The Ondina, Presumed Last Victim
The Ondina was a modern tanker built for one of the shipping companies of Shell, La Corona. She was new, relatively fast and by contemporary standards not lightly armed with a 4"/50 caliber gun on her stern and several machine guns for anti-aircraft use. Under Captain W. Horsman, she was now deployed between Fremantle in Australia and Abadan on the oil-rich shores of the Persian Gulf. On her journey to Abadan, she would only enjoy the protection of a small corvette. HMIS Bengal (Lt. Cdr. W.J. Wilson, RNR) was one of the RAN-type Bathurst class corvette/minesweepers, although she and three sister ships were allocated to the Indian Navy. She only had one 3-inch gun (a 4-inch gun was not available), which made her firepower barely enough to protect the Ondina from submarines, let alone from enemy surface raiders. The two ships departed Fremantle on 5 November 1942, expecting a long but uneventful trip.
Ondina's specifications are as follows:
Read more about this topic: Japanese Raiders In The Indian Ocean
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