Rescued off the Coast of Cape Hatteras
On April 16, 1942, a German submarine surfaced near the SS Alcoa Guide off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and opened fire with its deck gun. Unarmed and without an escort, the ship sank in two hours, but Junior Engineer Waldemar Semenov and 26 of his shipmates survived. In two lifeboats, the men drifted for three days until they were spotted by a search plane.
Twenty-eight-year-old Semenov did not panic as his ship came under fire. Before climbing into a lifeboat, he went below, grabbed his camera, and changed into a suit he had recently bought in New York. One of his shipmates took this photograph of Semenov in his suit.
The next day, the USS Broome, a Navy destroyer, picked them up.