Alfred Kottas

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Alfred Kottas (* 1885 ; † June 1969 in Hamburg ) was a German captain and polar explorer .

Life

From February 1935 to October 1939, Kottas was the captain of the Schwabenland aircraft base in Lufthansa's South Atlantic service . When the German Antarctic Expedition 1938/39 chartered the ship in October 1938, Kottas remained responsible for the ship's command and took part in the expedition, which operated on the Princess Martha coast between the beginning of January and mid-February 1939 . The expedition discovered previously completely unknown ice-free mountain regions and the region between 10 ° W and 15 ° E that was viewed and flown over was christened “ Neuschwabenland ” by the expedition leader . The expedition left the coast of Antarctica on February 6, 1939 and carried out further oceanographic investigations in the vicinity of Bouvet Island and Fernando de Noronha on the return voyage . After the expedition the ship was completely overhauled and in October 1939 Kottas took over the Schwabenland again when she was assigned to the Luftwaffe as a sling ship. After two years of service on the French and Belgian coasts, Kottas succeeded in breaching the canal on August 7, 1942 together with 23 other ships. From September 1942 he was stationed in Tromsø , where the Schwabenland was used as a base for long-range reconnaissance in the North Atlantic.

On March 24, 1944, the ship was torpedoed off Egersund by the British submarine HMS Terrapin and badly damaged. In May / June 1944, the ship could barely be made buoyant and towed to Bergen . In the period that followed, the no longer repairable ship only served as a material store for the Naval Equipment Station (MAST) in the Oslofjord and remained under Kottas' command.

Since Alfred Kottas remained in the merchant navy, he did not end up in a prisoner-of-war camp after the end of the war, but was interned as a civilian in Norway. In December 1946 he was commanded back to the Schwabenlandhalle he 1,400 tons to command Allied on 31 December 1946 poison gas ammunition loaded in Skagerrak coordinates: 58 ° 10 '22 "  N , 10 ° 45' 24"  O countersunk.

After his release from internment in June 1947 and his return to Germany, Kottas earned his living as a casual worker. In 1949 he became a representative for a coffee company. After his retirement, the bachelor lived secluded in Hamburg-Eppendorf , where he died in June 1969. He was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery.

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schwabenland's sinking site ( memento from April 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 2.2 MB)
  2. ^ Alfred Ritscher: Scientific and aviation results of the German Antarctic Expedition 1938/39 , Volume 1. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 1942, pp. 1–304. Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy: Digital Name Database Antarctica. Directory of German-speaking names in the Antarctic ( Memento from January 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) 2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main 1993
  3. ^ Heinz Schön: Myth of New Swabia. For Hitler at the South Pole . Bonus, Selent 2004, p. 109.
personal data
SURNAME Kottas, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German captain and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH 1885
DATE OF DEATH June 1969
Place of death Hamburg