Rescue At Novaya Zemlya

SUN 12 JUL 1942
Pacific
Submarine Seadragon (SS-194) sinks Japanese merchant cargo ship Nichizan Maru off Cam Ranh Bay, French Indochina, 13°47'N, 109°33'E.

Salvage party from VP 41, transported to Akutan Island in district patrol vessel YP-151, begin salvage of ZERO fighter discovered on 10 July. Their initial efforts reveal more work will be required (see 15 July).

Atlantic
Twelve survivors from U.S. freighter Thomas McKean, sunk by German submarine U-505 on 29 June 1942, reach Antigua (see 14 July).

U.S. freighter Andrew Jackson is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-84 approximately 20 miles off Cardenas, Cuba, 23°32'N, 81°02'W. Three of the 38-man crew perish; there are no casualties among the 11-man Armed Guard (see 13 July).

Caribbean
U.S. freighter Tachira, en route to New Orleans, Louisiana, is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-129 at 18°15'N, 81°54'W. Four of the 32-man crew perish, as does one of the six-man Armed Guard; U-129 briefly interrogates survivors and then provides medical assistance and directs them toward the nearest land (see 16 July).

Arctic
Survivors from U.S. freighter Peter Kerr (sunk on 5 July) are rescued by Russian motor torpedo boat and taken to Murmansk. Russian whaler rescues survivors of U.S. freighter Washington (also sunk on 5 July). Toward the end of their journey in lifeboats, Washington's survivors (one of whom dies of exposure on 28 July at Archangel) had subsisted on rations scrounged from U.S. freighter Winston-Salem that had been beached by her crew and abandoned on the shores of Novaya Zemlya. British armed trawler HMS Ayrshire rescues survivors from U.S. freighter Fairfield City, (dispersed from convoy PQ 17 and sunk on 5 July) from Novaya Zemlya.