M 126 (ship, 1918)

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M 126 (renamed M 526 in 1940and Alders in 1943) was a minesweeper builtduring the First World War for the Imperial Navy but only completed after the end of the war, which was used in the Reichsmarine and the Kriegsmarine as well as in the German mine clearance service.

Construction and technical data

The boat of the type minesweeper in 1916 ran on 21 December 1918 the Flensburger shipbuilding company from the stack and was on 1 July 1919 as a minesweeper M 126 into service. The boats of this type were 59.30 m long and 7.30 m wide, had a draft of 2.15 m and displaced a maximum of 630 t . They were armed with two 8.8 cm L / 30 guns and could carry and eject up to 30 mines . Two triple expansion steam engines with a total of up to 1850 hp gave them a top speed of 16.5 knots . The boats were at 14 knots cruising speed a range of 2,000 nautical miles .

career

The boat initially served in the Reichsmarine in mine search and clearance service in the North Sea . It was decommissioned on September 20, 1920 and was kept in reserve as a trailer until 1931 . From September 1931 to September 1933 it was then in the 1st minesweeping flotilla, from April 1, 1936 to June 19, 1937 in the 1st escort flotilla in Kiel and reactivated again in September 1937 for maneuvers. In the course of the armament of the Kriegsmarine it was assigned as a school boat to the Sperrschulverband der Sperrschule in Kiel , formed in 1936, as a school boat . At the beginning of the Second World War , the Sperrschulverband was dissolved and the 7th minesweeping flotilla was formed from its boats, which provided security, minesweeping and clearing services off the Pomeranian , Polish and East Prussian coasts in September and October 1939 and then until it was dissolved in March In 1940 he conducted minesweeping and submarine hunting in the North Sea. On April 1, 1940, the boat, now with the designation M 526 , came to the 6th minesweeping flotilla, which provided minesweeping and escorting in the German Bight and from May 1940 in the Den Helder - Delfzyl area .

On August 14, 1942, the boat was taken out of service in order to be converted into a clearing boat escort at the Deschimag's Seebeck shipyard in Wesermünde . On May 27, 1943, the boat with the new name Alders was put back into service as an escort ship of the 9th clearing boat flotilla stationed on the Belgian and Dutch coasts. The ship remained with this until the end of the war.

After the end of the war, the flotilla with the Alders was subordinated to the 2nd mine clearing division of the German Mine Clearance Service stationed in Cuxhaven from July 27, 1945 to October 1946 . With the completion of this task, the boat was handed over to the Office of Military Government for Germany (OMGUS) as US war booty on October 25, 1946 and then demolished.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/mboote/m1-7.htm
  2. ↑ Named after the Dutch naval officer Thomas Alders , who served as a squadron commodore in the Kurbrandenburg Navy towards the end of the 17th century .
  3. ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/minen/mrdiv2-frames.htm
  4. ↑ German: Office of the Military Government for Germany (United States)

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