. Moment torpedoes struck still burns for survivor By Saturday, 16 August 2008 Charley Watkins will pour himself a gill of whisky tomorrow and drink to the memory of absent friends – among them the 432 Allied prisoners who died when their ship was torpedoed on August 17, 1942. Though it was 66 years ago, the 89-year-old Wellington man still has vivid memories of the day the 8000- tonne Nino Bixio was torpedoed in the Mediterranean by a British submarine. Mr Watkins, whose company had been captured by Germans at El Alamein, says the Kiwi, Australian, British, Indian and South African prisoners were packed in like cargo as the Nino Bixio sailed in convoy. [...]