HMT Rohna was a British India Steam Navigation Company passenger and cargo liner that was built on Tyneside in 1926 as SS Rohna and requisitioned as a troop ship in 1940. ("HMT" stands for His Majesty's Transport.) Rohna was sunk in the Mediterranean in November 1943 by a Henschel Hs 293 guided glide bomb launched by a Luftwaffe aircraft. More than 1,100 people were killed, most of whom were US troops.
Building
In 1925, British India Line ordered two new ships for its Madras–Nagapatam–Singapore service. They were sister ships but were built by different shipyards and had different engines. Hawthorn Leslie and Company built Rohna at its shipyard at Hebburn on Tyneside. Barclay, Curle and Company built in Glasgow on Clydeside. Both ships were launched and completed in 1926.
Rohna was launched on 24 August 1926 and completed on 5 November. She was named after a village in Sonipat, Punjab, India. She had 15 corrugated furnaces that heated five single-ended boilers with a combined heating surface of . These fed steam at 215 lb<sub>f</sub>/in<sup>2</sup> to two four-cylinder quadruple expansion steam engines, developing a total of 984 NHP. Each engine drove one of the ship's twin screws, giving Rohna 984 NHP or 5,000 ihp.
By 1934, Rohna carried wireless direction finding equipment.
Civilian service
Instead of taking up her Madras–Nagapatam–Singapore route immediately, Rohna spent her first six months of service taking military reinforcements to Shanghai. As a result, she did not start her intended service until June 1927.
On 15 March 1940 Rohna returned through the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean, where she operated unescorted between Bombay, Rangoon, and Colombo until June. In May she was requisitioned as a troop ship
About 16:30 the next day off Bougie the convoy was attacked by 14 Luftwaffe Heinkel He 177A heavy bombers escorted by Junkers Ju 88 aircraft, followed by between six and nine torpedo bombers. At the time, the convoy had a limited air escort of four land-based Free French Air Force Spitfires. Later in the course of the attack, they were relieved by RAF Spitfires.
Details of the loss were revealed slowly over time. By February 1944 the US Government had acknowledged that more than 1,000 soldiers had been lost in the sinking of an unnamed troopship in European waters, but it hinted that a submarine was responsible. By June 1945 the US Government had released accurate casualty figures, the ship had been identified as Rohna, and the cause of the sinking had been identified as German bombers, but did not mention that a guided bomb was used. The use of an "aerial glider bomb" was first reported publicly on 14 November 1945 in an account of the battle in the Salt Lake City Tribune. On 9 March 1947 the Chicago Tribune published a complete account of the attack including the use of a "radio-controlled [sic] glider bomb." In 1948 a history of British India Line in the Second World War was published stating "the missile was one of the new glider bombs guided by wireless." The US Government officially released the remaining details of the incident, specifically that a radio-controlled glide bomb had been used, in 1967 after the passing of the Freedom of Information Act.
Monuments
Members of Rohnas crew who were killed are commemorated in the Second World War section of the Merchant Navy War Memorial at Tower Hill in London. Her lascar seamen are commemorated in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission monuments at Chittagong and Mumbai. A monument to the US troops who were killed was unveiled at Fort Mitchell National Cemetery in Seale, Alabama in 1996. In 1962, the traffic median of the Esplanade in Bronx, New York, at the corner of Astor Avenue, was named in memory of Private Sidney Weissman, a local resident killed in the sinking of the Rohna. On 31 May 2021, a bridge in Gardner, Massachusetts was dedicated to honor US Cpl. Lawrence Lukasevicius, a Gardner resident who was one of the soldiers killed while on the Rohna.
Controversy
In 1998 Dr James G. Bennett, who lost a brother in the sinking, published a book, The Rohna Disaster, through the self-publishing service Xlibris. In it he alleges that the heavy loss of life was due to the incompetence and cowardice of the Rohnas lascar crew and faulty safety procedures and equipment aboard.