Cobra (ship, 1926)
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The Cobra (2) was a cruise liner the Hapag that in World War II by the German Navy as mine ship was used and was lost in August 1942nd
Seebäderschiff
The Cobra was on 14 January 1926 on the Vulcan shipyard in Szczecin from the stack . She was used in the seaside resort service between Hamburg , Cuxhaven , Helgoland and Sylt and made her maiden voyage from Hamburg to Helgoland on May 16, 1926. The ship, measured at 2,132 GRT and traveling at 17 knots , could carry a total of 1919 passengers. Because of its elegance and the white paint, the Cobra was also called "Swan of the North Sea".
Mine ship of the Kriegsmarine
On August 26, 1939, a few days before the German invasion of Poland , the Cobra was requisitioned by the Navy and converted into a mine ship and armed with two 8.8 cm rapid fire guns. After the start of the war, it first laid mine barriers in the North Sea , and after the occupation of Norway from April 1940 also off the Norwegian coast.
Together with Roland and Brummer ex Olav Tryggvason on 7./8. The offensive mine barrier "SW 1", which was laid in the southwestern North Sea on August 31, 1940 was the undoing of the British 20th (mine-laying) destroyer flotilla on August 31, when the Express , Esk and Ivanhoe ran into mines in the previously undetected barrier. Esk sinks immediately, Ivanhoe is badly damaged and sunk by its own safety device as not towable and Express loses its forecastle, but can be towed in and is out of action for over twelve months.
From June 1941 it was then used in the Baltic Sea , where it already in the last week of June in the Gulf of Finland , together with the two mine ships Queen Luise and Kaiser, implemented the so-called “Corbetha” barrier. A few weeks later, the " Juminda barrier" was relocated in front of Cape Juminda on the north coast of Estonia . The two minefields led to heavy losses of the Soviet war and merchant navy when their ships escaped from the Baltic ports during the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht (see: Soviet evacuation of Tallinn ). The commander of the Cobra , Karl-Friedrich Brill , was awarded the Knight's Cross.
The End
During an air raid by the American XIII Bomber Command on the Wilton shipyard in Schiedam , the Netherlands , where the ship was being overhauled, the Cobra was hit by an aerial bomb on August 27, 1942 , capsized and sank. Four crew members were killed.
Web links
- Ralf Klee: "Cobra, take over", in one day: Zeitgeschichten on Spiegel-Online, July 13, 2009
- Cobra in the biographies of the HAPAG seaside resorts
Footnotes
- ↑ HAPAG had already used the side paddle steamer Cobra in the seaside resort service between Hamburg, Helgoland and Sylt until 1921 , which was scrapped in Wismar in 1922 . (see Cobra I ).
- ↑ From December 1939 to January 1940 Hellmuth von Ruckteschell , later in command of the auxiliary cruisers Widder and Michel and bearer of the oak leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , was in command of the Cobra .
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 31.8./1.9.1940 North Sea
- ↑ Kit C. Carter, Robert Mueller, US Army Air Forces in World War II - Combat Chronoloy 1941-1945. Center for Air Force History Washington, DC. 1991