Christoph Aschmoneit

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Christoph Aschmoneit (born March 17, 1901 in Beeskow , Brandenburg province , † February 14, 1984 in Kiel ) was a German shipbuilding engineer . After the Second World War he was one of the leading German submarine experts.

From the lagoon to the sea

As the son of Franz Aschmoneit († 1930) and his wife Ida geb. Mahlkow grew up Aschmoneit in Labiau on the Curonian Lagoon . His father was in charge of the hydraulic engineering department there. The official apartment was in the building yard , which resembled a state shipyard. As a subpriman , he volunteered in the 1st East Prussian Field Artillery Regiment No. 16 in 1919 . After graduating from high school in March 1921, he worked for a year at a shipyard in Königsberg i. Pr. At the same time he enrolled at the Albertus University in Königsberg in order to be able to be active in his father's Corps Littuania . He moved to another math term as Inactive in the winter semester 1922/23 at the Technical University of Gdansk and studied shipbuilding .

Imperial Navy

After passing the diploma examination with distinction in 1928, he applied to the Reichsmarine for admission to the civil service career. Despite his actually too old age and despite the oversupply, he was accepted. After basic training at the II. Marine Artillery Department in Wilhelmshaven , he went on the Schleswig-Holstein liner and from 1929 on the Niobe sailing training ship . He finished his civil servant training at the Wilhelmshaven navy shipyard with the second state examination. On July 29, 1932, he was appointed government master builder. He then worked at the shipyard in Wilhelmshaven and at the Arsenal in Kiel. In February 1933 he started the first submarine course of the Reichsmarine at the naval school Mürwik . The driver training took place in Turku , where the submarine CV 707, built according to IvS plans, was tested. The crew consisted of only eight officers and two naval construction officers. Since there were no crews on board, everyone had to do everything. The commander and chief engineer were former submarine officers in the Imperial Navy . Aschmoneit saw in this "extraordinary but very ingenious measure" of the naval command an essential explanation for the rapid development of the submarine weapon of the Navy . Since the German Reich was not allowed to own or construct submarines according to the Versailles Treaty , German shipyards maintained the Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (IvS for short) in the Netherlands with the support of the Reich . The boat was built by the Finnish Navy in Turku and put into service as Vesikko . The boat is considered to be the prototype of the German Type II submarine . Transferred to naval headquarters in October 1933, Aschmoneit investigated the problem of infrasound, which was acute at the time, but had been neglected until then .

Navy

Since April 1, 1935, Aschmoneit was a naval construction officer . Three days after the founding of the Navy , he came to the testing committee for submarines, which later became the submarine inspection command. In retrospect, he found this post particularly satisfying because technical imperfections were uncovered and personal relationships with the first submarine soldiers were made possible - "which has proven its practical value over decades" .

On October 1, 1938, he was transferred to the naval command design office in Berlin . There Aschmoneit was a consultant for the leading German submarine designer Friedrich Schürer . He worked on the design of the XI submarine . This was given up when the World War broke out. The designer was interested in a new type of snorkel system that the Dutch Koninklijke Marine used in their submarines of the O-19 class , the trimd diesel systeem . This enabled the diesel engines to be supplied with air when they were submerged, so that the batteries could also be charged underwater. When the Netherlands was occupied by the Wehrmacht in the western campaign in 1940 , the construction drawings fell into German hands. Today they are kept in the archive of the German U-Boat Museum in Cuxhaven .

In 1943 he succeeded Friedrich Schürer in office as ministerial advisor and department head . The seal (type 122) was created under his leadership . After the submarine development was transferred to the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition under Otto Merker , Aschmoneit only had an advisory role in the submarine commission. Towards the end of the war he personally led the deep diving test of a XXI boat . That he Seekriegserfahrungen could consider bureaucratic and rapidly, the submarine driver thanked him and Karl Doenitz .

New beginning

In the post-war period , Aschmoneit worked for the Information Office for Naval Construction installed by the Allies until December 19, 1945 . He then worked on the site of the former Kriegsmarine shipyard in Wilhelmshaven. As a group leader for matters relating to technical personnel, he had to deal in detail with civil service law and labor law , which he soon benefited from in civil administration. The employment relationship was terminated on November 8, 1946 without any recognizable legal basis.

Koblenz and Kiel

Immediately afterwards, he was summoned to an authority on behalf of the Palatinate Higher Government Presidium, which - mostly manned by former members of the Navy - was supposed to make the Rhine navigable again, to remove the many wrecks and to restore 700 damaged ships. The icebreaker Nobiling was built under Aschmoneit's direction . When the task of the authorities came to an end, he was transferred to the Rhineland-Palatinate waterways directorate in Koblenz as mechanical engineering department head . When the waterway administration was transferred from the federal states to the federal government, he became the head of the new waterway machinery office in Koblenz. On September 1, 1954, he was transferred to the Waterways and Shipping Directorate North in Kiel , again as a mechanical engineering department . On December 31, 1957, he left the transport system .

Bonn

In 1950 the office of Blank Aschmoneit and Ulrich Gabler asked for suggestions on the submarine weapon of the future German Navy . Your report was the basis of the later demands made by the Federal Ministry of Defense . On January 1, 1958, Aschmoneit transferred to the Federal Armed Forces administration as chief government director . Despite a development gap of 15 years and without the slightest organizational and personnel requirements, the Federal Republic of Germany had committed itself to its allies to build and operate 24 (later 30) submarines. All planning work was done by Aschmoneit. This task could only be mastered “if one got rid of the text of existing administrative regulations” . Since there was no longer a construction office or naval shipyards, the construction of submarines was put into private hands. The Federal Armed Forces administration merely laid down the tasks and objectives. Two arsenals were set up for the maintenance of finished boats . In collaboration with the Lübeck engineering office , Aschmoneit designed the submarine class 201 and the submarine class 205 . They were built from 1960 by Howaldtswerke in Kiel.

In addition to the planning of new buildings, sunken submarines were lifted and made operational again: Shark and pike of submarine class XXIII and a submarine class XXI that drove as Wilhelm Bauer with a civilian crew for over 20 years is now in the German Maritime Museum .

Norwegian Navy

At the beginning of the 1960s, the Royal Norwegian Navy had to replace its German and British-made submarines from the war. She decided on a variant of the German type 205. Her U 3 was initially borrowed. For testing purposes, it drove for a year as a Kobben under the Norwegian flag. The Norwegian Navy, with German administrative assistance, then ordered the construction of a boat from the Lübeck engineering office that was similar to class 205, but was built ferritic and could therefore dive deeper. The construction of 15 boats was awarded to Rheinstahl . For this task, Aschmoneit was sent to the Norwegian Navy and ensured that contractual and technical problems were resolved quickly. In order to complete the project, his term of service was extended by one year. King Olav V (Norway) awarded him the Order of Saint Olav .

Last years

Finally, Aschmoneit was still involved in the planning of the submarine class 206 . After he retired in 1967 at the age of 66, he moved to Wrangelstrasse in Kiel. He advised Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft on contractual issues for eight years . Revered in the shipbuilding industry and the navy, he died one month before his 83rd birthday. He left his wife Liselotte born in Wilhelmshaven . Schwietring , a daughter and two sons. One son became an engineer , the other an internist . For his funeral, Aschmoneit did not want flowers, but a foundation for the Möltenort submarine memorial .

In their obituary, Schiff & Hafen wrote :

“He has never - not even under pressure from above or out of opportunism - whitewashed or made unrealistic forecasts about deadlines or technical issues. As hard as he could work for the cause he was responsible for, it was just as little important to him to fight for advantages for himself. Career thinking was alien to him and has not influenced any of his actions - not even subliminally. "

- Heinrich Waas

Honors

literature

  • Shipbuilding Society: 100 Years Shipbuilding Society - Biographies on the History of Shipbuilding , Springer, Berlin, 1999, ISBN 3-540-64150-5 , pp. 14/15.
  • Ulrich Gabler : Christoph Aschmoneit - a life for German submarine construction . Marineforum 5/1984, pp. 145-147
  • Heinrich Waas: Christoph Aschmoneit † . Schiff & Hafen 4/1984, p. 72.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f U. Gabler (1984)
  2. ↑ a b Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 85/806; 2/405
  3. ↑ Vesikko ( Memento from February 13, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. ↑ a b H. Waas (1984)
  5. ↑ Icebreaker Nobiling and Heron
personal data
SURNAME Ashmoneit, Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval engineer
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Beeskow , Brandenburg Province
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1984
Place of death Kiel