Griffin (ship, 1926)
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The Greif was a torpedo boat of the German Imperial and later Navy . It entered service in 1927 as the second bird of prey class and was used in World War II. The Greif was sunk on the night of May 22nd to 23rd, 1944.
history
Construction and commissioning
The keel was laid on October 5, 1925 in the Reichsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven together with the two sister ships Seeadler and Albatros . On March 15, 1927, the ship was put into service, the first in command was First Lieutenant zur See Meendsen-Bohlken.
In contrast to the type ship Möwe , the steam turbine used in the machine system was not manufactured by Blohm & Voss , but by AG Vulcan Stettin . In addition, the ship was 88.5 m longer than the type ship and had a correspondingly greater displacement of 1290 t. In the other technical details, the Greif corresponded to the other ships of the class.
Second World War
From September 1938 the Greif belonged to the 5th torpedo boat flotilla, as part of this unit it also experienced the beginning of the Second World War. As a first operation, the flotilla, under the command of Corvette Captain Heyke, carried out operations in the North Sea in September 1939, during which the so-called "Westwall" mine barrier was relocated near the Dutch coast. At the end of this mission, the Greif was relocated to the Baltic Sea at the end of September in order to carry out ship controls in the Skagerrak and in the Kattegat together with the destroyers Z 7 Hermann Schoemann , Z 14 Friedrich Ihn and Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck , as well as the torpedo boats Falke and Albatros .
The ship appeared in 1940 during the invasion of Norway in April 1940. The Greif was assigned to Warship Group 4, which in addition to the sister ship Seeadler , the Luchs , seven speed boats and the escort ship Tsingtau also belonged to the light cruiser Karlsruhe . The aim of the association was to occupy the ports of Kristiansand and Arendal . On the return march on the evening of April 9, 1940, the Karlsruhe was torpedoed and badly damaged by the British submarine Truant . The ship was abandoned after two hours with a strong list and sunk by the Greif with two torpedoes. On April 14, in the run-up to the “Paternoster” mine operation in the Skagerrak, the ship hit the ground and had to be withdrawn.
In May 1940, the Greif was active to secure mine layers who extended a previously laid "Westwall" barrier to the north (mine barrier 16). At the end of June, the Greif belonged to the security group of the battle cruiser Scharnhorst on its return trip from Trondheim in the wake of the Juno company . In July the torpedo boat again secured the deployment of mine barriers 18 and 19 with other torpedo boats. On August 14 and 15, 1940, the mine ships Tannenberg , Roland and Cobra made an advance to set up the SW 2 mine barrier west of Terschelling , here too the Greif escorted and five other ships of the 5th Torpedo Boat Flotilla. Similar companies took place on 6./7. September (SW 0, north of Texel ) and on September 30th / 1. October. In the latter case, the company "Werner", griffin , falcon , condor and sea eagle drove into the English Channel as far as Dover to lay mines there, where the association was unsuccessfully attacked by the submarine Swordfish .
On October 11th and 12th, the same association, expanded to include the Wolf , a company "Willi" called an advance before the Isle of Wight , in which two British trawlers and two Free French underground fighters were sunk. On October 17th and 18th, the association supported a destroyer push into the Bristol Channel . In December there were further missions in mine operations in the English Channel ("Marianne", "SWa Wagner"), before the torpedo boat flotilla was moved to the North Sea at the end of the month to provide escort for the two battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau .
From 1941 the Greif was withdrawn to security tasks at French ports. In this function, among other things, in October 1942 she took over the initial security guard for nine German and Italian blockade breakers on the way from Bordeaux to the Far East. In March 1943 the Greif was moved to Narvik together with the battleship Tirpitz , the Scharnhorst , three destroyers and four other torpedo boats (company “Paderborn”). A month later, the ship was relocated back to secure mine operations in the North Sea again in May to strengthen the "Westwall" barrier. From June 1943, the torpedo boats and the Greif increasingly secured departing and returning submarines in the Bay of Biscay to protect against air raids. From 1944 onwards, more and more mines were laid in the English Channel in the run-up to the landing in Normandy , with the Greif temporarily stationed in Cherbourg .
On the night of May 22nd to 23rd, 1944, the torpedo boats were on the march to move from Cherbourg to Le Havre . The flotilla, consisting of a condor , griffin , falcon and seagull , came under fire from Allied fighter-bombers at Caen . The griffin was hit by a torpedo that was dropped in front of a Fairey Albacore of the 415th Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force and also collided with the condor ; both led to the sinking of the Greif in the Seine bay , with two men of the crew perishing .
The wreck is approximately 21 m deep at 49 ° 26 '5 " N , 0 ° 22' 2" W , with the propellers made of steel up are well preserved today.
technical description
Commanders
| March 15, 1927 to October 1, 1928 | OLzS / KL Wilhelm Meendsen-Bohlken | 1894-1967 | last: Vice Admiral |
| February 16, 1929 to September 1930 | OLzS / KL Werner Ehrhardt | 1898-1967 | Rear admiral |
| September 1930 to September 21, 1931 | KL Winfried Hagen | 1898– | KzS |
| December 7, 1932 to February 1934 | OLzS / KL Alfred Schemmel | 1900–1942 † | KzS |
| February to September 1934 | OLzS / KL Alwin Albrecht | 1903– | KK |
| September 1934 to October 1936 | KL Fuhrke | 1902– | KL |
| October 1936 to March 29, 1938 | KL Wolf Henne | 1905–1942 † | KK |
| November 1, 1938 to November 1939 | KL Wilhelm Verlohr | 1909-1989 | KzS |
| November 1939 to October 1940 | KL Wilhelm-Nikolaus Frh. Von Lyncker | 1911-1979 | KK |
| October 1940 to December 1941 | KL Heinrich Hoffmann | 1910-1998 | KzS of the German Navy |
| i. V. January to August 1942 | iV OLzS Ulrich Kolbe | 1917- | KL |
| i. V. August to October 1942 i. V. November / December 1942 i. V. July / August 1943 |
iV OLzS Werner Lange | 1917- | KL |
| October 1942 to March 1944 | KL Rudolf Fuchs | 1912-1944 | KK |
| i. V. December 1942 | iV KL Hans Quaet-Faslem | 1915-19 ?? | KK |
| i. V. December 1941 / January 1942 | iV OLzS Joachim Schramm | 1916-1943 | OLzS |
| i. V. July 1943 | iV KL Werner Gotzmann | 1910-1944 | KL |
| i. V. August / September 1943 | iV KL Helmut Düvelius | 1912- | KL |
| i. V. September to October 1943 | iV KL Walter Lüdde-Neurath | 1914-1990 | KK |
| i. V. October 1943 | iV LzS Karl-Heinz Böhrnsen | LzS | |
| March 1944 to May 1944 | OLt.zS / KL Horst Frhr. from Luttitz | 1917– | KL |
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