THE QUEEN MARY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1943, Page 4

THE QUEEN MARY

GREAT & GALLANT SHIP MAGNIFICENT RECORD OF WAR SERVICE. MANY DANGERS SURVIVED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, September 30. Although it is common knowledge that the liner Queen Mary has been playing a most important role as a troop transport during the war, the extent of her travels only now can be disclosed. She played, perhaps, the biggest individual part in saving the situation at El Alamein in the summer of 1943. In the same year she transported thousands of American soldiers. Once she steamed right through a pack of submarines estimated to number 25, and not one had time to get a torpedo trained on her. She once went out from England with men and stores representing half of a fully-equipped division. Her passage from England round the Cape and north to Suez —12,000 miles —was made in a few weeks. She was one of the most marked ships in the world, and Axis agents everywhere had done their best to warn enemy navies of her movements. Once the German pocketbattleship Luetzow was specially- despatched to the Atlantic to destroy her. Last winter, fully laden with American troops, the Queen Mary ran into a terrific gale and a giant wave swept her broadside. She listed till her upper decks were awash. Her officers afterwards said they were convinced she could never right herself. Her safety depended on five inches. Had she gone those inches further, the Queen Mary would have been no more.