Irben (ship, 1936)
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The Irben was a mine transport ship that the Navy used from 1936 until it was sunk in Kiel by an Allied air raid in April 1945 . It was their job, as a special form of ammunition transporter, to supply the navy mine ships with mines .
Construction and technical data
The ship was commissioned by the Navy to complement the new mine transporters Lauting , Rhein and Otter and laid down at F. Schichau in Elbing under construction number 1351. When it was launched in 1936, it was the only naval ship to be named Irben . The name goes back to the Irbenstrasse , where German naval operations took place during the First World War in 1915 ( advance into the Riga Bay ) and 1917 ( Albion company ).
Its length was 56.70 meters, it was 10.40 meters wide and had a draft of 4.41 meters. Its tonnage was 900 GRT , the displacement of 1157 ts. The drive consisted of a Sulzer four cylinder - diesel engine , the generated PS 450 and acted on a screw. The ship thus reached a speed of 9.5 knots . It had a range of 3000 nm at a cruising speed of 9 knots. In terms of construction, the Irben differed from the three previous buildings mainly in the arrangement of the bridge. This was not located at the stern by the machinery, but was arranged amidships. The armament consisted of four 2 cm Flak C / 30 and it could transport 240 mines. The crew consisted of 2 officers and 38 men.
history
After its commissioning in 1936, the Irben was subordinated to the Cuxhaven Blocking Equipment Office, to which the Otter was also assigned. The other two mine transporters were at the Wilhelmshaven Blocking Equipment Office. There is no information in the literature on the period up to 1941. After the start of the war, it was their job to transport the sea mines, which were filled and stored in the Blocking Equipment Office, to the required ports and ships. On the transporter, the mines were in an inoperable condition in the hold of the ship. With the on-board loading gear, the mines could be reloaded onto mine-layers or mine ships. The transporters did not have drop rails.
Organizationally, the two mine transporters Irben and Otter were released from the jurisdiction of the Cuxhaven Blocking Equipment Office on April 10, 1943 and placed under the command of the “leader of the mine ships”. This newly created office was relocated to Copenhagen in May 1943.
Only fragmentary information is available about the history of the Irben's operations , which requires further addition and systematisation:
- Before the German invasion of the Soviet Union ( Operation Barbarossa ), the mine transporters Irben and Otter were made available on June 6, 1941 in the Sund and the Great Belt , each with 200 EMC mines. The Otter had taken over the mines from the mine ships Prussia and Skagerrak from Swinoujscie , the Irben from the Versailles and the Grille from Kiel. With these 400 mines a possible escape attempt of the Soviet fleet from the Baltic Sea should be prevented.
- In the summer of 1942 the Irben and Lauting were in Norway. They first handed over on June 23 in the Dusavik Bay near Stavanger the mine ship Ostmark and the miner Brummer , and again on June 25 each 160 EMC mines for the mine barriers "Duke" and "Grand Duke", which then from Ostmark and Brummer were placed west of the Skagerrak.
- On April 8, 1943, the Irben was in the eastern Baltic Sea. In Tallinn , then called Reval, she took over the mine load of the mine ship Kaiser together with three coasters .
- In October 1943 the Irben is mentioned in Frederikshavn on the northern tip of Denmark. At the beginning of the month it handed over 50 LMF mines to Roland . Ostmark and Roland threw the mine barriers "lithium", "sodium" and "potassium" in the Skagerrak from October 8 to 18.
- In January 1945 , the Irben was supposed to supply a mine ship formation in Norway again. Between January 19 and 21, the mine ship Lorraine was to be equipped with mines for the company "Augustus". The Lauting transporter was already there, the Irben was still expected at that time. The operation had to be postponed and was only carried out on March 18, 1945 by the ships Ostmark , Linz , Lorraine and the destroyer Z 20 Karl Galster .
Only a few weeks later the van sank. On April 3, 1945, 700 aircraft from the 8th US Air Force attacked Kiel and the submarine yards there. In addition to the Irben , the passenger ship New York , the Monte Olivia , the tanker Mexphalte , the mine- layer Brummer , the minesweeper M 802 as well as the clearing boats R 59 , R 119 , R 261 and the submarines U 237 , U 749 , U 1221 were sold , U 2542 , U 3003 and U 3505 sunk.
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 3: Submarines, auxiliary cruisers, mine ships, net layers and barrier breakers . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1985, ISBN 3-7637-4802-4 .
- 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, OCLC 247353137 .
- Karl von Kutzleben, Wilhelm Schroeder, Jochen Brennecke: Mine ships 1939–1945. The mysterious missions of the “midnight squadron” . Köhler, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-7822-0844-7 .
- Dietrich Sonntag: Kreuzer Nürnberg: Kreuzer Nürnberg I, II and III as well as Admiral Makarow (ex Nürnberg) . Books on Demand , 2004, ISBN 3-8334-0995-9
Web links
- Jürgen Rohwer, together with Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. Library for Contemporary History of the Württemberg State Library Stuttgart 2007 to 2017, accessed on September 12, 2017 .
- Reichsmarine / Kriegsmarine (Germany). Mine warfare ships. Lauting mine transports (1934–1936). Retrieved September 12, 2017
- Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945. Business index , accessed on September 12, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gröner, p. 183, Hildebrand, p. 29, von Kutzleben, p. 248f.
- ↑ Gröner, p. 183, navypedia.org
- ↑ von Kutzleben p. 17
- ↑ von Kutzleben, p. 79; see. on the mine barriers "Wartburg I – III" laid from June 19 to 21, 1941: wlb-stuttgart.de
- ↑ von Kutzleben p. 142; see. wlb-stuttgart.de
- ↑ for both dates: von Kutzleben, p. 183, cf. for October 1943: wlb-stuttgart.de
- ↑ Sunday, p. 163, see: wlb-stuttgart.de
- ↑ Gröner, p. 183, Hildebrand, p. 29, wlb-stuttgart.de