Wilhelm Gustloff

Wilhelm Gustloff, 1938/1939 Italian cruise. From the slide group of the Wilhelm Gustloff's 1938/1939 cruise in Mediterranean sea.

The MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German armed military transport ship which was sunk on 30 January 1945 by Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German civilian refugees from East Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Estonia and military personnel from Gotenhafen (Gdynia) as the Red Army advanced. By one estimate, 9,400 people died, which makes it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history. Originally constructed as a cruise ship for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) organisation in 1937, she had been requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine (German navy) in 1939. She served as a hospital ship in 1939 and 1940. She was then assigned as a floating barracks for naval personnel in Gdynia (Gotenhafen) before being armed and put into service to transport evacuees in 1945.

Almost all Gustloff friends believe that the Gustloff was always painted white. but that is wrong. Color photos are often processed until the paint is white. In fact, in 1938/39 the paint was cream-colored. Axel Urbanke have a few slides on which this can be seen exactly. He told the Gustloff Museum about this, who previously believed that white was correct. Cream was new information to them. To show the diffrence he post here a zoom from one of his slides which show a ship of Seedienst Ostpreußen (white) and in the background the Gustloff (cream). The slide was taken in August 1939 in Swinemünde.

 

Source :
Akira Takiguchi photo collection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Wilhelm_Gustloff
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10222606779271661&set=gm.1627323930786357