FanShot

Paul Allen To Loan Yacht To British Navy For WWII Recovery Mission

42

It's not just fun, games and parties with Brangelina for Portland Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen and his Octopus superyacht in London during the 2012 Olympics. The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, reports that Allen is loaning the Octopus to the Royal Navy "at no cost" for use in a recovery mission with ties to World War II. -------------------------------- Mr Allen is loaning his mega-yacht, the Octopus, to Her Majesty's navy so they can retrieve the bell of the HMS Hood, a battlecruiser sunk in 1941 during World War II. After retrieving the bell, the British government hopes to display it as a memorial to the 1,415 people that perished when the ship sank. The battlecruiser was sunk by a German battleship, the Bismarck, on May 24, 1942 in the icy waters of the Denmark Strait. After an all-out assault on the vessel, it broke in half and sunk in minutes. Only three of the crew survived. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the Bismarck to be found and sunk in retaliation and on May 27, it was finally destroyed after several days of attacks by Royal Navy ships and the Royal Air Force. -------------------------------- -- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter