30th submarine flotilla

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 30th Submarine Flotilla was an association of the Kriegsmarine in World War II. It belonged to the U-Bootwaffe's front flotillas and consisted of six submarines.

history

During the First World War, the allied Turkey had given German boats from the Mediterranean access through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus , so that a U-Flotilla or U-Half-Flotilla could also be stationed in Constantinople. This made headlines , among other things, with the sinking of the Russian hospital ship Portugal . 

In the course of the war against the Soviet Union in 1941, there was again a need for the presence of the Navy in the Black Sea , although Turkey, which was neutral during World War II, did not open the sea route. For this reason, some submarines from the North Sea should be brought by land to the Danube and to the Black Sea port of Constana ( Constanța ) around 2500 km away in the allied Romania .

The 30th flotilla was set up in October 1941 for this purpose. Six type II B coastal submarines were selected, which at that time were mostly only used as school boats in the Baltic Sea. These had a displacement of 414 tons, a total length of 42.7 m, a width of 4.08 m with a pressure hull of 28.2 m length and 4 m width.

After the transfer from Gotenhafen , Pillau and Memel to Kiel , the boats were decommissioned from May 1942 at the German works and lightened by around 140 t for weight reasons and technical adjustments. The large pressure hull was rotated by 90 ° for transport-technical reasons.

For safety reasons, the pressure hull was enclosed with ten pontoons when docking in Kiel only for inland water transport through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal , on the Elbe and Danube . They were firmly mounted and connected to one another. The draft of the boats was thus reduced. The towed boats reached their destination without any problems.

The pressure hull was pulled out of the Elbe via the slipway on Böcklinstraße in Dresden-Mickten and then transferred to special multi-part carrier groups, two type R40 road scooters . Taken in tow by Wehrmacht tractors, Faun ZR150 and Kaelble Z6W2A130, the camouflaged heavy transport reached the Danube near Ingolstadt at 8 km / h over 300 km of the Reichsautobahn.

After reassembling the buoyancy aids, the floatation followed and the continuation of the inland water transport on the Danube to Linz or Vienna , where the boats were made fit to drive again. In overwater voyage we went to the Romanian inland port of Galatz ( Galați ), where the equipment was then completed.

U 24 was provided as the first of the German six submarines on October 14, 1942 returned to service, U 23 last June 3, 1943, the 30th U-boat Flotilla in Constanta transferred (Constanta). The enemy voyages were directed against the Soviet Black Sea Fleet , according to official information a total of 26 ships with 45,426 gross tons were sunk.

After Romania changed sides in 1944, the base port fell away. The boats U 9 , U 18 and U 24 lying there were damaged or even sunk near the port, although the Soviet troops later managed to rescue them. For the remaining three boats, it was no longer possible to evade to Bulgaria further south, and an attempt to break through into the Mediterranean Sea (in violation of the sovereign rights of neutral Turkey) was prohibited by Dönitz. The flotilla was disbanded in September 1944 and an agreement on a sale to Turkey was not reached. The boats had to sink themselves on the Turkish coast, the crews were interned, but did not reveal the location of the wrecks.

Flotilla Chiefs

Boat stock

Number of assigned boats: 6, each of type II B : U 9 , U 18 , U 19 , U 20 , U 23 , U 24

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ GERMAN U-BOATS ACTIVE IN BLACK SEA; Increasing in Numbers There, Opera… In: The New York Times , April 12, 1916
    Article Preview (accessed June 29, 2010)
    View Article (PDF; accessed June 29, 2010)