Introduction

This website is about the torpedoing of the troopship Cameronia in the Mediterranean on the 22nd December 1942. It may be considered to be the “younger sibling” of the Strathallan website  as both of these troopships were part of convoy KMF-5 when they were torpedoed within 28 hours of each other.

Split between these two troopships, there were almost 10,000 people onboard and if circumstances had been different the torpedoing of these two troopships could have led to the largest maritime disaster of the Second World War. Instead, in the case of the Strathallan, the greatest maritime rescue in history ever carried out by the Royal Navy took place, (a feat which today, is all but unknown); and in the case of the Cameronia, a mixture of unbelievable courage, quick thinking and sheer luck saw her limp safely into the port of Bougie, North Africa.

To deprive the enemy of valuable information, the entire episode remained secret and has since all but been forgotten. Convoy KMF-5 was not the largest convoy of the Second World War, nor was it the smallest, it was, all things considered, an average convoy and the only reason it is being remembered on this and the Strathallan website is that in both cases, a son of a survivor onboard each of the torpedoed troopships has bothered to research the convoy’s story, each, initially independently, but eventually as a team when the one learned of the other.

The author of this website is interested to hear from anyone whose relative may have been onboard the Cameronia when it was torpedoed so the story of this event can be expanded. He would also love to receive any wartime photos of this ship, especially ones showing the Cameronia in Bougie immediately after being torpedoed or in a Gibraltar dry-dock being repaired.

Thank you everyone who has contributed to the story so far.

The chart of the North Atlantic in the background is Kriegsmarine Marinequadratkarte No. 3401.