Far East Association
The Far East Association was an association of German warships that operated in the Pacific during World War II .
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prehistory
The association consisted of the auxiliary cruisers HSK 1 (Handelsstörkreuzer 1) Orion and HSK 7 Komet and the supply ships Kulmerland and Regensburg . The four ships united on October 18, 1940 on the island of Lamotrek of the Lamotrek Atoll, which is about 1500 kilometers north of the island of New Guinea . Lamotrek is an island of the Carolines and at the time belonged to the Japanese Mandate Area in the Pacific, which was one of the German colonies until 1919 ( Treaty of Versailles ) . The Komet and the Kulmerland had been anchored at Lamotrek since October 14, the other two ships were added on October 18.
Of the two warships, the Komet left Gotenhafen in the Baltic Sea on July 3, 1940 and entered the Pacific through the north polar waters around Siberia . The Orion had left Kiel on March 30, 1940 and entered the Pacific through the Atlantic around Cape Horn . The Regensburg left Japan at the end of September 1940 , the Kulmerland left Japan at the beginning of October.
commitment
The task of the trade cruisers, also in the Far East Association, was to hijack or sink opposing merchant ships. The ships were informed of the general situation via radio by the naval war command in Berlin and received instructions.
The commander of the Komet , Robert Eyssen, now also acted as the senior commander of the two trade cruisers, at the same time as the head of the Far East Association. The Regensburg gave everything on their remaining fresh water and fuel to the comet and the Kulmerland , and was ordered to get out of the friendly neutral Japan replenishment for the association, including a reconnaissance aircraft for the Comet , whose board aircraft at a start accident on 2 October was lost. For its part, Komet sold spare parts for the Orion's reconnaissance aircraft , which made it operational again. South of Australia , the Regensburg , which reached Yokohama on October 27 , was to meet the trade cruisers again and also deliver the new aircraft for the Komet . The machine, a Arado Ar 196 - float plane , was appointed in Germany and should on the Trans-Siberian Railway to be transferred to Japan.
On October 20, 1940, the ships left Lamotrek. Eyssen gave the order in "Association Order No. 1" that the ships should sail side by side, but at the greatest possible distance from one another, during the day, so that they could just make out their mast tips, at night to the utmost visibility. So they should form a reconnaissance line in order to be able to search the largest possible area in search of opposing merchant ships. The ships operated independently from each other at times. In the coming weeks, seven cargo ships with a total of 53,000 gross tons were sunk by the Far East Association.
During its war voyage on December 7, 1940, the association passed the island of Nauru just three nautical miles away to explore the newly built loading facilities for phosphate . The island is located about 2000 kilometers east of New Guinea and has huge phosphate deposits, formed over thousands of years from bird droppings, which are a high-quality fertilizer . A landing corps of 185 men was put together for the planned destruction of the shipping facilities and the oil tanks on the island, but the landing of the troops had to be avoided due to bad weather conditions that lasted for days.
On December 21, 1940, the association anchored on the former German Sturminsel , about 500 kilometers east of Lamotrek, and deployed a landing corps. Of the 675 captured crew members and passengers of the sunk ships, including women and children, 514 were transferred to the island and released. The captured enemy military personnel remained on board the German ships as prisoners of war.
resolution
On December 21, 1940, Eyssen dissolved the Far East Association. The Kulmerland went back to Japan, the Orion temporarily stayed in the South Seas for the long-planned machine overhaul with its own resources. The Komet went back to Nauru and on December 27, 1940 destroyed all of the island's technical facilities with its artillery.
The German freighter Warmia , coming from Japan, took over 183 prisoners from the Orion at the Lamotrek Atoll at the beginning of January 1941, mainly prisoners of the companies of the Far East Association, and left with them on January 9th to German-occupied Bordeaux .
The replacement aircraft for the Komet , which was to be delivered to Japan via the Trans-Siberian Railway and then to Regensburg , could not be delivered because the Soviet Union refused to allow war material to pass through its area.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robert Eyssen, Rear Admiral , received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for this mission in 1941.
- ↑ J. Rohwer / G. Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching, without a year. ISBN 3-88199-0097 . Page 89.
- ↑ Robert Eyssen: Auxiliary cruiser Comet. Pirate voyage on all seas. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1980. ISBN 3-453-00843-X . Pages 125-127.
literature
- Robert Eyssen: Auxiliary cruiser Comet. Pirate voyage on all seas. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1980. ISBN 3-453-00843-X . Pages 67-121.
- Kurt Weyher and Hans Jürgen Ehrlich: vagabonds at sea . The war trip of the auxiliary cruiser "Orion" 1940/1941. A report. Tübingen 1953
