Cattaro (ship, 1920)
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The Cattaro was an auxiliary cruiser of the Regia Marina during World War II . The ship was laid down in 1914 as the Hungarian Hunyad , it was not launched until 1920, and it was not put into service until 1933 as the Yugoslav passenger ship Jugoslavija .
After the capitulation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Italy took over the ship and renamed it Cattaro . From 1942 until the self-sinking in September 1943 it served as an auxiliary cruiser. Lifted by the Navy and reactivated, it was sunk again by its own troops in the spring of 1944 as a block ship.
Construction and technical data
In 1914 the Hungarian-Croatian shipping company Società in Azione Ungaro-Croata di Navigazione Marittima a Vapore from Fiume ordered the Ganz & Comp shipyard . Danubius Maschinen-, Waggon- und Schiffbau-AG in Fiume built a high-speed steamer that was laid down in the same year under construction number 68. The ship was to be named Hunyad , named after Hunyad County , an administrative unit of the Kingdom of Hungary in what is now Transylvania in Romania .
Due to the First World War, only the hull was completed and the construction work was initially stopped. It was only launched in 1920 - without a name. That year Fiume fell to Italy and the shipyard was renamed Cantieri Navale del Quarnero. The unfinished hull had to be delivered on the basis of the peace treaty of 1919 - like all merchant ships and the ships under construction - and went to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The ship remained unfinished in Fiume for the next few years.
In the early 1930s, the shipping company Jadranska Plovidba ddin Sušak showed interest in the ship and had it completed as a mail steamer for the Dalmatian coast at Cantieri Navale del Quarnero under hull number 139 from 1932. In February 1933 it was delivered to the shipping company and given the name Jugoslavija .
The length of the Jugoslavija was 78.50 meters, it was 10.45 meters wide, had a draft of 4.11 meters and was measured with 1275 GRT or 628 NRT. The drive consisted of two 4-cylinder triple expansion machines from Harland & Wolff in Belfast , which produced 2,224 hp and operated on two screws. With that she reached a top speed of 15.5 knots.
history
Yugoslavia 1933–1941
The ship's registered and home port was in Split in 1933 . The shipping company Jadranska Plovidba dd used it in the increasing traffic with tourists on the Adriatic.
In addition to its use in tourism, the Jugoslavija was also used for freight transport on the coast. However, the main focus of the trips offered were day trips on the Adriatic Sea and island traffic in the waters of Yugoslavia. There were also trips to Albania and Greece. She was supported on these tours by other ships of the shipping company such as the Prestolonaslednik Petar (1931), Karadjordje (1913), Ljubljana (1904) or the Zagreb (1902). Even after the surrender of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the ship initially remained in the possession of the shipping company.
Marina Regia 1941–1943
After the surrender of Yugoslavia, Italy annexed the Dalmatian coast and took over the Yugoslav ships in its own merchant navy. The Jugoslavija was now named Cattaro and sailed under the Italian flag, but remained in the possession of the former shipping company.
On January 8, 1942, the Regia Marina confiscated the ship and had it converted into an auxiliary cruiser in Fiume . The task of the Italian auxiliary cruisers was usually to protect convoy in coastal waters, at the same time they were used as fast transporters due to the required speed of at least 15 knots. For these new tasks, the ship was armed with two 100/47 mm guns, one 76/40 mm gun and four 20 / L65mm anti-aircraft guns as well as two depth charges. In addition to its name, the ship was also given the identification D 36 . On March 13, 1942, the Regia Marina put the Cattaro into service as an auxiliary cruiser; No detailed information is available about the individual operations.
At the time of the Italian surrender on September 9, 1943, the Cattaro was in Santa Margherita Ligure . There the crew sank the ship themselves so as not to let it fall into the hands of the Germans.
German Navy 1943–1944
After the self-sinking, the German Navy lifted and repaired the ship, which kept the name Cattaro . According to the only available information about the use of the ship by the German Navy, the Cattaro is said to have been used for transport tasks on the Dalmatian coast in 1944. The end of the ship came in the spring of 1944: On March 22, 1944, the Germans sank the Cattaro as a block ship in the southern entrance of the port of Livorno. Subsequently, on June 14, 1944, the ship was severely damaged in an Allied air raid on Livorno.
Yugoslavia 1945–1947
After the end of the war, the wreck of the ship was lifted in the port of Livorno and returned to the successor company of the former shipping company, the newly founded shipping company Jadranska linijska plovidba . This had the remains of the ship towed to Split. It was scrapped there in 1947.
literature
- Maurizio Brescia: Mussolini's Navy. A Reference Guide to the Regia Marina 1930-1945 . E-Book, Kindle Edition, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84832-115-1
- Reinhart Schmelzkopf: Foreign ships in German hands . Strandgut Verlag, Cuxhaven 2004
- Gabriele Faggioni: Italian Warships 1919-1945 . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-613-03551-5
- Rolando Notarangelo: Navi mercantili perdute . ed .: Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare. 3. Edition. Rome 1997, ISBN 978-88-98485-22-2
Web links
- Navires a Vapeur et a Moteurs . Lloyd's of London, 1943, plimsollshipdata.org (PDF), accessed November 27, 2016
- home.kpn.nl accessed on November 27, 2016
- hajoregiszter.hu accessed on November 27, 2016
- navypedia.org.Retrieved November 27, 2016
- regiamarina.net accessed on November 27, 2016
- forum-marinearchiv.de accessed on December 1, 2016
- marina.difesa.it accessed on December 1, 2016
- marenostrumrapallo.it accessed on December 1, 2016
Footnotes
- ↑ home.kpn.nl
- ↑ home.kpn.nl hajoregiszter.hu cf. partly also Faggioni, p. 126, or also navypedia.org
- ↑ Navires a Vapeur et a Moteurs . Lloyd's of London, 1943, plimsollshipdata.org (PDF), accessed November 27, 2016
- ↑ marenostrumrapallo.it
- ↑ home.kpn.nl cf. also jadrolinija.hr
- ↑ regiamarina.net
- ↑ marenostrumrapallo.it marenostrumrapallo.it
- ↑ Schmelzkopf, p. 49, Faggioni, p. 126, navypedia.org
- ↑ marenostrumrapallo.it forum-marinearchiv.de
- ↑ marenostrumrapallo.it forum-marinearchiv.de
- ↑ marenostrumrapallo.it forum-marinearchiv.de