Although the cruiser disaster cost more lives, the torpedoing of the Baependi - and those that followed - caused a national commotion that led the country to abandon its formal neutrality and declare war on the Axis at the end of August 1942.
Since the attack took place only a few kilometers from the coast, and due to the fact that many of the victims were women and children, the repercussions were many. In the days that followed, five more ships were sunk by the same submarine, bringing the death toll to six hundred and filling Brazilian headlines with graphic photographs of the dead, who crowded the beaches of southern Sergipe and northern Bahia.
Exactly twice as many people died in the attack as in the previous fourteen (between January and July of that year). Some consider the German attack on the Brazilian coast to be the "Brazilian Pearl Harbor".[1]
The sequence of torpedoeings ignited a revolt that was already stirring up public opinion. The political situation became tense, with anti-fascist demonstrations in the country. There were attacks on businesses owned by Germans or Italians, as well as harassment of people from or descended from those countries. A large rally in the center of Rio de Janeiro, led by Foreign Minister Oswaldo Aranha, roused the population, who marched to the Guanabara Palace and demanded that Getúlio Vargas declare war on the Axis countries.[2]
The president, feeling that he could not postpone the decision without undermining the foundations of the Estado Novo, then decided to take the lead and, on August 22, after a meeting with the entire ministry, declared war on Germany and Italy,[3] formalized on August 31, 1942, by Decree-Law No. 10,358.
The attack on this ship - as well as those that followed in the days that followed -, due to the impact it had on Brazil's contemporary history, is a recurring theme in naval literature, as well as the subject of various academic and military studies, being the biggest Brazilian naval disaster caused by an act of war and the fourth deadliest in history involving a national ship.[4]
When she sank, the Baependi had already been in service for over forty years. She had been built in 1899 at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, the same city where the was built in 1940.[5]
The ship was owned by the Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft (currently called Hamburg Süd), a company established in the city of the same name, and had been christened Tijuca, operating on the line between Germany and South America.
She was a mixed ship, i.e. a cargo ship and a passenger ship, which gave her the name, common at the time, of a passenger liner. The vessel had a gross register tonnage of 4,801 tons, measured 114m (374feet) long by 14.1m (46.3feet) wide and had a draft of 9.2m (30.2feet). Made of a steel hull, she was propelled by quadruple expansion engines, powered by steam and a propeller, giving her a power of 2200hp and a maximum speed of 12kn, although the ship almost always sailed at an average speed between 9and.[6]
Equipped with a smokestack and two masts, her crew was made up of an average of 60 men, and she could carry around 450 passengers, 50 of them in first class.[7]
The Tijuca was officially delivered to the operator on August 5, 1899, and soon afterward, on the 23rd of that month, she began her maiden voyage between Hamburg and Santos, via intermediate stops, sometimes extending as far as the countries of the Río de la Plata, on a route known as the "Golden (Brazil) and Silver Route" (Uruguay/Argentina).
Her career in the service of Hamburg Süd was long and uniform, with the Tijuca remaining on the east coast of South America for around fifteen years and docking dozens of times in the port of Santos, bringing emigrants or carrying sacks of coffee. The ship's routine was always the same: She came from Europe with German, Russian, Polish, or Baltic emigrants, and consumer and production goods that did not exist in Brazil; on the way back, she carried coffee and cotton destined for the European market.
The ship continued to sail on the Gold and Silver Route until the outbreak of hostilities that marked the beginning of the First World War. On August 4, 1914, the Baependi was sailing in the Atlantic when her captain received news of the outbreak of the world conflict and sought refuge in the Brazilian port of Recife.
She was later confiscated by the Brazilian government - on June 1, 1917 - along with other ships, in view of the declaration of war against the German Empire.[8]
Renamed the Baependi (also written Baependy), she was then operated by Lloyd Brasileiro, which acquired her full ownership in 1925. The ship was listed under number 114 of the 1926/1942 fleet and operated on the coastal shipping line. Before that, however, in 1920, she had fulfilled a charter contract with the French government, returning to Brazil in 1922.
Her Brazilian name was given in honor of the town of Baependi in the state of Minas Gerais, whose toponymy derives from mbaé-pindi, meaning "the open clearing" in Tupi-Guarani.
Since January 1942, it was certain that Brazil would align itself with the United States in the war against Nazi Germany. The words of the German ambassador, addressed to Chancellor Oswaldo Aranha, made clear what would happen if Brazil broke off relations with the Axis powers: "...it would undoubtedly mean a state of latent war, probably leading to events that would be tantamount to the outbreak of actual war".[9]
After the first attacks, in February, the Brazilian government, together with US naval authorities, began to take measures to try to prevent the ships from being sunk easily. Thus, it was decided that the ships should be painted gray and sail in the dark and without flags. In the middle of that year, the Brazilian ships began to be equipped with a timid defense system, with only one 120mm artillery piece, which proved ineffective in the face of surprise attacks at night, such as those that took place in the Caribbean Sea in June and July.
When, on May 24, the commander of the announced that he had sunk an armed Brazilian merchant ship - the Gonçalves Dias - in the Caribbean, and when, on the 27th of the same month, the Minister of Aeronautics - Salgado Filho - announced with euphoria that his planes had attacked Axis submarines without declaring war, the German Navy asked for all restrictions on attacks on Brazilian ships to be lifted.
Also in May, a heavily armed Brazilian Air Force (FAB) plane took off from Natal Air Base with the special mission of "locating and attacking a hostile submarine", which had attacked the freighter Comandante Lira. Although the hunt for the "U-boot" was unsuccessful, the government, the press, the people and even Roosevelt rejoiced at the retaliation (or attempt to) carried out by the FAB. On the other side, the Germans began to launch a merciless surprise attack. A game of belligerent action and reaction was taking place. The German Navy Command asked Hitler to lift the restrictions on attacking Brazilian ships, which was immediately granted.
In theory, the treatment given to ships from non-belligerent countries, until then, was interception - usually by torpedo - inspection, interrogation of the crew and, finally, the order to abandon, so that the vessel could be sunk with the crew already safe in the lifeboats. Therefore, "lifting the restrictions" meant sinking the ship, wherever it was, so that there were no survivors. From then on, Brazilian ships would be considered belligerent and torpedoed without warning.
Dissatisfied with the fact that he had not succeeded in bending Brazil as he had intended, Hitler, on July 4, approved a plan by the naval High Command in which the ports of Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife would be penetrated by stealth at night. Anchored installations and vessels would be torpedoed and access to the ports mined, which would increase the country's serious supply problems.
However, advised by his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler decided to abort the plan, fearing that such a measure could drag the entire American continent into the war, including neutral Argentina and Chile.
At the beginning of August, new orders were issued: only the U-507 was to infiltrate Brazilian territorial waters and there, carry out "free maneuvers", in other words, sink any and all Allied vessels, except Argentinian and Chilean ones.
Brazil was still a neutral country, but in light of recent events, this neutrality was precarious. This situation was already visible not only to the Brazilian authorities but also to the German command, which legitimized - from a Nazi point of view - the actions of the U-507 to operate in the midst of national coastal shipping.
See main article: German submarine U-507.
Since the beginning of August, the U-507 had been in Brazilian territorial waters, ready to attack, and she did not lack the credentials to do so. Since leaving the Hamburg shipyards on September 11, 1940, she had already sunk ten Allied ships in the North Atlantic, including a 10,731-ton American tanker, two Honduran tankers and a Norwegian tanker.
At the beginning of 1942, she also took part in a massacre on the east coast of the United States, which the Germans called their "second happy time" (the "first happy time" had been in 1940, around the British Isles), when the Germans sank dozens of ships off New York or even further, in the Gulf of Mexico. One of those that ventured into the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico was the U-507, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Harro Schacht.
The U-507 was a Type IXC submarine, built in 1940. She had a displacement of 1,120 tons on the surface and 1,232 tons submerged. With a length of 76.76m (251.84feet), submarines of this type were powered by a combination of diesel and electric engines. Underwater, only the electric motor could be used. It was only later in the war that a device was adapted - a tube that captures air from the surface - the snorkel, to make the submarine capable of starting the diesel engine even while submerged. On the surface, powered by diesel, a Type IXC could sail 13450nmi at a speed of . Submerged, it could only sail at a speed of just . They had 22 torpedoes and a load of 44 naval mines. They operated with a crew of between 48 and 56 men.[10]
The U-507
On the afternoon of August 15, the Baependi, commanded by Long-Distance Captain João Soares da Silva, was sailing about off the coast of the state of Sergipe, off the mouth of the Real River, when it was spotted by the U-507. Sailing so close to the coast had been an instruction from Lloyd Brasileiro to its ships, fearful of the actions of hostile submarines on the high seas.
The ship had left Salvador, Bahia, at seven o'clock in the morning, heading north to Maceió, its next port of call. Unarmed and with its navigation lights switched off, she was sailing the waters off the northeastern coast at a speed of, in a place where the depth was 40m (130feet).
From Rio de Janeiro, her port of departure, to Bahia, the sea was calm. However, from that point onwards, it was agitated, with strong waves.[11] The ship carried 306 people on board, including the crew of 73 men and an army unit, whose members - officers and soldiers - were accompanied by their families, some with many children, for a total of 233 passengers, as well as a general cargo - including military equipment - valued at more than eleven million cruzeiros.
The passengers had just finished dinner and were celebrating the birthday of the First Commissioner, Sebastião Ferreira Tarouquella. An orchestra was playing in the lounge and the captain and some of the passengers were joining in. Outside, under the awning of the aft deck, soldiers - most of them from Rio de Janeiro - were singing and drumming happily without suspecting a thing, around the cannon and on top of the boxes of goods and ammunition. They were from the 7th Back Artillery Group, commanded by Major Landerico de Albuquerque Lima, on their way to Recife.
At 19:12 (00:12 on the 16th, Central European Time), the first torpedo hit the Baependi. With the explosion, the few lights still on went out and the panic began. of explosives - enough to sink a battleship - hit the boiler room. A second torpedo was then launched precisely at the fuel tanks. Simultaneously with the bang, there was an explosion that caused the hatch of the No. 2 hold to burst open, from where great flames began to emanate, rising almost to the top of the mast. As a result, the ship caught fire and quickly drifted to starboard, the side on which it was hit.
The radio telegrapher did not have time to transmit a distress message. Nor was there time to launch the dinghies and lifeboats overboard; only one broke free spontaneously. Many of the passengers were in their cabins and had no time to get out due to the speed of the sinking. The captain, João Soares da Silva, died on the bridge blowing the ship's whistle, according to witnesses.
It took two minutes for the ship to submerge. This lapse of time was vividly reported by artillery officer Lauro Moutinho dos Reis, one of the few survivors:
Within minutes the ship was gone. The sea was soon filled with debris and pieces of wood fell everywhere like splinters. Light buoys, which lit up on contact with the water, gave the sea a reddish hue. Captain Moutinho, who had miraculously managed to return to the surface, brought up by the pressure of the ship's immersion, was still able to catch a glimpse of the submarine in the darkness, which was shining a beam of light on the wreckage to see the devastating effects of its mission.
On the cloudy, starless night, the situation of the survivors, despite being accommodated in the lifeboat, was precarious, due to the intense cold, added to the thirst, seasickness and injuries, all made worse by the rough sea. A stronger wave ended up hitting the lifeboat with force. The danger of capsizing became imminent and the men had to undress and put their soaked clothes in the chipped crevice of the boat, as well as bucket out the water that kept pouring in.
During the night, they could still make out the lights of a ship in the distance, but they could not reach it because of the distance. About an hour later, they heard a dry rumble followed by an immense flash. They did not understand what was happening. Only later did they discover what it was: the Araraquara being torpedoed by the same submarine.
At dawn on the 16th, they reached a deserted beach on the south coast of Sergipe, where they found some water in an abandoned hut by the beach. After a long walk, they reached a village called Canoas, where the locals were reluctant, due to the conditions they were in.
After being fed, they headed for Estância, also in the state of Sergipe, where they learned that another eight shipwrecked people had washed ashore. Among the few survivors who managed to reach the coast clinging to the wreckage was Adolfo Artur Kern, the ship's chief engineer. When he left the Baependi, he said that he spent around half an hour floating in the rough sea, among other shipwrecked people and the flames produced by the oil spilled from the ship.
In addition to the captain, the chief mate, the ship's doctor, a pilot, five train drivers, a radio telegrapher and two stewards died, along with 43 others, making a total of 55 crew members lost, as well as 215 of the 233 passengers on board. Major Landerico also died, along with three captains, five lieutenants, eight sergeants and 125 corporals and soldiers.
Some of the castaways managed to reach the only lifeboat that broke free; 28 survivors reached land the next morning. Eight took another day to reach the beach, clinging to debris. In total, 18 crew members and 18 passengers (only one woman) were saved. All the children on board died.
It was not until August 18, that the Press and Advertising Department's relay station broadcast to the country, and the newspapers published, the communiqué that would outrage the country (by that date, five other ships had already been sunk):
For the first time, Brazilian vessels, serving the traffic of our coasts in the transport of passengers and cargo from one state to another, suffered attacks by Axis submarines (...) The unspeakable attack against defenseless units of the merchant navy of a peaceful country, whose life takes place on the margins and far from the theater of war, was practiced with ignorance of the most elementary principles of law and humanity. Our country, in keeping with its tradition, is not afraid of such brutality and the government is examining what measures to take in the face of what has happened. The people must remain calm and confident, in the certainty that the crimes committed against the lives and property of Brazilians will not go unpunished." Press and Propaganda Department. August 18, 1942.The news outraged the Brazilian population who, desiring retaliation, turned against immigrants or descendants of Germans, Italians and Japanese. In many Brazilian cities, there were episodes of depredations of commercial establishments belonging to people from those countries, as well as attempts at lynching, even against those who were not sympathetic to the Nazi cause, which was the vast majority.[12]
Students, trade unionists, workers and other sectors of society marched through the streets of the country's main cities demanding the country's entry into the war. In Rio de Janeiro, around the Guanabara Palace and the Itamaraty Palace, the seat of government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, respectively, demonstrations followed one another.
On August 22, after a ministerial meeting, Brazil ceased to be neutral, declaring a "state of belligerence" against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, formalized by Decree-Law No. 10,508, issued on August 31, 1942.