Erwin Waßner (ship, 1938)
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The Erwin Waßner was a submarine escort ship of the German Navy during World War II . It was named after the highly decorated submarine commander of the First World War and later rear admiral and London naval attaché Erwin Waßner (1887–1937).
Construction and technical data
The ship was in 1937 with the hull number 213 at the Deutsche Werft in Hamburg-Finkenwerder for the Oldenburg-Portuguese Steamship Rhederei placed on the stack and ran there on 21 January 1938 as a motor freight ship Gran Canaria from the stack . The 3866 GRT ship was 123.1 m long and 16.7 m wide and had a draft of 5.7 m . The machinery consisted of two La Mont water tube boilers (570 m² / 35 atm ), a set AEG - transmission turbines with 6750 PS and a screw of 4.10 m in diameter; it gave the ship a top speed of 19.5 knots.
fate
The Navy bought the new building in the same year and had it converted into a submarine escort ship. The ship was armed with four 3.7 cm flak and six 2 cm flak. The water displacement after the renovation was a maximum of 6080 t . With its oil supply of 700 t, the ship could cover 8000 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 13 kn . The regular crew consisted of 229 men. There was also space on board for six to seven submarine crews.
On March 29, 1939, the ship was put into service under the name Erwin Waßner . First in command was Corvette Captain Heinrich Bertram; he was in October 1939 by Kapitänleutnant d. R. (later Korvettenkapitän d. R.) replaced Pies, who commanded the ship until July 1944. The Erwin Waßner served Commodore Karl Dönitz , the FdU / BdU , and his staff as a command ship until the operational staff of the BdU was relocated to Sengwarden near Wilhelmshaven in November 1939 . On board was Captain Hans-Georg von Friedeburg , considered the second Admiral of Submarines and from 1 March 1943 as Commanding Admiral of Submarines held first as department chief BdU / Org., From September 1941, the troops conduct in the service and regulated the organization of all personnel and material supplies.
Home port was Kiel . There the ship was sunk on July 24, 1944 in a British air raid .
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945, Volume 4: Auxiliary ships I: workshop ships, tenders and escort ships, tankers and suppliers. Bernard & Graefe, 1986, ISBN 978-3-7637-4803-7 .
- Siegfried Breyer: Special and special ships of the Kriegsmarine (I). Marine-Arsenal, Volume 30, Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Eggolsheim-Bammersdorf, 1995, ISBN 3-7909-0523-2 .