Hans Bartels (naval officer)

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Hans Bartels in 1940 as a lieutenant captain

Hans Bartels (born July 5, 1910 in Frankfurt am Main , † July 31, 1945 near Rendsburg ) was a German naval officer , most recently in the rank of corvette captain , in World War II and holder of the Knight's Cross .

career

Reich and Kriegsmarine

After graduating from high school, Bartels joined the Reichsmarine on April 1, 1931 . He received his nautical training a. a. on the sailing training ship Niobe and the light cruiser Karlsruhe ; on the Karlsruhe he took part in her second trip abroad (November 30, 1931 - December 8, 1932) under Captain Erwin Waßner . On January 1, 1933, he was promoted to ensign at sea , and on September 30, 1934, he was commanded to the ship of the line Schlesien . On April 1, 1935, he was promoted to lieutenant at sea . On July 2, 1935, he became an officer on watch on the M 89 minesweeper and on October 1, 1936 on the M 146 minesweeper . After completing a bulky weapons course and being promoted to lieutenant at sea on January 1, 1937, Bartels became the commander of the M 1 minesweeper on March 5, 1939 .

Second World War

During the invasion of Poland , his boat operated in Gdańsk Bay from September 1939 to October 1939 . Already on August 24, 1939, M 1 and the other five boats of the 1st minesweeping flotilla had picked up the 230 men of the Naval Shock Troop Company (MSK) in Memel and transferred them to the old Schleswig-Holstein liner on the high seas at Stolpmünde that same evening brought; However, the MSK failed to occupy the Westerplatte on September 1st with heavy losses .

Even before the end of the war against Poland, Bartels, who was promoted to lieutenant captain on October 1, 1939 , received the order to transfer with M 1 to the North Sea. He sank without warning in the early hours of February 24 1940 in the area of the Dogger Bank , the four in Esbjerg -based Danish fishing boat Ejjam (E 92), Gerlis (E 456), Mercator (E 348) and Polaris (E 504) by ramming. Bartels reported to his superiors that "for military reasons" no one was rescued by the cutter crews; 16 fishermen from neutral Denmark lost their lives.

During the German invasion of Norway in April 1940, his boat took part in the occupation of Egersund as part of the 2nd minesweeping flotilla (Korvettenkapitän Kurt Thoma), together with M 2 , M 9 and M 13 . Then he carried out security, reconnaissance, troop transport and escort service on the Norwegian south and west coast with his boat. In Kristiansand and the surrounding area he brought, among other things, a large ( Odin ) and three small Norwegian torpedo boats and four patrol boats (armed whalers), which were then taken over by the Navy. When the " Admiral Norwegian West Coast " Otto von Schrader visited the boat in Bergen and used the expression "Tiger of the Fjords", Bartels and the crew painted their boat accordingly and from then on hoisted a self-made "tiger flag". On April 15, M 1 transported 240 army soldiers to Bergen, on the return journey picked up 13 freighters from a convoy that was gathering for the journey to England and transferred these ships to Stavanger. On April 23, 1940, Bartels brought army troops up the Hardangerfjord and Eidfjord up to Ulvik with his boat and the 1st Schnellbootsflotille . There they secured the interned German freighter Afrika , which was sinking after the Norwegians opened its flood valves as the German flotilla approached. Shortly after the troops disembarked in Bakranes ( 60 ° 34 ′  N , 6 ° 55 ′  E ), the town center, they came under fire from Norwegian soldiers. There was one dead and 12 wounded. Thereupon Bartels opened fire on the place. All 56 houses in the village were destroyed by artillery bombardment and fire; only the church was spared. On the following day, April 24th, his boat transported troops again, discovered and boarded the German motor ship Cläre Hugo Stinnes 1 , which had previously been interned by the Norwegians in Ulviksfjord, and took more steamers as a prize on the return trip to Bergen.

For his achievements in securing the West Norwegian fjords Bartels on 11 May 1940, the Iron Cross I.class and five days later with the Knight's Cross awarded.

On May 27, 1940 Bartels became the first leader of the newly established “Coastal Security Association of the Norwegian West Coast” with the staff of the “Admiral of the Norwegian West Coast” on the accommodation ship Tan (ex Polaris ) in Bergen . The unit was deployed in the areas of the naval defense commanders of Oslo , Kristiansand , Stavanger and Bergen. Initially there were only four fishing cutters and two outpost boats available to him. By the end of September he had a total of 45 boats, armed and with crews , which were divided into the 52nd minesweeping flotilla and the 51st, 53rd and 55th outpost flotilla. Following the Tiger of the fjords he gave his small boats the unofficial name " Tiger Association " and donated for them the badge of honor of the Tiger Association as a separate award. After three clearing boats were lost to mines on October 13, 1940 , Bartels had twelve small Norwegian fishing boats equipped with the necessary equipment and thus created the smallest minesweepers in the Navy. They were boats of only 3.5 tons and they were all named "dwarfs". "Zwerg 7" was even brought to Berlin and presented to Grand Admiral Erich Raeder there .

On December 7, 1942 Bartels was transferred as first officer to the destroyer Z 24 , with which he was used in the North Sea. On August 12, 1943, he became the commandant of the T 14 torpedo boat . With this boat he took part in the disarmament of the Danish Navy on August 29, 1943 . On October 1, 1943, he was promoted to corvette captain .

As early as November 1943, he was relieved of the position of commander of T 14 and instead was commissioned to set up the first German mobile and operational unit of small naval weapons. The so-called "Einsatz -teilung Heiligenhafen", forerunner of the later "Marine Einsatzkommandos", was subordinate to the "Naval High Command East", consisted of navy and army personnel and was supposed to carry out commando operations on the British coasts and in the Adriatic Sea .

After a British micro-submarine of the Welman type was captured undamaged in the port of Bergen on November 21, 1943 and then thoroughly examined in Germany, Bartels prepared the way for the construction contract for the in initial negotiations on February 4 and 9, 1944 the basis of this boat was designed by German micro-submarines Biber with the Flender works in Lübeck . The first prototype of the beaver was finished on March 15, 1944 and ready for the first sea trials on March 29, 1944. The first attempt at diving was unsuccessful, but after some changes the beaver was found fit and 300 boats were ordered. In August 1944 Bartels became the commander of the training command 250 in the Reichswald near Lübeck- Schlutup in the small combat units of the Kriegsmarine . In this position, which he held until the end of the war, he was responsible for training and deploying a total of nine beaver flotillas that were set up by the Navy. The training command 250 consisted of the 1st to 9th beaver flotilla (K flotilla 261–270). On August 28, 1944, he himself went to Fécamp / Normandy with the 25 beavers of the K-Flotilla 261 (1st Beaver Flotilla, Kapitänleutnant Wolters) to reinforce the local marten units . A deployment of 18 boats on the night of August 30th was unsuccessful because of the bad weather. 16 boats had to end their mission prematurely. The other two reported the sinking of a freighter each, but this was never confirmed by the Allied side, and then returned unscathed. On August 31, the flotilla had to leave Fècamp in a hurry when British troops approached. Almost all of the beavers were blown up. The few for whom suitable transports were available left the port just an hour before the Allies took it and were destroyed by British tank shelling.

In March 1945 Bartels commanded a special command (code name "Puma") of combat swimmers from the small combat units of the Kriegsmarine (K-units) and frogmen of the "SS-Jagdverband Donau", which was supposed to blow up the Remagen bridge , which was captured by American troops on March 7, 1945 . The first attempt on March 12th failed when the men were spotted by searchlights and then taken under fire. Since two pontoon bridges had already been put into operation on March 11, 1945 , Bartels considered a second attempt to be pointless, and Admiral Hellmuth Heye , head of the K associations, thereupon rejected the use of combat swimmers. The bridge finally collapsed on March 17th.

post war period

With the surrender of the Wehrmacht , Bartels fell into British captivity . He was reactivated a little later in the German mine clearance service and took part in the mine clearance of the German sea areas. He was fatally injured in an accident near Rendsburg on July 31, 1945.

Awards

plant

  • Tiger flag hot before! German home publisher Ernst Gieseking, Bielefeld, 1941

literature

  • The Knight's Cross Bearers of the German Navy 1939–1945 Volume I, Letters A – K, pp. 15–17

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ At that time the flotilla consisted of the boats M 1 , M 3 , M 4 , M 5 , M 7 and M 8 .
  2. ↑ Hans Bartels: Battle report on the sinking of four Danish fishing boats
  3. ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-02.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/kriegsrecht/schiffbruechige.htm#240240
  5. ^ In May 1944 the association was divided into the 5th and 6th Coastal Security Association (KSV). In 1944 the following were subordinate to him: 23rd, 30th and 52nd minesweeping flotilla, 11th and 17th anti-submarine flotilla, 51st, 53rd and 55th outpost flotilla and the mine clearance ship 25
  6. ↑ http://postimage.org/image/11d4a6des/
  7. ^ Gordon Williamson, "Kriegsmarine Coastal Forces", Osprey, Oxford, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84603-331-5 (p. 16)
  8. ↑ http://pallas.cegesoma.be/pls/opac/plsp.getplsdoc?rn=120997&cn=51&lan=F&htdoc=general/opac.htm
  9. ↑ http://www.u-boote-online.de/diekluboote/ Einsatz_biber.php
personal data
SURNAME Bartels, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, most recently corvette captain in World War II and bearer of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1945
Place of death Rendsburg