Fazant (ship, 1931)
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
The Fazant and her sister ships Merel and Reiger were patrol boats of the governorate navy in the Dutch East Indies in the 1930s . During the Second World War they were incorporated into the Koninklijke Marine and used as a seaplane tender for the Marine Luchtvaartdienst . All three ships were lost in early 1942. The Fazant was 1944 by the Imperial Japanese Navy lifted, repaired and as patrol boat # 109. ( Jap . 第109号哨戒艇 ; Dai-109-GO shōkaitei ) used. The ship survived the war and finally served as the state yacht of the Indonesian President Sukarno in the early 1950s under the name Kartika .
Construction for the governorate navy
The three boats were commissioned by the Gouvernementsmarine (the state civilian navy of the Netherlands Indies) in the late 1920s to replace older, decommissioned coal steamers . The new ships were powered by diesel engines. The standard displacement should be 600 tons. The construction took place on site in Soerabaja ( Java ).
The first ship to be built was Merel (Dutch for " Amsel ") in 1928 , which, with a displacement of 592 tons, was slightly lighter than the two sister ships that followed in 1930/31, Reiger (" Reiher ") and Fazant (" Fasan ") with 624 each Metric tons.
Merel was stationed in Koepang ( Timor ); Reiger in Ambon ( Moluccas ) and Fazant in Menado (North Celebes ).
Militarization
Due to the politically tense situation in Europe and Asia, parts of the Dutch armed forces were provisionally mobilized as early as April 1939 . At the end of August, the militarization of ships of the governorate navy began. H. to arm and prepare for military operations. Merel , Reiger , Fazant and a few other boats were converted into seaplane tenders for the supply of seaplanes of the MLD ( naval aviation ). After the outbreak of war on September 1, the combat-ready Gouvernementsmarine ships were then incorporated into the Royal Navy by order of the governor , where they became part of the Nederlandsch Eskader in Oost-Indië . As military ships, the militarized boats were given the prefix Hr. Ms .; that means that Fazant became Mr. Ms. Fazant .
The three ships were used in the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea and in the Moluccas. From there surveillance flights took place along the northern borders of the colony. The seaplane tenders ensured the aviators were supplied with kerosene, oil, spare parts, ammunition and provisions and had communication systems. From December 8, 1941, the Netherlands was at war with Japan . By early February 1942 at the latest, the northern areas fell to the Japanese and the ships withdrew to Java. Most of the seaplanes had been destroyed in battle.
On February 17th, Palembang in Sumatra fell to the Japanese , with which Java itself was threatened. In order to prevent Japanese vanguard units from crossing the Sunda Strait to West Java in small boats at night , an auxiliary patrol was formed, which in addition to Merel , Reiger and Fazant, two other governorate naval ships ( Sirius and Bellatrix ) as well as some British escaped from Singapore Belonged to coal steamers. The British steamers were replaced by Australian Bathurst corvettes after a few days ; in addition, the gunboat Mr. Ms. Soemba added. The auxiliary patrol was on duty at night and anchored during the day on the Javanese coast near Merak or in Bantam Bay .
After the destruction of the ABDA fleet in the Battle of the Java Sea on February 27, the fall of Java could no longer be prevented. The next day the last larger Allied warships were intercepted and sunk by the Japanese in the Sunda Strait, within sight of the auxiliary patrol boats . The auxiliary patrol disbanded; the Australian corvettes had previously withdrawn to the south. Merel and Fazant were able to escape the Japanese for the time being and get to Tandjoeng Priok (the port of Batavia ). Reiger, on the other hand, got lost when she hit a reef . The crew managed to save themselves on land, but soon became a prisoner of war.
The next day, March 1st, the Japanese began invading Java . Since the ships from Tandjoeng Priok could not escape, they were together with numerous other boats and support vessels scuttled not to fall to the Japanese in their hands and to block the port. Batavia fell on March 5th, and the remaining troops surrendered on March 9th. Frederik Jacob Keizer , the commander of the Fazant , died in 1945 in the Bangkong POW camp near Semarang .
In Japanese services
In July 1944, the wreck of the Fazant was lifted by a Japanese Navy repair unit, made buoyant again and towed to Soerabaja, where repairs began - the Japanese needed every ship given the war situation. On October 15, the ship was entered in the Japanese warship register as patrol boat No. 109 ; assigned to the Maizuru Naval District and subordinated to the 2nd South Expeditionary Fleet (with headquarters in Soerabaja; part of the Southwestern Regional Fleet ). The repairs and modifications were not yet completed at this point, however , after delays , boat no. 109 was not ready for use until the end of April 1945. In addition to the Fazant , two other Dutch auxiliary ships were used as Japanese patrol boats: the Valk ( No. 104 ) and the Arend ( No. 108 ).
On August 2, 1945, No. 109 escorted a convoy from Batavia to Singapore , consisting of the freighters Fuyo Maru , Tencho Maru and the repair ship Seiha Maru No. 2 . The next day, the convoy was attacked by the British submarines HMS Trump and HMS Tiptoe , which sank the Tencho Maru near Billiton . The remaining ships reached Singapore.
In September, after the surrender of Japan, the patrol boat No. 109 in Batavia was taken over by British units and returned to the Netherlands.
post war period
In 1947 the ship was decommissioned by the Dutch. In 1949 Indonesia became independent, which ended the five-year struggle for independence successfully. The Fazant fell to the new Indonesian state.
In 1951 the ship was rebuilt and received a new Werkspoor engine. Under the name of Kartika , it served Sukarno as the presidential yacht for a few years . In 1954 the Kartika was finally retired and scrapped.
Web links
- Bob Hackett, Sander Kingsepp, Peter Cundall: SHOKAITEI! - Stories and Battle Histories of the IJN's Patrol Boats (extensive information on the Japanese patrol boats, accessed March 2015)
- go2war2.nl: Gemilitariseerde schepen van de Gouvernements Marine - Gouvernementsschepen van het type Merel (Dutch; accessed in March 2015)
literature
- Tom Womack: The Dutch Naval Air Force Against Japan: The Defense of the Netherlands East Indies, 1941–1942 , McFarland, Jefferson NC, 2006, p. 174f ( Appendix 7: Marine Seaplane Tenders )
References and comments
- ↑ according to other (unlikely) information ( navypedia.org [1] and [2] ) the ship was propelled by a vertical triple expansion engine (525 hp) with 2 boilers
- ↑ Tom Womack: The Dutch Naval Air Force Against Japan: The Defense of the Netherlands East Indies, 1941–1942 , McFarland, Jefferson NC, 2006, p. 36 ( Neutrality and Mobilization in the NEI )