I found these quotes from a news group on the Armed Guard
Web Site:
According to 'The Liberty Ships,' by Sawyer and
Mitchell, the Liberty Samuel Heintzelman was sunk in the Indian
Ocean while en route from Charleston to Karachi, and that both the
Japanese and the Germans claim responsibility for the sinking. A Japanese
account says she was sunk by gunfire and torpedo on July 3, 1943,
north of Freemantle. German records date the sinking six days later
and credit a German submarine, U511. Sawyer and Mitchell say it's
a fact that debris and empty boats from the ship washed up on Diego
Garcia, in the Maldives, on Sept. 30. The book says, too, that there
is no evidence of a Japanese raider being at sea after November of
'42 but that the U-511 was in the Indian Ocean, en route to Japan,
at the time.
Captain Moore's A CARELESS WORD...A NEEDLESS SINKING
quotes German records claiming the ship. It also quotes a US Navy
dispatch from Colombo dated October 5, 1943: 'On 30 September 1943,
wreckage washed up off Minni Minni Village, Maldives Islands (5-00
South/72-00 East).
The wreckage consisted of glass tubes with unidentified
powder, ammunition boxes, and a plank marked SS SAMUEL HEINTZELMAN.
On the previous day, two ship's boats were sighted and later disappeared
in the same area. They were apparently not occupied.' Moore also quotes
Heinz Rehse, a member of U-511 who reported that the sub went deep
after firing, heard underwater explosions. Upon surfacing, they found
no sign of the ship or survivors...and had pieces of wreckage on the
deck of the sub. (p. 250)
The reports of debris found seems consistent with what
my family had been told, especially the piece of wreckage with the ships
name on it. However I had never known that the debris was washed up
on Diego Garcia, a couple of hundred miles from the location where the
Heintzelman was sunk. I had always assumed that the debris had been
located somewhere near where the ship went down.
