Carsten Tank-Nielsen

Carsten Tank-Nielsen

Carsten Tank-Nielsen (born September 16, 1877 in Horten (Norway) , † August 2, 1957 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian naval officer , most recently rear admiral .

He was Norway's first submarine commander and one of the “midwives” of Norwegian naval aviation . At the end of his career as naval commander of the Norwegian west coast in April 1940, he had to witness how the forces under his command were almost powerless against the German invaders of his country.

family

He was the son of the naval officer and shipyard director Alf Nielsen (1846-1919) and his wife Helga Smith (1854-1933). His grandfather was Carsten Tank Nielsen (1818–1892), Norway's first telegraphy director. Grandfather wrote the names without a hyphen; the grandson had the name change approved with the hyphen in 1901.

Carsten Tank-Nielsen married Margaret Gudrun Tidemand Johannessen (1887–1971), daughter of the factory owner Carl Fridtjof Johannessen (1854–1895) and Clara Tidemand (1859–1944) in 1909.

career

Early years

Blink the torpedo boat

Tank-Nielsen, then still Nielsen, joined the Norwegian Navy after finishing school and became a second lieutenant after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1898 . After completing the upper level of the naval academy, he was promoted to first lieutenant in the sea (Premierløitnant i Marinen) in 1900 .

He then served in various positions, but specialized early on in torpedo and electrical engineering . In 1901/1902 he was trained at the Austro-Hungarian torpedo school in Pola , and in 1903 he became the commander of the 40-ton torpedo boat Blink . From 1903 to 1905 he was a nautical officer and skipper in merchant shipping in East Asia , where he earned a reputation as a blockade breaker during the Russo-Japanese War .

In 1905 he returned to Norway and was initially again in command of a torpedo boat. In autumn of that year he served on the royal yacht Heimdal , which brought the newly elected King Haakon VII to Kristiania on November 25, 1905 after the personal union with Sweden was dissolved . Haakon and his family had come from Copenhagen to Drøbak in the Oslofjord on the Danish royal yacht Dannebrog , where they switched to the Norwegian Heimdal . In 1906 he became chief of a torpedo boat division.

Submarine pioneer

The Kobben , Norway's first submarine

In 1907 he was sent to Germany, where he received further training in engine and electrical engineering at the Technical University of Hanover until 1908 in preparation for his future use as a submarine commander . Afterwards, now as captain lieutenant (Kaptein i marinen), he led the training of the future 14-man crew and finally hoisted the Norwegian flag on the Kobben submarine , the first submarine of the Germania shipyard in Kiel , on November 28, 1909 Norwegian Navy. After two weeks of sea trials and diving exercises in the Great Belt , the boat arrived at the Norwegian naval base in Horten on December 12, 1909. It was then used as a test and school boat until the outbreak of the First World War . Tank-Nielsen remained in command of the Kobben until 1913 , which was renamed A-1 in February 1913 .

Start of the Norwegian naval aviation

The start (in the Gardermoen military aircraft collection )

During this time, as head of the so-called Kobben flyvekomité , he was the most committed supporter of Norwegian naval aviation. In 1912 he organized the trip of his first officer, Hans Fleischer Dons , to Germany, where he obtained his pilot's license and bought an aircraft that was to become the first Norwegian naval aircraft. The plane cost 30,000 crowns , which had been raised by private donors at the initiative of the committee; one of the most generous donors was King Hakon. On June 1, 1912 Dons made with this by Edmund Rumpler in his Rumpler Aircraft GmbH in Berlin built and Start -called Etrich dove the first flight in Norway. On June 7th, he flew, this time with Tank-Nielsen as the first passenger, from Borre via Horten and the Oslofjord to Moss and Fredrikstad , covering the distance of 48 km in 35 minutes. The aircraft was then donated to the Norwegian Navy.

Submarine commander

When in 1913 the first of the three other submarines ordered in May 1911, the A-2 , was put into service - A-3 and A-4 followed in 1914 - Tank-Nielsen became the commander of the submarine mother ship Ellida , one converted old steam corvette, and appointed chief of the submarine division.

During the safeguarding of neutrality in Norway from 1914 to 1919, he was the head of the Tønsberg department, in which all submarines were combined. In 1918 he set up a submarine base in Teie (Tønsberg), which he commanded until 1929. Then he was promoted to frigate captain (Kommandørkapitein) and appointed first commander of the submarine inspection. In the summer of 1920 he served at sea as deputy commander of the coastal armored ship Tordenskjold , and in 1926 he was for some time in command of Heimdal , which was sent to Spitsbergen to support Roald Amundsen's North Pole expedition .

Commander West Coast

In the autumn of 1934 Tank-Nielsen became captain of the sea (Kommandør) and chief of the second sea defense section, which extends from Jærens Rev southwest from Stavanger to Rørvik in the north, and is based in Bergen . In this position, Tank-Nielsen, promoted to Rear Admiral in 1938, was responsible for ensuring Norwegian neutrality on the west coast at the outbreak of World War II ; At the same time, its stretch of coast was also the starting point or contact point for the convoy traffic to and from Norway, which was organized in cooperation with Great Britain .

Altmark incident

Tank-Nielsen had to deal several times with the penetration of German and British ships into neutral Norwegian waters. The best-known case was that of the German supply ship Altmark in February 1940. Coming from the South Atlantic, the ship ran on February 14, with 303 British seamen on board, who had been captured by the armored ship Admiral Graf Spee at his merchant war enterprise 1940 north of Trondheim into Norwegian territorial waters and then to Germany along the coast . The Altmark was stopped and checked twice by Norwegian torpedo boats without the prisoners of war being discovered. Tank-Nielsen, who had been informed about British internees on board, was not satisfied with this, went to Altmark himself on February 15 with the torpedo boat Garm and requested a new investigation. The captain of the Altmark refused; his attempt to reach the German embassy in Oslo by radio was prevented by the Norwegians. On the instructions of the Admiralty in Oslo, Tank-Nielsen then allowed the continuation of the journey with Norwegian torpedo boats. On February 16, the Altmark was seized and boarded by the British destroyer HMS Cossack in Jøssingfjord. Seven German seamen were killed, the British seamen were freed and the Altmark was subsequently released. This double violation of Norwegian neutrality by both warring parties had serious consequences, as April 1940 would show.

German invasion of Norway

After the arrival of the first news of a possible German invasion of Norway , Tank-Nielsen ordered increased vigilance in his section on the afternoon of April 8, 1940, which he divided into three subsections for more effective defense, in order to prevent German penetration into the main fjords . However, he had only 17 or 18 warships, mostly small ones, and 5 or 6 naval aircraft at his disposal. On the night of April 9th, when the news of enemy intrusion into Norwegian waters increased, he had the beacons extinguished and gave orders to lay mines and armed resistance against all foreign warships attempting to enter Bergen. He coordinated his actions closely with the commander of the 4th Division, Major General William Steffens, and kept in touch with his subordinate. Nevertheless, the defense of Bergen collapsed very quickly when the German Warship Group 3 under Rear Admiral Schmundt arrived . The light cruiser Königsberg , the artillery training ship Bremse and the speedboat escort ship Carl Peters received hits when the coastal batteries were fired at Kvarven , but Bergen itself was occupied without a fight, and the coastal batteries were soon taken by German troops. Tank-Nielsen and Steffens had to evacuate to Voss, about 75 km to the northeast, in the morning . On April 11, Tank-Nielsen flew via Gudvangen to Balestrand on the Sognefjord , where he inspected the ships that remained there and gave instructions on how to continue the resistance, but only five days later he went on sick leave under the pressure of events.

retirement

His disappointment that the Navy couldn't fend off the invaders must have been immense, and he never returned to service. In February 1941 he wrote a report on his involvement in the war, and retired the following year, after briefly serving as a German prisoner of war in the Grini police detention center in January 1942 .

Awards

Carsten Tank-Nielsen was appointed knight, 1st class of the Order of Saint Olav in 1926. He has also been awarded a number of foreign medals: Commander 2nd Class of the Swedish Order of the Sword , Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy and Knight 1st Class of the Finnish Order of the White Rose .

Footnotes

1. ↑ Although Norway was linked to Sweden in a personal union until 1905 , it had its own navy, albeit small and only designed for coastal defense. In 1900 this consisted of two coastal armored ships , four monitors , three unarmored gunships, twelve gunboats , 16 small gunboats and 27 small torpedo boats. 116 active officers and 60 rotating reserve officers were used to guide them .
2. Jump up ↑ Lyn- class, a torpedo tube, a 37mm cannon.
3. ↑ Hans Fleischer Dons (June 13, 1882 - October 28, 1940) was a Norwegian naval officer and since 1909 Tank-Nielsen's deputy on the Kobben .
4. ^ Ellida , English Wikipedia
5. ↑ William Steffens on snl.no (Store Norske Leksikon, Norwegian)

Web links

• Carsten Tank-Nielsen in the norske leksikon store
• Carsten Tank-Nielsen in the Norsk biografisk leksikon

literature

• Harald BM Rønneberg: Det norske ubåtvåpen gjennom femti år: 1909 - 1959. JW Eides , Bergen, 1959
• Vera Henriksen: Luftforsvarets historie, Volume 1: Fra opptakt til nederlag. Aschehoug, Oslo, 1994, ISBN 978-82-03-22068-5
• B. Hafsten and T. Arheim: Marinens flygevåpen 1912–1944. Tankestreken, Sandvika, 2003, ISBN 978-82-993535-1-9