6th clearing boat flotilla
The 6th Räumbootsflottille was a naval unit of the German Navy in World War II , which existed from July 1941 to early May 1945 and operated in the Mediterranean .
Lineup
The flotilla was set up on July 28, 1941 in Cuxhaven with eight small mine clearing boats of the type Räumboot 1930-33 . These were the boats R 9 , R 10 , R 11 , R 12 , R 13 and R 14 as well as R 15 and R 16 from the Schlichting shipyard built by Abeking & Rasmussen in Lemwerder .
Five of the boats, R 9 - R 13 , were handed over to the 5th clearing boat flotilla , which instead received larger boats. The boats were 24.5–27.8 m long and 4.38–4.50 m wide, had 1.12–1.58 m draft and displaced between 46 and 52.5 t (maximum). The drive consisted of two 6-cylinder four - stroke diesel engines with a total of 1428–1540 hp . With their two Voith Schneider propellers , the boats reached top speeds of 16.5–19.8 knots . The range of action was 800 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 13 knots. The boats were initially only armed with a 2-cm L / 65 C / 30 machine gun and could carry up to ten mines ; later they were equipped with four 2-cm machine guns. The crew consisted of 18 men. The first flotilla chief was Lieutenant Richard Rossow, who was followed by Lieutenant Peter Reischauer in August 1941. From its formation until 1943 , the chief engineer of the flotilla was a lieutenant , later a lieutenant in the sea (engineer) Heinz Johann Schulz.
Since the flotilla was intended for use in the Mediterranean and off the North African coast, the decision was made for the small boats, which, after appropriate modifications, could be moved over French rivers and canals to Tripoli in Libya . The R 10 , R 15 and R 16 were prepared in Königsberg , the other boats in Cuxhaven for passage under bridges and through locks, and on September 27, 1941 the flotilla was completed. Between November 19 and December 1, 1941, the boats left Cuxhaven in three groups. Disguised as air traffic control boats and with the crews in civilian clothes, they drove via Rotterdam , the Rhine , the Rhine-Rhône Canal and the Rhone to Port-Saint-Louis at the mouth of the Rhone . From there the flotilla moved in two groups to La Spezia ( Italy ) for shipyard overhaul and equipment. On March 18, 1942, the flotilla left La Spezia to continue south. In several stages she reached her new base in Tripoli via Naples , Salerno , Messina , Palermo , Trapani and Lampedusa on April 7, 1942.
Mission history
North Africa 1942–1943
From this point on, the boats were used in escort and security service, with Tripoli and Benghazi initially serving as bases. With the rapid advance of Rommel's Africa Corps to the east, the flotilla also moved further east to Derna in the Cyrenaica on May 18, in order to be able to guarantee the supply of the troops. After the capture of Tobruk , six boats of the flotilla entered the port there on June 21, 1942 as the first German fleet units. On June 29, 1942, R 13 was the first boat to be transferred to the newly conquered Marsa Matruh in Egypt , and in July the entire flotilla was deployed there to secure supply lines.
On August 2, 1942, the flotilla lost its first boats when the R 9 and R 11 were sunk in the Bay of Bardia during a night bomb attack. The permanent use of the boats made shipyard visits unavoidable, and in September the R 10 , R 14 and R 16 were sent to the shipyard in quick succession via Crete , Piraeus , the Corinth Canal and Corfu to Palermo. On October 26, the R 12 and R 13 also went to Palermo, so that at the beginning of November 1942 only the R 15 was stationed in North Africa. After arriving in Palermo, the R 12 and R 13 immediately moved on to Bizerta to support the German-Italian troop concentration in Tunisia and arrived there on November 12th, followed by the RA 10 on November 14th .
After the second battle of el-Alamein (October 23 to November 4, 1942), the steady retreat of the Axis powers in North Africa to Tunisia began. When Tobruk was evacuated, R 15 took the remaining command of the city on board on November 12, 1942 as the last ship. When Vice Admiral Edmond-Louis Derrien surrendered the French war port of Bizerta on December 8, 1942, the R 12 , R 13 and RA 10 were involved in taking possession of tugs , barges and other ships in the port. Only then did the R 12 and R 13 go to the shipyard in Palermo, while the RA 10 was prepared in Ferryville for relocation to La Spezia.
From December 1942 to the capitulation of the last German troops in Tunisia in May 1943 secured the flotilla of Sicily coming replenishment , in particular air raids, but also attacks British speedboats constitute a permanent danger. Since only the four boats R 10 , R 14 , R 15 and R 16 were now available, and these were also repeatedly damaged by enemy action, it was decided in April 1943 to replace the flotilla with boats R1 , R 3 , R 4 , R 6 , R 7 and R 8 from the Reich territory, which then arrived in the Mediterranean via the Rhine and Rhone at the end of May / beginning of June.
Italian west coast 1943
In the meantime, the remaining boats of the flotilla had already been moved to Sicily, R 14 and R 15 on April 8, R 10 and R 16 on May 7, 1943. RA 10 , the British booty boat, was already on April 30 after a bomb hit sunk before La Goulette . With the conquest of Sicily by the Allies (July – August 1943), the flotilla was moved back to the west coast of Italy, to Anzio and Nettuno . From there she secured escorts in the sea area between Naples , La Spezia and Bastia , and in August as far as Toulon . The damage caused by aircraft attacks and therefore necessary docking times became more and more numerous. In July Lieutenant Walter Klemm became the new chief of the flotilla. On August 13, 1943, the R 6 was sunk in an air raid off Civitavecchia . After Italy had capitulated on 8 September 1943 were R 7 and R 13 by their crews, each with six depth charges on September 9 in Salerno blown up, the city took over as naval guns of the Allied invasion fleet under fire.
In September the boats R 10 , R 12 , R 14 and R 15 , which were not in the shipyard, were used to clear German troops from Sardinia and Corsica . The flotilla base was relocated from Anzio to Marina di Pisa on September 17th . From October the remaining nine boats ( R 1 , R 3 , R 4 , R 8 , R 10 , R 12 , R 14 , R 15 and R 16 ) in the area between Marseille and Livorno were busy with escort and mine duties; however, several boats were almost permanently out of action due to enemy action. In November, eight of the nine boats had to go to the shipyard for repairs in Toulon . There the flotilla lost three of its boats in an air raid on November 24th: R 1 was sunk by a bomb, R 3 was severely damaged beyond repair, and both R 10 machines , which were jacked up in a shipyard, were destroyed. R 10 was not operational again until November 1944.
Adria 1944-1945
Until mid-December, R 4 , R 14 , R 15 and R 16 carried out escort and mine clearance tasks in the Tyrrhenian Sea . Then the boats were prepared for transfer to the Adriatic Sea , and in January 1944 the R 4 , R 8 , R 12 , R 14 , R 15 and R 16 were relocated to Venice , where they were overhauled in the arsenal there in February / March . Abbazia on the Istrian peninsula became the new base of the flotilla , then Pola in May . From April to September, the ready-to-drive boats were used for mine and escort operations in the area of Trieste , Fiume , Pola, Veglia , in the Kvarner Bay and along the Dalmatian coast. Their area of operation was narrowed down with the steady advance of the Allies, and because of the enemy air superiority, the boats were almost only used at night. On September 5, 1944, the R 12 was lost after a mine hit off Piran . At the end of September 1944, R 187 came to the flotilla. It had previously belonged to the 12th clearing boat flotilla , was badly damaged in an air raid on Rogoznica on February 23, 1944 and then towed to Pola, sank there in an air raid on February 26, 1944, then lifted and repaired.
With the advance of British and Yugoslav armed forces in the Dalmatian coastal area in October, the area of operation of the boats shifted back to the Fiume-Pola-Trieste-Venice area, and since the northern Adriatic coast was increasingly being mined from the air by the enemies, the flotilla had frequent mine clearance tasks. At the beginning of 1945 the flotilla still consisted of the boats R 4 , R 8 , R 10 , R 14 , R 15 and R 16 as well as R 187 . On February 22nd, the R 4 was badly damaged in an aircraft attack off Portalbona and was first transferred to Fiume and later to Pola, but was no longer used. In an air raid on 16 March at the shipyard in Monfalcone received R14 a direct hit at the rear and was no longer operational.
The End
After the loss of the R 4 and R 14 , the flotilla still had five boats in April 1945, of which the R 15 was sunk by a British MTB by torpedo on April 16 at Cape Salvore . Several formerly Italian boats ( RD boats ) were in Venice and Monfalcone shortly before completion, but the recently completed RD 115 had already been sunk in the Monfalcone shipyard canal during the air raid on March 16, and the next two boats, RD 116 in Monfalcone and RD 127 in Venice did their first test drives at the end of April. At the end of April, the Pola base had to be abandoned. After the Allied conquest of Verona on April 28, 1945, the boats under construction in Venice were destroyed; only RD 128 was towed to Trieste by a speedboat without engines . On April 30, the unfinished boats in Monfalcone were blown up, one day before New Zealand troops took the place. The remaining boats R 8 , R 10 , R 16 , R 187 and RD 116 ran to the Tagliamento estuary, where they were put on the beach together with the mine ship Fasana on May 2 and set on fire. Their crews came into British captivity.
Boats and whereabouts
| number | To the flotilla | Whereabouts |
|---|---|---|
| R 9 | July 1941 | Sunk by aerial bomb in Bardia Bay on August 2, 1942 |
| R 10 | July 1941 | Beached on May 2, 1945 by its own crew at the Tagliamento estuary |
| R 11 | July 1941 | Sunk by aerial bomb in Bardia Bay on August 2, 1942 |
| R 12 | July 1941 | Sunk on September 5, 1944 by mines off the Dalmatian coast near Piran |
| R 13 | July 1941 | 9 September 1943 blown up by its own garrison in Salerno |
| R 14 | July 1941 | Destroyed by bombs in Monfalcone on March 16, 1945 |
| R 15 | July 1941 | Sunk on April 16, 1945 by torpedo at Cape Salvore |
| R 16 | July 1941 | Beached on May 2, 1945 by its own crew at the Tagliamento estuary |
| R 1 | May 1943 | Sunk November 24, 1943 by a bomb in Toulon |
| R 3 | May 1943 | November 24, 1943 irreparably damaged by bombs in Toulon |
| R 4 | May 1943 | February 22, 1945 irreparably damaged in an air raid off Portalbona |
| R 6 | May 1943 | Sunk by aerial bomb off Civitavecchia on August 13, 1943 |
| R 7 | May 1943 | 9 September 1943 blown up by its own garrison in Salerno |
| R 8 | May 1943 | May 2, 1945 stranded by its own crew at the Tagliamento estuary |
| R 187 | Sept 1944 | May 2, 1945 stranded by its own crew at the Tagliamento estuary |
| Booty boats | ||
| RA 10 | Oct. 1942 | April 30, 1943 after bombs before La Goulette dropped |
| RD 115 | March 1945 | Destroyed by bombs in Monfalcone on March 16, 1945 |
| RD 116 | April 1945 | May 2, 1945 stranded by its own crew at the Tagliamento estuary |
Individual evidence
- ↑ The British motor torpedo boat MTB 314 was captured by R 10 during a British attack on the port of Tobruk on the night of September 14, 1942 and was put into service by the flotilla as RA 10 in October and then went to Palermo for conversion. RA 10 sank on April 30, 1943 after a bomb hit off La Goulette .
- ↑ R 187 was a much larger boat of the clearing boat type 1937-43 . It was launched on May 29, 1942 at Burmester in Bremen. At 35.4 m long, 5.55 m wide and 1.50 m draft, it displaced 110 t (standard) and 126 t (maximum). With two 6-cylinder four-stroke diesel engines from MWM with a total of 1800 hp and two Voith-Schneider propellers, the boat reached a speed of 23.5 knots. The range of action was 1100 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 15 knots. The armament consisted of a 3.7 cm L / 83 C / 30 gun and two 20 mm MG l / 65 C / 30. The boat could carry ten mines. The crew consisted of 31 men.
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/44-02.htm