HMS Abelia
|
|
|---|---|
 The Abelia in Hvalfjord , Iceland , January 1942 |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | corvette |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | August 19, 1940 |
| Launch | November 28, 1940 |
| Namesake | the honeysuckle of the same name |
| Commissioning | February 3, 1941 |
| Whereabouts | Sale to Norway |
| 2. Period of service |
|
| period of service | 1949-1965 |
| Commissioning | as a whaler |
| home port | Tønsberg , Sandefjord |
| Whereabouts | 1966 demolished |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
925 ts |
| length |
overall: 62.5 m (205 ft) |
| width |
10 m (33 ft) |
| Draft |
3.6 m (12 ft) |
| crew |
85 men |
| drive |
2 steam boilers type Scotch, |
| speed |
16 kn |
| Range |
3500 nm at 12 kn |
| Armament |
1 x 4 inch Mk.IX -Geschütz |
| Fuel supply |
232 tons of oil |
| as |
whaler |
| measurement | |
| length |
last 64.0 m |
The HMS Abelia (K184) was a Flower-class corvette of the Royal Navy during World War II . In 1944 it was badly damaged.
In 1947 she was sold to Norway and converted into a whaler. It was used until 1966 under the names Kraft and Arne Skontorp (from 1954).
The HMS Abelia was launched on November 28, 1940 at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast . It was one of the orders that the shipyard had received from the French Navy in April 1940 and that the Royal Navy took over after the surrender of France . She was the 21st corvette of the type completed by the shipyard when she entered service on February 3, 1941. She still had minesweeping equipment, although this operation was no longer expected from the corvettes. She was then one of the first corvettes to receive a radar of the type 271. The radar installed on the HMS Orchis for the first time in March 1941 made it possible not only to discover submarines that had surfaced , but also a periscope at over 1000 m.
The first use of the boat took place in the safety of the convoy HG 54 coming from Gibraltar together with the flotilla leader Broke and the old destroyers Saladin , Vanity and Wolsey . The corvette was subsequently used to secure over 60 convoy trains and was a member of EscortGroup B.4.
At the beginning of February 1943, the Abelia was subordinate to the EscortGroup B.2 to secure the convoy SC 118, which consisted of 61 ships and was attacked by the German submarine groups "Pfeil" and "Haudegen" in the middle Atlantic with a total of 20 boats.
In addition to the Abelia , the EscortGroup consisted of the British destroyers Vanessa , Vimy and Beverley ex USS Branch as well as the corvettes HMS Campanula , HMS Mignonette and FFL Lobelia and the USCG cutter Bibb . The US destroyers Babbitt and Schenck came from Iceland with the USCG cutter Ingham and aircraft for reinforcement.
The convoy lost ten ships with a total of 55,680 GRT, including the rescue ship Toward , the Norwegian tanker Daghild (9,272 GRT) as the largest ship and the transporter Henry R. Mallory , with which 272 men drowned, although the two CoastGuard cutters still saved 222 men could.
The defenders were also able to sink three submarines ( U 187 - from which 45 men were rescued -, U 609 and by aircraft U 614 ) and seriously damage others.
At the end of March 1943, the Abelia reinforced the security of the attacked convoy HX 228 with the Vimy from a return flight .
On January 9, 1944, the Abelia was badly damaged while securing the convoy OS 64 running south from Liverpool. She had discovered a submarine and ran towards it to attack it with depth charges. The commander believed he was so close to the submarine that a torpedo attack was no longer possible. In fact, the Abelia was hit by a torpedo and lost her rudder. The submarine presumably deployed a wren type acoustic torpedo and escaped. The damaged Abelia was brought in by the salvage tug HMT Stormking (W87). The tug was secured by the HMT Vizalma trawler . The corvette was not operational again until the end of 1944 and was taken out of service in Europe shortly after the end of the war.
Civil use as a whaler
In 1948 the corvette was bought by the Norwegian whaling company "Antarctic" in Tønsberg and prepared for civil use at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel . She was put into service in 1949 under the name Kraft and sent to the Antarctic on the factory ship Antarctic , the renamed CA Larsen .
The force served as a so-called buoy boat that dragged whales to the factory ship. After her second fishing season, she went back to Howaldtswerft in the summer of 1951 to be converted into a modern whaler of 716 GRT. So she was involved in the last fishing season of her mother ship 1951/1952. The shipowner Anton von der Lippe (1886–1960), who had been working with the Jahr Group since 1928, gave up whaling with the old factory ship and had it converted into a tanker at Howaldt.
In 1954 the power was acquired by the whaling company Kosmos of the years group in Sandefjord . With Arnfinn Bergan (ex HMS Aubretia ), Milliam Khil (ex HMCS Fennel ), Leif Welding (ex HMS Columbine ) and Asbjørn Larsen (ex HMS Wallflower ), this company already had four almost identical whalers, which were also used by Howaldt from Flower corvettes had been rebuilt.
The company, under the leadership of Anders Jahre , had lost its two large factory ships Kosmos and Kosmos II in the World War. Of the two new buildings Kosmos III and Kosmos V completed in Sweden and Great Britain in 1947/1948 , only the first was used as a factory ship. In addition, the former German factory ship Walter Rau was used as Kosmos IV . The former Abelia was added to the fleet in 1954 as Arne Skontorp , named after a famous harpoon shooter of the years fleet.
In 1954 the Arne Skontorp went whaling for the first time with the Kosmos III and 12 other fishing boats in the Antarctic . For the next two years she was also part of the fishing fleet of this factory ship, which consisted of 16 and then (limited) 12 fishing boats. In the 1957/1958 season she accompanied the Kosmos IV for the first time , to whose fishing fleet she then belonged from the 1959/1960 season after she had accompanied the Kosmos III again in 1958/1959 .
Final fate
The last fishing season for Arne Skontorp was 1964/1965. Then the ship was laid up and did not take part in the last three voyages of Kosmos IV . The former German ship was the last factory ship under the Norwegian flag to operate in the Southern Ocean in the 1967/1968 season .
In October 1966 the Arne Skontorp, like her sister ships Arnfinn Bergan , Milliam Khil , Leif Welding and Asbjørn Larsen, was sold to Grimstad for demolition. All five boats had been in use together since 1959/1960. Only the latter two had also taken part in the fishing expedition in 1965/1966.
literature
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
- Johann N. Tønnessen, Arne Odd Johnsen: The History of Modern Whaling. University of California Press, 1982, ISBN 0-520-03973-4 .
Web links
- HMS Abelia on uboat.net
- Image of Abelia
- HMS Abelia on the Arnold Hague database at convoyweb.org.uk.
- The whaler Arne Skontorp
- Ship list Anton vd Lippe
Individual evidence
- ↑ BR 4 inch-45 Mk.IX
- ^ Rohwer, p. 325.
- ↑ literary edited in THE REAL CRUEL SEA by Richard Woodman
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 340.
- ↑ Hague (Convoynet) accepts U 953 as the attacker
- ^ Biography of the Arnfinn Bergan
- ↑ The curriculum vitae of Milliam Khil
- ↑ Leif Welding's CV
- ↑ Asbjørn Larsen's curriculum vitae