Queen Luise (ship, 1934)
 The Queen Louise
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The second Queen Luise of HAPAG was, like her name predecessor from 1913 , a seaside resort ship .
She was lost in the Second World War as a mineship of the Kriegsmarine with considerable fatalities.
history
Seebäderschiff
Between the world wars, HAPAG procured three new seaside resorts with a size of over 2000 GRT : first the second Cobra in 1926, then the second Queen Luise and finally the third Helgoland in 1939 . The launch of the second new building for the seaside resort service after the First World War took place on April 10, 1934 at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel , the commissioning in the summer of the same year.
The Queen Louise was the first all-welded ship of Hapag. It was 93.5 meters long and 12.8 meters wide. The ship was measured at 2,400 GRT. Two marine diesel engines with a total output of 3,600 hp worked on two screws . With this, Queen Luise reached a speed of 16 knots . The crew consisted of 77 men. The ship could carry 2,000 passengers.
With a few exceptions, Queen Luise was used on excursions to Heligoland . Such a special mission was also planned three times a week between Key West , Florida , and Havana ( Cuba ) from mid-December 1938 , in order to shorten the lay-up time in winter and earn foreign currency . These trips were probably under the influence of Kristallnacht canceled by the American side.
Mine ship
The German Navy took over the ship in September 1939 and had it converted into a mine ship and armed. The ship was armed with two 8.8 cm cannons, one 3.7 cm cannon and two 2 cm cannons and could carry approximately 240 mines .
In April 1940 Queen Luise was used to mine the Kattegat and Skagerrak . At the beginning of 1941 she was stationed in Stavanger and laid defensive mine barriers in the association of Mining Ship Group North ( Frigate Captain von Schönermark) with the mine ships Tannenberg , Hanseatic City of Danzig and the former Norwegian Brummer . On 22./23. In February 1941 she moved from Bergen with the Brummer and the Cobra , which in the meantime also moved to Norway , secured by the 5th minesweeping flotilla, the mine barrier 23 "Swine" as the third part of the northern extension of the "Westwall" barriers in the sea area between the Shetland Islands and the Krossfjord . On 6./7. On March 1st the mine barrier 24 »Wollin« was laid approx. 50 nm east of the Shetlands as the northernmost part of the extended »Siegfried Line« barriers. After another use with the Cobra on 10/11. March the Queen Luise went to the shipyard.
After the overhaul, it was relocated to the Baltic Sea . As the 3rd task force, she moved with the mine ships Kaiser and Cobra on June 12th from Gotenhafen to the Finnish archipelago . On 21/22 June put the group 3 under Corvette Captain Dr. Ing. Brill, secured by six boats of the 1st Schnellbootflotilla and five boats of the 5th clearing boat flotilla , the barrier »Corbetha« (400 EMC and 700 explosive buoys ) between Kallbada-Grund and Pakerort . On August 8th, the group started laying the Juminda barriers, supported by the aforementioned flotillas and two Finnish mine-layers. To this end, over 1,300 mines were laid.
After laying another block of 86 EMC mines, the ship under Kapitänleutnant Wünning was marching back to a Soviet mine near Helsinki on September 25, 1941 after the release of the Finnish minesweeper and sank to 60 ° 0 ′ 50 ″ N , 24 ° 59 ′ 2 ″ E within a few minutes. 40 seafarers were killed. The high number of deaths was partly a result of the immediate failure of the ship's radio system after the mine hit, which meant that help could not be called immediately.
Hietaniemi Cemetery, Helsinki.
Memorial stone for the 40 dead. Hietaniemi cemetery.
literature
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies. A mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present day. 7 volumes. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1983.
- Arnold Kludas : The History of German Passenger Shipping. Volume 5: An era comes to an end from 1930 to 1990 (= writings of the German Maritime Museum. Vol. 22). Kabel, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-8225-0041-0 .
- Claus Rothe: German seaside ships. 1830 to 1939 (= library of ship types. ). transpress publishing house for traffic, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-344-00393-3 , pp. 144-145.
- Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: German merchant shipping 1919–1939. Volume 1: Chronicle and evaluation of the events in shipping and shipbuilding. Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg 1974, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .
Web links
- Fall of Queen Luise (II)
- Picture of Queen Luise (II) during disembarkation
- Use of the mine ship Queen Luise in the mine ship group "Nord"
- Loss of the mine ship Queen Luise
