Crane (ship, 1917)

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The Kranich was originally a minesweeper of the 1916 type for the Imperial Navy , which - after several modifications and changing civilian uses in the interwar years - was chartered by the German Air Force during the Second World War and used as an auxiliary air traffic control ship.

Construction and technical data

The ship was on 4 September 1917 with the hull number 296 at the shipyard of John. C. Tecklenborg in Geestemünde from the stack . It was 56.46 m long and 7.30 m wide, had 3.49 m side height and 2.20 m draft and displaced 526 tons . The machine system consisted of two marine boilers (195 m² heating surface, 16.5 atü ) and two 3- cylinder - triple expansion steam engines . Its power was 1870 PSi and resulted in a top speed of 16.5 kn over two screws, each 1.90 m in diameter . A total of 135 tons of coal bunker capacity resulted in a sea endurance of 2000 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 14 knots. The ship was armed with three 8.8 cm L / 45 rapid loading cannons and could carry up to 30 mines . The crew numbered 41 men.

history

Minesweeper

The ship was put into service on September 30, 1917 as M 77 and the III. Assigned a demining semi-flotilla with which it participated in Operation Albion in October 1917 and in the Battle of Moon Sound on October 17. After the end of the First World War , the ship was still used to clear mines in the Baltic Sea and was finally removed from the list of ships of the Reichsmarine on July 13, 1921 and released for sale.

Rhine tugboat, harbor ferry

About a Berlin stop the ship in 1922 came to the brothers Luwen in Duisburg-Ruhrort, which (in addition to their Boilermakers, Elektroschweißerei, machinery factory and shipyard) a Tugging - shipping company operated the ship for Rhein tug Hermann Luwen III tags and on 8 November 1922 in Put on duty. When the Luwen shipping company switched from tug shipping to passenger shipping, after more than six years of service, it sold the tug to HADAG in Hamburg on April 23, 1929 . This had the ship converted into a passenger ship at the Neptun shipyard in Rostock and put it into service as a port ferry on July 27, 1929 under the new name of Reich President .

Aircraft ship

The Hamburg shipyard Blohm & Voss bought the ship on October 18, 1935 . Your daughter, Hamburger Flugzeugbau (HFB), was supposed to develop and build a catapult-capable transocean aircraft for Lufthansa's planned North Atlantic airmail service; it became the four-engine HA 139 floatplane . For the test phase, a suitable ship was required to put the aircraft on the water and to pick it up again after the water . The ship was accordingly converted into an aircraft overhang, with a towing sail and an aircraft lifting crane , a large, four-legged gantry crane , behind the funnel and a smooth aft ship for transporting an aircraft. It began its service in 1936 under the new name B&V Kranich . After the renovation, it was 56.68 m long and 10.06 m wide, had 3.49 m side height and 3.22 m draft , was measured at 477 GRT and displaced around 1,100 tons. The machine system now consisted of two steam boilers (250 m² heating surface, 16 atmospheres) and two 3-cylinder triple expansion steam engines with an output of 1000 psi; it enabled a top speed of only 13 knots with the two screws. The crew consisted of 25 men.

Auxiliary air traffic control ship

On June 19, 1941, the ship was chartered by the Reich Ministry of Aviation for the Air Force to be used as an auxiliary air traffic control ship. For this purpose, the ship, now known as Kranich , was equipped with two 2 cm Flak C / 30 , three Fla- MG 15 and an MES system. On September 3, 1941, it was assigned to SNDF 5 "Nord" for use in Northern Norway . On December 13, 1941, the crane moved to Travemünde for final equipment and then on to Tromsø , where it served as a tender for the catapult ship Friesenland . There it proved to be unsuitable because of its very high fuel consumption and inadequate machinery, and as early as May 1942 the SNDF Nord applied for an air traffic control ship to be assigned to carry out repairs on both the crane and the two other auxiliary air traffic control ships, Wal 10 and Wal 11 , two former whaling boats. After the Karl Meyer arrived in the area of ​​the SNDF Nord, the Kranich moved to Aalborg in Denmark on July 22, 1942 . In February 1943 she was assigned to the SNDF 1 Mitte in Kiel-Holtenau , but this waived because he saw no possibility of using the ship. The crane then took another from February 26 to March 9, 1943, a transport journey Holtenau-Travemünde- Copenhagen -Holtenau for the command of ships and boats (KadoSchub) of the Air Force, but then ran at 12 to 14 March to Nordenham and was returned to Blohm & Voss on March 15, 1943 and renamed again to B&V Kranich .

Salvage ship

At the end of the war in May 1945, the ship was spoiled by the British. In 1947 or 1948 it was sold to the Hamburg company Alex as the rescue ship Kranich . Schmidt was sold and, from April 20, 1949, was again employed by Hamburger Fahrzeugbau GmbH, the successor company to the Blohm & Voss subsidiary of Hamburger Flugzeugbau. In 1952 the crane was sold to Alnwick Harmstorf, shipping company and salvage company. In December 1961 the old ship was sold for scrapping and demolished in Bremerhaven in 1962 .

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 8.8 cm / 45 (3.46 ") SK L / 45, at www.navweaps.com
  2. ↑ Maritime Emergency Service Guide 5 ("Nord", later "Norway")

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