Aalesund class
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The Aalesund-class was a series of two planned destroyers for the Norwegian Navy , laid down in 1939 and under construction during the German occupation of Norway in April 1940. The Navy gave them the designations ZN 4 and ZN 5 or later TA 7 and TA 8 and continued to build them. TA 7 was destroyed by the Norwegian resistance in 1944 and TA 8 in 1945 by a British air raid. The ship class was named after the city of Ålesund .
Technical specifications
The two ships of the class should be a larger and improved version of the destroyer of the Sleipner class and represent a significant modernization for the Norwegian Navy, which is mostly equipped with outdated ships.
After their completion, they should be 100.6 meters long and 10.6 meters wide and have a maximum draft of 3.20 meters. The construction displacement should be 1278 and 1298 tons for the two units, the maximum 1694 and 1721 tons. Two sets of De Laval geared turbines with three Yarrow boilers were provided for the drive . 30,000 hp should act on two waves and enable a top speed of 34 knots. At 19 knots and 300 tons of oil, a range of 1375 nautical miles should be achieved. 130 officers and men were provided for the crew.
The plans saw the armament of four 120 mm guns (two of them in the double shield on the forecastle), four 40 mm Bofors flak or - depending on the source - two 40 mm Bofors flak and two 12.7 mm machine guns. There were also four 53.3 cm torpedo tubes that were to be placed amidships in groups of two. In an international comparison at the time, these ships were armed almost equally, but this did not apply to the torpedo armament.
history
Start of construction for the Norwegian Navy
During the construction period, the two ships usually had no names and were only listed under the design names one and two . Names that were considered later were not planned either. Both were laid down in April 1939 under construction numbers 129 and 130 at Marinens Hovedværft on Karljohansvern in Horten .
During the German occupation of Norway , the Wehrmacht found the two new buildings on April 9, 1940, still in the early stages of their production on the Helligen, and confiscated them.
Further construction for the Navy
The navy initially gave the two ships the designations ZN 4 and ZN 5 for "Destroyer Norway" and planned to continue building them. In view of their small size and combat strength, they classified them as "Torpedo Boats Abroad" in 1941 and continued to run them as TA 7 and TA 8 .
The Navy revised the construction plans. They now provided for a standard displacement of 1478 and a maximum displacement of 1694 tons. Instead of the four 120-mm guns, three individual 105-mm, two 37-mm and six 20-mm anti-aircraft guns and four 53.3-cm torpedo tubes in a set of four were planned as armament. The crew was now 8 officers and 154 men. For the time after its completion it was already planned to assign TA 8 to the 5th torpedo boat flotilla .
Further construction was delayed by the Norwegians and progressed only slowly. The launch of TA 7 took place on May 29, 1941, that of TA 8 on June 30, 1943. Both ships, however, were no longer ready by the end of the war. TA 7 was blown up by Norwegian resistance fighters in Horten on September 27, 1944 with a bomb in the engine room. Before the finished hull of the second ship, TA 8 , could be towed to Germany for equipment, it was sunk in Horten by a British air raid on February 23, 1945.
Whereabouts
After the Second World War, the Norwegians lifted the wreck of TA 8 . Temporarily they considered building the ship further as Aalesund , but they got away from it. In 1956 they finally sold the hull for demolition.
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945, Vol. 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speed boats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6 .
- Robert Gardiner / Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the world's fighting ships 1922-1946 , Conway Maritime Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-8317-0303-2 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyers in World War II , Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 .
- Zvonimir Freivogel: Prey destroyer and torpedo boats of the Kriegsmarine , Marine-Arsenal Volume 46, Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 2000, ISBN 3-7909-0701-4 .
- Harald Fock: Fleet Chronicle. The active warships involved in both world wars and their whereabouts , Koehler's publishing company, revised and expanded version Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-7822-0788-2 .
Web links
- http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/captured/destroyer/index.html , accessed on June 16, 2017
- http://www.navypedia.org/ships/norway/no_dd_aalesund.htm , accessed on June 16, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gröner, p. 94, Gardiner, p. 379, Whitley, p. 221, Freivogel, p. 9
- ^ Whitley, p. 221
- ↑ Freivogel, p. 9, Fock, p. 218
- ↑ Gröner, p. 94, Whitley, p. 48f., Freivogel, p. 9, http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-04.htm
- ↑ Whitley, p. 48, p. 221, Fock, p. 150, p. 155, Freivogel, p. 9
- ^ Whitley, p. 221, Freivogel, p. 9