Alsace (ship)
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The Alsace was a former French canal ferry that was converted into a mine ship and put into service by the Kriegsmarine after the German occupation of France .
Cote d'Azur ferry
The ship ran in 1930 on the shipyard Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée in Graville-Sainte-Honorine , Le Havre , from the stack . It was 99.29 m long, 13.72 m wide and had a 3.65 m draft , displaced 2238 tons (standard) and 2598 t (maximum) and was measured with 3047 GRT and 1040 NRT. The machinery consisted of four Babcock - boilers and two Parsons turbines , which together 14,000 PS generated. The ship had two propellers with which it reached a maximum speed of 23.17 knots on the test drives . The ship had space for 1,400 passengers in first and second class. It made its first official test drive on February 19, 1931 in Cherbourg and entered service on April 14, 1931. Under the name of Côte d'Azur , it operated the Calais - Dover route for the French shipping company Société Anonyme de Gérance et d'Armement (SAGA). Home port was Le Havre.
The ship was requisitioned on May 8, 1940 by the French government and used as an armed troop transport. On May 10th, as part of a convoy , it brought 800 men from the 2nd Battalion of the 224th Infantry Regiment to Vlissingen to defend the Dutch areas of Walcheren and Zuid-Beveland . It left Vlissingen on May 11, but had to anchor in the roadstead there on the evening of May 19 after returning from Folkestone because of the mines at the port entrance of Dunkirk . It survived a German air raid that evening unscathed. On May 27, during which began the day before the Allied evacuation from Dunkirk and the violent attacks of the Air Force , but it was of Stuka - bombs hit. It was 15 degrees list and then sank in shallow water. The guns continued to protrude from the water and participated in the defense of Dunkirk through May 31.
Mining ship Alsace
After the occupation of France , the ship was lifted on January 29, 1941 and converted into a mine ship by the Navy. It was enlarged to 103.5 m in length and received two 10.5 cm cannons (one in front and one aft) as well as four 4 cm flak and four 2 cm flak as armament . The ship was put into service on October 18, 1942 with the name Alsace and under the command of Klt dR Friedrich Dyckerhoff. The crew of around 280 men came mostly from the mining ship Hanseatic City of Danzig , which sank on July 9, 1941 near Öland after being hit by a mine .
The Alsace was used to lay a number of mine barriers in the North Sea , Skagerrak , off the Norwegian coast and in the Kattegat , often together with her sister ship Ostmark , the former Côte d'Argent . The two ships were involved in the fourth week of June 1943 in the laying of minefields "Archangel", "wild boar" and "Golden Eagle" by which the maritime section of the Western Wall -trap was extended to the north. In the first days of December 1943 they took part in companies 16e "Wall Cabinet" and 16f "Handkoffer" in the eastern North Sea, where mine barriers were renewed and strengthened in order to block access to Denmark and the Skagerrak again. In April 1944, together with the mine ship Kaiser , the destroyers Erich Steinbrinck and Hans Lody and the minesweepers M 301 , M 381 , M 406 and M 462 , they laid the new Westwall sections "Katzbach A" and "Katzbach B" west of the Skagerrak "And the barriers XXI" Leipzig "and XXV" Ligny ". In May, the Alsace , Ostmark and the emperors together with the minesweepers M 15 and M 29 laid the mine barrier XXII "Waterloo".
The End
In the early morning hours of January 5, 1945, the Alsace ran into a mine in Samsø Bælt between Kalundborg and the island of Samsø and sank within a short time at 55 ° 43 ′ 0 ″ N , 10 ° 43 ′ 0 ″ E. . At least 87 men of their crew were killed.
Web links
- http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/sch-ndx.htm
- Listen up. (PDF; 2.3 MB) (No longer available online.) Marinekameradschaft Flensburg, November 2003, p. 10 , formerly in the original ; accessed on September 2, 2018 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )
- The French Riviera
- Photo of the Côte d'Azur (PDF; 1.5 MB)
- http://dkepaves.free.fr/html/pas_coulees_a_dk.htm (French)
literature
- Karl von Kutzleben, Wilhelm Schroeder, Jochen Brennecke : Mine ships 1939–1945. The mysterious missions of the “midnight squadron”. Köhler, Herford 1974, ISBN 3-7822-0098-5 .
- Peter Holberg, Henrik Holleufer: Mineskibene Elsass og Ostmark. Fra Færge til Forlis. HHH Neptun, Fredericia 2002, ISBN 87-91249-00-7 (Danish).