In 1942, Portuguese ships assisted the shipwrecked from more than a dozen ships in both the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans.
The first few months They will witness the impact of the attacks near the American coast, where U-boats took advantage of the lack of an effective defense system to cause a wave of destruction comparable only to the first months of the war. German submariners called it later the "second happy time".
It is also in this year that Mozambique -then a Portuguese colony - sees the arrival of large numbers of shipwrecked people from ships trying to reach North Africa via the Cape route, since through the Mediterranean the chance to reach Egypt had become almost impossible. The Mozambique Channel became a hunting ground, first for Japanese submarines and, later, also for U-boats.
22-01-1942 The "João Corte Real" found survivors from the "Gandia"
07-07-1942 The "Almirante Sousa e Faro" picked the men from the "Dago"
27-03-1942 The "Cunene" found the survivors from the Norwegian "Svenør"
06-04-1942 Cunene and Lobito found crew members from de Norwegian Koll
We will keep posting information about other rescues in the next months.
Do you already know what hapenned between 1939 and 1941.