HISTORY
The ADANA was a 4205-ton steamship built in 1922 by the Vulcan shipyards of Hamburg and owned by Deutsche Levante Linie of Hamburg. She measured 115,1 meters long and 15,5 meters wide and had a central quarterdeck, four holds, and two masts.
On the evening of April 13, 1941, the convoy set sail from the port of Naples, bound for Tripoli. This was the 20th convoy carrying men and materials from the initial contingent of the Afrika Korps to Libya, and for the ADANA, this was the fifth transport on these routes. The convoy consisted of five merchant ships—the German ARTA, AEGINA, ADANA, and ISERLOHN—carrying materials, vehicles, and a contingent of 1.042 men, and the Italian steamer SABAUDIA, loaded with ammunition. The convoy was escorted by three Italian destroyers: the TARIGO, the LAMPO, and the BALENO.
During navigation, on the morning of April 15, near Cape Bon, the convoy was spotted by a Martin Mariland scout plane, which began shadowing the convoy, reporting its progress to Malta. The scout plane had in turn been spotted by the convoy's escort ships, which requested air assistance, but bad weather prevented the intervention of Italian and German scouts and fighters.
At 18:30 the destroyers of the 14th Destroyer Flotilla, JERVIS, JANUS, NUBIAN and MOHAWK, under the command of Captain Philip John Mack, three of which were equipped with radar, set sail from Malta to intercept the convoy.
Shortly before 2:00 a.m. on April 16, the British destroyers' radars spotted the convoy, and the destroyers maneuvered unseen to position themselves for the attack, facing the moon, brandishing their guns and torpedo tubes. At 2:20 a.m., the British ships opened fire from the tail of the convoy at a range of only 2000 meters. The steamer SABAUDIA, which had the rearmost position in the convoy, was among the first to be hit, and her ammunition load exploded fearfully, disintegrating the ship, leaving no survivors. In the confused melee that followed, the steamer ARTA attempted to ram an enemy vessel that narrowly avoided it by counter-maneuvering. The LAMPO and BALENO were immediately hit, and although they attempted to retaliate, they were quickly put out of action. The British destroyers riddled one ship after another with cannon fire and torpedoes, and the convoy was completely destroyed. The sinking TARIGO managed to fire two torpedoes at one of the attacking ships, the MOHAWK, which also sank. Over 700 men, including crew and transported troops, lost their lives in the fighting and in the sinking of the ships.
The wreck of the LAMPO, semi-surfacing, was later recovered and returned to service in May 1942. It sank again on 30 April 1943.
The wreck of the ADANA was seen still floating and on fire the next morning and slowly sank in the afternoon.
THE WRECK
After the war, the MICOPERI ship salvage company scrapped the convoy's ships that had sunk in shallow water. The ADANA appears to be the only wreck of the Tarigo convoy that remained preserved and unscrapped.
The wreck was discovered in 2008 by a team from the SDSS (M. Arena, M. Cottafava), at 34,38°N, 11,83°E, approximately 38 miles off the coast of Kerkennah and 88 miles SW of Lampedusa, in a 60-meter seabed. The wreck rests on its keel, intact from bow to stern, with a large gash on the starboard side near the engine room, which was destroyed, perhaps by a torpedo explosion. The two masts remain standing at half their original height. The ship's holds contain fuel drums, several dozen large aircraft bombs, a large quantity of artillery shells, numerous coils of detonating cord, spare aircraft parts, carts for refueling lubricating oil at airports, and several motor vehicles.
After the first dive in 2008, the wreck was not visited again until 2019. During this time, the superstructure housing the ship's bridge completely collapsed. Another striking change was the removal of the 120 mm shielded gun located at the stern. Both of these major alterations are believed to have been caused by nets tangled in the wreck during fishing trips and the subsequent attempts by the fishing vessel to free them, pulling at full throttle with its engines.
EXPLOSIVES AND HYDROCARBONS
The ship's holds contain a number of aerial bombs (at least thirty, probably more), some incendiary bombs and a significant quantity of cases of artillery shells.
LIFE ON THE WRECK
The ADANA wreck is teeming with marine life of all kinds, from sponges and other encrusting organisms to large resident and pelagic fish. On the wreck, you can encounter dusky groupers, American groupers, common snappers, amberjacks, white sea breams, brown meagres, and damselfish.
THE MODEL
The photogrammetry was achieved by processing over 17.000 photographs taken in 2023 over the course of six dives. Developing the model required many days of computation.
Photo: S. Gualtieri, M. Arena.
Elaboration: S. Gualtieri, K. Beemster Leverenz, N. Arena.
JOURNEY INTO THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL WRECK
3D photogrammetry of the wreck, freely accessible
Immersive 360° video up to 8K resolution in 3D viewable with smartphone, laptop or
head set “A tour of Adana with SDSS”
The 3D file to print it with a 3D printer
Virtual tour of the wreck in a virtual reconstruction
Cargo manifest
Ship's plan sheet
Bonus video of some wrecks from the Battle of the Convoys