Dubrovnik (ship, 1931)
 The Dubrovnik 1933
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The Dubrovnik was a destroyer of the Yugoslav Navy that was built in the early 1930s. During the Second World War it was also used under the name Premuda in the Royal Italian Navy and as a torpedo boat TA 32 in the German Navy .
history
Yugoslav Navy
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As a flotilla on the British model the ship at the shipyard was Yarrow & Co. Ltd in Glasgow on the 10 June 1930 laid Kiel . The launch took place on October 12, 1931, the commissioning for the Yugoslav Navy in May 1932. It was the largest destroyer ever built at the time . Yugoslavia had demanded that the ship be more heavily armed and faster than its possible Italian opponents. The guns were supplied by the Czech company Škoda , and the ship had very powerful anti-aircraft armament for the time .
The Dubrovnik brought King Alexander I to France for his state visit in October 1934 and brought his body back after his murder in Marseille .
When the war with Yugoslavia broke out , the rapid advance of the Axis forces prevented any operational use by the Yugoslav Navy. The Dubrovnik was captured by Italy on April 17, 1941 together with the two destroyers Beograd and Ljubljana in Kotor .
Italian Navy
After partially changing her armament, she entered service with the Italian Navy in January 1942 as Premuda , named after the island of Premuda , the scene of a successful Italian command company during the First World War. The 84 mm guns had been replaced by four 37 mm anti-aircraft guns, and the ship had received a new fire control device of Italian design. The Premuda was used from February 1942 to secure the convoys to North Africa and took part in the company against the British convoys Vigorous and Harpoon in June 1942 . It was then used again in the escort service until the Premuda went to the shipyard in Genoa for a major overhaul in 1943 . There their main armament was to be converted to four 13.5-cm L / 45 guns and the anti-aircraft armament was to be modernized with 37-mm L / 54 flak and 20-mm L / 70 machine guns . To prevent overloading, one of the two torpedo triplet sets should be removed. When the Italian surrender was announced, it was not ready to drive and was therefore captured by the Germans on September 9th.
German Navy
The ship was initially converted into a fighter command ship. For this purpose, a radio measuring device of the type “Freya” A1 was installed on the stern and the torpedo tubes were removed. The main armament now consisted of three 10.5 cm L / 65 flak . When the conversion was completed in the early summer of 1944, the Allied air superiority was already so overwhelming that fighter guide ships had become useless, and on June 18, 1944 it was decided to convert the ship back to a torpedo boat . The radio measuring device was replaced by a fourth 10.5 cm anti-aircraft gun and additional 2 cm anti-aircraft quadruplets , and three 53.3 cm German-made torpedo tubes were installed in a set of three.
On August 18, 1944, the Premuda with the designation TA 32 was put into service by the Navy. She served as the flagship of the 10th torpedo boat flotilla stationed in Genoa and provided missions in the Ligurian Sea . On March 18, 1945, she was attacked by the two British destroyers HMS Meteor and HMS Lookout at a mine-laying operation northwest of Corsica together with the previously captured Italian torpedo boats TA 24 and TA 29 (ex Arturo and Eridano ) . TA 24 and TA 29 were sunk in the battle; TA 32 was damaged, but was able to escape thanks to its high speed and protection from heavy smoke. After the battle of March 18, only TA 32 of the original eight boats remained.
In the German evacuation of Genoa was TA 32 on 24 April of the own crew in the harbor by blasting sunk . The wreck was lifted in March 1950 and scrapped in Savona .
Notes and individual references
- ↑ The anti-aircraft armament changed several times; at times up to seven 2-cm-Fla-Quads were on board.
- ↑ TA = Torpedo boat abroad
literature
- MJ Whitley: Destroyer in World War II. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 .
- Wirich von Gartzen: The flotilla. Extraordinary naval warfare of German Mediterranean torpedo boats. Köhler, Herford 1982, ISBN 3-7822-0261-9 .
- Zvonimir Freivogel: Navy in the Adriatic 1941–45; Ex-Yugoslav warships flying the German flag - a piece of largely unknown naval and naval history. (Marine-Arsenal Volume 40), Podzun-Pallas, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 1998, ISBN 3-7909-0640-9 .
- Zvonimir Freivogel: Prey destroyer and torpedo boats of the Kriegsmarine. (Marine-Arsenal Volume 46), Podzun-Pallas, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 2000, ISBN 3-7909-0701-4 .
