Flat minesweeper
 The boats FM 27 as Polish ORP Jaskółka (front) and FM 28 as Polish ORP Mewa (rear) around 1925
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The shallow minesweeper was a type of minesweeper used by the Imperial Navy during the First World War . After the war ended, most of the boats of this type were decommissioned, sold or scrapped. A number served in the navies of other countries after 1918.
Development, construction and technical data
The unrestricted submarine war of the German Reich , declared since March 1917, led to British countermeasures, which consisted of increased mining of the outlet routes in the German Bight . To clear these mine barriers, the German Navy quickly needed additional minesweepers - with shallow drafts - to clear the shallow mines.
The navy's own official draft was already available in the same year and the ship class was referred to as "shallow minesweepers" (FM boats) because of its particularity. It was a scaled-down version of the previous minesweepers and their size only included about 40 percent of the previous minesweepers. A special feature was the shallow draft. It was supposed to be built according to simple merchant ship standards and produced by smaller shipyards that still had free capacity for naval orders. In 1918, the Navy presented an adapted design with slightly larger dimensions, which was implemented from the boat FM 37 . Differing information from this draft is given in brackets.
In the design of 1917, the boats had a length of 43.00 meters (45.50 meters), a width of 6.00 and a draft of 1.68 meters (1.71 meters). The design displacement was 170 tons (185 tons), the maximum 193 tons (205 tons). The machine was two standing three-cylinder expansion machines with 600 PS (750 PS) that worked on two screws . With this, the boat achieved 14.0 knots (14.3 knots) and had a range of 650 (640) nautical miles with 32 tons (35 tons) of coal. The crew consisted of 35 men. An 88 mm gun was installed as armament.
As of June 1917, the Navy ordered a total of 66 of these boats from 21 shipyards: Frerichs & Co. ( FM 5 , FM 6 , FM 7 , FM 23 , FM 24 ), Janssen & Schmilinsky ( FM 51 , FM 52 , FM 53 ), JW Klawitter ( FM 63 , FM 64 ), shipyard of Henry Koch ( FM 45 , FM 46 , FM 47 ), DW Kremer Sohn ( FM 54 , FM 55 ), Lübecker Maschinenbau Gesellschaft ( FM 30 , FM 31 ) Jos. L. Meyer ( FM 17 , FM 18 , FM 48 , FM 49 , FM 50 ), Nobiskrug-Werft ( FM 29 , FM 60 , FM 61 ), Nordseewerke ( FM 33 , FM 34 ), Nüscke & Co. ( FM 65 , FM 66 ), Oderwerke ( FM 36 ), Rickmers Reismühlen & Schiffbau-AG ( FM 42 , FM 43 , FM 44 ), Gebrüder Sachsenberg ( FM 11 , FM 12 , FM 32 ), G. Seebeck ( FM 1 , FM 2 , FM 21 , FM 22 ), HC Stülcken Sohn ( FM 8 , FM 9 , FM 10 ), Joh. C. Tecklenborg ( FM 3 , FM 4 , FM 19 , FM 20 ), Thormählen ( FM 62 ), Union foundry ( FM 13 , FM 14 , FM 35 ), Schiffbau-Gesellschaft Unterweser ( FM 25 , FM 26 , FM 37 , FM 38 , FM 39 , FM 40 , FM 41 ), Dresdener Maschinen-Fabrik & Schiffswerft Übigau ( FM 15 , FM 16 , FM 58 , FM 59 ) and Caesar Wollheim ( FM 27 , FM 28 , FM 56 , FM 57 ).
use
The tradition of the FM boats is very sketchy for most of the boats, so that precise details are missing for many boats. Before the end of the war, the shipyards delivered at least 14 boats to the Navy, all of them from the first series (designed in 1917).
After the boats had been delivered, however, the navy stopped using them to search for mines: the British Royal Navy had since changed its tactics and laid the mines out of reach of the new boats. The Imperial Navy therefore initially assigned the FM boats to the submarine schools.
After the first use of the FM boats, it quickly became clear that they were not fulfilling the expectations placed on them: the boats were not very seaworthy due to their construction, the hulls were made of less resistant material and defects were repeatedly found. At the same time, the type 16 minesweeper could be retrofitted in such a way that the need for the FM boats was eliminated. Therefore, before the end of the war, all 66 boats were not built and orders for 19 boats were canceled or canceled. A total of 47 boats had been completed by 1919.
After the peace negotiations, the boats FM 5 , FM 6 , FM 20 , FM 22 , FM 25 , FM 26 and FM 36 remained with the Reichsmarine. The boats FM 2 , FM 27 , FM 28 and FM 31 were sold to the Polish, FM 16 and FM 23 to the Albanian Navy, FM 19 to the Portuguese and FM 24 to the Persian Navy. The other boats went to civilian owners at home and abroad and were mostly converted into inland vessels, harbor ferries or passenger ships. The other boats were scrapped. FM 21 was used as DF boat III from 1920 to approx. 1930 . In 1933 it was overhauled as an SA marine boat in Bremerhaven and used as a floating interrogation and torture site (so-called ghost ship ) until around 1939. The boat is said to have been scrapped in 1944. In a trial in 1948, several responsible persons were convicted.
After the beginning of the Second World War , 12 of the 47 boats can still be verified. Four of them were drafted back into the Navy, all of them in the Kriegsmarine : FM 1 was used as a navigation training ship and at times evacuation boat escort , FM 5 was confiscated in Greece in 1941 as a passenger ship and used as an outpost boat 10 V 1 and as a transporter. FM 13 bought the Kriegsmarine in Romania in 1941 , where it was used as a barge, and converted it into a minesheet or submarine hunter UJ 116 Xanten , while FM 55 was confiscated in Belgium in 1940 and used as a steamship in the Navy served.
After the Second World War, the last FM boats are still traceable before they were also scrapped. All of them were last used as harbor ferries: FM 1 served again under the old name Siegfried in 1950 until it was scrapped in 1960, FM 25 was in service in Trieste from 1935 until it was scrapped in 1954 and FM 29 was in Barreiro in Portugal in 1958 .
See also
literature
- Jürgen Gebauer, Egon Krenz. Marine Encyclopedia from A – Z , licensed edition, Tosa Verlag, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85492-757-6 .
- Reinhart Ostertag: German minesweepers. 80 years of defense against sea mines , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1986, ISBN 3-7822-0394-1 .
- Norman Friedman: Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactic and Technology. Naval Institute Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-59114-188-4 , limited preview in Google Book Search
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945, Volume 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speed boats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6 .
Web links
- Shallow minesweepers at german-navy.de, accessed on September 23, 2018
- FM type coastal minesweepers (1918-1919) from navypedia.org, access: September 23, 2018
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gebauer, Krenz, p. 78
- ↑ Friedman, p. 350
- ↑ Ostertag, p. 29
- ↑ Shallow draft minesweepers in german-navy.de
- ↑ a b c d Gröner, p. 170ff.
- ↑ Ostertag, p. 30f.
- ↑ FM type coastal minesweepers (1918-1919) at navypedia.org
- ↑ Manfred Ernst: The "Gespenterschiff" from Bremerhaven. In: Deutsche Schiffahrt , Heft 1 (2016), pp. 9–13, and Heft 2 (2016), pp. 6–10.
- ↑ Flotillas in Greece / Coast Guard Flotilla Northern Greece: 10 V 1 in the Historical Naval Archive