See also
James WHITE, 1942, age 40, james White
James WHITE, James White lost at Sea Grave
James WHITE, 1940, age 38, 61 Second Ave
James WHITE, nino-bixio
| Name: | James WHITE |
| Sex: | Male |
| Father: | William WHITE ( -1935) |
| Mother: | Agnes ( -1957) |
| Cause of Death: | Drowned |
| Note 1: | In December 1941 and August 1942 two POW transport ships from North Africa were struck by allied subs, to the great lose of Allied POWs. Hundreds of Australian and New Zealand boys were buried at Methoni and 10 km further north at Pylos in Navarino Bay. Today we honour the memory of those Australian and New Zealand Servicemen who died on this day when a ship called “Nino Bixio”, transporting several thousand Prisoners of War from Benghazi in Libya to Brindisi, enroute to POW camps in Italy, was torpedoed. Two days out of Benghazi, the convoy was attacked by the British submarine HMS Turbulent. The Nino Bixio was hit by two torpedoes: one exploded in the tightly packed forward hold, killing more than 200 men and wounding another 60. Others drowned overboard. Despite extensive damage the Nino Bixio did not sink and was towed by an escorting destroyer to Navarino in Southern Greece, where the dead were removed and buried. The surviving POWs were transferred ashore and those fit enough were shipped to Bari in Italy." James WHITE sn 23005 |
| Note 2: | https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-fate-of-the-nino-bixio/ THE MV NINO Bixio was almost brand new. Named after a general from the 1870 unification of Italy, it had been commissioned in Genoa nine months earlier. Still, there was hardly enough room for 2921 POWs. The captives were destined for Brindisi, a port on the heel of Italy’s boot. But the Nino Bixio’s captain, Antonio Raggio, decided to zig-zag across the Mediterranean, turning a day’s journey into three. Royal Navy submarines were hunting ships bound for Italy, so Raggio would pretend to sail for Greece. On August 16, flanked by two destroyers and two torpedo boats, the Sestriere and the Nino Bixio left Benghazi harbour. The ships were unmarked, flying neither a red cross nor a white flag, the signals for wounded servicemen or prisoners of war. Troops criss-crossed the Mediterranean to join major campaigns in North Africa, Crete and Italy. Right, a Royal Navy warship carries New Zealand servicemen to Greece. ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY Crushed into the forward hold were about 500 of the prisoners, including the New Zealand contingent, “packed tight as a swarm of bees”, said Henderson. It was late afternoon at the height of the Mediterranean summer when the convoy set sail. The foward hold was standing room only and the air was heavy and stifling and foul. “All I did all night was sit down on my haunches and stand up. Sit down, stand up. Sit down, stand up,” said Ron Yates, a serviceman from Tauranga, in a 1960s radio documentary, Prisoners of War. The following day, whispers began filtering through the ship that there was an Allied submarine in the area. Out in the deep, the HMS Turbulent was prowling. Its captain, John ‘Tubby’ Linton, was a Welshman who played rugby for the Royal Navy. He would later be posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for sinking 81,000 tons of enemy shipping. By mid-afternoon, the Peloponnesian coast of Greece was visible from the deck of the Nino Bixio. About 3.30pm, Linton gave the order to fire. “I had a premonition it would happen,” said Yates. “I was sitting there and, all of a sudden, everything just seemed to go cold around me. I felt black wings beating around. I knew it was death, but above me there was a white light shining. I felt that though there was death all around me, it wasn’t going to hurt me.” The first torpedo struck the Nino Bixio’s engine room. The second clipped the rudder, disabling the ship’s steering. The third smashed into the forward hold. The HMS Turbulent, which torpedoed the MV Nino Bixio in August 1942, was sunk off the coast of Italy in March 1943. ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY The explosion killed dozens of men in an instant, vaporising them. Then seawater surged into the hold through a ragged hole two storeys high, throwing men around like garments in a washing machine. Hatch covers and steel beams collapsed into the turmoil. Of the chaos, Henderson remembers “swirling bits and pieces of bodies. Screams. Terrible cries for impossible help.” Some were spared. Charles Watkins, originally from Wellington, was playing cards on the forward hold’s upper deck and climbed to safety, he later recalled. Yates was thrown above the ship by the explosion. “I had a feeling I was up in the air but I couldn’t see,” he said. “I was in a grey cloud and all I kept thinking was, ‘Which arm? Which leg?’” He landed on his side on the deck, suffering a knock to the back that would bother him for the rest of his life. The sea was full of bobbing heads. Some captives had been sucked out through the hole in the hull, while others had leapt overboard, believing the ship was sinking. Survivors still on the Nino Bixio began throwing ropes to them. One man pulled his body up hand over hand, then collapsed on deck, both of his legs missing. Another man was found in a coffin of steel plates that had curled around him as the sides of the ship split apart. New Zealand soldiers serving at El Alamein in July 1942 fashioned veils as a protection against the flies that were a feature of the area, wrote Harold Paton, official photographer of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force. ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY The Nino Bixio glided on without power, slowing and lowering in the water. Behind her, Henderson saw “a pitiful spreading wake of debris and drowning men that finally reached almost as far as the eye can see”. The two destroyers cut through the human wake, releasing depth charges, but the Turbulent eluded them. A few of the survivors in the water, clinging to makeshift rafts, would be rescued later. Most would die |
| Birth | 3 Jul 1902 | Belfast, Antrim, Northern Ireland |
| Residence | 1942 (age 39-40) | Auckland, New Zealand |
| 61 Second Avenue, Kingsland, New Zealand https://www.nzwargraves.org.nz/casualties/james-white-0 |
||
| Occupation | 1942 (age 39-40) | Soldier |
| Killed or died while a Prisoner of War, Cause of Death AWMM Killed whilst a Prisoner of War https://www.nzwargraves.org.nz/casualties/james-white-0 https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/record/C21792 |
||
| Death | 17 Aug 1942 (age 40) | At Sea |
| Cause: Drowned Casualty Service Number: 23005 Name:James White Rank: Private Date of Birth: 03 July 1902 Place of Birth: Belfast, Ireland Next of Kin: William and Agnes White (parents), 61 Second Avenue, Kingsland, New Zealand Date of Enlistment: Not known Enlistment Address: 61 Second Avenue, Kingsland, New Zealand Occupation on Enlistment:Bushman Armed Force: Army Unit: New Zealand Infantry, 24 Battalion Casualty Details Cause of Death: Lost in the S.S. Nino Bixio Date of Death: 17 August 1942 Day of Death: Monday Age at Death: 35 Conflict: WW2 Embarkation Details Embarkation Body: Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF) Text in italics supplied by Cenotaph Online, Auckland War Memorial Museum Cemetery Cemetery: Alamein Memorial Cemetery Reference: Column 106. Cemetery Location: Egypt |
||
| Burial | 1942 | Alamein Memorial |
| Cemetery Reference: Column 106. Cemetery Location: Egypt |
||
In December 1941 and August 1942 two POW transport ships from North Africa were struck by allied subs, to the great lose of Allied POWs. Hundreds of Australian and New Zealand boys were buried at Methoni and 10 km further north at Pylos in Navarino Bay.
Today we honour the memory of those Australian and New Zealand Servicemen who died on this day when a ship called “Nino Bixio”, transporting several thousand Prisoners of War from Benghazi in Libya to Brindisi, enroute to POW camps in Italy, was torpedoed.
Two days out of Benghazi, the convoy was attacked by the British submarine HMS Turbulent. The Nino Bixio was hit by two torpedoes: one exploded in the tightly packed forward hold, killing more than 200 men and wounding another 60. Others drowned overboard. Despite extensive damage the Nino Bixio did not sink and was towed by an escorting destroyer to Navarino in Southern Greece, where the dead were removed and buried. The surviving POWs were transferred ashore and those fit enough were shipped to Bari in Italy."
James WHITE sn 23005
https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-fate-of-the-nino-bixio/
THE MV NINO Bixio was almost brand new. Named after a general from the 1870 unification of Italy, it had been commissioned in Genoa nine months earlier. Still, there was hardly enough room for 2921 POWs.
The captives were destined for Brindisi, a port on the heel of Italy’s boot. But the Nino Bixio’s captain, Antonio Raggio, decided to zig-zag across the Mediterranean, turning a day’s journey into three. Royal Navy submarines were hunting ships bound for Italy, so Raggio would pretend to sail for Greece.
On August 16, flanked by two destroyers and two torpedo boats, the Sestriere and the Nino Bixio left Benghazi harbour. The ships were unmarked, flying neither a red cross nor a white flag, the signals for wounded servicemen or prisoners of war.
Troops criss-crossed the Mediterranean to join major campaigns in North Africa, Crete and Italy. Right, a Royal Navy warship carries New Zealand servicemen to Greece.
ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY
Crushed into the forward hold were about 500 of the prisoners, including the New Zealand contingent, “packed tight as a swarm of bees”, said Henderson.
It was late afternoon at the height of the Mediterranean summer when the convoy set sail. The foward hold was standing room only and the air was heavy and stifling and foul.
“All I did all night was sit down on my haunches and stand up. Sit down, stand up. Sit down, stand up,” said Ron Yates, a serviceman from Tauranga, in a 1960s radio documentary, Prisoners of War.
The following day, whispers began filtering through the ship that there was an Allied submarine in the area.
Out in the deep, the HMS Turbulent was prowling. Its captain, John ‘Tubby’ Linton, was a Welshman who played rugby for the Royal Navy. He would later be posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for sinking 81,000 tons of enemy shipping.
By mid-afternoon, the Peloponnesian coast of Greece was visible from the deck of the Nino Bixio. About 3.30pm, Linton gave the order to fire.
“I had a premonition it would happen,” said Yates. “I was sitting there and, all of a sudden, everything just seemed to go cold around me. I felt black wings beating around. I knew it was death, but above me there was a white light shining. I felt that though there was death all around me, it wasn’t going to hurt me.”
The first torpedo struck the Nino Bixio’s engine room. The second clipped the rudder, disabling the ship’s steering. The third smashed into the forward hold.
The HMS Turbulent, which torpedoed the MV Nino Bixio in August 1942, was sunk off the coast of Italy in March 1943.
ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY
The explosion killed dozens of men in an instant, vaporising them. Then seawater surged into the hold through a ragged hole two storeys high, throwing men around like garments in a washing machine. Hatch covers and steel beams collapsed into the turmoil.
Of the chaos, Henderson remembers “swirling bits and pieces of bodies. Screams. Terrible cries for impossible help.”
Some were spared. Charles Watkins, originally from Wellington, was playing cards on the forward hold’s upper deck and climbed to safety, he later recalled. Yates was thrown above the ship by the explosion.
“I had a feeling I was up in the air but I couldn’t see,” he said. “I was in a grey cloud and all I kept thinking was, ‘Which arm? Which leg?’”
He landed on his side on the deck, suffering a knock to the back that would bother him for the rest of his life.
The sea was full of bobbing heads. Some captives had been sucked out through the hole in the hull, while others had leapt overboard, believing the ship was sinking.
Survivors still on the Nino Bixio began throwing ropes to them. One man pulled his body up hand over hand, then collapsed on deck, both of his legs missing. Another man was found in a coffin of steel plates that had curled around him as the sides of the ship split apart.
New Zealand soldiers serving at El Alamein in July 1942 fashioned veils as a protection against the flies that were a feature of the area, wrote Harold Paton, official photographer of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force.
ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY
The Nino Bixio glided on without power, slowing and lowering in the water. Behind her, Henderson saw “a pitiful spreading wake of debris and drowning men that finally reached almost as far as the eye can see”. The two destroyers cut through the human wake, releasing depth charges, but the Turbulent eluded them.
A few of the survivors in the water, clinging to makeshift rafts, would be rescued later. Most would die