ORP Orzeł (85A)
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ORP Orzeł (85A) was a submarine of the Polish Navy during World War II . The Orzeł (German "Adler") was built in the Netherlands and was the type ship of the Orzeł class of the same name . The Polish boat was interned in Estonia shortly after the war began , but managed to escape to Great Britain . During the German invasion of Norway, the Orzeł sank a German troop transport. The boat has been missing in the North Sea since June 1940 .
Prehistory and construction
The construction contract was awarded by the Polish Navy on January 29, 1936 to the NV Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde shipyard in Vlissingen . Between 1936 and 1939 the Orzeł was built at the same time as her sister ship Sęp , which was launched at the Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij in Rotterdam . The construction costs for the two Orzeł class boats amounted to over 20 million złoty and were mainly financed by the delivery of Polish agricultural products.
The construction, modern at the time, was developed jointly by Polish and Dutch engineers.
Orzeł was put into service on February 2, 1939, received the tactical number 85A and reached its home port of Gdynia on February 10, where the boat was enthusiastically received by thousands of onlookers.
Constructive features
It was a submarine with a classic combined drive of diesel and electric motors without a snorkel . The two 6-cylinder diesel engines from the Swiss manufacturer Sulzer together delivered an output of 4,740 hp (3,484 kW). The two electric motors came from the Swiss manufacturer Brown & Boveri and together delivered an output of 1,100 hp (809 kW). The boat had two shafts that drove two screws .
The hull was built as a 2-hull construction and had a guaranteed diving depth of 80 m. The maximum diving depth was given as 100 m.
The barrel armament for the surfaced mission consisted of a 105 mm deck gun from the Swedish manufacturer Bofors with 125 rounds and two 40 mm anti-aircraft guns in a double mount with 1,200 rounds.
The boat had eight internal reloadable torpedo tubes (four in the bow, four in the stern). In addition, four external, pivotable pipes that cannot be reloaded at sea were installed outside the pressure hull. In total, the boat carried up to 20 torpedoes. The torpedo tubes were designed to be able to shoot both the French 550 mm and, with an insertion adapter, the smaller-caliber British 533 mm Whitehead torpedoes. In practice only the British torpedoes were used.
The design was a bit too big for the shallow waters of the small Baltic Sea . The maximum displacement of 1,650 ts even exceeded that of the early German Type IX offshore boats. However, the boat's suitability for the open sea and sea endurance of up to three months benefited from its later use in the North Sea.
Mission history
First patrol into the Baltic Sea
The ship's command
As the newest and most modern boat of the small Polish submarine fleet, the Orzeł received the popular "komandor podporucznik" Henryk Kłoczkowski , known as "Klocz", as commander on February 2, 1939 . At the age of 37, Klocz was the most experienced submarine commander in the Polish Navy. From the beginning there was a conflict between the commanding officer and his first officer, “Kapitan” Jan Grudziński , as both were disliked and did not trust each other. The problems of the two officers culminated in a court-martial after Grudziński's death in which Klocz was accused of cowardice and treason.
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| Ships of the line | 2 | 0 |
| Light cruisers | 3 | 0 |
| destroyer | 10 | 1 |
| Minesweepers | 30th | 6th |
| Submarines | 10 | 5 |
Situation at the beginning of the war
At the beginning of the war on September 1, 1939, the Polish Navy was far inferior to the German Navy in the Baltic Sea, both numerically and in terms of age and condition of the available material. (See: Balance of Power at the Beginning of the War .)
In view of the hopeless situation, the Polish naval command under Rear Admiral Józef Unrug decided to evacuate the most important surface units. The three Polish destroyers Burza , Błyskawica and Grom were sent to Great Britain on August 29 as part of Operation Beijing to bring them to safety. In addition to five submarines and various smaller units, only the destroyer Wicher and the heavy mine- layer Gryf remained off the Polish coast .
Plan Worek
On March 22, 1939, the Memelland was returned to the German Reich by the Lithuanian government under pressure from the National Socialist government.
On September 3, the first sea battle of the war broke out in the port of Hel when the two German destroyers Leberecht Maass and Wolfgang Zenker met the destroyer Wicher and the mine- layer Gryf .
In the early morning of September 1, the Orzeł left the home port of Gdynia with a crew of 63 to take part in the Plan Worek , the Polish defense plan for submarines. The sector assigned to the boat was to the west of Gdańsk Bay . Due to the extreme superiority of the German air force and the proximity to the German bases in East Prussia, the shallow water was certainly the most dangerous section of the Polish coastal defense.
Unlike the other Polish ships, Orzeł's first day at sea was calm and without any contact with the enemy.
On September 2, the base in Hel tried in vain to inform the Orzeł by radio that Schleswig-Holstein , which would have been a worthwhile target, was leaving Danzig and should be attacked. In retrospect, this news turned out to be misinformation. On the night of September 3, Orzeł sighted two German warships coming from Pillau in the direction of Hel. They were probably the German destroyers Leberecht Maass and Wolfgang Zenker , who unsuccessfully attacked the destroyer Wicher and the mine- layer Gryf the next day in the port of Hel . Due to the overwhelming German air supremacy , Klocz decided against an attack.
In the afternoon of September 3, the boat was discovered by German aircraft in 28 m depth and with water bombs attacked, which, however, did not cause any damage. At around 10:00 p.m. Orzeł met the Polish submarine Wilk , and Klocz debated for a long time with its commander Boguslaw Krawczyk . According to First Officer Jan Grudziński, the commander was said to have behaved "pessimistic and strange" after the interview. The Wilk later broke through to Great Britain and was the first Polish submarine to succeed in this operation.
On September 4 at 9:50 a.m. Orzeł , which had meanwhile been aground, was again unsuccessfully attacked from the air with depth charges. At around 3:00 p.m. Klocz tried to go to periscope depth , but had to dive again from the air after German depth charges. The commander then decided to leave Gdansk Bay and patrol Gotland . This decision was contrary to the orders of the base, which is why it came to the final break with Grudziński, who strongly contradicted.
On September 7th, the boat reached Gotland under difficult bypassing German minefields , which was unknown to the Polish naval command, as they suspected the boat was still in the ordered sector.
On the morning of September 8th, Klocz called in sick and stayed in his cabin without officially handing over command to Grudziński. Over the next two days, Grudziński tried to convince the commander to inform the base of the current situation, but Klocz still refused to hand over the command and forbade contact.
On September 10, Klocz finally allowed radio contact with the base, which gave the boat the choice of either returning to the base or dropping the sick commander down in a neutral port. Klocz couldn't make up his mind and withdrew again to his cabin.
On September 12th, a German merchant ship was finally sighted. The attack did not take place due to the lack of leadership and renewed differences between the commander and his first officer. In the evening, to the surprise of the crew, Klocz decided to call at Reval in the neutral but German-friendly Estonia.
Internment in Reval
The boat entered the port of Reval in the late evening of September 14th. Due to naval law, the crew assumed that they would be allowed to sail again unmolested within the next 24 hours. Klocz and another sick crew member were put ashore. However, the Estonian authorities arrested the Orzeł on the morning of September 15 on the grounds that the German merchant ship Thalassa was in the port and that the submarine would not be allowed to leave the port until 24 hours after it left port, according to naval law internationally applicable law of the sea .
The Estonian patrol boat Laine guarded the Orzeł . During the afternoon the submarine was officially interned. This illegal decision can certainly be explained by diplomatic pressure from Germany and the Soviet Union , which were allies at the time (→ German-Soviet non-aggression pact ).
As soon as the internment was declared, demilitarization of the boat began . The nautical charts, papers, navigational instruments, the flag and other removable devices were confiscated. The Estonian authorities started unloading the torpedoes. The crew, who worked pro forma with the Estonians, managed to slow down the disarming process through targeted deception and diversion and to preserve some important devices such as the radio equipment of the boat. When the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on September 17th, the crew decided to flee together.
On the night of September 18, the guards were taken by surprise and the Orzeł left the port of Reval with 61 crew members, two captured Estonian soldiers and at least six torpedoes on board.
The Estonians fired at the boat with handguns and heavy artillery from the coastal defense, which is why Grudziński laid the boat aground. In order to deceive the pursuers from now three navies (Germany, Estonia, Soviet Union), he later allowed the boat to surface towards the northeast in the Gulf of Finland . The deception succeeded because the Orzeł managed to escape and charged her batteries the next day near the Åland Islands .
Orzeł incident
The escape of the Orzeł was referred to in Soviet and German propaganda as the " Orzeł incident ". The Soviet Union accused Estonia of failing to meet its obligations as a neutral state. They let the boat escape on purpose. Despite much more decisive events on the land fronts, the German, Soviet and Estonian press dealt intensively with the Orzeł issue .
The so-called Orzeł incident served the Soviet Union as one of the pretexts for the long-planned invasion of the Baltic States . The first units of the Soviet Navy arrived in Reval in September 1939.
Patrol in the Baltic Sea
Despite the hostile superiority and the damage caused by the Estonian dismantling, Grudziński decided to search for enemy units in the Baltic Sea.
The two Estonians were provided with provisions and released in a rubber dinghy in Swedish waters two nautical miles off Gotland on the night of September 21 . Alluding to the propaganda of the Estonian and German press, which claimed that the two guards had been murdered, Grudziński said: “If you come home from the underworld, then first class!” And gave them clothes and plenty of cash for the journey home.
The boat patrolled for a few days east of Öland , where it narrowly escaped a disaster when it ran aground and shortly afterwards was unsuccessfully attacked by a German aircraft.
On October 1, the German minelayer M-85 ran into a sea mine laid by the Polish submarine Żbik . Until the end of the war, the Navy assumed that M-85 had been sunk by Orzeł . The lonely Polish submarine was also suspected to be the cause of further incidents, but this did not correspond to the facts, since Orzeł had not come to an attack.
When the supplies of water and food ran low in the first week of October, Grudziński decided to break through the Øresund into the North Sea and flee to the allies in Great Britain. Orzeł passed Ystad on October 7th around 9 p.m.
Breakthrough to Scotland
The journey through the Øresund was an enormous challenge with great risks. The nautical charts and navigation instruments were lost in Reval. The sound is flat, only a few kilometers wide and heavily traveled.
On the morning of October 8, the boat appeared near Trelleborg to recharge the batteries. As the brightness increased, the Orzeł lay aground at a depth of 30 m and waited for it to get dark. In the evening the boat appeared, hoisted an improvised Swedish flag and reached the Swedish island of Ven at midnight , where an unidentified warship was sighted and laid aground again for the next 20 hours at a depth of 25 m. The Kattegat was reached the following night . On October 10, Grudziński attempted a patrol but only sighted Swedish ships. On October 11th, the Skagen lighthouse was passed and the Skagerrak was reached. The boat's radio system was defective in the meantime, so that the allies in Great Britain could not be informed of the imminent arrival.
On the morning of October 12th, the open North Sea was reached after British minefields had been bypassed with good luck. So close to its destination, the boat was still in enormous danger. The allies were not informed of the arrival and could therefore mistake Orzeł for an enemy boat. The location of the minefields was not known. The overtired crew suffered from hunger and thirst. There was also a severe storm. On the morning of October 14th, the radio operator Henryk Kotecky finally managed to repair the radio and make contact with England. However, the Royal Navy had doubts about the authenticity of the news, especially since the German submarine U 47 had carried out its spectacular attack on Scapa Flow the night before and was suspected to be off the British coast. Around 11 a.m. Orzeł met the British destroyer Valorous , who was escorting the boat to Rosyth base in Scotland , where the escape came to an end.
Under British command
Upon arrival in Rosyth, the crew was delighted to find that the Wilk had also survived the dangerous journey. The Polish submarine had already reached the naval base on September 20th.
It turned out that the Orzeł had been damaged by the depth charge and the involuntary grounding near Öland, which is why it was overhauled in Dundee by December 1st.
On November 16, Jan Grudziński was awarded the Krzyz Srebrny Orderu Virtuti Militari (Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari Order) by General Władysław Sikorski , the then Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile , for his services . Strangely enough, only the commander and not, as in the case of the Wilk, the entire crew were awarded.
On December 8, the British government announced that both the Wilk and Orzeł had escaped, a blow to German and Soviet propaganda that claimed to have sunk all Polish submarines in the Baltic Sea. In truth, all five Polish submarines were able to save themselves: two escaped to Great Britain and three were interned in Sweden.
As before in Germany and the Soviet Union, the Orzeł topic dominated the press landscape again, but this time the British and French. King George VI. visited the boat several times and awarded Grudziński the Distinguished Service Order .
The boat was placed under British command and assigned to the 2nd submarine flotilla in Rosyth. However, no British commander was used and the Union Jack was not hoisted on the boat. The Orzeł remained de jure under the Polish flag. Except for one man who was transferred to the Polish depot ship Gdynia , the original composition of the crew did not change for the time being. The crew was only supplemented by three British seamen, including a radio operator. Her first voyage under British command took place in December in the North Sea, where two convoys were escorted together with other units of the Royal Navy. On the second patrol, she escorted four units to Bergen in Norway on December 29, 1939, together with four destroyers . The crew spent New Year's Day 1940 in Bergen. On the way home, a large convoy of 35 ships was accompanied by the destroyers between Norway and Great Britain.
On January 18, the Orzeł began her third patrol in British service. The area of operation was the Skagerrak. No German ships were sighted. The next patrol was off the Dutch coast in March. Only a neutral Danish merchant ship was stopped and checked here.
Sinking of the Rio de Janeiro
The Orzeł left their base in Rosyth on April 3, 1940 to embark on the sixth patrol. The area of operation was the Norwegian coast, which was reached on April 7th. The British naval command expected a German offensive in Scandinavia and ordered all available forces into the access routes of the enemy invasion fleet.
On April 8, 10:15 a.m., the Orzeł discovered a plume of smoke from a ship on the horizon at periscope depth, sailing between Lillesand and Kristiansand . After the observation showed that the course of the ship was in the direction of the boat, Grudziński slowed the speed to 3 knots and changed his own course accordingly. At 11:00 a.m. the ship was close enough to identify it as the German passenger ship Rio de Janeiro (5261 GRT) with its home port of Hamburg . Although the ship did not fly a flag, the optics clearly showed the name and home port. This seemed strange, since the Rio de Janeiro actually operated on the South America route, but headed north towards the mountains. Grudziński decided to show up and inspect the ship according to the award law . The Rio de Janeiro was 1000 m away and responded to the signals from the Orzeł by increasing its speed. The submarine took up the chase. The deck gun was still unusable as a result of the events in Estonia, which is why several warning shots were fired with the flak.
The Rio de Janeiro stopped while two Norwegian patrol boats, which had since become aware, approached at high speed. Grudziński signaled to the German crew that they should leave the ship and that he would attack in five minutes. At the same time he had a torpedo tube watered. The Germans confirmed the news, but otherwise did not respond. Grudziński had to delay the launch because one of the patrol boats drove into the expected torpedo runway, after which the transporter picked up speed again. The delayed shot missed its target. The Rio de Janeiro tried to escape the second torpedo, but had no chance and was devastated at 12:05 p.m. The Orzeł observers were surprised that the ship had transported several hundred German soldiers who were desperately fighting for their lives in the ice-cold water. The Orzeł circled its victim submerged, while the patrol boats and several Danish and Norwegian fishermen picked up the survivors. Thanks to the quick help, 183 Germans were rescued. 150 soldiers and sailors drowned.
At 1:15 p.m. Grudziński launched a third torpedo. This also hit, whereupon the Rio de Janeiro broke in the middle and sank.
Norway was not aware of the real threat situation at the time, as the rescued German soldiers stated that they had only been used to protect Norway against an Anglo-French invasion . Oslo even protested in London about the mining of the access routes of the German invasion fleet. However, the protest was not entirely unfounded, because the British also planned an invasion of Scandinavia using the Winter War as a pretext , which Winston Churchill mentioned in his memoir.
The Orzeł had gotten into the middle of the largest Triphibian landing operation in military history . On April 9, 1940, military units of the Wehrmacht with a strength of 130,000 men, supported by the Navy and Air Force, landed at various locations in neutral Norway as part of the Weser Exercise Company. Despite determined resistance, all important Norwegian ports were captured within the next two days. At the same time, Denmark, which was also neutral, was occupied by German army and naval troops almost without a fight.
Hunt for the Orzeł
On April 10, the boat attacked three German auxiliary patrol boats armed with depth charges and anti-aircraft guns with two torpedoes. Shortly after being shot down, the boat was attacked from the air and had to go to a depth of 50 m, which is why the effect of the attack could not be observed. The target, the auxiliary boat V 705 / Carsten , was missed.
On April 11, a very large German unit was sighted west of Kristiansand , but could not be attacked because repeated air strikes weighed down the boat. The trawlers also took part in the hunt with depth charges. It is possible that the Orzeł was attacked by the German U- 5 submarine that day without even noticing the attack. On the morning of April 12, the two trawlers discovered the Orzeł again , which had to go to a depth of 85 m under the constant depth charges.
On April 13, the boat left its previous area of operations for the Danish coast, where it was caught and attacked again. More attacks followed. On April 15, the boat lost its trim during alarm diving and could only be caught at a depth of 105 m. The crew had to hold out at great depth for 24 hours.
On April 16, the Orzeł received the order to return home and was attacked from the air by a German Arado on April 17 on the way home . The base in Rosyth was reached on April 18th.
The Orzeł was attacked between April 11 and April 15, 1940 with well over 100 (other estimate: 200) depth charges.
End of Orzeł
During the next mission, the Orzeł reached the Norwegian coast off Stavanger on May 2nd. Apart from the sighting of some floating mines, the operation was uneventful.
On May 23, the boat left the base in Rosyth with the assignment to patrol the waters between Norway and Denmark and then run north. Since then there has been no news from the Orzeł and both the boat and the entire crew are considered missing. The most likely theory is that the boat ran into a sea mine.
Post-history
The sister ship Sęp was interned in Sweden in 1939, served in the Polish Navy after the war until 1969 and was scrapped in 1972. The Wilk was transferred to the reserve on April 2, 1942, decommissioned in Poland in 1951 and then scrapped.
The first commandant of the Orzeł , Henryk Kłoczkowski, was in Reval hospital for only three days. He was in Estonian custody until November 1939. In December 1941 he was tracked down by Polish agents of the “ Anders Army ” in the Soviet Union. It is unclear why and how he came to England afterwards. In any case, the first commandant of the Orzeł in England was sentenced to four years imprisonment before a military tribunal for pretending to be ill, disregarding base orders, delaying the handover of command and indebtedness. He was also officially discharged from the Polish Navy and lost his rank. The conviction was based on a letter written by the boat's crew on arrival in Rosyth. Apparently he did not have to serve the entire sentence, as he left England in 1943 for the United States , where he was given command of a merchant ship. After the war, Klocz went to Canada , where he died in 1962.
The only crew member of the Orzeł who returned home was mate Feliks Prządak, who served on other Polish submarines during the further course of the war and did literary work after the war, which gave him some popularity in Poland.
In 1958 the Lodz Film Studio released the film Orzel Submarine .
On May 17, 1992, a monument to Orzeł was unveiled in Lillesand City Park . There is also a memorial for the boat in Reval. Orzeł is probably the only submarine in the world for which two monuments have been erected abroad and none exist in the home country.
In the summer of 1993, a submarine wreck was discovered west of Egersund , which was initially thought to be the wreck of the Orzeł . It was quickly established that it was the wreck of the almost identical Dutch submarine O 22 , which was probably sunk on November 8, 1940 by the German minesweeper M-144 and the UJ-177 submarine.
On May 31, 2013, the British Navy announced that they had discovered a wreck in British waters at a depth of 70 m, which according to the standards corresponds to those of the Orzeł . As a result, the Lech from Gdynia set off on June 3, 2013 as part of a Polish expedition with divers and hydrographic equipment to this wreck. However, the exact location is not disclosed in order not to endanger the resting place of the Polish soldiers who died there.
Commanders
- Henryk Kłoczkowski (February 2, 1939 - September 14, 1939)
- Jan Grudziński (September 14, 1939 - May 1940)
Crew list
Crew on the last voyage on May 23rd
The Orzeł has been missing with a crew of 60 since May 23, 1940 and officially counted as a total loss since June 11, 1940:
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Disembarked on arrival in the UK
- podporucznik marynarki Stanisław Pierzchlewski - fell on hurricane in 1943 .
- bosmanmat Władysław Oczkowski
- bosmanmat Czesław Olesiński
- mat Alojzy Grewka
- starszy marynarz Antoni Szymczak
- Bosmanmat Marek Oldakowski
- mat Feliks Przadak - was the only one to return to Poland
- Eryk Sopoćko - fell on hurricane in 1943
Disembarked in Reval on September 14, 1939
- komandor podporucznik Henryk Kłoczkowski
- mat Marian Barwiński
Traditional name Orzeł
Two other submarines of the Polish Navy bear the name of the Orzeł after the Second World War :
- Orzeł was a Soviet whiskey class boat(Project 613), entered service by the Polish Navy in 1962 and decommissioned in 1983. The ship class is also referred to as the Orzeł class .
- Orzeł is a Soviet Kilo class boat(Project 877E), entered service in 1986 by the Polish Navy and is in active service to this day (2006). The ship class of the boat, as it is the only Polish boat in its class, is also named the Orzeł class.
literature
- Erminio Bagnasco: Submarines in World War II. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-613-01252-9 .
- Janusz Piekałkiewicz : The Second World War. Komet, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-89836-472-0 .
Web links
- Polish submarine Orzeł : Legend of World War II (English)
- Orzeł on uboat.net (English)
- dutchsubmarines.com (Submarines built in the Netherlands) (English)
Footnotes
- ^ "ORP" is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".
- ↑ a b "komandor podporucznik" corresponds to a lieutenant commander .
- ↑ a b "kapitan marynarki" is comparable with first lieutenant to the sea .
- ↑ Three other Polish destroyers were evacuated to Great Britain shortly before the start of the war as part of Operation Beijing .
- ↑ Rights and obligations of neutral states in the event of a sea war ( Memento of October 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) - Article 16.
- ↑ Janusz Piekałkiewicz: p. 208.
- ↑ Tyskernes angrep på Norge starts April 8th ( Memento from June 26th 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Levende historie (Norwegian)
- ^ Allied Submarine Attacks of World War II
- ↑ "bosman" corresponds to boatswain .
- ↑ "podchorąży" is comparable to officer candidates .
- ↑ "starszy marynarz" corresponds to private .
- ↑ "mat" corresponds to Maat .
- ↑ "chorąży marynarki" is comparable to lieutenant at sea .
- ↑ Jan Grudziński was promoted posthumously to komandor podporucznik in 1940 .
- ↑ "bosmanmat" corresponds to chief mate .
- ↑ "porucznik marynarki" is comparable to first lieutenant at sea .
- ↑ "marynarz" corresponds to sailor .
- ↑ "starszy bosman" corresponds to Chief Petty Officer .
- ↑ "podporucznik marynarki" is comparable to lieutenant at sea .
- ↑ Henryk Kłoczkowski was dishonorably dismissed in 1942, losing all ranks .
