Hanonia (ship, 1900)

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The Hanonia was an Estonian cargo ship that was converted into a mine ship by the German navy during World War II and used as such.

freighter

The 1,781 GRT great ship was launched in October 1900 with the hull number 208 at the shipyard Grangemouth Dockyard in Grangemouth , Scotland , for the Kertch Metallurgical & Mining Co. in Kerch from the stack and was named Alexei Gorianow . The ship was 85.1 m long and 12.9 m wide and had a draft of 5.1 m . Two boilers and a triple expansion steam engine of 1000 hp allowed a speed of 6 knots .

The ship changed hands several times over the next 40 years. It was sold to Rederi AB Henckei in Helsingborg as early as 1904 and renamed Drott . In 1916 it was sold to Rederi AB Väring in Helsingborg, but in 1917 it was resold to Angfartygs AB Tirfing in Gothenburg , for which it operated under the name Småland . In 1923 it was sold again to Rederi AB Naparima in Stockholm and renamed Hanö . In 1925 the shipping company SN Nilsson took over the ship, in 1929 it came to the shipping company C. Lundquist. In 1934 the ship was sold to Finland to Rederi AB Hanö in Helsinki . On June 6, 1939, it was finally bought by the shipping company Hanonia in Kuressaare , Estonia, which renamed it Hanonia on August 2, 1939 .

Mine ship

On September 24, 1939, the ship was seized by the German submarine U 34 off the Norwegian south coast, with a load of pit wood on its way from Veitsiluoto in Finland to Grimsby in England, and brought to Kiel by a prize crew because of the enemy targeting of the cargo . From there the ship went to Hamburg on September 28th. There it was handed over to Leth & Co. for care on November 21st . The charge was released on November 22nd by Prisenhof Hamburg for use by interested parties in Germany.

The ship itself was released for use on December 15 by the Prisenhof to the Kriegsmarine or the Admiral of the Kriegsmarine-Dienststelle (KMD) Hamburg. Already on December 21st, the instruction was given to convert it into a camouflaged mine ship or special ship with the designation Schiff 11 . The ship was then rebuilt at the Stülcken shipyard in Hamburg and put into service as Ship 11 on February 6, 1940 . A scaffolding on deck was camouflaged as a timber cargo and concealed the mine cargo . On March 2, went Ship 11 , under Lieutenant Commander Rudolf Betzendahl, to Cuxhaven , there took a charge mines on board and moved, to Estonia, on March 9, east of North Foreland, the eastern end of the Isle of Thanet , several minefields with a total 144 mines and 146 explosive buoys .

Since the operation of March 9th had been very successful, it was to be repeated shortly afterwards, but this did not seem advisable to Betzendahl and his crew with the old and extremely slow Hanonia . With the consent of their superiors, they requisitioned the banana steamer Ulm , lying in Hamburg, on March 18 , which was then converted into a camouflaged mine ship at Stülcken in just four days.

The Hanonia, on the other hand , was decommissioned on March 24th due to her insufficient speed of only 6 knots and relocated to the Stücklen shipyard under the new designation Schiff 111 . There the ship took over the mining equipment from ship 4 (ex Wandrahm ) on March 27 and was put into service on April 2 at the shipyard for the company Weserüb , the occupation of Norway, as ship 111 , setting the German trade flag . On the morning of April 9, the ship reached Bergen , where four mine barriers were immediately placed in front of the port after being exposed. On April 11, the ship ran into the snow while throwing a mine barrier in Sørfjord ( Osterøy ) on a rock, struck a leak and damaged its propeller . However, the crew managed to beach the ship in a bay. The next day the leak was sealed and the ship pumped out and taken to Bergen. On the same day it was taken out of service again; the crew and equipment were transferred to the old Norwegian mine- layer Uller and the outpost boat VP 221, captured by the Navy on April 9 near Bergen .

Whereabouts

On April 27, 1940, ship 111 was recognized as a prize by the Hamburg Prize Court and handed over to the Bergen Harbor Protection Flotilla as a mine-layer. Thereafter, there are contradicting information about his further fate. According to the entry in the list of use of the prize ships for June 27, 1940, the ship ran into a mine and sank (Skl A VI 3740/40), and from the beginning of 1941 at the latest, ship 111 was the name of the former Norwegian Britt , who was with the Harbor Protection Flotilla Bergen served. On the other hand, it is also said that the Hanonia was taken over as a mine storage ship by the Sperrzeugamt Bergen on July 9, 1942 , so that it may not have sunk or at least been made afloat again to the point that it could still be used as a storage ship.

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ The information 2534 GRT is often made incorrectly.
  2. ↑ auxiliary mine layers of WWII - Navy (Germany) . navypedia.org. Archived from the original on October 8, 2012. Retrieved May 16, 2013.
  3. ↑ 50% owned by John Caxbom & Co. of Hull.
  4. ↑ Between March 11 and March 20, 1940, at least five and possibly up to nine ships sank in the minefield. ( Successful sinking of the mine barrier ship 11 / Hanonia . Wlb-stuttgart.de. Accessed on May 16, 2013.)
  5. ↑ The Ulm , now with the crew of the Hanonia and designated as Schiff 11 , carried out the planned mining operation on April 2nd, disguised as a Norwegian freighter. She lay east of the lightship Smiths Knoll (east of Norwich) a minefield of 90 mines and 84 explosives buoys. The planned layout of the mines on the convoy route on the English east coast was not possible due to guarding. ( Sea War 1940, April )

Web links

literature

  • Karl von Kutzleben, Wilhelm Schroeder, Jochen Brennecke : Mine ships 1939–1945. The mysterious missions of the “midnight squadron”. Köhler, Herford 1974, ISBN 3-7822-0098-5 , p. 240.