Atlas (ship, 1951)
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The Atlas was a Bremen cargo ship that was badly damaged by two explosive charges on October 2, 1958 in Hamburg's Kaiser-Wilhelm-Hafen and partially sank. The criminal investigation was unsuccessful. It was only on 27 November 1959, announced that the attack in the context of the Algerian War of the Red Hand had been carried out, which is known only since the 1990s that this is an under false flag operating front organization of the French Action Division acted .
Technical specifications
The Atlas was a Shelter Decker and ran on 15 March 1951 in Flensburg from the stack . The building yard was the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft ( hull number 530), owner of the Bremen Atlas Levante-Linie .
The Atlas was 116.3 m long and 15 m wide, the measurement was 2700 GRT , the carrying capacity was 5200 t. It was by a MAN - Diesel engine driven and reached a top speed of 13 knots . The shipping company took over the ship on May 30, 1951; the maiden voyage began the next day under Captain Wilhelm Reiners and led into the Levant . After the attack, the Atlas was renamed Naguilan in 1959 and was temporarily used in charter in Central and South America . In 1967 the ship was transferred to the Hamburg South American Steamship Company and renamed Atlas again. From 1969 to 1971 the ship was used as Nordhaff by the shipping company "Nord" Klaus E. Oldendorff . In 1974 the shipping company Siam Maritime Lines in Bangkok took over the ship, where it was named Siam Queen until 1976 and from 1976 the name Simali 1 or Simalee 1 . The final fate of the ship is unknown, but the ship is still registered on Siam Maritime Lines to this day .
The attack
On 1 October 1958 12:50, took place on board a heavy explosion through which the cargo ship lying at the quay in front shed 72/73 with a list of up to 50 ° from partial to starboard fell due. The capsizing of the Atlas was only prevented by the masts of the ship coming to rest on the quay wall. Of the 32-man crew on board under the command of Captain Keller, nobody was injured “as if by a miracle”, according to the contemporary press. The crew was able to use the gangway to get to safety on land, especially since it was not clear whether further explosions would follow.
Due to the penetration of the water and shifting of the load, the Atlas moved for hours after the explosion and partially straightened up again. The load officially consisted of a good 500 tons of flour and a dozen Volkswagen for the Levant. The ship that had arrived in Hamburg eight hours earlier from Brake was supposed to leave in 24 hours.
The wreck was immediately examined by a diver who at first could only discover an explosion leak on the starboard front. The inward-facing edges suggested an explosion from the outside. However, the investigating criminal police did not want to issue a statement before the ship had been lifted and put into dry dock . At least one witness had observed a water column on the ship during the explosion, so that an internal detonation, for example by a time bomb , was excluded. An explosion in the engine room was ruled out because an engineer assistant had been there shortly before and had not noticed any irregularities.
Initially, there was speculation about whether the Atlas could have hit the ground with an aerial bomb from World War II . However, the fact that the freighter still had three meters of water under the keel before sinking spoke against this.
By mid-October 1958 the Atlas was sealed, lifted by the Bugsier and brought to Blohm and Voss with three tugs . On October 17, 1958, the Hamburg police gave a press conference at which details about the investigation under the direction of criminal director Breuer were announced. During the investigation of the wreck by Dr. Lesczynski from the Federal Criminal Police Office had found that there were two explosion holes that were a good eight to nine meters apart. The explosive charges had apparently been attached to the bilge keel. When and where, d. H. It was unclear in which port the charges, presumably only one kilogram of explosives , were placed. Without any indication of any reference to the Algerian war, however, it was pointed out that the Atlas was in the Algerian port of Philippeville (now Skikda ) in mid-August of that year .
In the current press coverage, there was no evidence of any suspects. The Hamburg daily Die Welt also considered the possibility that the attack could never be solved. Neither Die Welt nor the Oldenburger Nordwest-Zeitung expressed any suspicion, only the Bremer Weser-Kurier provided a context for the Algerian war:
“This is the third bomb attack in Hamburg that has not yet been resolved. The previous cases were attacks on the Hamburg arms dealer Schlueter. "
On September 28, 1956 and June 3, 1957, the arms dealer Otto Schlueter had already been attacked by explosives in Hamburg, which were never cleared up, but in which a business partner and Schlüter's mother had died.
Since Schlüter also conducted arms deals with North Africa and the Middle East , there was suspicion that either the colonial power France or the Algerian Front de Liberación Nationale (FLN) could be the cause. Schlueter worked closely with Georg Puchert, a former member of the Navy, alias "Captain Morris", who worked as a smuggler in Morocco from around 1948 and from 1956 also supplied the FLN with weapons. Two of Puchert's cutters , the Bruja Roja ( Red Witch ) and Sirocco , which sailed under the Costa Rican flag, were sunk in the roadstead of Tangier from an unknown side with cargo in the summer of 1957 .
Subsequent findings on the course of events
On November 27, 1959, the British daily Daily Mail published an interview with the French national Christian Durieux (also Roger Durieux, born 1929), who stated, among other things, to have blown up the Atlas on behalf of the Red Hand . Durieux was contacted by the news magazine Der Spiegel in February 1960 and interviewed in Switzerland . Durieux apparently did not provide details of the attack on the freighter.
In 1964, the journalist Bernt Engelmann claimed in his work "My friends, the arms dealers. Small wars, big deals" that the Atlas had loaded Norwegian dynamite for the FLN and was sunk by frogmen from Service Action for this reason .
See also
literature
- Reinhold Thiel: Argo-Reederei and Atlas Levante-Linie. 100 years of Bremische Seeschiffahrt , Bremen (Verlag HM Hauschild GmbH) 1994. ISBN 3-929902-14-1
- The hole is 2.5 meters high and 1.5 meters wide. Mystery of ship explosion in port. The explosive device probably worked from outside , in: Die Welt , No. 229 of October 2, 1958, p. 5.
- Unfortunate series of shipping. Severe explosion on the "Atlas" - SOS in the North Sea , in: Nordwest-Zeitung of October 2, 1958, p. 2.
- Riddles about ship explosion , in: Nordwest-Zeitung of October 3, 1958, p. 7.
- Persistent silence about the "Atlas" , in: Die Welt, No. 237 of October 11, 1958, p. 5.
- The assassination attempt on the "Atlas". The police announced the result of their investigation yesterday , in: Die Welt , No. 243 of October 18, 1958, p. 5.
- The explosion on the "Atlas" was a bomb attack. No evidence of motive and perpetrator , in: Nordwest-Zeitung of October 18, 1958, p. 1.
- Mysterious explosion on the freighter "Atlas" , in: Weser-Kurier , No. 229 of October 2, 1958, p. 3.
- Leak the "Atlas" is the size of a barn , in: Weser-Kurier , No. 230 of October 3, 1958, p. 3.
- Hamburger Kripo announces: An explosive attack was carried out on the freighter "Atlas". Explosions ripped two leaks. Motive and perpetrator still unknown , in: Weser-Kurier of October 18, 1958, p. 1.
Web links
- CV of the ship at ddghansa-shipsphotos
- Thomas Riegler: The State as Terrorist: France and the Red Hand , in: Perspectives on Terrorism , Vol. 6, No. 6 (2012)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thiel, pp. 144, 230