Adels, Louis Edouard (Civilian Pilot (Captain))

Killed in Action 1942-January-19

Royal Mail Ship SS Lady Hawkins, a Canadian National Steamship Company vessel was one of five sister ships that operated between Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Caribbean, via Bermuda. On January 19, 1942 this vessel, carrying 321 passengers and crew, was struck by two torpedoes fired by the German U-boat, U-66 about 150 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Three lifeboats were launched before the ship sank 30 minutes after being torpedoed. Two lifeboats were lost without a trace along with an unknown number of passengers and crew. The remaining lifeboat, designed to hold 43 people had 76 aboard. Adrift at sea for five days, this number dwindled to 71 before the lifeboat was picked up by US merchant vessel SS Coamo and taken to San Juan, Puerto Rico on January 28, 1942. The casualty list from various sources is incomplete and a number of those lost do not appear on any list found to date, including some aircrew from RAF Ferry Command who were sailing to Bermuda

American civilian Pilot Captain LE Adels, American civilian Pilot Captain HE Fausett and Aircraftman 1st Class EEC Snell (RAF) were aboard the Lady Hawkins and killed in action. They all appear in Christie's Ocean Bridge book

Captain Fausett's wife was also aboard the ship and lost and both are recorded on the casualty list for the event in uboat.net

Adels and Snell are listed in CWGC for this date but do not appear on any casualty list found to date

The missing have no known grave. Captain Adels and Captain Fausett are commemorated on the Ottawa Memorial

Leading aircraftman Snell is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial

U-boat U-66, after sinking or damaging two hundred and twenty three thousand tons of Allied shipping over a period two and a half years in the Battle of the Atlantic, would be rammed and sunk by the US Navy destroyer escort ship USS Buckley (DE-51), part of an antisubmarine hunter-killer group on May 4, 1944

The SS Coamo would itself torpedoed and sunk as part of Convoy MKF-3 bound for the UK on December 2, 1942 by German U-boat, U-604. There were no survivors from the 186 passengers and crew aboard, the largest single loss of a merchant crew on a US flagged merchant vessel in the Second World War

Ocean Bridge, The History of RAF Ferry Command by Carl A Christie page 311

Lady Hawkins (Canadian Steam passenger ship) - Ships hit by...

LADY HAWKINS - For Posterity's Sake

The sinking of the Lady Hawkins - Free Online Library

Naval History.ca - Canadian Merchant Ship Losses 1939-1945

Coamo (American Steam passenger ship) - Ships hit by German U-boat...

German submarine U-66 (1940) - Wikipedia

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Finadagrave.com

Civilian Pilot (Captain) Louis Edouard Adels has no known grave.