Bucharest (ship)
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The Bucharest was a German motor cargo ship that was used by the Air Force as a so-called air park ship during World War II . After the war it became British war booty , then drove as Empire Ettrick under the British, as Bremnes or Clio under Norwegian , as Panorea under the Greek and as a charity under the Cypriot flag, until it was scrapped in 1974.
Construction and technical data
The ship was launched on 29 August 1939 with the hull number 226 at the German shipyard , work Reiherstieg in Hamburg for the German Levante line from the stack . It was 129.5 m long (124.9 m in the waterline ) and 16.92 m wide, had 6.48 m draft (empty 5.50 m) and a side height of 10.50 m and was 4558 GRT and 2661 NRT measured. The water displacement was 6988 tons when fully loaded (4412 tons by design). The drive consisted of two two-stroke six-cylinder diesel engines from MAN with a total of 3860 hp , which enabled the ship to reach a top speed of 14.3 knots over two propellers .
Sister ships were the Athen (1936), the Belgrade (1937) and the Sofia (1939).
history
air force
The Bucharest was requisitioned after the start of World War II still in the shipyard of the Air Force and completed a so-called air parking ship, d. H. as a special transport ship for the supply of aviation equipment for winter storage and refurbishing of air bases in central and northern Norway. The ship was u. a. equipped with workshops (radio masters, carpentry, blacksmiths, welding shops, precision mechanics, etc.) as well as with two high tanks each for 133 m³ of aviation fuel. After its completion, the Bucharest was put into service on July 1, 1940 with the Luftzeuggruppe See in Kiel , which was responsible for the replenishment of equipment and the implementation of all technical and operational matters of the Luftwaffe sea pilots. In the summer of 1943, the ship served for several months as a workshop and target ship for Kampfgeschwader 102 (KG 102), a school squadron for torpedo pilots stationed in Riga since June 1943 . From September 2, 1943, it was back in service with the Air District Command in Norway.
At the end of February 1945 the Bucharest was relocated to the Baltic Sea to bring ammunition and food from Swinoujscie to Pillau and later to Libau , where German troops fought in the Kurland basin until the end of the war. She now had 38 seafaring crew and 42 gun operators. Up to 1,400 wounded and refugees were taken on the return journey . When the Soviet troops were already at Stralsund in April , the wounded and refugees were brought to Copenhagen . The last trip ended there on May 5, 1945.
post war period
After the German surrender , the ship with a German crew, but British gun crews, was transferred from Copenhagen to Kiel , where it was then declared to be British spoils of war. It was brought to Hamburg through the Kiel Canal , where the cargo, which could no longer be completely unloaded in Libau, was unloaded. Then it was taken to Hull for delivery . On June 7, 1945 it was handed over to the Ministry of War Transport (Ministry of War Transport; from 1946 Ministry of Transport), renamed Empire Ettrick and assigned to the Cunard Line for ship management . The Empire Ettrick was registered in London and was given ship number 180678 and callsign GNLR in Lloyd's Register .
In July 1946 it was handed over to the Norwegian government, which handed it over to Nortraship , the state-owned shipping company created in 1940 for the duration of the war . It was renamed Bremnes and received the callsign LLTN. In December 1946 the ship was sold to the Bergener Dampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft in Bergen and then renamed Clio on March 24, 1947 . Only a few days later, on March 28, 1947, she collided west of the Store Bloksen rock north of Haugesund with the Norwegian cargo ship Sevilla , which then sank with ten of its crew .
In August 1963, the Clio was sold to the Greek company Compania Panorea SA (from 1969 Panorea Compania Naviera SA) in Piraeus and renamed Panorea . When IMO numbers were introduced , the Panorea was given the ship number IMO 5076078. In September 1972 she was sold to United Shipowners Ltd. sold in Famagusta ( Cyprus ) and renamed Charity , but then resold on September 22, 1972 to Yu Kuo Steel Co. in Kaohsiung ( Taiwan ) for scrapping. The ship was scrapped in 1974.
Web links
- Bucharest , at the Historical Marine Archives
- Clio ex Bucharest (with photo), at Sjøhistorie.no (Norwegian)
- The German Levante Line, at The Ships List (English)
- Roger W. Jordan: The World's Merchant Fleets, 1939: The Particulars And Wartime Fates of 6,000 Ships . Naval Inst Press, 2006, ISBN 1-59114-959-2 , pp. 55 (English, 624 pp., Limited preview in Google Book Search).
Footnotes
- ^ WH Mitchell & LA Sawyer: The Empire Ships. Lloyd's of London Press, London / New York / Hamburg / Hong Kong, 1995, ISBN 1-85044-275-4
- ↑ a b https://sites.google.com/site/seefahrtserinnerungen/kapitaen-hans-borgwardt
- ↑ At the lighthouse Ryvarden fyr near Sveio ( Vestland ) at the entrance to the Bømlafjord .
- ↑ The 1383 GRT motor ship Sevilla (callsign LCXN) was built in 1921 by Wood, Skinner & Co. in Gateshead . It was 79.4 m long and 11.5 m wide and had a draft of 4.51 m. It was for the Norwegian shipping company Norske Middelhavslinje by Fred. Olsen & Co. from Oslo with a load of fish and nickel ore on their way from Bergen to Genoa . ( Norwegian Ship Losses 1946-1968: Norske Skipsforlis i 1947 )