Naval Service Group (Royal Navy)
The naval service group (MDG RN) of the British Royal Navy in Cuxhaven was a military-like association with German personnel.
Creation of the naval service group
The MDG RN was created in 1951 in the course of the dissolution of the Cuxhaven Mine Clearance Association (MRVC), whose essential tasks were transferred to the Labor Service Unit (B) (LSU (B)), which was set up under US management, together with large parts of the personnel and material . The MDG RN took over the escort ship Weser , three war fish cutters (KFK) and the tanker Dievenow . The KFK had mine clearance equipment. The staff included 78 former members of the German Navy , who had also been taken over by the Cuxhaven Mine Clearance Association. The boats were only kept in operation for a short time and then handed over. So the Weser was sold to the Netherlands in 1953 after a period as a trailer .
The coordination of the clearance work with the International Mine Clearance Board remained the responsibility of the British and was the task of the naval service group, while the clearance work was mainly carried out by the LSU (B). In addition, the MDG RN assumed general support tasks for the naval units of the British occupying forces stationed in Germany .
A staff of about ten experts headed by the former lieutenant captain and later admiral Armin Zimmermann , among other things, dealt with the evaluation of the mine clearance operations and provided the British with knowledge about Soviet sea mines . This team of experts joined the German Navy in 1956 .
German position
On the German side, after the dissolution of the MRVC, there was initially considerable interest in maintaining a demining capacity with the remaining vehicles to which they had a certain access. The Blank office as well as the Federal Ministry of Transport tried between 1950 and 1952 to take over the vehicles under German management. The Royal Navy rejected this in September 1952 because of its own use. After that, German interest died out because, from the point of view of the Ministry of Transport, the danger of mines had largely been averted and, from the point of view of the Office Blank, the structure of the LSU (B) corresponded sufficiently to the German ideas about defense preparations.
Web link
Individual evidence
- ↑ Report in the Hamburger Abendblatt from December 11, 1953 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ German Naval Archives
- ↑ Douglas C. Peifer: Three German Marines - Dissolution, Transitions and New Beginnings , Bochum, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89911-101-9 (p. 109 ff.)
- ↑ Heinz-Ludger Borgert, Walter assailants, Norbert Wiggershaus: service groups and West German defense contribution - Considerations Prior to arming of the Federal Republic of Germany. Boppard am Rhein, 1982, ISBN 3-7646-1807-8
