for the life of me figure out why this would be the case other than just institutional secrecy But when they would like discharge from the army at the end of the war They were ordered not to talk about it to the press and they were told that if they did their gi bill benefits would be cancelled

So you don't get your fucking like uh 50s house anymore, uh, you don't get to go to college or whatever You don't you don't get to uh, you don't get to live in an exclusionary suburb Oh, yeah, you yeah, exactly and uh, The families of the people who got killed never got any explanation for how their relatives died They just you know got told that they got killed They were lost to see Yeah, exactly exactly. Um, and the 66th infantry division is so depleted by this loss They can't in fact be usefully sent to the battle of the bulge

um What happens is in a certain sort of historical irony? They get sent further south and they end up fighting to seize the ubo base lorion instead One of the things I think which uh, you know got made this, you know, especially that the families who lost, um, their kids in this, uh Incident, you know, I imagine kind of suspicious is that you know, they they just sent Johnny off to war They saw him off at the train station in Omaha like two weeks earlier And they already got a letter back from the government saying oh, yeah, he died Right. Yeah. Yeah

That's sufficiency absolutely Um, I mean you may be pleased to know that on its next combat patrol in april U 486 is torpedoed and sunk with all hands By the the British submarine hms taper, which is then history's deadliest taper Ah What's what's a tap here? What's a taper is a taper is a kind of like, uh, it's a jungle animal Looks like a pig with a weirdly long like snout. Yeah, I see Mm-hmm. They're cute. They're cute right three

Mm-hmm. Also true. Um anyway What did we learn From the sinking of the ss leopoldville now that we've been allowed to talk about it a very obscure disaster still to this day I do not believe the documents were declassified until 1996 This is fuck price. What why why what what what did they fucking have on that shit moth man? He strikes again. Were they sending fucking captain america to bastone? Why why the secrecy? I have no idea. It's just embarrassing

I mean, I guess so but like plenty of other embarrassing things happened and still weren't treated with this level of like I don't know Makes me want to be a conspiracy theorist Yeah, I don't know that it's this this, uh, I don't know that there's any conspiracies around it Sound off in the comments if you have a a conspiratorial explanation for why Uh, this was covered up to the extent that it was and double points if you can link this to spotify censoring us somehow Yes, yes, of course I mean in terms of lessons learned from this, I would simply say

I do not entrusts the Flemish with anything. Yes Make sure that instructions are read in the vernacular language Respect congolese ghosts. Yes Don't do the belgian congo. Yeah, don't do genocide Do not become complacent about you boats and most of all Chiefly the real message of this podcast never goes through a Christmas party. Yes You never know you never know if when you will be called upon to rescue a ship haunted by ghosts Yes, or which one of your colleagues is secretly at your boat

Exactly. It could be anyone. It could be you. It could be me. It could be Justin It could be any one of us. It could be activate windows logo Yes, that's the moral of the story. Don't get blown up by you boat Don't don't get blown up by you boat and don't go to a Christmas party Happy holidays everyone. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Merry Merry Christmas Happy Kwanzaa and Hanukkah's over already. Yeah

Uh, what else is in there do a festive us? I guess. Yeah, I'm not doing that. It's for the rest of us Oh Well, we have a segment on this podcast which we like to call safety third Very good. Thank you. That's so fucking loud, dude I didn't know it was going to do that to be honest Hello, well, there's your problem podcast and guest if applicable No, that's an old idea No jackass

But hello, well, there's your problem podcast and you activate windows. Yes I'm a construction worker who shall for legal reasons remain unnamed I was working on a very small crew a few years ago at a facility that was getting new equipment installed As part of this process temporary equipment needed to be moved in to keep the fun all the functions that the old equipment was serving Running while the new gear could be installed Okay, this process had moved moving By hand several large cabinets on little caster wheels

The one of interest today weighed at around 5 000 pounds What? Is that allowed? probably Just add more casters Also of note was a requirement in this facility for us to be monitored at all times by an escort Uh, no, not that kind unfortunately That's a rewrite by far now

To make sure we didn't look at anything too closely Ask too many questions or fuck anything up as they were very particular about their area Sure, great. The guy getting crushed by a like 5 000 pound container has to wear a little visitors badge. Yeah The way this temporary gear was moved in was relatively simple except for the threshold I noticed that the threshold is capitalized here. So I would suggest that it's more like the threshold Yes For the majority of the walk to the location the gear sat in it could comfortably be rolled along the floor and while heavy it was manageable

This is until the threshold a very threshold Very fragile door threshold the gear couldn't just roll over It had to be ramped up and then back down via four foot long ramps. We had built out of wood They were pretty shallow as the threshold Was not very tall But when you're talking about several thousand pound piece of gear being moved by three guys any change of elevation is notable This tail takes place at the end of the job when the temporary gear was being removed and all the new equipment was up and running The escort of the day was jack

Who was an old guy who if you believed him had seen and done every kind of job under the sun And was not shy about telling you how to do yours. Yeah, he used to be on the ss leopoldville There's a sea captain and he fought in world war two and then he'd been to space The only one to survive didn't go down with the ship as The largest cabinet was being moved out down the threshold Uh the threshold I the youngest and smallest guy on the crew was given the illustrious position

Of being on at the front of the cabinet pushing against it as I slowly rolled down the ramp While my other co-worker held on to it from the back and pulled against it Jack was off to my right on my side of the threshold. This is jack here, right? Yeah, this little red dot Yeah, and my boss was to my left also have also helping to guide the gear down Predictably for this segment something went wrong and the cabinet slipped and began rolling free And this was not a big deal until you know that the other end of the wall of this hallway The other wall of the hallway is almost right at the end of the ramp And with just enough space for the gear to sit on the flat section of the floor in front of the ramp, right?

Like here, right? Yeah, so it can come to a stop, but also it will squish you. Yes For bonus fun. There was also a 480 volt disconnect on the wall that stuck out and should the gear hit it The chance of causing an arc flash explosion Now we're talking So there I am Between a big two and a half ton rolling cabinet and a big metal disconnect ready to crush me into chunky marinara And also potentially cook me as well I made the smart decision and tried to get the fuck out. I mean, you wouldn't want to roll chunky marinara. Yes, exactly

No um Jack a company man attempted to save the gear Unfortunately, I tried to scoot out from the same side jack was on but because he had jumped in and started pushing against the cabinet I was now trapped between the gear the gear the disconnect and acceptogenarian Fucking boomers With plan a out I had no recourse but to throw everything I had into stopping this I don't know how but somehow we managed to stop the equipment

I'm pretty sure my co-worker and boss were able to get hands on it And I might have gotten the tip of my steel toe in front of one of the wheels to act like a chalk But honestly, the memory is hazy from the aftermath of the adrenaline Once this little oopsie was cleared up. We finished moving this and the other cabinets out of the building And my boss had a chat with jack about delineation of duties and basically threatened to walk off the job from what I heard about it Hell yeah Yeah Well, the story is to always have an exit plan

Make sure that plan can't be screwed up by other people making dumb decisions And make sure everyone knows what they should be doing when you do sketchy shit It's good advice and also never never trust an old guy. It's true Um, no never trust never trust an old guy on a job site. Yeah fair enough That's why their job should be to sit on the other side of the fence and and and make a comment Umar El shit, absolutely. Yeah Well Safety third fuck. Where's my safety third button? Yeah. Yeah, you gotta find it

I lost it because the sign felled Yeah Our next episode is on the boss of molasses disasters. Didn't mean to have any commercials before we go I think Liam has a shout out. I do. This is true. Yes. Yes. Let me just uh god Better than show Katie Uh, I could use some monetary support some help Uh, they've got a bunch of medical issues Uh, and I would appreciate just as a personal appeal if you guys are out there listening to it

Uh Send some money to their PayPal. Uh, that would be very very appreciated if we could drop their PayPal In the slides and the notes the release notes had a great shit. And yeah, there we go Great listen to kill james bond do that watch franklin Stop fucking emailing us about spotify. We're working on it Listen to and listen to Lions live by donkeys. Yes trash feature trash feature. I can't believe I forgot it

Yes Well, Merry Christmas From us to you That's right. All right fire. I don't know why being visited by three ghosts Yeah, what's their us do do not become a capitalist unless you wish to be visited by three ghosts. Yes. Yes exactly Ooh, you will be in a slide show eventually All right, Merry Christmas. Bye everybody. Yeah, that was a nice short one