The Liberty ship SS Henry Bacon was the last allied ship sunk by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Twenty two crew members and seven members of the United States Navy Armed Guard lost their lives in this action. The vessel was named after Henry Bacon, the American architect who designed and built many monuments and settings for public sculpture, including the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. World War II The Henry Bacon was one of the thirty-eight merchant ships in convoy RA 64, which departed Kola Inlet, Murmansk, North Russia bound for Loch Ewe, Gourock, Scotland on Friday, 17 February 1945. The crew complement under Captain Alfred Carini was forty-one merchant seamen and twenty-six US Navy Armed Guard. The Henry Bacon was in ballast and carrying nineteen Norwegian civilian refugees, including women and children, as passengers. Before the convoy set sail, news had been received of a German attack on Norwegian patriots living on the island of Sørøya, in the approaches to the former German naval anchorage at Altafjord. The British Royal Navy had sent four destroyers to the scene and had rescued 500 men, women and children. These refugees were distributed among the ships of the convoy for passage to England. On the afternoon of the Saturday, 18 February, the weather deteriorated to force 8 on the Beaufort scale, and the escort carriers were unable to operate aircraft. That night the storm intensified with winds gusting up to sixty knots (110 km/h) with a heavy sea and swell. The convoy split up and began to disperse. The storm continued through Sunday, 19 February. On 20 February, the storm abated and the escort vessels started to round up the scattered ships. At 4 am the convoy had been detected by aircraft, and by 9 am twenty-nine of the ships were back on station with four still straggling. Then, on 22 February, the convoy ran into one of the worst storms ever recorded in the Barents Sea. Once again the convoy began to split up and was blown apart. The weather deteriorated to Beaufort scale force 12 with winds at 70 to 90 knots and temperatures 40 below zero. During this storm, one of the main springs on the Henry Bacons steering gear was broken, and the retaining pin was sheared. This damage caused the Henry Bacon to drop out of the convoy to effect repairs. Fate Around 1500 GCT