Ausonia (ship, 1914)
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Ausonia was an unfinished Italian passenger ship, named after a landscape in southern Italy , which the Imperial Navy of the German Empire was to convert into an aircraft carrier towards the end of the First World War .
prehistory
The Imperial Navy had already converted several former merchant ships into aircraft mother ships and equipped them with two to four seaplanes each , which were then used for reconnaissance purposes. After the small cruiser Stuttgart had been converted into an aircraft cruiser (with three seaplanes) and the result was satisfied, it was initially planned to convert the outdated but relatively fast large cruiser Roon (with four seaplanes) and the small cruiser Stettin accordingly. However, these plans were abandoned in October 1918 after the design office of the Reichsmarineamt had decided instead that it was laid on April 15, 1915 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg for the Italian shipping company Societa Italiana di Servizi Marittimi (Sitmar) from the stack overflowed and since there unfinished turbine lying passenger ship Ausonia convert to an aircraft carrier, and then as " aircraft steamer I to provide" in service.
Planning draft
The Ausonia was 158.8 m long (149.6 m in the waterline ) and 18.8 m wide. She had 7.43 m draft and should have a displacement of 12,585 tons. The machine system consisted of two steam turbines from Blohm & Voss with a total output of 18,000 hp, which enabled a top speed of 21 knots.
The commander of the naval aviation departments and later naval aviation chief, Captain Otto Kranzbühler , who had been subordinate to the admiral staff since August 29, 1914 , gave the order for the planning draft. The design, conceived by Dipl.-Ing. and lieutenant at sea d. R. Jürgen Reimpell (1892–?), Envisaged a kind of hybrid between the aircraft mother ship and aircraft carrier. Reimpell had flying experience, since he had been employed in the I. Sea Aviation Department since 1915. The ship should carry up to 19 seaplanes and 10 wheeled planes . Like other carriers of the time, Design I was to have a long landing deck on the stern and a shorter launch deck on the forecastle, from which the aircraft could take off directly from the hangar . In contrast to the already operating British carriers (such as Furious and Argus ), the ship should already have a bridge as an island structure as a novelty, as it was only common on all aircraft carriers much later. Compared to the previous draft, draft II had a continuous flight deck and modified structural facilities with regard to aircraft handling. It is also assumed that the ship would have been equipped for self-defense with six 8.8 cm Flak L / 45 and several automatic cannons in 3.7 cm caliber.
Whereabouts
These plans became obsolete when the war ended in November 1918. The shipyard and the Italian shipping company negotiated several times in 1919/20 about further construction as a passenger ship - but this was ultimately given up due to the onset of inflation and the unfinished ship was advertised for sale. Since no shipping company wanted the ship designed for the special conditions of the Eastern Mediterranean, the hull was scrapped at the shipyard in 1922.
The Ausonia had a sister ship built at an Italian shipyard, the Esperia . This came into service in 1918 and was sunk on August 20, 1941 off Tripoli by the British submarine HMS Unique .
See also
literature
- Siegfried Breyer: aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. Marine-Arsenal Special Volume 1, Podzun-Pallas Verlag, Wölfersheim 1994, ISBN 3-7909-0334-5
- Erich Gröner : The German warships 1815–1945 ; Volume 1: Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 1998
- Jürgen Reimpell: The accommodation of aircraft on board. Dissertation at the TH Berlin-Charlottenburg of November 22, 1918 (not printed on official instructions from 1919; no copy can be found)
- Jürgen Reimpell: The development of the aircraft mother ships . In: Schiffbau 21/1919, Issue 2. (there excerpts from the dissertation).
- Jürgen Richter: The first German aircraft carrier project from 1917/18. Marines 9/1969, H 12: 1496-1508
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ The five steamers Adeline Hugo Stinnes 3 , Answald (FS I), Glyndwr , Oswald (FS III) and Santa Elena (FS II).
- ↑ Federal Archives
- ↑ https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/S3PZTKOZ4SIBMSSVEZTVJZ6I5246533N Front associations of naval aviators of the Imperial Navy Description of the inventory