F 1 (fleet attendant)
 The fleet companion F 1 after completion
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The Fleet Companion F 1 , hunting from April 1942 , was the first of ten escort boats of the Fleet Companion type of the German Navy . After extensive modifications, the ship was used as a fleet tender and lead ship during World War II .
Construction and technical data
The ship was commissioned on May 17, 1934 and laid down on August 2, 1934 with the hull number 526 at the Germania shipyard in Kiel . It ran there on 1 March 1935 by stacks and was placed in Kiel in service on 15 December 1935th It was 73.50 m ( waterline ) or 75.94 m (overall) long and 8.80 m wide, had a 2.24 m draft and displaced 712 t (standard) and 1,028 t (maximum). The machinery consisted of two sets of Brown, Boveri & Cie. - Geared turbines with gear drives and two high-pressure vessels from the La Mont system, each with 80 atmospheres . It generated 16,993 WPS on the two shafts . 216 t of fuel could be bunkered . The maximum speed was 27.8 knots , the range in 1995 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 13 knots. The armament consisted of two 10.5-cm rapid fire guns L / 45, four 3.7-cm Flak L / 83 in twin carriages , four 2-cm-bottles MG L / 65 in individual mountings and four water balloon launchers . Up to 62 mines of the type EMA or 50 of the type EMC could be carried. The crew consisted of 113 to 145 men, depending on the task.
modification
The ship was fundamentally rebuilt in two phases. From April 4, 1939 to May 22, 1941, it was extended at the Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven due to its poor sea characteristics and converted into a fleet tender. It was now 80.2 m long (74.80 m in the waterline), had a 2.59 m draft and displaced 1147 t. The shape of the stern has been changed. In order to gain additional space for staff and office staff, the outer skin was raised from the aft edge of the bridge superstructure to the level of the forecastle deck . Structural changes were made to the bridge superstructure, the aft chimney was brought to the same height as the front, a new aft mast and a boat crane for a motordingi on the starboard side were installed, and the machine foundations were reinforced. Engine output decreased to 14,000 WPS and top speed dropped to 26 knots.
In the second phase of the conversion, from December 1941 to April 1942 in Kiel, the armament was changed. The aft 10.5 cm gun was replaced by a 2 cm quadruple flak, and the two 3.7 cm twin flak were removed and replaced with two 2 cm single flak.
At the end of 1942 there was one last change in the light air defense system.
Mission history
The ship initially belonged to the 1st escort flotilla in Kiel and then to the 2nd escort flotilla, which later moved from Kiel to Cuxhaven . On October 29, 1938, the two flotillas in Cuxhaven were merged to form the escort flotilla , as a large number of the boats were always not operational. In Kiel, the boats were jokingly referred to as the “station flotilla” because there were always a large number in the shipyard opposite the main station at the lower end of the fjord . On April 4, 1939, the fleet attendant F 1 decommissioned to be rebuilt at the Schichau shipyard in Königsberg .
The renovation dragged on until 1941. F 1 was not ready for action again until May 23 , when the boat came into service as a torpedo catching boat with the 25th U-Boat Flotilla in Gotenhafen. At the beginning of December 1941, a further renovation began in the shipyard in Kiel. In addition to a routine docking time, the boat was re-armed by April 1942 and received a 2 cm Flak Vierling 38 in place of the rear 10.5 cm gun .
On April 19, 1942, the boat moved to Wilhelmshaven was renamed Hunting and used as a tender for the leader of the destroyers , which lasted until the end of the war. The FdZ, sea captain Erich Bey , who was appointed commodore on April 20, 1942 , switched to the F 1 hunt that day , with which he left Wilhelmshaven on May 9, 1942. In Swinoujscie he switched to his Führer destroyer Z 29 . From May 15 to 17, 1942, the F 1 hunting fleet tender moved with the heavy cruiser Lützow under the protection of destroyers Richard Beitzen , Hans Lody , Z 27 and Z 29 from Świnoujście to Kristiansand (company Walzertraum ). From May 18-20, the association moved on to Trondheim , reinforced with the T 15 torpedo boat . The cruiser Admiral Hipper, damaged by a torpedo hit by a British submarine, was escorted back to Germany in the opposite direction .
The boat remained until the end of August as an office ship of the FdZ in the Trondheim area and then went to Aarhus until September 4, 1942 and then via Kiel and Cuxhaven to the North Sea. Stationed in Wilhelmshaven on September 18, 1942, it was hit there by a dud during a British air raid on February 26, 1943 and had to go to the shipyard for repairs until June 8, 1943 . On June 12, 1943, it moved via Wesermünde , Rendsburg , Kiel and Travemünde to Swinemünde, its main harbor until the end of the war. It continued to serve as a staff boat for the FdZ, which also repeatedly embarked on the tender. The tender also moved more frequently in the Baltic Sea area. So he was in Copenhagen , Kiel and Rønne in October / November 1943 .
The main battle area of the fleet moved to the eastern Baltic Sea in 1944 and the tender moved from Swinoujscie in March to Kiel and Rønne, in July to Rønne and Gotenhafen , in October to Copenhagen and Gotenhafen. There, in November 1944, the anti-aircraft armament was reinforced again: the hunt last had a 3.7 cm double mount and a fully automatic 3.7 cm single gun , a 2 cm anti-aircraft quadruple and two 2 cm anti-aircraft guns. Double mounts and two 15 mm Fla-MK. The hunt then moved to Aarhus, as the FdZ also acted as the "oldest sea commander in the area of the Danish islands" and the focus of its tasks was on securing escorts from and to Norway.
The hunt therefore remained largely in Copenhagen as his office ship. The cruisers Cologne and Nuremberg served as the flagship of the FdZ, Vice Admiral Leo Kreisch (1895–1977) . It is doubtful whether the tender F 1 Jagd was one of the last German ships to evacuate Swinoujscie on May 4, 1945.
The hunt , which was decommissioned on May 5, 1945 in Copenhagen, became part of the war spoils of the USA and then served with the 5th Mine Clearance Division of the German Mine Clearance Service (GMSA) in IJmuiden until 1947 . When the “German Minesweeping Administration” (GMSA) had to be disbanded under pressure from the Soviets, the F 1 Jagd tender was delivered to France and there - without going into active service - was scrapped.
Commanders
- December 1935 - September 1937: Lieutenant Captain Siegfried Flister
- September 1937 - October 1938: Lieutenant Hagen Küster
- October 1938 - April 1939: Lieutenant Reichard
- April 1939 - May 1941: vacant (renovation)
- May 1941 - December 1941: unknown
- Dec. 1941 - April 1942: vacant (renovation)
- April 1942 - January 1944: Oberleutnant zur See Benecke
- January 1944 - May 1945: Officers of the FdZ staff
Footnotes
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Hildebrand u. a .: The German Warships , Vol. 3, p. 110
- ↑ At that time it is said to have been called dragonfly ; However, no secure documents are available for this.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 15.- 20.05.1942 Norway
- ↑ so Rohwer: Seekrieg , April 16 - May 6, 1945 Baltic Sea: “The FdZ , Vice Admiral Kreisch, left with five transporters and the destroyers Z 34 , Z 38 , Z 39 , Z 43 , T 33 , T 36 , the auxiliary cruiser Orion and the flak ship Hummel (the latter two were sunk by Soviet planes) and about 35,000 people on board Swinoujscie and ran to Copenhagen ”; According to Hildebrand et al .: The German warships : in the articles on the individual units this should not apply to Z 43 , F 1 Jagd and Kreisch.
Web links
- Flottenbegleiter F 1 deutsches-marinearchiv.de (accessed December 8, 2015)
- "F" type escorts (1935–1938) navypedia.org (accessed December 8, 2015)
- F 1 Flottenbegleiter 1935–1947 german-navy.de (accessed December 8, 2015, English)
- Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945 wlb-stuttgart.de (accessed December 8, 2015)
literature
- Siegfried Breyer: Fleet torpedo boats and fleet escorts. (Marine-Arsenal 44), Podzun-Pallas, Wölfersheim 1999, ISBN 3-7909-0671-9 .
- Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Koehler's publishing company, Herford, seven volumes
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH (Herrsching 1968), ISBN 3-88199-009-7