Shipping on Lake Constance in World War II

The Bodenseeschifffahrt in the Second World War was marked by a military use to date of civilian ships. A special situation arose from the fact that both the German Empire with the "attached" Austria and neutral Switzerland were neighboring states of Lake Constance.

prehistory

The Lake Constance region with the neighboring states of Germany, Austria and Switzerland is located in the center of the Alemannic language and cultural area. Shipping has been connecting the lake population for two millennia and has been a hub for European trade routes. Wars with the use of ships were rare and then justified externally: The confrontation between Romans and Celts in 15 BC. BC, the Roman border security by fighting ships against Alemanni incursions in the 3rd and 4th centuries, but above all the naval war on Lake Constance 1632–1648 and the First Napoleonic War (1798 / 99–1801 / 02). From the 15th to the 19th century, individual armed hunting ships were limited to protecting ships with valuable cargoes. At the end of the 19th century, the establishment of a "steam war flotilla" with its own naval port was suggested and then rejected. Only the Austrian-German Lake Constance flotilla was realized in World War I with lightly armed patrol boats.

Starting position at the beginning of the Second World War

In 1937 the police on Lake Constance were subordinated to the Reich Minister of the Interior and integrated into the protection police under the name "Special Service Branch Water Police " (SW) . The seat of the SW command “Bodensee” was Friedrichshafen with four other bases for the police boats. These and other boats of the "Seewache" were involved in March 1938 when Bregenz was occupied by German units when Austria was annexed to the German Reich . After that, Austria's Lake Constance ships were part of the fleet of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , which comprised nine steam ships (DS), 17 motor ships (MS), six motor boats (MB) and two motor trajectory ships (M. Tr.).

At the beginning of the war, the Kriegsmarine was only present with a small unit on Lake Constance, the Marine News Station MNS South , radio reconnaissance unit, in Langenargen. It was led by Alfred Manhardt Edler von Mannstein and decoded the enemy radio traffic in the southernmost German naval location.

In and around Friedrichshafen , important armaments industries have sprung up, which is why the city was the only port city in the region to become a focus of Allied air raids from 1943 onwards . The Zeppelin airship developed in Friedrichshafen was no longer of any military importance in 1939.

Situation on the Swiss Lake Constance

The neutral Switzerland possessed at the beginning of the war does not have warships on Lake Constance. The passenger ships of the SBB have not been used by the military also provided with camouflage paint. After the German invasion of the Netherlands and Norway in 1940, the Swiss army had to reckon with a landing operation by the Wehrmacht on the southern shore of Lake Constance and was preparing for defensive measures. It was not until 1942 that Switzerland set up the motorboat company , a small fleet of 18 lightly armed and mostly requisitioned boats to guard the maritime border. The motorboat company was not a Swiss naval unit; the 86 men were subordinate to the engineering team (pioneers). To protect the port facilities of Romanshorn there was a bunker below the Hotel “Schloss” . From 1942 onwards, Eastern Switzerland feared another German invasion. She felt particularly threatened by the growing number of landing ferries as well as landing boats and assault boats with which the Pioneer Training Battalion 4 between Lindau and Langenargen (headquarters of the staff) trained pioneers for use in all theaters of war. The boats were manufactured near the border at the Dornier shipyard in Manzell , the Bodan shipyard in Kressbronn and the Biatel shipyard in Hard .

Since the neighboring states had never defined a uniform border in the Obersee , they tacitly applied the heap theory, according to which the lake areas with a water depth of more than 25 m were jointly managed by the neighboring countries as a condominium . During the Second World War, the German Reich actually accepted that the Swiss border guards carried out controls according to the real division theory in the middle of the lake. However, there was no military conflict between the two states on Lake Constance during World War II. In the last two years of the war, the SBB motorboat Hecht carried out courier crossings on behalf of the customs authorities. Three days before the voluntary internment of German Lake Constance ships in Switzerland in 1945 , a German fled to Switzerland in the pioneer landing craft (PiLB 41) 535. The boat was interned by the Swiss Army in Romanshorn on April 23, 1945 and handed over to the French Navy in Constance in 1948 .

War-related operational restrictions

Already on May 15, 1939, the ferry traffic to Switzerland was discontinued and on June 5, 1940 cross-ship traffic between Germany and Switzerland as well as the passage between the Upper and Lower Lakes on the Seerhein . The suspension of the ferry traffic hit the transit traffic of the city of Romanshorn particularly hard. Because of the fuel rationing , most of the motor ships of the Reichsbahn were shut down, including the new Ostmark , which was still baptized on September 24, 1939, but no longer put into service. The limited regular service was taken over by a few steamers. The ships had to be darkened at night and have gas masks ready. From November 1944, the Friedrichshafen- Lindau - Bregenz connection was discontinued and the other courses were only operated in the dark. All ships were given a blue-gray camouflage in 1943. Even Switzerland, which was not involved in the war, had to shut down its four motor ships due to a lack of fuel and carry out restricted longitudinal traffic on the Upper and Lower Lake with two steamers each.

At the beginning of the war, all private watercraft and even buoys were seized. Only professional fishermen and dredgers with a special permit were allowed on the lake. From 1941 to 1943 it was possible to sail in demarcated bays with a special permit, after which it was again completely banned. Some of the boats were rented from the German customs border guards or were pulled in together with the owner to monitor certain restricted lines. At certain times, parts of the lake where target practice with live ammunition were taking place were not allowed, even after the war.

Ship assignment to the German Navy, Air Force and Wehrmacht (sometimes multiple answers)

A few steamships were enough to meet the reduced timetable. Most of the motor ships, which were rarely used because of fuel rationing, were used by various military bodies as auxiliary ships . The crew remained civil and the ships unarmed. Only the few ships that were used for anti-aircraft defense were armed warships with soldiers on board.

Housing ships

MS Allgäu was in Lindau during the entire war.
From October 1943, MS Mainau was accommodation for the crews of the flak ships off Friedrichshafen.
MB Buchhorn served as a connection boat to the anchored flak ships.
MS Augsburg and MS Kempten were accommodations for Russian forced laborers in Lindau in 1945.

Cable laying and salvage ships

M. Tr. Schussen , equipped with a jib crane and capstan winches for laying submarine cables . Deployment in 1941 in the Bregenz Bay for the Intelligence Test Command (NVK) Kiel, in front of Immenstaad and in front of Fischbach. Salvage of sunk auxiliary ships in Friedrichshafen in 1943.
M. Tr. 12 for military use without further details.
M. Tr. 16, equipped with a slewing crane for laying underwater cables .

Trial and training ships

The German Navy taught in 1941 to experiments with naval mines a lock-weapon test command (SVK) in Ueberlingen and a message center trial command (NPC) in Kressbronn . On the site of the later Dornier works originated Torpedo test facility Seewerk Immenstaad . In addition, tracking devices and new torpedo and parachute devices were tested in the Überlinger See . Flak practice shooting took place regularly on the Obersee . The following ships of the Deutsche Reichsbahn und Motorferfer (MF) of the Stadtwerke Konstanz were affected:

MF Konstanz in Überlinger See from 1941 for the NVK
MF Konstanz in Überlinger See from 1943 for the SVK
MS Konstanz , an unfinished new building ( hull ), was used in 1943/1944 as a torpedo intercepting boat for aircraft torpedoes at the Seewerk Immenstaad torpedo test facility, then used to test Voith-Schneider propellers for mine clearance boats and for tests with V weapons .
MS Oesterreich was used by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH from 1944 as a torpedo test ship off Immenstaad with a torpedo tube set for target exercises and two anti-aircraft guns against air attacks.
MS Schwaben was used as a test ship for underwater listening devices off Kressbronn from 1941 to 1945.
MS Kempten was also used there as an NVK test ship in 1942.
Until 1942 MS Ravensburg was a test ship for the Versuchsamt Berlin-Grunewald, the NVK Kiel and the Aviation Research Institute Oberpfaffenhofen off Friedrichshafen.
MB Buchhorn was the service ship of the NVK and the flight research institute Oberpfaffenhofen.

Units of the Wehrmacht on Lake Constance

The coastal hunter department z. b. V. 800 Brandenburg

From the Pioneer Training Battalion 4, which had existed in Langenargen since 1942, the Coastal Hunter Department (KJA) for special use 800 was set up at the turn of the year 1942/43, a unit in the Brandenburg division . It was the only military association on Lake Constance. The KJA trained members of the army, air force and navy for special missions, but had no combat mission on Lake Constance. The unit was transferred to the Mediterranean on March 15, 1943. In the last days of the war, the people of the Lake Constance area feared their intervention, which would have resulted in high losses.

The unit consisted of a staff department and four companies , about a thousand men in total, with the following equipment: command boats, heavy assault boats 42, explosive boats Linse , a pioneer landing craft 41 and several confiscated French motor yachts; also light and heavy machine guns and medium grenade launchers .

Flight operations boats

Two type C III aircraft were stationed in Friedrichshafen; both were open air force tug and transport boats. FL. C 3084 was loaned to the Dornier shipyard, FL. C 3142 was at the airbase stationed Friedrichshafen.

Floating anti-aircraft batteries, anchored off Friedrichshafen for sea-based air defense

Friedrichshafen was surrounded by a ring of anti-aircraft batteries to repel the air raids, which became more frequent after 1943. Several flak ships anchored about 300 meters from the shore , which had civilian functions before the takeover by the military, also closed the defensive ring on the seafront. To the east, the bay was sealed off with anchored crosses made of tree trunks, on which large sheet metal panels were mounted vertically in order to simulate land to the bombers' radars. Fogging from fishing boats increased the effect. On September 27, 1944, the anti-aircraft protection for the largely destroyed Friedrichshafen was lifted and the anti-aircraft ships withdrawn.

M. Tr. Schussen was equipped with two flak and searchlights as early as the end of August 1939 .
M. Tr. 16 was armed with three 2 cm anti-aircraft guns and equipped with searchlights.
DS Queen Charlotte , which had already been retired in 1943, was equipped with a quadruple gun on the forecastle and searchlights on the stern pavilion in 1944.
A trajectory barge was converted into a flak ship Argen and anchored in front of the Immenstaad sea works.
In addition, some barges and gravel ships were armed with light flak.

War-related damage and losses

Through German dismantling and requisitioning

In the following paddle steamers, the wheel arch decorations (coat of arms, mostly made of bronze) were dismantled and melted down to extract raw materials:

DS Friedrichshafen 1940
DS Lindau 1941
DS Bavaria 1941
DS City of Meersburg 1943
DS Zähringen 1943

Two motor boats were requisitioned by the German military:

MB Glückauf , used in 1942 as a Dnieper ferry, lost on the Eastern Front .
MB Woge , built in Friedrichshafen in 1938 for the Deutsche Reichsbahn , was a light flak ship from 1939 to 1943 and was sunk. The use is unknown.

Through Allied bombing raids on Friedrichshafen from 1943 to 1945

The crew of an RAF bomber is preparing for a mission to bomb industrial plants in Friedrichshafen (see comment on the picture).

The following ships were damaged in the bombardment of the old town in the port or when an anti-aircraft ship was at anchor:

DS Friedrichshafen burned down in the night of April 27-28 , 1944 at the shipyard slipway .

DS Württemberg sank that same night after a near detonator in the front port basin of Friedrichshafen. After the uplift, it was finally destroyed by a bomb hit on July 20, 1944.

DS Queen Charlotte , already retired, was also badly damaged in this attack in the harbor basin and then scrapped.

The mud-bus n. 3 fell heavily damaged in the harbor.

The steam sludge dredger was hit by an explosive bomb on April 28, sank and was lifted again in June.

The former Trajektkahn II was badly damaged on April 28, 1944 and sank.

SD Gna , the research ship of the aerological kite station, sank badly damaged.

M. Tr. Schussen was slightly damaged by a Nahdetonierer.

A gravel ship with light flak was also damaged in this attack.

The research boat Kormoran of the Limnological Institute Konstanz (previously A- barge of the battleship Moltke , then the police boat) was destroyed in the Seemooser Halle, as was the fleet of boats of the Württemberg Yacht Club with the motor boat Graf Zeppelins, the Württemberg .
The light speedboat LS 5 , built in 1941 by the Dornier shipyard in Friedrichshafen and used as an escort ship by the Dornier works , was sunk on September 25, 1943.
The flight operations boat FL.C 3084 Dornier-Werke was damaged during an air raid on 18 March 1944 by the Michelsen shipyard repaired and burned after the attack on 23 May 1944 in full.
The hull of the unfinished MS Konstanz burned almost completely amidships after a bomb hit in April 1945 in the harbor basin.

In addition, the port facilities were largely destroyed. The air defense resulted in high losses, both among the crews of the aircraft hit and among the mostly young flak helpers on land. There were hardly any casualties on the flak ships. The city of Friedrichshafen was 60% destroyed in eleven heavy bombings. More than a thousand people were killed and wounded, mostly civilians and foreign workers.

By Allied air raids with on-board weapons

Parts of the decommissioned Konstanz ships were anchored in the port and in the bay of Ludwigshafen in Überlinger See to protect them from bombing , where they were discovered and shot at by Allied low-flying aircraft on July 24, 1944.

MS Höri sank in the shallow harbor basin. It was restored after the war.
MS Schienerberg was badly damaged in the Bay of Ludwigshafen.
MS Baden also received 400 hits there - one is still visible today - and fishermen just managed to save it from sinking.

In all of these events nothing is known of any fatalities among the crews. On the same day, the scheduled ship Stadt Meersburg was only able to escape the shelling by low-flying aircraft by fleeing to the Swiss bank. Another time it escaped to the port of Meersburg , which is protected by a ridge.

Damage when the French troops marched in at the end of April 1945

Like the island town of Lindau, these three ships were looted and damaged in the last days of the war:

MS Ravensburg in Überlinger Mantelhafen
MS Schwaben in Kressbronn
MB Bodman in Bodman

War-related consequential damage after the end of the war

At the end of April 1945 the Allied troops occupied the western and northern Lake Constance region, which became completely part of the French occupation zone. The ships of the Deutsche Reichsbahn were managed by the Association of the South-West German Railways (SWDE), Speyer, in the French-occupied zone. Three of the four Austrian ships were transferred back to the Austrian Federal Railways; the Ostmark was renamed Austria , as originally planned .

Through reparations to France

Motorboats were brought to France as spoils of war ("prize de guerre") and as part of the reparations that France as the victorious power demanded from Germany:

MB Greif was used as a port barge in Rouen until the end of the 1990s .

MB Buchhorn

MB Arthur

MB eagle

MB Silberhecht was badly damaged while it was still in use on Lake Constance and sold to the Bodan shipyard in Kressbronn.

LS 13-18 . The six light speedboats from the Dornier shipyard were brought to France in 1945.

Six work boats of the Reichsbahn (from the R1-R8 series) were requisitioned as spoils of war for the new "Flotilla du Lac de Constance" when the French troops marched in.

At least ten "Vedettes" were confiscated as spoils of war on Lake Constance and later used on the Rhine

Five pioneer landing craft PiLB 41 (No. 536-540 or Constance IV ), still under construction at the Bodan shipyard, also had to be delivered to the "Flotilla" after their completion.

Only boats that could be moved by rail, road or waterways were finally seized. They were given French names as a matter of principle, in the first months of the occupation even by the unit that seized the boat, and later by the military administration in Constance. When the boats were relocated to the Upper Rhine or the coast after their use on Lake Constance, they were renamed there again. In contrast to German prehistory, the stations and names are well documented in the French sources.

Ships temporarily confiscated by the French occupation forces

Most of the German ships on Lake Constance were confiscated by the French occupying forces and used as living, watch or pleasure ships. Some continued to be used militarily after the war:

Although it was not a German ship, the MS Oesterreich was used by the French Navy for torpedo attempts off Immenstaad until 1948 and then handed over to the Austrian Federal Railways in a completely desolate condition.
MS Schwaben was renamed St. Corenthin and the French Navy continued to use it for underwater listening devices until 1949.
M. Tr. Shoten was like M. Tr. 16 except for the lifting of ships to salvage the previously laid submarine cables.
MB Bayern was used as a Bretonne by the French customs administration on Lake Constance.
MS Mettnau and MS Hegau were courier ships of the French occupying forces.
MS Ravensburg was an accommodation ship in the military port of the Bodan shipyard.
WSP 3 Panther . The motorboat, built in 1934 by the Bodan shipyard for the water police , was used in the armed "Flotilla du Lac de Constance" until it was transferred to France in 1948.
The Konstanz – Meersburg car ferry was out of service until November 1945. The three ships were used as troop transports between Bregenz and Überlingen .
The French "Marine nationale" based in Constance confiscated all private boats and ships that were still in existence in 1945. Officially, this was supposed to prevent war criminals from fleeing. In fact, scientists and technicians from armaments factories and laboratories were mainly sought.

Of the temporarily confiscated ships, only three were given a French name. During the occupation, all German ships had a registration number on the bow and carried the French tricolor , later the Caesar flag (international designation: Charlie). The Austrian ships carried a red-white-red pennant on the yard of the main mast. At the end of the 1940s, the camouflage was removed and the ships painted white again.

Dangers to fishermen

For part of Lake Constance shipping, the professional fishermen, the hidden legacies of the Second World War still pose a great danger today:

Crashed aircraft wrecks damaging the nets;
Bomb duds and mines, a life-threatening bycatch;
Weapons, ammunition and vehicles sunk in the lake when German troops withdrew;
Bombs, ammunition and explosives that were "disposed of" in the lake by the French occupation forces after the end of the war.

General and prevented damage

In general, shipping has suffered damage from years of downtime, inadequate maintenance, the removal of the tough camouflage paint, as well as operational downtime and destroyed port facilities. Many crew members were drafted.

Fortunately, two orders from the National Socialist rulers shortly before the end of the war were not carried out: The plan was to arm the men and ships and send them into a hopeless battle.

Another senseless NS order from the Lindau district leadership provided that all ships lying in the ports of Lindau and Bregenz, including the largest units Germany , Allgäu and the new Ostmark , should be sunk before the enemy invaded. Only the secret negotiations of the Reichsbahn executive board Dr. It was thanks to Otter, the understanding of the Swiss authorities and the courage of the ship's crews that on the night of April 26, 1945, three operational steamships and one motorboat were able to tow five unfit ships unnoticed into four Swiss ports, where they could go to without crews were interned at the end of the war and then handed over to the Allies unharmed. Most German ships on Lake Constance survived the war relatively unscathed. Five of them still operate today: the paddle steamer Hohentwiel and the motor ships Baden , Karlsruhe , Swabia and the Austrian Austria , the former Ostmark .

The four Swiss motor ships, which were well maintained during the decommissioning, were immediately available when the entire Lake Constance was opened to them in 1946 for special trips and recreational trips for German children, the Swiss children . The Zurich and Thurgau ships involved in this Good Neighborhood campaign are still in operation today.

A relic from the Second World War is a massive bunker on the shipyard of the Bodensee-Schiffsbetriebe in Friedrichshafen. It offered protection to the shipyard workers and ship's crews and also withstood later attempts to remove it, although it looks as inconspicuous as a shed.

literature

Michael Berg: Motor shipping on Lake Constance under the Deutsche Reichsbahn and in the post-war period . regional culture publisher, Ubstadt-Weiher et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-89735-614-6 .

Dietmar Bönke: paddle wheel and impeller. The shipping of the railway on Lake Constance . GeraMond Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-86245-714-4 .

Hans-Georg Brunner-Schwer, Karl F. Fritz: The history of the great Lake Constance ships. Bodensee Magazin Verlag, Konstanz undated , ISBN 3-935169-00-0 .

Hans-Georg Brunner-Schwer, Karl F. Fritz: From the "Allgäu" to the "Graf Zeppelin". The large passenger ships of the German Lake Constance fleet since 1929 . Labhard Verlag, Konstanz 1997, ISBN 3-926937-36-X .

Karl F. Fritz: Adventure steamboat trip on Lake Constance . MultiMediaVerlag, Meersburg 1989, ISBN 3-927484-00-8 .

Karl F. Fritz: From the paddle steamer to the white fleet; History of Lake Constance Shipping . (Illustrated book, 1824–2013). Sutton Verlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-95400-170-5 .

Karl F. Fritz: When the “White Swans” became “Gray Geese” . In: IBN, the magazine for water sports on Lake Constance, No. 12.2013, pp. 18-20.

Web links

Matthias Haeberlin: The Lake Constance region in the Second World War Table of contents
www.bodenseeschifffahrt.de The Second World War
Karl F. Fritz on bodenseeschiffahrt.de: 70 years ago: The end of the steamer "Friedrichshafen"

References and comments

↑ In order to deepen this brief overview, apart from the links to the ship portraits, it is advisable to read the authors Michael Berg and Dietmar Bönke (see literature), who refer in detail to primary sources and the extensive specialist literature. Karl F. Fritz (see literature) is characterized by its practical relevance. Unless otherwise stated, all information relates to the listed works by these authors.

^ Erwin A. Schmidl : The "connection" of Austria. The German invasion in March 1938 . Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1994, ISBN 3-7637-5936-0 .

^ Report of the Thurgauer Zeitung from October 4, 2014 on measures at Arbon

^ Alain François Berlincourt, Marco Jorio : Warships. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 5, 2007. Retrieved June 25, 2019 .

↑ MB Rheingold by Alfons Heidegger from Überlingen as an example for other boats ( Memento of the original from December 30, 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.

↑ The authors Berg and Bönke (see literature) point out uncertainties and contradictions in the various sources for this section.

↑ On the function and meaning of the so-called "Seewerk" in Immenstaad: Schwäbische Zeitung of July 24, 2004. ( Memento of the original of December 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 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. @1@ 2
^ KJA - Coastal Hunter Department zbV 800 »Brandenburg«. Retrieved July 30, 2019 .
↑ Flight operations boat FL. C 3142
↑ cf. Raimund Hug-Biegelmann: Friedrichshafen in the strategic air war 1943–1945 , in: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings , 113th year 1995, p. 57 ( digitized ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: Der Link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )@1@ 2

^ Report of a flak helper on the Schussen and Argen .

↑ 1943: three 3.7 cm Flakgeschützen 36, February 1944: 2 cm Flak 30 , June 1944: four 3.7 cm Flak 37

↑ A photo of the damaged DS Bludenz was taken on April 4, 1944 from the middle bridge of the M. Tr. 16 and shows that the ship cannot be identical to the flak ship Argen , which had no central bridge (see photos in Dietmar Bönke / Literature, pages 77 and 131).

↑ See Dietmar Bönke (literature), p. 131.

↑ On the history of the wave

↑ Article on SÜDKURIER Online from April 25, 2014: When thousands of bombs laid Friedrichshafen in ruins , (accessed on June 18, 2015); therein a gallery with documentary photos of Württemberg , which sank in front of the Salzstadel (picture 21) and of Friedrichshafen, which burned out on the slipway (picture 31).

↑ Max Messerschmid: 100 Years of the Friedrichshafen-Romanshorn Railway Trajectory , in: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings , 87th year 1969, here: p. 113, footnote 13 ( digitized version )

↑ H.-J. Elster: explored lake. Lake Constance as a research object in the past and present . In: Bodensee-Hefte, Heft 10, Konstanz 1985.

↑ german-navy.de

↑ The work boat for towing seaplanes was a design by the Kröger shipyard in Warnemünde , type Seeschwalbe III . It was 10.7 m long, 2.76 m wide and had a displacement of 4 t. With the 85 PSe engine it was 13.8 knots. All information from luftwaffe-zur-see.de

↑ Klaus von Rudloff, Claude Jeanmaire and others: Shipping on Lake Constance, Volume 3: Beginning of motor shipping . Verlag Eisenbahn, Villigen (CH) 1987, ISBN 3-85649-072-8

↑ Max Messerschmid: 100 years of the Friedrichshafen-Romanshorn railway trajectory , in: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings , 87th year 1969, here: p. 113, footnote 12 ( digitized version )