Gneisenau (F 212)
The Gneisenau in its last state of arms
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The frigate Gneisenau (F 212) of the German Navy was a training ship, named after the Prussian Field Marshal August Neidhardt von Gneisenau (1760–1831). The ship was launched in 1943 as HMS Oakley for the Royal Navy and was in service during World War II .
From 1958 to 1966 the Gneisenau served as an artillery training ship for the German Navy . In 1977 it was canceled.
history
The later Gneisenau was as escort destroyer of the Hunt-class built for the Royal Navy. Based on the war building program, the Navy ordered 16 additional Hunt-class ships on December 20, 1939, two of which were to be built at Yarrows in Glasgow . The well-known destroyer shipyard had received orders for four ships of the class before the start of the war, which were completed between July and December 1940 as ships of the "Type I" and received the order for two more boats with the first war building program in September. Type II ”were completed. The first boat of the new contract with hull number 1753, the keel of which was laid on August 19, 1940, was to be named Tickham . When it was launched on January 15, 1942, the new building was named HMS Oakley . This name had already been given to a sister ship built on Vickers-Armstrong's High Walker yard , which was made available to the Polish Navy when it was completed and was renamed ORP Kujawiak on June 7, 1941 . Due to a bomb attack on the shipyard, the completion of the Oakley was delayed until May 7, 1942.
Operations under the British flag
By the end of 1942, Oakley took over security tasks in the north-east Atlantic with the approach of convoys to the British Isles, the provision of tankers for northern sea escorts and defensive mining companies.
In February 1943, the destroyer escorted to secure a convoy in the western Mediterranean to Bone and was then involved in securing the Allied landing in Sicily in June ( Operation Husky ). In the spring of 1944, the Oakley fell out of service for a long time after a grounding near Taranto and was then used again as a security vehicle during the Allied landing in southern France ( Operation Dragoon ). The Oakley then moved to the Aegean Sea and participated in the recapture of Athens.
Before a planned mission in South-East Asia, the Oakley relocated to Chatham for repairs , from where it did a few more North Sea missions. Relocation to Asia began in April 1945. Some improvements were made in Taranto and the ship finally went back to Great Britain, where it was assigned to the reserve at the end of 1945.
The Oakley was in a high state of readiness for a long time and was finally sold to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957.
German school frigate
As part of the rearmament, Germany acquired ships from the United Kingdom for use as school frigates. A total of seven school frigates were in the service of the German Navy during this construction phase, which for the sake of simplicity were grouped under the heading of class 138 school frigates , although they were by no means all identical. The first of these units was the HMS Oakley (II) as Gneisenau (F212) on October 18, 1958. She was the only school frigate type Hunt II, two more units originated from ships of the type Hunt III and four from sloops type Black Swan . The Gneisenau was put into service for the Naval Artillery School. The ship was still armed with its original armament of three 102 mm L / 45 Mk XVI twin guns , a 2pdr 40 mm anti-aircraft quadruplet and two Oerlikon 20 mm automatic cannons . This was reduced to two 102 mm twin guns and two single older 40 mm Bofors guns at the end of the year. The frigate also made shorter trips abroad and visited Biarritz , Dublin and Norway , among others .
On October 28, 1962, the Gneisenau was decommissioned and equipped with the standard weapons of the new buildings of the German Navy. It was modernized at the Howaldtswerke in Hamburg and received an automatic 100 mm cannon of French origin on the forecastle as well as two individual Bofors 40 mm L / 70 guns on the long deck structure. At the rear there is a double carriage of the same type. Rebuilt, it came back into service on March 5, 1964. From 1965 she was only a stationary training ship and was decommissioned on June 30, 1966.
The ship, which was assigned to the reserve flotilla in 1968, was mothballed. On September 30, 1972, the Gneisenau was struck from the warship list and from November 20, 1972, cannibalized in the Wilhelmshaven naval arsenal . In October 1976 it was sold for demolition and from January 1977 it was scrapped in the Netherlands. Parts of the Gneisenau supply computer are now in the computer science collection of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Other warships named Gneisenau
Several German warships were named after August Neidhardt von Gneisenau :
- The Gneisenau from 1879, a three-mast cruiser frigate that sank near Málaga in 1900 as a cadet training ship for the Imperial Navy (44 dead)
- The Gneisenau from 1906, a large cruiser ( armored cruiser ) of the Scharnhorst class of the Imperial Navy
- The Gneisenau from 1939, a Scharnhorst -class battleship of the Kriegsmarine
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Hildebrand: The German warships. Vol. II, p. 148
- ↑ Lead calculator with ballistic correction calculator M4 / 2-42 Du. Website of the computer science collection of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Retrieved April 5, 2014.
literature
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Koehler's publishing company, Herford,
- Günter Kroschel, Klaus-Jürgen Steindorff: The German Navy 1955–1985, ships and aircraft. Wilhelmshaven 1985, Verlag Lohse - Eissing, ISBN 3-920602-30-7 .