HMS Zinnia (1915)
 The Zinnia under the British flag
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The Zinnia was a British sloop of the Flower-class during the First World War , which was used as minesweepers and to escort and submarine hunting. In 1920 Belgium acquired the ship for fisheries protection, in 1940 the Germans confiscated the Zinnia and converted it into the flak training ship Barbara . After the war it served first as a Zinnia , then as a Breydel in the Belgian Navy and was scrapped in 1952.
Construction and technical data
The Zinnia belonged to the second series of the Flower class of the First World War, the Azalea class, of which a total of 12 ships were built in 1915. The Zinnia was given in May 1915 order and at Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson in Newcastle upon Tyne under the hull number 1000 set to Kiel . The launch took place on August 12, 1915, the commissioning with the Royal Navy on September 15 of that year.
Her length was 81.20 meters, she was 10.00 meters wide and had a draft of 4.10 meters. The design displacement was 1281 tons (1020 standard, 1590 maximum). The drive consisted of a 4-cylinder triple expansion machine with two boilers, which achieved 1400 hp and acted on one screw . This enabled her to reach a top speed of 17 knots and a range of 3,700 kilometers at 15 knots. In the Royal Navy, she was armed with two individual 4.0-inch guns, i.e. 102 mm (also called two 4.7-inch guns, about 120 mm) and two single three-pounders (equivalent to 47 mm). This with a crew of 79 officers and men.
Reconstruction in 1941/1942
After the German occupation of Belgium, the Cockerill shipyard in Antwerp was converted into an anti-aircraft training ship in 1941/42 , which completely changed its appearance. The low deck was closed so that space for additional crews was gained. At the same time, the two chimneys were replaced by a single one and the deck superstructures expanded. With the weight of the additional installations, weapons and crews, the maximum speed was now 12 knots, the range 3700 nautical miles at 10 knots. This was completely sufficient for a training ship, especially since the coal-fired machines saved fuel for other ships.
For use as a flak training ship, it was equipped with a 105 mm flak, a 37 mm and up to ten flak of 20 mm caliber, but the armament changed. Armament of three 105 mm flak, eight 37 mm and twelve 20 mm flak is also mentioned in the literature.
history
Lieutenant-Commander Graham FW Wilson was appointed first in command. He took over command on September 7, 1915 and held it until the Cicero mine sweeper on May 17, 1919.
During the First World War, the Zinnia provided missions in the Mediterranean and the Irish Sea. In the Mediterranean, their tasks consisted of mine hunting as well as escort protection and submarine hunting. Then she operated in the Irish Sea with the same tasks. It came on August 21, 1917 in thick fog to the collision with the US destroyer Benham . This was so badly damaged at the stern that it threatened to sink and had to be towed by the Zinnia into the port of Queenstown in Ireland. During the entire war, there was no evidence that the Zinnia were involved in sinking enemy ships.
After the war, most of the Flower class ships were decommissioned and sold or scrapped. In 1919, the Zinnia initially carried out coastal patrols in the North Sea before it was also up for sale.
1920–1940 Belgian fisheries protection
The British government sold the Zinnia to Belgium on April 19, 1920, where it replaced the 34-year-old fishing protection vessel Ville d'Anvers . Before the transfer from Plymouth, all weapons and demining equipment were removed as it came under civilian fisheries protection. It kept its name and navy paint and entered service in June 1920. Its manning was now 40 officers and men. Their duties under civil and sovereign law included the control of and compliance with international regulations on fishing, general supervision of shipping and safeguarding the coast.
In 1926 the Zinnia was also made available to the Navy as a training ship and used by the Ostend navigation school. Even after the Navy was disbanded in March 1927, it continued to perform this task. The crew strength as a training ship was the same number of officers and NCOs in addition to the 40-man regular crew. Aside from routine tasks, the Zinnia took part in the reconstruction of this operation on the 10th anniversary of the British attack on Ostend in 1918. The Zinnia took over the role of the British cruiser Vindictive . A few years later, the ship represented Belgium at the celebrations for the 50th birthday of the fish market in Hamburg-Altona from October 14 to 17, 1937. Shortly after this last foreign visit, the Belgians laid up the ship in Ostend due to its practical uselessness.
In May 1940 it was transferred to the re-established Belgian Marine Corps. In the short period of time it was no longer possible to overhaul or equip it and it served as a residential ship on site.
1940–1945 Navy
After the Wehrmacht marched into Belgium, the Germans confiscated the ship lying in Ostend and continued to use it there from July 12, 1940 as a barge for the crews of the 2nd Schnellboot Flotilla. As early as September of that year they towed it to Antwerp to convert it into an artillery training ship for anti-aircraft gunmen. Under German supervision, the conversion took place there in 1941–1942 at the Cockerill shipyard . During the renovation, on November 17, 1941, she was given the name Barbara - the patron saint of the artillery . On January 4, 1942, she was put into service by Lieutenant Jagfeld at the coastal artillery school in Swinoujscie .
She had a permanent crew of two officers and 75 men and, as a student, up to four other officers and 81 men. She served as a training ship until the end of the war, and from 1943 she also served temporarily as an escort ship for the 14th clearing boat flotilla. At the end of the war, the commander of the safety training division , Captain Otto Lensch, temporarily embarked on her during her mission in Stettin .
1945–1952 Belgian Navy
After the end of the war, the ship was discovered by the British in Emden and identified as a Belgian ship. In June 1945 members of the RNSB ( Royal Navy Section Belge ) brought the ship back to Ostend. It got its old name back Zinnia and was renamed Breydel in 1946 . In the Belgian Navy it quickly became clear that the ship was no longer able to cope with the current requirements. In 1952 it was canceled due to obsolescence and uselessness.
literature
- Robert Gardiner, Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the world's fighting ships 1922-1946. Conway Maritime Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-8317-0303-2 .
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945. Volume 5: Auxiliary Ships II: Hospital Ships, Residential Ships, Training Ships, Research Vehicles, Port Service Vehicles. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1988, ISBN 3-7637-4804-0 .
- Siegfried Breyer: Rarities at sea in the last 70 years. ( Marine-Arsenal. Special volume 14), Podzun-Pallas Verlag, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 1997, ISBN 3-7909-0597-6 .
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Volume 9: Historical overview, collective chapter landing craft, mine ships, minesweepers, speedboats, training ships, special ships, tenders and escort ships, torpedo boats, supply ships. Mundus Verlag, 1999
Web links
- wlb-stuttgart.de accessed on June 25, 2016
- wlb-stuttgart.de accessed on June 25, 2016
- navypedia.org.Retrieved June 25, 2016
- lmb-bml.be (DF) (with photos before and after the renovation) accessed on June 25, 2016
- dreadnoughtproject.org. Retrieved June 25, 2016
- naval-history.net accessed June 25, 2016
- belgian-navy.be accessed on June 25, 2016
- marinebelge.be accessed on July 27, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ naval-history.net
- ↑ Gardiner / Chesneau, p. 385
- ↑ Gröner, p. 113
- ↑ Gröner, p. 113
- ↑ Gardiner / Chesneau, p. 385
- ↑ dreadnoughtproject.org quoted "The Navy List" from December 1919 (p. 945a)
- ↑ lmb-bml.be (PDF) or belgian-navy.be
- ↑ cf. Secret Victory: Ireland and the War at Sea, 1914-1918, by Liam Nolan, John E. Nolan, p. 250, navsource.org or warshipfacts.de
- ↑ cf. Harald Fock: Fleet Chronicle. The active warships involved in both world wars and their whereabouts. Revised and expanded version. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-7822-0788-2 , p. 34 ff., P. 54 ff.
- ↑ belgian-navy.be
- ↑ lmb-bml.be (PDF)
- ↑ Gröner, p. 113
- ↑ belgian-navy.be , lmb-bml.be (PDF)
- ↑ belgian-navy.be
- ↑ marine-mra-klm.be
- ↑ lmb-bml.be (PDF)
- ↑ Breyer, p. 10
- ↑ lmb-bml.be (PDF)
- ↑ Gröner, p. 113
- ↑ Gröner, p. 113. Breyer, p. 10. Hildebrand, p. 152. On the 14th R. boat flotilla cf. also: wlb-stuttgart.de The extent to which the war diary of the 14th clearing boat flotilla contains additional information about the ship during this time must be checked ( deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de )
- ↑ (see http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/bdsich.htm )
- ↑ belgian-navy.be , belgian-navy.be
- ↑ Gröner, p. 113, Breyer, p. 10