A Story of the REINA DEL PACIFICO.

[john mc dermott]

If you were seeking work ashore the DR in your book would now mean definitely reliable.

[Ann Good]

Hello,
When the original post was written by Captain Kong in 2008, the British National Archives had only just declassified files on the HMT Rohna. Convoy KMF 26 was attacked off the Algerian coast, and indeed the Reina del Pacifico was one of the convoy ships. The author may not have known what actually happened; he stated that "The convoy was attacked on 26th November by 60 aircraft and Lamport and Holt's Delius was the only loss." In fact, the only loss was the HMT Rohna, which was carrying nearly 2,000 US troops en route to Bombay and lost 1,015 of them, along with 108 Indian Merchant Navy crew, and 30 British men (9 Merchant Navy, 9 Army and 12 Navy).

I contributed research on British troops on board the Rohna. Soon we will release the documentary "Rohna Classified" (mentioned recently on this site); the production and research team members all had an ancestor on that ship, and mine was a casualty with the Royal Army Medical Corps. We also determined the names of 27 confirmed and 26 presumed Merchant Navy survivors. I am in touch with a small number of their families, which helped us piece together the story of the tragedy, but we would love to find more to share what we have learned very recently.