Mars (ship, 1937)

The Mars was a German cargo steamer that was bought by the Navy in 1938 , converted into an artillery training ship and used as such until 1944.

Construction and technical data

The ship was on 5 June 1937 under the name Altair in the North Sea works Emden in Emden for the Argo Reederei Richard Adler & Co. of Bremen from the stack . The ship, the third of this name of the Argo Reederei, was 105.1 m long and 14.2 m wide, had a draft of 5 m and was registered with 2414 GRT . A diesel engine with 1500 hp gave the ship a top speed of 12 knots .

Artillery training ship

The ship was sold to the Navy as early as 1938, which originally wanted to convert it into a speedboat escort and put it into service under the name Samoa . However, the ship was converted into an artillery training ship for anti-aircraft guns and put into service on January 20, 1941 under the name Mars , with 16 × 37-mm flak and 10 × 20-mm flak. The ship now displaced 5100 t and had a crew of 182 men. The Mars was the naval air defense school (from September 1941 naval air defense school I) in Swinoujscie assumed from 1 October 1943 the Higher Command of Marineflugabwehr- and coastal artillery schools.

The End

On April 11, 1944, the ship, lying in the port of Szczecin , was hit by an aerial bomb during an attack by the Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force and burned out. The wreck was later scrapped.

Web links

• Artillery school ships at www.deutschekriegsmarine.de
• Argo Line, Bremen

literature

• Siegfried Breyer: Special and special ships of the Kriegsmarine (= naval arsenal with international naval news and naval overview. Vol. 30). Volume 1. Podzun-Pallas, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 1995, ISBN 3-7909-0523-2 .