Alster (ship, 1928)
 The Alster
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The Alster of North German Lloyd (NDL) was the ninth of its fast freighters, mostly named after rivers, for the East Asia and Australian service, which differed in details.
At the beginning of the Second World War, the ship was at home. In 1940 the Alster was used as a transporter for the Weser Exercise company. She belonged to the "export squadron " and was supposed to bring heavy equipment and supplies to the troops used for the conquest of Narvik and reach the port as early as possible after the occupation. The lone ship was attacked on April 10, 1940 by the British destroyer Icarus north of Bodø . The attempt at self-immersion failed.
As a British prize Empire Endurance , the former Alster was opened in the North Atlantic on April 20, 1941 by the German submarine U 73 at 53 ° 5 ′ 0 ″ N , 23 ° 14 ′ 0 ″ W sunk. There were 65 dead and 29 survivors.
History of the ship
The Alster was established in 1928 from the Deschimag belonging volcano shipyard manufactured in Hamburg under the hull number 211th It was launched on January 5, 1928 and was delivered on February 25, 1928. The shipyard had previously built the sister ship Oder under hull number 210. The Bremer Vulkan with Franconia , Swabia (two-master), Aller and Main (four- master) had delivered the first four ships of the new high-speed freighter type of NDL between April 1926 and August 1927. Deschimag had distributed three further orders with the Lahn to its Tecklenborg plant and with the Mosel and Neckar to the main Weser plant , which were a little longer and were supplied with an exhaust turbine . Of the six following newbuildings in the series, the Hamburg Deschimag company built the sister ships Isar and Danube under construction numbers 213/214 , which were the only ones in the series to receive a Maierform spoon bow.
The Alster was 155.42 m long and 19.39 m wide. The ship was measured with 8514 GRT and 5328 NRT with a dead weight of 12,000 dwt. Like the previous ships in the series, she had four masts, a funnel, a round stern and a slightly inclined bow. The drive took place via a triple expansion machine and a connected exhaust steam turbine. A total of 6500 PSi were available, which enabled the Alster to operate at a speed of 14 knots .
Use until the start of the war
The Alster was assigned to the Australian service of the NDL in the second half of 1928, where the new Mosel , Lahn , Neckar and Alster were used for the first time between June and September after the high-speed freighters Main and Aller had already been used.
The Alster remained in service to Australia until 1939. They and their sister ships usually ran through the Mediterranean on their outbound and return voyages. On May 28, 1933, the Alster left Brisbane with the record load (after 1918) of 19473 bales of wool in order to take over more bales in Melbourne before leaving for Europe. There should Bordeaux , Antwerp , Dutch ports, Bremen, Hamburg and Gdynia are underway. The takeover took place in competition with the French motor ship Eridan (9927 GRT). In addition to this seasonal load and wheat, mainly ores were transported from Australia to Europe. In the summer of 1936, the NDL used the Alster to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its trips to Australia, which began in July 1886 with the mail steamer Salier . In 1936, the Alster was the largest ship alongside the express freighters Aller (7627 GRT) and Main (7624 GRT), the Moselle (8428 GRT) and the older Cologne (7881 GRT) converted into a freighter . In addition there were the smaller Erlangen and Goslar (both 6040 GRT) in the Australia and New Zealand service. The newly built motor ship Cairo (3183 BRT, sp. Memel ) was also used for Australia in 1935.
The Alster , which was primarily used to Australia, ran at least in the autumn of 1938 in the "West Coast Service" from Bremen to Chile .
When the Alster last arrived from Antwerp in Australia in the summer of 1939, it mainly loaded lead concentrate for the return trip. A young woman came to Australia on the ship, and her story got a lot of coverage in the Australian press. She reported that as a Jew, her fiancé had been deported back and forth between Germany and Poland several times. On August 18, 1939, the Alster returned to Hamburg. Her departure, which began almost immediately, was canceled in Bremen due to the danger of war.
War effort
In September 1939 the ship made a trip to transport ore on the Baltic Sea to Luleå and loaded back to Hamburg. In December, the Alster was used to move Baltic Germans from Latvia and brought 1,250 emigrants from Riga to Gdansk before Christmas .
On March 18, 1940, the Alster was used as a transporter for Operation Weser Exercise , the German occupation of Norway. She was assigned to the "export squadron " that was supposed to transport the heavy equipment of the first landing units.
In the first hours of April 3, the Alster left with the two other transporters Bärenfels and Rauenfels intended for Narvik and the tanker Kattegat Brunsbüttel to reach Narvik by April 9. The whaling mother ship Jan Wellem from the so-called Base North near Murmansk , which was used as a tanker and was ultimately the only German supplier to reach its destination before the actual invasion, was also supposed to arrive there.
When they reached the Norwegian coast, the Alster and the Kattegat went into Norwegian territorial waters and pretended to the local coastal protection authorities that they were on their way to Murmansk. Accompanied by the Norwegian torpedo boat Trygg and with the support of Norwegian pilots , both ships ran to Kopervik near Karmøy south of Stavanger , where they arrived on April 5. There were no longer any pilots available. The Alster continued its journey on the same day, while the Kattegat did not leave Kopervik until the following day. In Kopervik, the Alster and Kattegat were inspected by the torpedo boat Stegg , without the Norwegians finding anything worth complaining about. On April 8, the Alster reached the Vestfjord , where it encountered the Norwegian guard boat Syrian , which warned them of a British minefield that had just been laid as part of Operation Wilfred . The Alster continued to Bodø to await further developments. When the war between Germany and Norway began on April 10, the Syrian was put on the march to prevent the Alster from continuing its journey. When she rediscovered the German freighter, the commander of the small guard boat decided not to board the Alster , as he suspected that she was armed and had troops on board. When the Alster tried to escape the Syrian , the guard boat radioed this to the British warships nearby. The light cruiser Penelope used to search for the Alster ran aground near Bodø and suffered severe damage. On April 10, however, the British destroyer Icarus brought the Alster in the Vestfjord north of Bodø. The German crew tried in vain to sink their ship, as only one of the prepared explosive devices could be detonated.
After the Alster was hijacked , there were no more German transporters on the way to Narvik, as the day before, shortly before Narvik , the Rauenfels had encountered the British destroyers, which were sunk. The belated Bärenfels had stayed in Bergen and was unloaded there. The German occupiers under General Eduard Dietl therefore only had supplies from Jan Wellem, who arrived in time, and captured supplies from the Elvegårdsmoen camp of the Norwegian army
The Alster was brought to the makeshift British base on the Skjelfjord in Lofoten , where a prize crew of the Penelope took responsibility for the ship. The German freighter, equipped with additional cranes, was used as a base for repairs to damaged units of the Royal Navy, such as the destroyer HMS Eskimo , which had lost its bow off Narvik. The Alster served as a residential ship.
On April 24th, the Alster left Skjelfjord and moved to Tromsø , where it received a British occupation. The 80 men on the Alster , including eight officers, were brought to Great Britain in various ships and ended up in prisoner-of-war camps in Canada. Most of the ship's cargo was handed over to the Norwegian troops in Tromsø. She consisted u. a. from 88 trucks , anti-aircraft guns, aircraft spare parts, ammunition, telecommunications equipment, coke and hay. The mobile radio station served to support a local radio station and considerable numbers of field telephones replaced old and worn out equipment among the Norwegian troops. Swedish volunteers gave instruction in the German equipment.
Use as a British prize
The Alster came into dock in Tromsø. The last German prisoners disembarked and the British prize crew was replaced by a civilian Norwegian crew. On May 17, the Alster , accompanied by the whaling -type submarine hunter HMS Ullswater, left for Kirkenes in Finnmark to take over a load of iron ore. From the 19th the Alster took over about 10,000 tons of ore and then ran with the Ullswater and a Norwegian guard boat to Harstad , where it arrived on May 26th. During their stay, the new British base was attacked several times by the air force.
On May 27, the Alster left Harstad for Great Britain in a convoy of five ships, including the badly damaged Eskimo . In addition to the ore cargo, she had 209 British soldiers, 46 Norwegian soldiers and 72 German prisoners of war on board. On deck she carried the Eskimo's "B" turret , which had been removed as part of the destroyer's emergency repairs. When the Alster arrived in Scapa Flow on May 31 , it gave up the bulk of its passengers and then continued to Rosyth with a Norwegian ship and the destroyers HMS Ashanti and Bedouin .
The Alster was then given to the British Ministry of Transport and renamed Empire Endurance . Middlesbrough was given as home port and Booth Steamship Co Ltd. commanded the ship. After a few trips in the coastal area, the Empire Endurance joined the OA 202 convoy on August 21 for its first transatlantic voyage . After the convoy was disbanded on the 25th, she ran to Montreal , where she arrived on September 3, 1940. The return voyage began on September 12 and she joined convoy HX 74 , which she left on October 2 to enter the Clyde to unload her cargo.
The Empire Endurance's second departure took place on October 25th in convoy OB 234 . Her destination was again Montreal, where she arrived on November 6th, and then returned to the Clyde from November 18th until November 27th.
The third departure was from January 5 to 17, 1941 in convoy OB 270 to Saint John (New Brunswick) . The Empire Endurance returned from February 3rd to 21st, 1941.
The last trip
From February 23, the Empire Endurance called at several ports in Wales and in the south-west of England for cargo acceptance and repairs. On April 19, she left Milford Haven to go to Alexandria via Cape Town . A crew of 90 people and five passengers were on board. Two Fairmile "B" type coastal protection boats , ML-1003 and ML-1037 , were on board as deck cargo . On the night of April 20, the solo Empire Endurance, southwest of Rockall , was hit amidships by a torpedo from the German submarine U 73 after an undetected miss . After a second torpedo hit, Empire Endurance broke and sank with 65 men of the crew and one passenger. On April 21, the HMCS Trillium (K172), a Canadian Flower-class corvette , was able to take 20 crew members and four passengers. On May 9, the British motor ship Highland Brigade rescued five other crew members. The dead of Empire Endurance are on the Tower Hill Memorial in London honored
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ships clear Brisbane with record cargo
- ^ Alster a goodwill ship July 18, 1936.
- ^ New German Ship to Port Adelaide July 4, 1935.
- ^ Downhill runs on the Alster
- ^ No mans land July 29, 1939.
- ^ Sandvik: Krigen i Norge 1940 , vol. 1, p. 135.
- ↑ Steen: Norge sjøkrig 1940-1945. P. 43.
- ↑ Steen, p. 170.
- ↑ Derry 1952, p. 46f.
- ^ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Losses of German merchant ships 1939-1945 and foreign ships sailing under the German flag: 1940. In: Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart. Retrieved March 10, 2012 .
- ↑ Sandvik, Vol. 1, pp. 214f.
- ↑ a b Steen, p. 171.
- ^ Sandvik, Vol. 2, p. 183.
- ↑ Monday, May 27
- ^ Lloyd's Register, Steamers & Motorships. (No longer available online.) Plimsoll Ship Data, archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; Retrieved April 23, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Convoy OA.202. Convoyweb, accessed April 23, 2014 .
- ↑ Convoy HX 74. Warsailors, accessed on 23 April 2014 .
- ↑ Convoy OB.234. Convoyweb, accessed April 23, 2014 .
- ↑ Convoy OB.270. Convoyweb, accessed April 23, 2014 .
- ^ Empire Day to Empire Engineer. Brian Watson, accessed April 23, 2014 .
- ↑ Don Kindell: Casualty Lists of the Royal Navy and Dominion Navies, World War 2 - 1st - 30th April 1941 - in date, ship / unit & name order. In: Naval-History.net. April 18, 2009, accessed April 23, 2014 .
Web links
- Fall of the Empire Endurance on uboat.net
- TK Derry: THE CAMPAIGN IN NORWAY
- NAVAL EVENTS, APRIL1940 (Part 2 of 4)
- Equipment Transport Echelon ( Memento from November 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The History of German Passenger Shipping. Volume IV: Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930. (Writings of the German Maritime Museum, Volume 21). Kabel, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-8225-0047-X .
- Arnold Kludas: The ships of the North German Lloyd. Volume 2: 1920 to 1970. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1992, ISBN 3-7822-0534-0 .
- Trygve Sandvik: Krigen i Norge 1940 - Operasjonene til lands i Nord-Norge 1940. 2 volumes, Forsvarets Krigshistoriske Avdeling / Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo 1965, OCLC 492547012 . (Norwegian)
- Erik Anker Steen: Norge sjøkrig 1940-1945 - Sjøforsvarets kamper og virke i Nord-Norge 1940. Forsvarets Krigshistoriske Avdeling / Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo 1958, OCLC 78259120 . (Norwegian)