Thanks, but who are Bailey and Ryan? Did they gain access to undisclosed records from the war office? I googled their names and a book on Amazon from 1975 popped up, and the top review said their work was biased. e.g. "Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan, together, present an ultra-nationalistic, biased interpretation of the policies, decisions and events leading up to the sinking of the Lusitania." If this is true, then their analyses of the truth might be suspect at best. Perhaps they were very patriotic and were seeing the evidence through rose coloured glasses, or were funded by the government to repeat the old patriotic narratives like the wartime propaganda to quash any mistakes or criminal activities, especially if it led to something much bigger - similar perhaps to the aftermath of the Titanic when Colonel Gracie's book and Lawrence Beesley's book which were both published not long after the disaster had both praised the company and the board of trade and both dismissed the allegations that the ship broke in two.
Perhaps the records were destroyed and a false set were duplicated to kill any press stories, and the newly formed government could not confirm or deny with absolute certainty what the Lusitania was carrying and they decided it was better to be cautious and destroy the wreck rather than allowing the possibility of its contents be known especially with the growing interest in salvaging the ship and her cargo in the 1920's.
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