MS München was a German LASH carrier of the Hapag-Lloyd line that sank with all 28 hands for unknown reasons in a severe North Atlantic storm in December 1978. The most accepted theory is that one or more rogue waves hit München and damaged her, so that she drifted for 33 hours with a list of 50 degrees without electricity or propulsion. Early career MS München was launched on May 12, 1972 at the shipyards of Cockerill Yards, Hoboken, Flanders, Belgium (Yard number 860) and delivered on September 22, 1972. München was a LASH ship and was the only ship of her kind under the German flag. She departed on her maiden voyage to the United States on October 19, 1972. Her sister ship MS Bilderdijk was built for the Holland America Line also at the shipyards of Cockerill Yards, Hoboken, Belgium (Yard number 859). She sailed under the Dutch flag until 1986 when she was renamed Rhine Forest. This ship was retired from commercial operation on December 15, 2007. She has been scrapped in Bangladesh. Last voyage and search operations München departed the port of Bremerhaven on December 7, 1978, bound for Savannah, Georgia. This was her usual route, and she carried a cargo of steel products stored in 83 lighters and a crew of 28. She also carried a replacement nuclear reactor-vessel head for Combustion Engineering, Inc. This was her 62nd voyage, and took her across the North Atlantic, where a fierce storm had been raging since November. München had been designed to cope with such conditions, and carried on with her voyage. The exceptional flotation capabilities of the LASH carriers meant that she was widely regarded as being practically unsinkable. München was presumed to be proceeding smoothly, until the night of December 11/12. Between 00:05 and 00:07 (all times GMT) on December 12, Münchens radio officer Jörg Ernst was overheard during a short radio communication on a "chat" frequency. He reported bad weather and some damage to München to his colleague Heinz Löhmann aboard , a German cruise ship away. Ernst also transmitted Münchens last known position as . The quality of the transmission was bad, so that not everything was understood by Löhmann. Since it was a standard communication, the information was not relayed back to the ship's owner until December 17. Distress call Around three hours later (03:10-03:20), SOS calls were received by the Greek