Garigliano (ship, 1934)

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The Garigliano was a landing ship of the Italian Navy ( Regia Marina ) , which was used from 1943 by the German Navy as a mine ship under the name Dwarsläufer and later Oldenburg .

Landing ship Garigliano

The ship was one of four seaworthy landing ships of the Sesia class , all named after rivers that were built by the Italian Navy between 1933 and 1937, but were officially designated as water tankers ( motocisterne per acqua (MC) ) for reasons of military secrecy . Sister ships were the type ship Sesia , the Scrivia and the Tirso . Since the Sesia carried out a number of landing exercises at Massaua in the Red Sea in 1937 , Jane's Fighting Ships in 1937 and the French Revue Maritime in 1939 correctly classified the ships as landing ships.

The Garigliano was founded in 1933 on the shipyard Cantieri del Tirreno Riva Trigoso in Genoa on down Kiel , expired on 22 February 1934 from the stack and was found on May 8, 1934 as the second ship of the class in service. It was 66.12 m long and 10.05 m wide. Her draft was a maximum of 4.2 m at the stern and 0.5 m at the bow. The water displacement was 1141 tons and about 1450 tons maximum. Two diesel engines of 300 hp each allowed a top speed of 10.5 knots . The range was 4000 nautical miles at 8 knots cruising speed or 2700 nautical miles at 10 knots cruising speed. The ship was armed with four 13.2 mm machine guns. In 1938 the armament was changed and now consisted of two 20 mm MG L / 65 and three 8 mm MG. Up to 118 mines could be picked up during mine operations . As a landing ship, the Garigliano could carry up to 1062 soldiers and 50 mules or wheeled vehicles and light tanks that could be landed via a 2.7 m wide and 13 m long, electrically operated bow ramp . When landing on flat beaches, the bow rudder halfway under the fore ship could be retracted. In the stern there was a ballast tank that could be flooded to reduce the draft at the bow even further if necessary.

The Sesia and the Garigliano were already used in the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936) in the Red Sea. In April 1939, the Garigliano and her sister ships took part in the Italian invasion of Albania . On June 10, 1940, when Italy entered the war on Germany's side and invaded southern France , it was in Taranto . She then moved with her sister ships Sesia and Tirso to Valona in southern Albania in order to carry out a planned landing of troops on Corfu during the attack on Greece at the end of October 1940 with the so-called Forza Navale Speciale , which had to be canceled due to bad weather. In August 1941 the four ships were moved to Livorno to be ready for a planned invasion of Corsica . For this purpose, they were equipped with an assemblable army pontoon bridge of 70 m length, which was supposed to cross sandbanks in front of the beach and which could be ready for use within 19 minutes of touching the ground. In the early summer of 1942, in preparation for the German-Italian landing on Malta ( company Herkules or "Operazione C3") planned for July , the Garigliano received the code F 844 , which it retained even after this company was canceled. The ships were then used on November 11, 1942 for the landing in Corsica , and then also for the transfer of Italian troops to Tunisia, which began shortly thereafter .

Navy ship

The Garigliano , with some damage caused by its crew, was taken over by German troops in La Maddalena in the wake of the armistice of Cassibile (September 3, 1943) and in the course of the subsequent German occupation of Italy on September 13, 1943 a prize crew on 16./17. September to Porto-Vecchio and from there to Genoa. The Navy put the ship into service on November 25, 1943 under the name Dwarsläufer . It knew first as part of belonging to the third Geleitflottille minelayer Group West Italy escort service in the Tyrrhenian Sea to Sicily but and North Africa, presented in January 1944 already minefields south of Elba and east of Savona . After a mining company south of Elba, the Dwarsläufer was on 23/24. Attacked by British motor torpedo boats on January 1st , collided with the F 523 during an evasive maneuver and was seriously damaged in the process. It had to be beached in Livorno and then towed to La Spezia for repairs.

In February 1944 the ship was renamed Oldenburg and then mainly used for mine-laying. As a mine ship, the Oldenburg was armed with two 3.7 cm rapid fire cannons L / 83 C / 30 and 14 20 mm Fla -MG L / 65 C / 30 and could carry up to 145 mines . In March the Oldenburg put a number of mine barriers northwest of Gorgona and in April others both south and north of Elba. A shell hit during an air raid on La Spezia on May 12, 1944 resulted in a fire in the engine room, which was brought under control; Only in November was it then possible to repair the damage in the engine room in a shipyard. At the end of May and beginning of June 1944, the mine ships Oldenburg and Dietrich von Bern threw mine barriers off La Spezia and Genoa. A number of other mining operations in the Ligurian Sea followed by April 1945 .

On April 25, 1945, the Oldenburg in Genoa was sunk by its crew .

Post-war years

In 1946 the ship was lifted and after the necessary repairs were put back into service by the Italian Navy under its old name Garigliano . The ship was decommissioned on April 1, 1952 and then scrapped.

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ La Campagna d'Etiopia: La Regia Marina in Africa Orientale
  2. ↑ At that time, the mine ships Kehrwieder and Lower Saxony also belonged to the mine ship group West Italy ( http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/mittelmeer/geleit-mm.htm )
  3. ↑ wlb-stuttgart.de

Web links

literature

  • Enrico Cernuschi: Source cinque navi segrete e incomprese. Rivista Italiana Difesa (RID), December 1993 (ital.)
  • Erminio Bagnasco, Enrico Cernuschi: Le navi da guerra italiane 1940-1945 / Italian Warships of World War Two. Ermanno Albertelli Editore, Parma, 2003, ISBN 88-87372-40-3 (Italian & English)
  • Mariano Gabriele: Operazione C3: Malta. Ufficio storico della marina (USMM), Rome, 1990 (ital.)
  • Vincent P. O'Hara, Enrico Cernuschi: Dark Navy: The Italian Regia Marina and the Armistice of 8 September 1943. Nimble Books, Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA), 2009, ISBN 978-1-934840-91-7 (Engl .)
  • Karl von Kutzleben, Wilhelm Schroeder, Jochen Brennecke: Mine ships 1939–1945. The mysterious missions of the “midnight squadron”. Köhler, Herford 1974, ISBN 3-7822-0098-5 .