Bärenfels (ship, 1921)
 The Bear Rock
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Bärenfels of the Deutsche Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft Hansa (DDG Hansa), put into service in 1921, was the fifth in a series of seven cargo ships for the shipping company's front indigenous service, which were completed at the Joh. C. Tecklenborg shipyard between 1916 and 1921.
In 1940 the Bärenfels was used as a transporter for the Weser Exercise company . It belonged to the " export squadron" and was supposed to bring heavy equipment and supplies to the troops used to conquer Narvik . The ship, traveling alone, entered the already occupied Bergen on April 10, 1940 and stayed there. On April 14th, she received a bomb hit from attacking British machines and sank.
The sunken ship was lifted again and was ready for use again from November 1941. On April 14, 1944, it was sunk again in Bergen. A British micro submarine had attacked the Bärenfels with a sticky mine, which was actually intended for the floating dock next to it.
History of the ship
The Bärenfels was launched on February 5, 1921 as the first ship of a follow-up order placed after the First World War at the Joh. C. Tecklenborg shipyard in Geestemünde for DDG Hansa.
Between 1916 and 1920 the shipyard had already completed four ships of the same type on behalf of the DDG Hansa, three of which were delivered to Great Britain due to the surrender regulations. In the case of the Frauenfels , which was completed in November 1920 , the allied side had decided not to deliver because of the oversupply of cargo space that had now prevailed. With this first new building, DDG Hansa resumed its liner service to the Persian Gulf and India in November 1920.
The DDG Hansa had already used a Bärenfels from 1898 to 1914 . This 5609 GRT cargo ship, built by the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft , was confiscated in Port Said when the First World War broke out. When Huntsvale was deployed under the British flag, it was torpedoed and sunk on November 4, 1916 east of Malta by the German submarine UB 43 .
The new ship was, like the ships completed from 1916 to 1920, 149.35 m long and 17.82 m wide. The ship was measured with 7596 GRT and a load capacity of 11,328 dwt. It had two masts, a funnel, a round stern and a straight bow. It was propelled by a triple expansion machine , which had an output of 3600 PSi and gave the Bärenfels a service speed of 12 knots (kn).
In May 1928, the ship was retrofitted with an exhaust steam turbine at the shipyard, which is now part of Deschimag , which increased the output to up to 4,100 hp.
In addition to the Bärenfels , which was completed under construction number 285 on May 2, 1921 , the DDG Hansa also received the Marienfels and Ockenfels in September and October 1921 (construction number 286/287). In 1926, the shipping company bought back the first ship in the series, the Altenfels- built Eastern Prince , from Great Britain. With this ship, which was brought back into service as the Stolzenfels , five ships of the series were then in use for the DDG Hansa.
The Bärenfels and its sister ships were used in the shipping company's route between the Persian Gulf and Burma until 1939 . Frauenfels and Marienfels sought refuge in Eritrea, Italy and Iran, respectively, and submerged themselves in the face of the threat of British occupation. The Bärenfels was one of the three units in their home country that were all lost in the course of the war.
War effort
In March 1940, the Bärenfels 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, 1940, the Bärenfels left the assembly point in front of Brunsbüttel with the Rauenfels and Alster vans, also intended for Narvik , in order to reach Narvik by April 9. The three transporters ran separately to their destination. The bad weather conditions delayed the arrival of all transporters considerably. While the other two transporters reached the sea area around Narvik on April 10, but were destroyed or seized by British naval forces, the Bärenfels only reached Bergen, which has meanwhile been occupied by the Germans, on the 10th . The unloading of the ship began there on the 12th.
On April 14, an attack by 15 British Blackburn Skua dive bombers , which had started in Hatston on the Orkneys , took place on the port . The Bärenfels was hit by a bomb in the aft part of the ship, which also detonated ammunition that had not yet been removed from the pier. As a result, the Bärenfels was badly damaged and threatened to capsize. With the help of Norwegian salvage ships, the wreck was stabilized, lay partly on the bottom and was unloaded by the end of June. In August she was moved to a floating dock and an emergency repair was carried out by the end of the month to restore her buoyancy. It was not until November that the ship was relocated to Oslo for repairs. Due to the weather conditions and the lack of suitable tugs, the relocation dragged on for weeks until well into December. The Bärenfels was not ready for operation again until the end of October 1941 .
From autumn 1942 the Bärenfels was regularly used as a transporter along the Norwegian coast and to Germany.
On April 14, 1944, the ship, loaded with coal and coke for Norway, was lying on a coal pier near Bergen next to a floating dock when it was sunk by a detention mine attached by the British submarine X 24 . The attack by the boat (Operation Guidance) was aimed at the floating dock , which was primarily used for the maintenance of German submarines.
In 1947 the wreck of the Bärenfels was lifted to be scrapped elsewhere. On the way there, the recovery vehicles lost control of the wreck, which was finally at position 60 ° 31 ′ 13 ″ N , 5 ° 4 ′ 32 ″ E. sank.
The sister ships
| Surname | Shipyard | GRT tdw |
Launched in service |
further fate |
|
Altenfels from 1926: Stolzenfels (4) |
Tecklenborg building no. 269 |
7509 11.104 |
11/25/1915 11/11/1916 |
Delivered to Great Britain in 1919, Eastern Prince in 1920 , buyback in 1926: Stolzenfels , September 1939 Sperrbrecher XII / 12 , March 20, 1941 sunk by torpedo aircraft near Schiermonnikoog |
| Treuenfels | Tecklenborg building no. 270 |
7471 11,780 |
4.04.1916 February 20, 1917 |
Delivered to Great Britain in 1919, 1920: Perim , broken up in 1935 |
| Geierfels | Tecklenborg building no. 277 |
7460 11,400 |
11.08.1918 04.29.1920 |
Delivered to Great Britain in July 1920, 1921: City of Baghdad sunk by the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis on July 11, 1940 |
| Frauenfels | Tecklenborg building no. 278 |
7887 11,379 |
08.1920 16.11.1920 |
not extradited, September 26, 1939 in Massaua , sunk there on April 4, 1941, in service again as Empire Niger in 1942 , to Hong Kong in 1948: Belapur , Snowdon Hill , Canadian Fir , 1958 to China, broken up in 1963 |
| Bear Rock (2) | Tecklenborg building no. 285 |
7569 11,328 |
5.02.1921 2.05.1921 |
Sunk April 14, 1940 in Bergen, ready for action again in October 1941, sunk again on April 14, 1944 |
| Marienfels (2) | Tecklenborg building no. 286 |
7575 11,328 |
4.06..1921 September 8, 1921 |
1939 in Bandar Shapur , sunk there on August 25, 1941, in service again as Empire Rani in 1941 , to Italy in 1950: Karachi , broken up in 1959 |
| Ockenfels (3) | Tecklenborg building no. 287 |
7574 11,328 |
28.07.1921 10.13.1921 |
January 1937 disaster in the Atlantic Ocean, introduced to Lisbon, August 1940 sunk because of Operation Sea Lion to Le Havre , February 12, 1943 after being hit by mines near the Terschelling Bank |
Web links
- The Bärenfels on ddghansa with links to the sister ships
- Use of the Bärenfels
- Bear Rock Wreck (Norwegian)
- TK Derry: The Campaign in Norway .
- Naval Events, April 1940 (Part 2 of 4)
- Equipment Transport Echelon ( Memento from November 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
literature
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945 . Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7
- Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: German merchant shipping 1919–1939 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .
- Erik Anker Steen: Norge sjøkrig 1940–1945 - Sjøforsvarets kamper og virke i Nord-Norge 1940 . Forsvarets Krigshistoriske Avdeling / Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo (1958).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schmelzkopf: Die deutsche Handelsschifffahrt , p. 33.
- ^ Sea War, April 14, 1940
- ↑ X 24 as a museum ship ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ X 24 Historic ships
- ↑ Operation Guidance
- ↑ Fall of the Stolzenfels
- ^ Fall of the City of Baghdad
- ↑ Fall of the Bear Rock
- ↑ 2. Fall of the Bear Rock
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg, p. 159
- ↑ Fall of the Ockenfels
