Why would the ferry pilots be sailing *toward* England? I can see flying over and sailing back, but “victims of a torpedo attack in the Atlantic while *en route* to England.”
Could they have been going over to fly planes already in Britain down to Africa? You would think British pilots would be available for that but maybe they were stretched so thin, what with defending against the blitz, finding crews for RAF raids on Germany and conducting combat ops in the Med that they needed Americans for moving planes to North and West Africa.