He was drafted into the army on April 8, 1943. He was sent to North Africa where he was a private in the 33rd Replacement Depot. Pvt. Lehnert died in a tragic sinking that claimed more lives than the USS Arizona but remains largely unknown to this day.

Just after noon on Thanksgiving Day (November 25, 1943), Pvt. Lehnert was one of more than 2,000 American troops that steamed out of Oran, Algeria on the British passenger liner HMT Rohna. Thanksgiving Dinner that day was watery canned chicken and weevil-filled bread. It joined a convoy on the way to Egypt before plans to continue on to the Far East.

The next day, in the late afternoon, the convoy was attacked by a squadron of thirty Heinkel He 177A heavy bombers. Rather than using conventional bombs, they were armed with Henschel Hs 293 radio-guided, rocket-boosted glide bombs; in other words, a primitive cruise missile. Via line-of-sight remote control, the Germans in one of the bombers guided the glide bomb to hit the 461 foot long ship and pierced the port side. The blast created holes in both sides of the ship big enough "you could drive a truck through" plus flooded the engine room. The explosion also started fires and knocked out all electrical -- rendering the pumps useless. The crew discovered that all 11 of the lifeboats on the port side were either destroyed or unusable due to the listing of the ship. They were able to use 8 of the lifeboats on the starboard side but most became overloaded and capsized.

Other ships in the convoy were able to rescue more than 1,600 survivors, but 1,318 troops and sailors were killed. No other single sinking by the enemy claimed more Allied lives during World War 2.

There was no immediate reporting of the tragedy. The Allies did not want to let the Germans know their new wonder weapon worked. In February 1944 a press release reported the sinking of an unnamed ship and the loss of 1,000+ soldiers by a German submarine. In June 1945 the US government finally identified the Rohna and the accurate casualty figures plus admitted it was a loss due to bombing, although no mention was made of the unique guided bomb. In 1948 a history of the shipping line that owned the Rohna finally revealed the ship was sunk by a wireless guided bomb. The US government did not confirm this until 1967.

His cenotaph grave is at Calvary Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.

Source: WW2 Fallen 100 www.tggf.org

Peter E Lehnert Jr