Heinrich Ruhfus

Rear Admiral Heinrich Ruhfus (1942)

Heinrich Ruhfus (born April 14, 1895 in Charlottenburg ; † May 26, 1955 in Flensburg - Mürwik ) was a German rear admiral in World War II .

Life

Imperial Navy

Ruhfus joined the Imperial Navy on April 1, 1913 as a midshipman ( crew 1913 ) and, after completing his basic training, served on the great cruiser Victoria Louise . He then attended the Mürwik Naval School and served at the beginning of the First World War on board the small cruisers Rostock , Regensburg and Kolberg . From mid-May 1915 he was an officer on watch in the VII Torpedo Boat Flotilla and on September 18, 1915, he was promoted to lieutenant at sea . At the same time he completed a torpedo course from November 1915 to January 1916. From October 1916 to November 1917, Ruhfus was an officer on watch in the IV Torpedo Boat Flotilla. In the Albion company in 1917, his torpedo boat S 64 ran into a sea ​​mine and sank. This was followed by a job as an officer on watch with the Destroyer Flotilla Flanders or as a commander in the 1 Baltic Sea mine sweeping flotilla. For his work during the war he received both classes of the Iron Cross .

Imperial Navy

After the end of the war , he initially served for three years in the Coast Defense Department in Lehe (Coast Defense Department IV) and then in October 1922 he was in command of the T 154 tender as a first lieutenant in the Reichsmarine . On September 19, 1924, Ruhfus was transferred to the 4th Torpedo Boat Semi-Flotilla as commander of the T 157 torpedo boat and rose in this position on August 1, 1925 with RDA from May 1, 1925 to lieutenant captain . From September 1926 he was a training officer on the light cruiser Emden , from March 1928 company commander in the ship master division of the North Sea, and from February 1929 company commander in the II Marine Artillery Department. On the sailing training ship Niobe he served from September 1930, initially as a training manager and from February 1932 as a commander. In 1932, on a beautiful summer's day, an all of a sudden thunderstorm gust , which in this form may only occur once every 100 years, capsized the sailing training ship Niobe off Fehmarn . Because of the sinking of the Niobe on July 26, 1932, he was brought before a court martial , which on November 3, 1932 acquitted him of guilt for the loss of the ship and many lives. During this time he was available for the inspection of the educational system and he was a training officer on board the test boat T 23 . From the end of December 1932 he served as a navigational officer on the light cruiser Königsberg , became a corvette captain on January 1, 1933, and was promoted to first officer on September 27, 1933 .

Navy

In the Navy from July 1935 he was in command of the 2nd Marine Artillery Department. After his promotion to frigate captain , Ruhfus became a staff officer at the staff of the Mürwik naval school in early October 1937 . After the beginning of the Second World War , as a sea ​​captain , he was appointed commander of the light cruiser Königsberg on September 16, 1939 . After his cruiser was sunk by British aircraft during the German occupation of Norway on the quay of Bergen on April 10, 1940, he took over the port and sea command in Bergen for four months. In August 1940 he succeeded Friedrich Rieve as sea ​​commander Oslo , and from April 1941 as commander of the Oslofjord naval defense . From October 1942 to April 1944 he was in command of the Mürwik Naval School as Rear Admiral . From this post he was replaced from one day to the next in the spring of 1944 after a visit by the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy . In April 1944 he became sea ​​commander French Riviera based in Toulon . There, when the Allies landed on August 28, 1944, he was taken prisoner by the French and physically ruined.

After his release in June 1947, he returned to his wife and two children in Mürwik and initially worked as a peat worker and town house keeper, then as a sales representative and finally retired from 1955. He died in May 1955 at the age of 60.

See also

• List of commanders of the naval school (Kiel and Mürwik)

literature

• Dermot Bradley (eds.), Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849-1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1990, ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 , pp. 168-169.
• Karl H. Peter : Eight Glass - End of Watch. Memories of a naval officer of the crew 38. Preußischer Militär-Verlag, Reutlingen 1989, pp. 92–93, 97.

Web links

• The fall of Niobe

Individual evidence

1. ^ Commander of the French Riviera Naval Defense. deutsches-marinearchiv.de, accessed on May 23, 2015 .