Draug (ship, 1908)
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.jpg) The Draug |
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| Overview | |
| Type | destroyer |
| Shipyard |
Marine shipyard , Horten hull |
| Launch | March 18, 1908 |
| delivery | 1908 |
| Decommissioning | November 19, 1943 |
| Whereabouts | Scrapped in 1944 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
578 ts, |
| length |
69.2 m over everything |
| width |
7.3 m |
| Draft |
2.9 m |
| crew |
76 men |
| drive |
4 water tube boilers , |
| speed |
26.5 kn |
| Armament |
6 × 76 mm Armstrong rapid fire guns, |
| Coal supply |
105 t |
| Sister boats | |
The Draug was a small destroyer called a torpedo destroyer , of the Norwegian Navy , which was in service from 1908 to 1943.
Construction and technical data
The Draug was the first destroyer built for the Norwegian Navy and the lead ship of the Draug class built between 1908 and 1913 . The three boats of the class - Draug , Troll and Garm - were ordered at the same time to replace the Valkyrjen , built near Schichau in 1896 , which, due to its insufficient speed of only 23 knots , its relatively weak armament and its poor maneuverability, its main task of keeping foreigners away Torpedo boats from the Norwegian coast, had not grown.
The Draug ran on 18 March 1908 at the Navy Yard in Karljohansvern with the hull number 103, stack and was put in the same year in service. She was 69.2 m long and 7.3 m wide, had a 2.9 m draft and displaced 578 tons (standard). She had a triple expansion steam engine with 8000 hp at 340 rpm , which allowed a top speed of 27 knots. The armament consisted of six 7.6 cm rapid-fire cannons in single installation (one on the forecastle, two on the right and left behind the bridge , two on the right and left immediately behind the fourth and last chimney, and one aft behind the boat crane), a 12 , 7 mm Colt Fla machine gun and three swiveling 45 cm torpedo tubes in individual installation (one each on the right and left of the second and third chimneys, one on the stern). The crew consisted of 76 men.
history
1912-1939
During the First World War , the Draug , like the other ships of the Norwegian Navy, served to ensure Norwegian neutrality and in the escort service for merchant ships in Norwegian coastal waters. After the end of the war, until 1927, the boat was mainly used to catch smugglers trying to bring alcohol into the country during the Norwegian prohibition .
In the 1930s the Draug , like her two sister ships , was mothballed for cost reasons , the Draug in Bergen , the Troll and the Garm in Horten . Although the three boats were already very obsolete by the outbreak of World War II , they were reactivated to ensure Norwegian neutrality , the Troll and Garm on August 28th, and the Draug on September 5th, 1939. However, it was some time before the boats were so outdated that they were ready for use again. However, they were only suitable for security, escort and guard duty.
April 1940
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The three boats were combined to form the 1st Destroyer Division (1st Jagerdivisjon) and stationed in the 2nd Sea Defense Section (Central Norway), although each boat operated relatively independently in the coastal section assigned to it. The Draug was stationed in Haugesund and carried out security and escort tasks along the Norwegian west coast. On April 8, 1940, the day before the German attack on Norway , she escorted the German combined ship Seattle (7369 GRT ), which had broken through from Curacao through the North Atlantic , the Denmark Strait and north around Iceland to Norway, southwards to prevent a violation of Norwegian neutrality. After this task is the received Draug instruction to immediately run to Haugesund and coals there bunkering . There , on the afternoon of April 8, the news of German naval forces marching through the Danish straits and the sinking of the German transport ship Rio de Janeiro by the Polish submarine Orzeł off Lillesand reached their commandant, Korvettenkapitän (later Vice Admiral ) Thore Horve . At the same time, reports of British mine-laying operations off the Norwegian coast came in. Horve received the message from the commander of the 2nd naval defense section, Rear Admiral Carsten Tank-Nielsen , that he had given the ships stationed in the Bergen area the order to armed resistance against all foreign warships attempting to enter Bergen, and that Horve in the following Hours of his own assessment of the situation should follow. Horve had his ship cleared for action.
On the night of 9 April, the patrol Draug in Karmsund . At around 2:00 a.m. the news came that the coastal batteries in the Oslofjord had opened fire on enemy forces of unknown origin. At 4:00 a.m., after warning shots , the Draug landed a ship sailing north through Karmsund without a flag, which during the investigation in Haugesund turned out to be the German motor freighter Main (7,624 GRT). Her shipping papers said she was bringing 7,000 tons of coke to Bergen, but the cargo consisted of war material for the German invading forces in Trondheim , including 2,000 mines in particular . Since reports of the German occupation of Bergen and Stavanger arrived in the meantime , Captain Horve decided to escape to Great Britain with the Main as a prize ; he ignored an order to run to the Hardangerfjord and deny German naval units entry there.
The master of the Main initially refused to take a course for the British Isles, but had to give in after several warning shots and the threat of torpedoing . About 40 nautical miles from Haugesund, the two ships were attacked by an Air Force bomber on April 9 at 9:00 a.m. The attack was aimed at the Main , and although the bombs missed their target, the captain, in view of his dangerous cargo, immediately gave the order to sink and leave the ship. After the crew had left the boats in great haste (the boatswain drowned in the process), the Draug fired about ten grenades into the waterline of the prize to finally sink it. With the 67 crew members of the Main on board as prisoners of war , the Draug went to Sullom Voe on the Shetland Islands . On the way there she was picked up on the morning of April 10 by the British destroyers Sikh and Matabele and escorted the rest of the way. The German prisoners of war were put ashore in the evening and then brought to Kirkwall on the French destroyer Brestois .
The Draug drove in the company of the French destroyer Boulonnais to Scapa Flow , where she arrived on the morning of April 11th. There a number of their crew members were transferred to various ships of the Royal Navy , on which they served in the further course of the Norwegian War. Only the chief engineer initially remained on board with around 20 technical personnel to keep the ship ready for navigation.
1940-1943
On May 7, the Draug moved to Portsmouth, where she served as the mother ship for the two newest units of the Norwegian exile navy until August 5, 1940 , the two motor torpedo boats MTB 5 and MTB 6 , which were ordered before the invasion of Norway, but only in the May 1940 were delivered. From 6 August to 27 October 1940, when the threat of a German invasion of England was imminent, it was, now with adequate air defense weapons stocked , as a guard ship ( Guard Destroyer ) in Lowestoft used. During this time she was exposed to German air raids several times, but without suffering any damage. From November 1940 to spring 1941 she was modernized and re-armed in Grimsby . Here, the forward funnel was removed and the bridge rebuilt, the rear 7.6 cm gun through a 7.6-cm Flak replaced, and in both bridge wing per a Lewis - Fla - MG installed. A demagnetization cable was placed around the hull to protect against mines . During this time in Grimsby she also carried out escort service along the coast and guard duty in the Humber . It was able to repel an attack by a German HE 111 with bombs and on-board weapons. After that, until April 1942, she mainly provided escort service along the southern coast of England.
In addition, she repeatedly dragged Norwegian MTBs near the Norwegian coast and back again so that they could carry out attacks on German convoy trains there. The first attack of this kind took place on 3/4. October 1941, when MTB 56 , coming from the Draug from Scapa Flow, was brought into position about 120 nautical miles off the Norwegian coast and then the Norwegian tanker requisitioned by the German occupiers near the small island of Kyrholmen in the Krossfjord (south of Bergen and the island of Sotra ) Borgny (3015 GRT) sank with two torpedoes off Kyrholmen , which was supposed to bring 3500 tons of aviation fuel for the Air Force from Son to Trondheim . 14 men of the Norwegian Borgny crew were killed; the 13 survivors, some of them severe burns, were taken in by the two escort vehicles, the M1101 and V5505 anglerfish . MTB 56 escaped the defensive fire of the German escort boats and the coastal artillery at Korsneset, hit the Draug the next morning and was towed by this to Lerwick on the Shetland Islands.
From April 1942, the Draug was only used in Port Edgar on the Firth of Forth as an accommodation ship for members of the Norwegian Navy. On February 5, 1943, the old boat was retired from the Norwegian Navy. It was then used on loan by the British Royal Navy for exercises and experiments.
The final decommissioning took place on November 19, 1943. In 1944 the Draug was sold for scrapping.
literature
- Frank Abelsen: Norwegian naval ships 1939–1945. Sem & Stenersen, Oslo, 1986, ISBN 82-7046-050-8 (norwegian & engl.).
- Nils Bjørnsson: Å være eller ikke være - Under orlogsflagget i den annen verdenskrig. Sjømilitære Samfund ved Forlaget Norsk Tidsskrift for Sjøvesen, Haakonsvern, 1994, ISBN 82-990969-3-6 (norweg.)
- Ole F. Berg: I skjærgården og på havet - Marinens krig April 8, 1940 - May 8, 1945. Marinens Krigsveteranforening, Oslo, 1997, ISBN 82-993545-2-8
- Ola Bøe Hansen (ed.): Sjøkrigens skjebner - deres egne beretninger. Sjømilitære Samfund ved Forlaget Norsk Tidsskrift for Sjøvesen, Gjøvik, 2005, ISBN 82-92217-22-3
- Svein Carl Sivertsen (ed.): Sjøforsvaret dag for dag 1814–2000 Sjømilitære Samfund ved Norsk Tidsskrift for Sjøvesen, Hundvåg, 2001, ISBN 82-92217-03-7 . (Norway.)
Web links
- Torpedo Jager KNM Draug
- Draug destroyers on navypedia
Footnotes
- ^ Organization of Norwegian Marine Forces ( Memento of the original dated February 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Leo Niehorster : "Scandinavian Campaign: Administrative Order of Battle Royal Norwegian Navy 2nd Naval District" ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The next day, while continuing to Kristiansand , the Seattle was caught in the defensive fire of Norwegian coastal artillery against the approaching German warship group 4 with the light cruiser Karlsruhe , was set on fire and had to be abandoned.
- ↑ http://www.naval-history.net/xDKWW2-4004-13APR02.htm
- ↑ http://warsailors.com/homefleet/shipsb2.html#borgny
