Carinthia (ship, 1941)

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The Kärnten was a fleet tanker and supply ship of the German Navy during World War II .

prehistory

The Navy of the Netherlands did not have before World War II tankers that their operations at sea and especially in the area Dutch East Indies could support. She managed by chartering commercial tankers from Dutch shipping companies at short notice if necessary . This was an unsatisfactory stopgap measure in several ways. It required careful and far-sighted planning, because it usually took two to eight weeks from the conclusion of the charter contract to the availability of the ship. The tankers were unarmed, to slowly warships at cruising speed to keep up, and to refuel without the devices ships at sea. In addition, the charter contracts were more expensive in the final accounts than building and operating your own tanker.

The Ministry of Defense therefore ordered a tanker from the Cornelis van der Giessen & Zonen shipyard in Krimpen aan den IJssel on October 28, 1939 . The ship with the provisional designation Tankboot No. 1 was with the yard number 667 on 14 December 1939 laid the keel . The draft envisaged a ship ideally suited for its purposes - fast, well armed and with a large tank capacity.

The ship

During the German occupation of the Netherlands , the unfinished ship still in the shipyard fell undamaged into German hands on May 14, 1940. The Navy had it completed with minor changes compared to the original plan. The ship was on May 3, 1941 by Stack and received, as the majority of German replenishment oiler for a landscape named the name of Carinthia . The ship was 132.1 m long (over all) and 16.15 m wide and had a 7.5 m draft . It was measured with 5660 GRT and displaced 6900 tons (standard) or 15,000 tons fully loaded. The ship was 6,640 tons of fuel bunkering . The machinery consisted of two four-stroke eight-cylinder diesel engines from Werkspoor with a total of 7000 hp , which enabled a top speed of 15.2 knots with two screws . The armament was somewhat weaker than the Dutch plan for the sea ​​target artillery , but more strongly designed for the air defense : instead of the planned 12 cm L / 45 twin guns and the planned four 40 mm Bofors L / 60 - Flak , the ship received two 75-mm guns, two (from 1943 four) 37-mm flak, six 20-mm anti-aircraft machine guns and two 75-mm rocket launchers. The aircraft intended by the Dutch Navy was canceled.

fate

The test drives began on September 20, 1941, during which problems with the machines had to be resolved, and the Carinthia was put into service on October 27, 1941. She was assigned to the supply ship association, group north on March 15, 1942 and moved to Norway in April , where she was initially stationed in the Skjomenfjord, a branch of the Ofotfjord , near Narvik . In August 1942 she was placed under the command of the U-Boats and stationed in Kirkenes . Until the end of the war, the ship served the German submarines and other units operating in the North Sea as a supply.

After the end of the war, the ship went on May 15, 1945 in a convoy with four other ships and 15 submarines from Narvik to Trondheim . The convoy was intercepted on May 17th by the 9th Escort Group of the British Royal Navy , and the German ships capitulated in all forms. The submarines and the Carinthia were directed to Scotland and arrived on May 19 at the submarine assembly point Loch Eriboll , while the four other ships were allowed to continue to Trondheim and were interned there in the nearby Lofjord .

The Carinthia was awarded to the Soviet Union as reparation in December 1945 . The ship then served under the new name Poljarnik in the Soviet Pacific Fleet . The Poljarnik was deleted from the list of ships in 1990. Her further fate is not known.

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ The option for a second ship was announced, but was no longer implemented as the war broke out.
  2. ↑ In the test drives up to 17.1 knots were reached.
  3. ↑ http://www.netherlandsnavy.nl/Gun_12cmMk8.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.netherlandsnavy.nl/Flak_bofors40.htm
  5. ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/versorgung/tsv.htm
  6. ↑ The Aviso Grille with the staff of the "Leader of the U-Boats, Norway", the workshop ships Huascaran and Cameroon and the barge Stella Polaris .
  7. ↑ U 278 , U 294 , U 295 , U 312 , U 313 , U 318 , U 363 , U 427 , U 481 , U 668 , U 716 , U 968 , U 992 , U 997 and U 1165 .