Constanța (ship, 1929)
 The Constanța
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The NMS Constanța was a submarine escort ship built in 1931 for the Romanian Navy and was one of the first submarine escort ships to be built specifically for this purpose. In 1944 the Soviet Union confiscated the ship and used it first under the name Bug , later as PKZ-87 , until it was scrapped in 1977. It was named after the Romanian port city of the same name, Constanța .
Construction and technical data
The enlargement of the Romanian national territory with the expansion of the coastal waters after the First World War required larger naval forces than before the war. In the naval construction program of 1927, the Romanian government ordered two destroyers (Regele Ferdinand and Regina Maria) , a submarine ( Delfinul ) and a submarine escort ship from Italian shipyards .
The ship was in Italy at the shipyard "Cantiere Navale di Quarnaro" in Fiume, now Rijeka in the summer of 1927 on set Kiel . The launch took place on November 3, 1929 under the name Constanța , the completion and delivery to the Romanian Navy took place on May 11, 1931. On June 8, 1931, the Romanian flag was first hoisted on the ship in Fiume.
Her length was 77.70 meters, she was 11.20 meters wide and had a draft of 4.00 meters. The construction displacement was 1,350 tons, the maximum 2,200 tons. The drive consisted of two diesel engines with an output of 2000 PSi . This worked on two screws , the ship reached a speed of 13.0 knots and had a range of 10,000 nautical miles. The crew consisted of 136 officers and men.
Upon delivery, the armament consisted of two 102mm guns and two 4.0 cm flak . Even before Romania entered the war on the side of the Axis Powers in the spring of 1941, this armament was given to the mine- layer Amiral Murgescu . As a replacement, the Constanța received two old 7.6 cm guns, two 2.0 cm Oerlikon flak and four 13 mm Hotchkiss machine guns.
Romanian constanța
Originally the Constanța was supposed to sail from the shipyard in Italy to Constana together with the also new Romanian submarine Delfinul , but since the delivery of the Delfinul was delayed, the Constanța left Fiume alone on June 15, 1931 and reached Constana on June 20, 1931 In October she went back to Fiume to bring the Delfinul's crew to the shipyard to take over the boat. But the submarine was still not ready, so that the Constanța returned alone.
The last time the Constanța sailed to Fiume on February 7, 1936, finally escorted the new submarine to Romania. From the end of the year, the Constanța was on the road again with the Delfinul : in December 1936 and June 1937, she accompanied the submarine on its trips abroad to Istanbul. On April 1, 1932, the Constanța was also used as a training ship for cadet training.
Since June 1940, the Constanța was assigned to the new "submarine and speedboat group" of the Romanian Navy and served the Delfinul as a joint escort ship like the speedboats Viscolul , Vijelia and Viforul . With the beginning of the German-Soviet War in June 1941, the Constanța was still the flagship of the "U-Boot- und Schnellboot-Gruppe" - one of the few naval units that were suitable for offensive activities.
For the Constanța , the military clashes began shortly before the start of Operation Barbarossa , the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Between June 13 and 18, 1941, she was part of the support forces for the Romanian mine-layers who laid mine blocks on the coast of Constanta. A short time later, on August 3, the Constanța shot down an enemy aircraft. In May and June 1942 she took part in landing exercises and together with the mine- layer Amiral Murgescu and the auxiliary mine- layer Dacia in joint maneuvers. The next information about the ship is only available for the time of the Romanian surrender and the change of side to the Allies.
Soviet bug and PKZ-87
In August 1944, Soviet troops had recaptured large areas, and on August 23, 1944, the coup d'état took place in Romania , as a result of which Romania surrendered to the Soviet Union and the first Soviet naval units reached Constana on August 30. On September 5, Soviet troops boarded the ships lying in the port, interned the crews in the building of the naval station and confiscated all ships.
Together with the destroyers Ferdinand Regele , Regina Maria , Mărăşti , Mărăşeşti and other ships, the Constanța left the port of Constana on October 12. The ships were incorporated into the Soviet Black Sea Fleet . Some ships were later returned to Romania, but the Constanța was not. She was given the name Bug , later only the identification PKZ-87 and remained stationed with the fleet in Sevastopol until it was scrapped in 1977 . However, there is no information about its use.
Footnotes
- ↑ NMS is the abbreviation for "Nava Majestǎţii Sale" and was the name prefix of Romanian ships from 1881 to 1947. NMS means "His Majesty's Ship".
- ↑ Gardiner, p. 359.
- ↑ a b c d e f http://worldwar2.ro/arr/?article=354
- ↑ a b c d e File de istorie ( Memento from January 27, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ cf. also Elmar B. Potter, Chester W. Nimitz , Jürgen Rohwer: Seemacht. From antiquity to the present , Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching 1982, ISBN 3-88199-082-8 , p. 623.
- ↑ Gardiner, p. 360.
literature
- Robert Gardiner / Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the world's fighting ships 1922-1946 , Conway Maritime Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-8317-0303-2 .
- Nicolae Koslinski, Raymond Stănescu: Marina Română în Al Doilea Razboi Mondial: 1939–1945 , Volumul II, Editura Făt-Frumos, București 1997. ISBN 973-552-033-8 .
- Pierre Hervieux: The Royal Romanian Navy at War, 1941–1944 , in: Warship 2001–2002, Conway Maritime Press, London.
Web links
- http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints/ships/ships-other/61637/view/nms_constanta_%5Bsubmarine_depot%5D___romania__1942_/ (side view), accessed on December 23, 2017