Alster (class 423)
| Class 423 (Oste Class) class | |
|---|---|
 The Alster in the port of Kiel |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Fleet service boat |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | 1987 |
| Namesake | Alster (river) |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | June 30, 1989 |
| home port | Eckernförde , Schleswig-Holstein |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
|
| length |
83.5 m |
| width |
14.6 m |
| Draft |
4.20 m to 6.40 m |
| crew |
36 (Stamm) + 40 (emergency personnel 2. / EloKaBtl 912 ) |
| drive |
Humboldt-Deutz Diesel |
| speed |
20 knots |
| Range |
5,000 nm |
| Armament |
no |
The Alster (A 50) is a fleet service boat of class 423 ( Oste class ) of the German Navy . The fleet service boats are reconnaissance ships that are equipped with various sensors for this purpose .
The Alster belongs to the 1st submarine squadron , which is subordinate to the operational flotilla 1 , and is stationed in Eckernförde . In addition to the Alster , the German Navy also maintains the sister boats Oste (A 52) and Oker (A 53) . With a range of over 5000 nautical miles, the Alster is designed for longer reconnaissance missions.
It is the successor to the fleet service boat of the same name with the same identification that was used between 1960 and 1988 .
The ship is named after the river of the same name in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.
equipment
Exact data on the devices on board are not known. According to the website of the Federal Ministry of Defense , it should be about electromagnetic, hydroacoustic and electro-optical devices for strategic information acquisition in crisis areas. Depending on the type of order, up to 40 specialists from all branches of the armed forces can be embarked to operate the early warning, telecommunication and reconnaissance equipment. The ships of the Oste class can operate on their own as well as in an active and communication network with other units and agencies of German and international armed forces.
Calls
Class 423 boats were originally built to scout Soviet ships in the Baltic Sea, particularly in the Warsaw Pact maritime area .
Balkans
After 1990 the Alster were also used for reconnaissance tasks outside the Baltic Sea, for example from 1999 to reconnaissance in the Balkans in the Mediterranean.
Lebanon
From the summer of 2006 the Alster was used for reconnaissance off Lebanon. It is suspected that - without being explicitly included in the Bundestag mandate - it supported units of the UNIFIL operation of the German Navy by reconnaissance of air and sea movements. According to Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung , it fell under the 400 support forces covered by the UN mandate. She was the subject in October 2006 diplomatic disagreements between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany due to an incident with Israeli combat aircraft of type F-16 .
On the morning of October 24, 2006 at 10:11 am, the incident took place around 50 nautical miles (around 90 kilometers) off the Lebanese coast in international waters at the level of the Lebanese-Israeli border and the Israeli town of Rosh Hanikra . First media reports spoke of six Israeli F-16s that had flown low over a German ship of the UNIFIL fleet, fired two untargeted shots in the air and dropped several infrared decoys . There was no fighting and no one was injured. This was confirmed on October 25 by the spokesman for the German Ministry of Defense.
An Israeli army spokeswoman first stated that a German helicopter had taken off from the Alster , which was allegedly located in Israeli waters at the time in question, and that the flight had not previously been agreed with the Israeli army. The F-16 pilots then tried to force the helicopter to return and land. She also confirmed the firing of shots, but denied the use of flares. However, the Alster has no helicopter landing facilities on board; In addition, according to the Ministry of Defense, the helicopter was 70 kilometers away from the Alster at the time in question . It is unclear whether the helicopter had an activated IFF system.
On October 27, 2006, the Israeli Air Force corrected this statement and stated that the incident with the helicopter took place on another ship and that the Alster was actually in international waters. However, Israeli training flights are frequent in the region and the incident took place in this context.
It was only through this that it became known that the ship concerned was not part of the UNIFIL fleet - as was first announced - but the reconnaissance ship Alster , which was on a mission that was not publicly announced. As a result, Franz Josef Jung came under criticism of the Bundestag opposition, which demanded a full investigation and the publication of video recordings made by crew members of the Alster with high quality lenses of the incident and which are currently kept under lock and key by the Ministry of Defense.
German naval officers anonymously gave the ddp news agency an assessment in which they accused Israel of having been unhappy about the use of the Alster due to their potential espionage activities, although the use of the reconnaissance ship Israel had been explicitly reported. The incident should therefore represent a kind of show of force: "The Israelis wanted to show us a rake."
According to reports by Focus on October 28, 2006, a German UNIFIL ship was actually involved in the event that the Israeli army spokeswoman first described. The helicopter in which Flotilla Admiral Andreas Krause was located was targeted by the jet's fire control radar , which is usually the last step before an attack.
The Bild am Sonntag reported on 29 October 2006 that a similar situation had occurred again on the night of October 27. Here, too, a helicopter from the German UNIFIL fleet was harassed by an Israeli F-16 fighter aircraft. This has been confirmed by the Federal Ministry of Defense.
Franz Josef Jung traveled to Israel from November 3rd to 5th, 2006 to clarify open questions about these incidents and to optimize the coordination between the German Navy and the Israeli Air Force .
Mediterranean 2011–2012
On November 5, 2011, the Alster left Eckernförde on a secret mission to the Mediterranean. With a crew of 85, the mission under Corvette Captain Maik Riegel was planned until March 2012 and was dubbed a national reconnaissance mission . The fleet service boats collect information with the help of acoustic and optical sensors, which they pass on to the Strategic Reconnaissance Command .
At Christmas 2011 the Alster moored in the port of Larnaka in Cyprus. The Mediterranean voyages were used to monitor shipping traffic in the course of the NATO operation Active Endeavor or the UN mission UNIFIL. A national reconnaissance trip had not yet taken place.
The Alster was, according to the Mirror threatened in December 2011 in the eastern Mediterranean by the Syrian navy. At the end of December, a Syrian warship aimed its on-board cannon at the fleet service boat as it was traveling 15 nautical miles off the coast. Since it was not an armed operation, the Alster was outside Syria without the knowledge of the Bundestag. The defense policy spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group, Omid Nouripour , criticized the secrecy of the operation after the incident became known. In any case, Parliament must be informed, he told Spiegel .
Web links
- Fleet service boat OSTE-Klasse (423) on the website of the German Navy
- Fleet service boat Alster (A 50) on the website schiffsspotter.de
- Incident with the German Navy: Opposition demands release of the video evidence against Israel. In: Spiegel Online , October 28, 2006.
- Alexander Szandar: Strategic reconnaissance: Bundeswehr eavesdropping on the world. In: Spiegel Online , September 1, 2008.
Individual evidence
- ^ Johannes Berthold Sander-Nagashima: The Federal Navy 1950 to 1972: Concept and Structure (= Security Policy and Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. Volume 4). Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-57972-7 , p. 577.
- ↑ Battalion Electronic Warfare 912: About Us. Federal Ministry of Defense - The head of the press and information staff, July 9, 2018, accessed on October 23, 2019 .
- ↑ Return only in the new millennium. In: Marineforum , No. 12, 1999, p. 32.
- ↑ Tagesspiegel : Video confirms German representation ( Memento of November 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), October 27, 2006.
- ↑ Anne Peters: Fleet service boat "Alster" on a secret mission. In: shz.de/Eckernförder Zeitung , November 5, 2011.
- ↑ Syrian Navy threatened German spy ship. In: Stern.de , January 15, 2012.