Griffin (ship, 1937)

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The Marcel Le Bihan (ex Greif ) with the Archimède

The Greif was an air traffic control ship , originally called a "salvage ship", of the Luftwaffe during World War II . After the war she served in the French Navy from 1951 to 1961 and then until 1987 as an escort ship for French deep-sea research submersibles.

Construction and technical data

The ship was built in 1936/37 under the construction number 791 on the Stettiner Oderwerke . It ran 1936 by the stack and was on August 1, 1937, the identifier BS II provided (BS = salvage vessel) in service.

The Greif was 72 meters long and 10.6 m wide, had a draft of 2.65 m and displaced 890 tons . Two 12-cylinder, 4- stroke MAN diesel engines with Büchi turbocharging and 2200 hp each propelled two Voith Schneider propellers and enabled the ship to reach a top speed of 18.7 knots . With 40 tons of Bunker capacity of was operating range 1,500 nautical miles at 17.4 knots cruising speed. The ship was equipped with a MAN gantry crane with 13 tons of lifting power and an inflatable 8 × 6 m run-on mat at the stern for seaplanes . It could take a maximum of three seaplanes on deck. The armament consisted of a 2 cm gun, later two 2 cm twin AA cannons; in January 1940 three 20 mm MG were also installed. The crew numbered 41 men.

Luftwaffe and World War II

On August 1, 1937, the Greif was assigned as a test and recovery ship to the Air Force test site in Travemünde . With the rapid growth of the Luftwaffe - and especially after the naval aviation was incorporated into the Luftwaffe on January 27, 1939 - it became necessary to set up a sea emergency service for the Luftwaffe, the Greif was used for sea ​​rescue tasks by the Sea Emergency District Office (Luft) in Bug on Rügen and from In March 1939 it was subordinated to the Holtenau Sea Emergency District Office near Kiel , but remained stationed in Travemünde. In November 1937 and August 1938, an aircraft carrier deck was set up on the aft ship of the Greif , and aircraft of the Fieseler Storch type were used to take off and land on the ship.

From July 1942 the Greif was assigned to the Torpedowaffenplatz Hexengrund of the Luftwaffe near Gotenhafen , where air torpedoes and sliding torpedoes as well as the necessary launching and dropping devices were tested on aircraft. In 1942 and 1943, tests were carried out with Flettner helicopters .

In August 1944, together with the air traffic control ships Boelcke , Hans Albrecht Wedel and Gunther Plüschow , she was placed under the sea emergency group 81 in Bug on Rügen , which also included the sea emergency group 81 in Bug, the search and escort group 81 in Parow and the sea emergency flotilla 81 in Swinoujscie belonged to. The Greif and the other units of the Sea Emergency Group 81 were then mainly used in the evacuation operations from East and West Prussia ( Hannibal company ). The Greif alone brought about 30,000 refugees westwards with up to 2200 people per trip.

France

French Navy

On December 22, 1945, the Greif in Wilhelmshaven was taken as spoils of war by the US Navy . Then she came to the Flender shipyard in Lübeck for overhaul and was handed over to the French Navy as reparations in February 1948 . It received the registration number A 759 and was renamed Marcel Le Bihan .

In 1951 and 1952 the ship was used in the French Indochina War. It served as a tender for seaplanes, to transport special commands and as a command center for special operations. On October 29, 1952 it left Saigon and returned to France, where it was assigned to the Port Authority of Toulon (Direction du Port de Toulon). In 1956 the ship took part in the French fighting during the Suez Crisis .

Deep sea submersible tender

In 1961, the ship was transferred to the deep-sea study and research group ( Groupe d'Études et de Recherche Sous-marine - GERS), where it served as the escort of the French bathyscaph ( deep-sea submarine ) Archimède during his deep-diving attempts - so in 1962/63 in the Kuril Trench , 1964 in the Puerto Rico Trench , 1965 in the Mediterranean near Cape Matapan ( Greece ), 1966 near Madeira , 1967 again in the Kuril Trench, 1968 in the search for the French submarine Minerve which sank off Toulon , 1970 in the search for the sunk Eurydice , the FAMOUS project and the recovery of the submersible Cyana, which sank to a depth of 3400 m during an unmanned test dive .

On January 1, 1978, the ship was given the new name Gustave Zédé , in honor of the French submarine designer who died on April 26, 1891 after an explosion. After a major overhaul and renovation in 1980/1981, in which the crane was removed and an underwater scaffold was installed instead, the ship was again used by the deep-sea research group, renamed GISMER ( Groupe d'Intervention Sous la Mer ) (since 1973) , now as the mother ship for the research - Submarine Licorne .

On September 8, 1987 the Gustave Zédé was decommissioned. The cannibalized hull was sunk on June 22, 1990 in the Mediterranean off Toulon.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Test sites in Travemünde and Tarnewitz. Volume 2, Luftfahrt-Verlag Walter Zuerl, Steinebach-Wörthsee, ISBN 3-87500-024-2 , pp. 115–124.
  2. ^ On- board aircraft of German auxiliary cruisers and auxiliary ships. Retrieved April 17, 2015
  3. ↑ This was previously the name of the former German submarine tender Saar , which was taken over by France after the end of the war and decommissioned in 1971 .
  4. ↑ The name Marcel le Bihan was given to an Aviso .