Lichtenfels (ship, 1929)
 The Lichtenfels
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The second Lichtenfels of the Deutsche Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft Hansa (DDG Hansa), put into service in 1929, was the first of a series of four cargo ships for heavy goods transport of the shipping company, which were completed at the Werft AG Weser between 1929 and 1932.
In 1939 the Lichtenfels sought refuge in Massaua in Eritrea on the Red Sea . When the threat of occupation of the port in the Italian colony by British troops, the crew set the ship on fire on April 4, 1941 and sank it themselves.
History of the ship
The Lichtenfels ran on June 12, 1929 as the first ship of a newly developed class in the Deschimag belonging AG Weser launched. The shipyard built two ships under construction numbers 878 and 879, which were characterized by the consistent use of the Maier shape and their heavy cargo gear. The ship was named after the first Lichtenfels (5734 BRT, 1903) built in Flensburg for the East India Service, which was confiscated by Portugal in Mormugoa in 1916 during World War I and remained in service there as Cubango until 1950 . It was named after the district town of Lichtenfels in Upper Franconia.
The shape gave the ships a very characteristic appearance, especially at the bow. The loading gear consisted of a 120 t, 30 t and 15 t boom and 18 × 5 t booms. The DDG "Hansa" ships previously delivered only had a 30 t boom and 18 × 5 t booms.
The new ship was 160.45 m in length and 149 m between the perpendiculars. The width of the new ships was 18.94 m and their draft 7.77 m. The Lichtenfels was measured with 7457 BRT and 4521 NRT and had a load capacity of 10,700 tdw. Driven by a 3-cylinder triple expansion machine from the shipyard with a Bauer-Wach steam turbine of 5,100 PSi, which acted on a propeller, the ship could reach a speed of 13.7 kn.
Calls
The Lichtenfels was delivered to the DDG "Hansa" on July 26, 1929. On August 31, 1929, the sister ship Freienfels followed .
The main area of application for the new ships was the transport of rolling stock for railways in the Middle East. The heavy lift boom enabled the independent loading and unloading of locomotives on tracks at the pier without additional port facilities. The success of the newbuildings led to an additional order for two more ships of this type, which came into service as Geierfels and Uhenfels on February 10 and March 12, 1931 (construction numbers 885/886).
The global economic crisis then led to the abandonment of further new construction orders for the next few years. The Uhenfels was the last major Deschimag building for two years . The AG Weser was after completion of Uhenfels without another new job.
The Lichtenfels and her sister ships were used in the shipping company's route between the Persian Gulf and Burma until 1939 . In 1939, shortly before the start of the war, the Freienfels and Geierfels were in the Mediterranean and called at Italian ports. The Uhenfels sailed from Bandar Shapur with the launch "DDG HANSA VII" on deck to Bombay at the end of July and left Bombay on August 25, 1939 for her homeward journey to Germany. She tried to reach her homeland via the Portuguese colony of Mozambique .
The Lichtenfels received the warning message QWA 7 on August 25 when she was leaving Port Sudan and due to a lack of coal she went on another trip to Massaua in the Italian colony of Eritrea , where she arrived on the same day.
Fate of war
On August 25, 1939, the Lichtenfels arrived in Massaua due to the German warning messages. With the Liebenfels (6310 BRT), Frauenfels (7887 BRT) and Wartenfels (6181 BRT), three more ships of the DDG "Hansa" followed before the war broke out. A total of ten German merchant ships were finally gathered in the port of the Italian colony. From the NDL these were the Coburg (7400 GRT), which was the first German ship to seek refuge there, the Crefeld (8045 GRT) and the Oder (8516 GRT); in addition from Hapag the steamers Oliva (7886 BRT) and Gera (5155 BRT) as well as the Bertram Rickmers (4188 BRT) of Rickmers Reismühle, Reederei und Schiffbau AG, Bremen.
On April 20, 1940, the crew members of all German ships in Massaua gathered on the Lichtenfels for a birthday party in honor of Adolf Hitler. The opinion seemed to prevail among the crews that the war could be survived safely in Massaua. The crews of the ships lying up in Massaua changed to the "Embatkalla" camp in the mountains in the hinterland every three days to recover from the heat on board.
On February 17, 1941, the only German motor ship in the port, the Coburg , tried to break through to the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis operating in the Indian Ocean . She was placed on March 4th southeast of the Seychelles with the prize tanker Ketty Brövig (7031 BRT) before a meeting with the Atlantis from the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra . Both ships sank themselves when the cruiser opened fire from a great distance.
On February 20, 1941, the colonial cruiser Eritrea and the Italian banana steamers Ramb I and Ramb II of the Italian Navy, which had been converted into auxiliary cruisers, left Massaua for Japan. Eritrea and Ramb II reached Kobe by the end of March. Ramb I was sunk on February 27, southwest of the Maldives by the New Zealand cruiser HMNZ Leander .
On February 26th, the Wartenfels of the DDG "Hansa" managed to leave Massaua unnoticed and to escape to Diego Suarez in Vichy-controlled Madagascar . Two of eight Italian ships that wanted to escape to Madagascar also reached Diego Suarez.
The Italian motor ship Himalaya , which set sail on March 1, 1941 , reached Rio de Janeiro by the beginning of April . On July 31, it left Brazil with an essential cargo and reached Bordeaux at the end of August . From March 1 to 3, four Italian submarines also left Massaua and, with the support of German ships, reached Bordeaux in 64 to 80 days.
On March 24th the Oder tried to escape, but was discovered in the Red Sea by the sloop HMS Shoreham and sank itself on it. On March 30th the freighter Bertram Rickmers tried to escape from Massaua as the last German ship . He, too, escaped by scuttling himself shortly after the capture by the British destroyer Kandahar .
When the British occupation of the port was finally imminent, the crew of the Lichtenfels sank their ship in the port on April 4, 1941 at 15 ° 36 ′ 39 ″ N , 39 ° 28 ′ 28 ″ E . In Massaua, the Frauenfels and Liebenfels of the DDG "Hansa", the freighters Oliva and Gera of the Hapag and the Crefeld of the NDL sank, some of which were also set on fire. Most were later lifted to make the port usable. Frauenfels , Liebenfels and Gera were brought back to life as Empire Niger , Empire Nile and Empire Indus . In addition to the German ships, the Italian troop carrier Colombo (11,760 GRT, 1917) and other Italian merchant ships sank . Immediately when the city was stormed by the British forces, the remaining Italian naval units also sank.
The wreck of the Lichtenfels was only lifted in 1950 and scrapped on site. In 1954 the DDG Hansa put its third Lichtenfels into service, a heavy lift motor ship of 6800 GRT of the so-called Picasso or Lichtenfels class of eight ships. It was sold in 1972 and scrapped as Silver Dawn in 1979 .
The sister ships
| Surname | Shipyard | GRT tdw |
Launched in service |
further fate |
| Lichtenfels (2) |
AG Weser Building No. 878 |
7509 10,750 |
06/12/1929 07/26/1929 |
August 1939 in Massaua , sunk himself there on April 4th 1941, |
| Freienfels (2) | AG Weser Building No. 879 |
7454 10,750 |
15.07.1929 08.31.1929 |
1939 in the Mediterranean Sea, December 19, 1940 ran into an Italian mine barrier off Livorno and sank |
| Geierfels (2) | AG Weser Building No. 885 |
7505 10,505 |
12/1930 02/10/1931 |
1939 in the Mediterranean Sea, December 19, 1940 ran into an Italian mine barrier off Livorno and sank |
| Uhenfels (2) | AG Weser Building No. 886 |
7503 10,340 |
01.1931 03.12.1931 |
Leaked August 25, 1939 from Bombay on her way home, received no coal in Lourenco Marques on September 10, added coal from Dortmund (5138 GRT, 1926) and left again on October 13, 1939. Discovered by planes of the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal on November 5, 1939 about 230 nautical miles from Freetown. The British destroyer Hereward put a prize command over that was able to prevent the sinking initiated by the crew. As Empire Ability on June 27, 1941, south-west of the Canary Islands, it was torpedoed and sunk in a convoy by the German submarine U 69 . |
literature
- Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa - from liner service to special shipping , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1976, ISBN = 3-7822-0105-1
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH (Herrsching 1968), ISBN 3-88199-0097
- Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: The German merchant shipping 1919-1939 , Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schmelzkopf: Die deutsche Handelsschiffahrt 1919–1939, p. 118
- ↑ melt head, p. 124
- ↑ melt head, p. 192
- ↑ melt head, p. 145
- ^ Sinking of the Coburg
- ↑ sinking of the Oder
- ↑ sinking of the Bertram Rickmers
- ↑ 1–10 . April 1940 Red Sea
- ↑ Fall of the Freienfels
- ↑ Fall of the Geierfels
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , p. 21
- ↑ Sinking the Empire Ability
Web links
- The Lichtenfels on ddghansa with links to the sister ships
- THE MILITARY OPERATIONS OF THE ITALIAN FLEET ON RED SEA JUNE 1940 - APRIL 1941