Karl Meyer (ship)

The Karl Meyer was an air traffic control ship of the German Air Force in the Second World War , the first of four ships of the class K V. Her sister ships were the Max Stinsky , the Immelmann and the Boelcke . The ships were very similar to the Hans Rolshoven and the previous Krischan class.

Construction and technical data

The Karl Meyer ran in early 1940 when Norderwerft Köser & Meyer in Hamburg with the hull number 718 from the stack . She was initially registered as a hospital ship Wedel , but then completed as an air traffic control ship and renamed Karl Meyer on March 5, 1940 .

The ship was 78 m long and 10.8 m wide. It had a draft of 3.7 m and displaced 1157 t (standard) and 1351 t (maximum). Four 12-cylinder 4-stroke MAN - diesel engines with a total of 8800 psi, and two screws gave the ship a speed of 21.5 knots (empty) or 18.5 knots (full load). The hopper capacity was 120 tons of diesel oil and allowed a range of 3350 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 18 knots. The ship was unarmored and armed with three 3.7 cm and two 2 cm anti-aircraft guns. The armament was changed in 1943/44 by replacing the 3.7 cm gun on the forecastle with a 10.5 cm gun. The vessel was equipped with a 18-t-MAN crane and aft adjustment and a working deck equipped and could be up to three water aircraft types He 60 , Do 18 , He 114 or Ar 196 to record. The crew consisted of 66 men.

fate

In April 1940 the ship was provisionally put into service, still without a crane, in order to participate in the occupation of Norway ( company Weser Exercise ). It brought on 10/11. April jet fuel to Stavanger , where the Air Force occupied Sola Airport . On August 22, 1940, the ship was finally completed and put into service with the identification K 51 or KVF in distress area III in Trondheim (Norway). It then served in Norway as a tender and security ship of the "See Notzentrale (Luft) Nord" for long-range reconnaissance and coastal pilots of the Air Force.

On October 26, 1944, the Karl Meyer was hit by aerial bombs a little north of Rørvik near Namsos in an attack by aircraft belonging to the British aircraft carrier Implacable . She had to be put on the beach burning and burned out completely by the morning of the next day. The wreck was made floatable on a makeshift basis and towed to Sandnessjøen for scrapping .

literature

• Volkmar Kühn (di Franz Kurowski ): The sea emergency service of the German Air Force 1939-1945 , Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, 1995, ISBN 3879435642 , ISBN 978-3879435647
• Dieter Jung, Berndt Wenzel, Arno Abendroth: Ships and boats of the German sea pilots 1912-1976 , Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, 1st edition, 1977
• Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung and Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 - Volume 7: The ships and boats of the German sea pilots . Bernard & Graefe, Munich, 1982

Web links

• Karl Meyer in the Historical Marine Archive

Footnotes

1. ↑ Karl Meyer (born January 18, 1890 in Wimmelburg ; † April 21, 1918 at Amiens ) was sergeant and pilot in Aviation Department 33 and lost his life with his observer August Wurm when his plane crashed near Amiens. He was buried in the Vermandovillers-Nord military cemetery in France. ( http://www.frontflieger.de/3-mf.html )