Black Watch (ship, 1938)
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Black Watch in the Lofjord, 1939
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The Black Watch was a Norwegian combi ship that in World War II by the German army and then by the Navy as the barge was used.
Combined ship
The ship was on 16 June 1938 on the shipyard Akers Mekaniske Verksted in Oslo with the hull number 474 from the stack . It was 117.58 m long and 16.15 m wide, had a draft of 5.64 m and was measured with 5035 BRT and 3431 NRT . It had a mast with loading gear fore and aft and a funnel. The drive system consisted of two 9-cylinder 2- stroke diesel engines from Akers Mekaniske Verksted with a total of 5600 HP , which enabled a speed of 18 knots via two 4-bladed propellers . The ship had a deadweight of 2938 tons and space for 290 passengers . The crew consisted of about 75 men.
The Black Watch was put into service by A / S Ganger Rolf ( Fred Olsen Line ) in Oslo at the beginning of 1939 and served the Oslo- Kristiansand - Newcastle route , just like her sister ship Black Prince launched in December 1937 . The Black Watch made only a few voyages, however, because when the Second World War broke out in September 1939, both ships were laid up in Oslo .
Army housing ship
After the German occupation of Norway , the Black Watch was taken over by the Wehrmacht on April 28, 1940 . She then served, mostly lying in the Kåfjord , from September 19, 1940 and until July 26, 1942 as a living and command ship for the staff of the general of the mountain troops Eduard Dietl , commanding general of the mountain corps Norway and from January 1942, after he left in August had assumed responsibility for all of Northern Norway from Helgeland to Kirkenes , Commander in Chief of the Lapland Army .
Kriegsmarine support ship
The ship, which had been served by a Norwegian hull crew up to that point, was then taken over by the Navy, converted into a submarine accommodation and depot ship in Narvik , provided with a German crew and, from 1943, as a living and depot ship for in the North Sea operating submarines used in Hammerfest . At least five accidents had been reported beforehand: March 26, 1941 collision with an icebreaker in Kåfjord; 19 August 1942 ran aground in the port of Tromsø ; October 2, 1942 collision with the German Triton in Sør- Skjomen , a southern branch of the Ofotfjord near Narvik; November 9, 1942 collision with the Norwegian Sardinia (1975 BRT) in Narvik; November 16, 1942 Collision with the Norwegian transport in Hammerfest.
Sinking
On May 4, 1945, the Black Watch was in the southeast of Kilbotn Bay near Harstad , where the Navy had relocated its submarine base previously operated in Hammerfest in autumn 1944. A British combat group under Rear Admiral Rhoderick McGrigor ran from Scapa Flow on May 1 for an advance ( Operation Judgment ) against German shipping west of Narvik and to the base in Kilbotn . The combat group consisted of the three escorts Searcher , Queen and Trumpeter , the cruisers Norfolk and Diadem and seven destroyers . Three squadrons of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm were stationed on the three carriers.
On the afternoon of May 4, 16 flew torpedo bombers of the type Grumman Avenger and 28 also armed with bombs fighter aircraft of type Grumman F4F Wildcat an attack on Kilbotn. The German submarine U 711 had gone alongside the Black Watch about two hours earlier after a patrol in the sea area off Murmansk , and apart from a ten-man guard and the commander , Lieutenant Captain Hans-Günther Lange , the crew was already on the line Gone Black Watch when the attacking planes appeared low over the bay from the west at 5:00 p.m. The Black Watch received seven bomb hits in a short time and sank on fire and broken in two parts after an explosion within a very short time. Only a few of their crew of more than 200 could be rescued, and the 40 men from U 711 who had already been transferred to them were also killed. The eleven men still on the submarine were able to free their boat during the attack, but the boat sank not far from the Black Watch due to the pressure of about five close hits. The eleven men could be saved.
The 860 GRT supply ship Senja , about 200 m further west in the bay, was also sunk. The flak ship Thetis , lying close to land on the west bank of the bay , survived the attack unscathed, presumably because it was not an easy target because of its location.
The wreck
The wreck of the Black Watch lies at position 68 ° 43 ′ 11 ″ N , 16 ° 34 ′ 9 ″ E at a depth of about 40 m in 90 ° lateral position the sandy bottom of the bay and can be dived; the top of the wreck is about 18 m below the water surface.
literature
- Rainer Busch & Hans-Joachim Röll: The submarine war 1939-1945, Volume II: The submarine construction in German shipyards from September 1939 to May 1945. ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn, ISBN 3 -8132-0512-6
- Death trap "Black Watch" , in: U-Boot im Focus , No.5, Luftfahrtverlag-Start, Bad Zwischenahn, 2009, ISBN 978-3-941437-03-6
Web links
- M / S BLACK WATCH, at www.ffektaomfartyg.se (Swedish)
- Photo of the Black Watch
- General Dietl's command ship Black Watch in the Kåfjord (photo)
- http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/45-05.htm
- Photo of the attack: the Black Watch and U 711 are hidden in the back, the Senja supply ship in the middle in the hail of bombs ; front left the flak ship Thetis , which was not attacked
- Loss list of members of the submarine weapon from the Harstad submarine base who died when the workshop ship “Black Watch” sank on May 4th, 1945
Footnotes
- ↑ He previously had his headquarters in the well-known Britannia Hotel in Trondheim ( Eduard Dietl, in the Norsk Biografisk Leksikon ).
- ↑ It is not clear whether this is the Triton water tanker or the Triton survey vessel .
- ↑ http://www.naviearmatori.net/eng/foto-156075-1.html
- ↑ The 882nd season on the Searcher provided 20 Wildcats for the attack, the 853rd on the Queen and the 846th on the Trumpeter provided 8 Avengers and 4 Wildcats each.
- ^ Report by the commander of U 711