Minesweeper 1916
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The minesweeper 1916 was a class of minesweeper of the Imperial Navy , which was used by different navies in the First and Second World War .
Development history and construction
See also: List of Minesweeper Units 1916
Based on the experiences in the early years of the First World War , which had brought about an intensification of the mine warfare , the German naval command had a type of ship developed that was especially suitable for mine defense. One of the criteria here was a short construction time and the involvement of smaller shipyards that were not previously involved in warship construction .
The draft, known as the minesweeper in 1916 , was the third official draft of the Imperial Navy after those of 1914 and 1915 , of which 56 boats were built. In the period from 1916 to 1919, 119 boats were ordered which, as usual for units of this size, have numbers ( M 57 to M 176 ) instead of names. The construction contracts for sixteen of the last eighteen boats ( M 159 - M 160 and M 162 - M 175 ) were canceled at the end of the war. Thirteen other boats ( M 123 , M 124 , M 127 , M 128 , M 141 , M 142 , M 143 , M 148 , M 149 , M 153 , M 154 , M 155 and M 156 ) were still under construction at the end of the war were canceled unfinished; six also unfinished boats ( M 131 , M 147 , M 151 , M 152 , M 158 and M 161 ) were partially sold abroad as shell structures and built for other purposes. Thus a total of 84 boats of this type were completed as minesweepers.
Furthermore, it was planned to build seven boats for use as submarine escort ships, which should bear the designation UT 1 to UT 7 . The first three of these were commissioned on August 25, 1918 at the Triester Austria shipyard and the other four at the Lange & Böcker shipyard in Reval . None of the boats were completed.
use
The boats of this type were used not only for mine clearance , but also for escort and submarine hunting .
In 1939 there were still 36 of these boats in the fleet of the Kriegsmarine: M 57 , M 60 ( Hecht , Hille ), M 61 , M 66 ( Störtebeker ), M 72 , M 75 , M 81 ( Nautilus ), M 82 ( Jagd ), M 84 , M 85 , M 89 , M 98 , M 102 , M 104 , M 107 ( Von der Groeben ), M 108 ( Delphin ), M 109 ( Johann Wittenborg , Sundevall ), M 110 , M 111 , M 113 ( Acheron ), M 115 ( Arkona ), M 117 , M 122 , M 125 , M 126 ( Alders ), M 129 ( Otto Braun ), M 130 ( Fuchs ), M 132 , M 133 ( Wacht , Raule ), M 134 ( Frauenlob , Jungingen ), M 135 ( Hela , Gazelle ), M 136 ( Havel ), M 138 ( Zieten , Nettelbeck ), M 145 , M 146 ( Taku , Von der Lippe ) and M 157 . A significant number of them had been rebuilt for various special purposes and many had since been given other names.
M 77 was converted into a Rhine tug in 1922, into a Hamburg harbor ferry in 1929 and into an aircraft overhang ship in 1935 and served as an auxiliary air traffic control ship for the Luftwaffe from 1941 to 1943.
In 1927 the Lithuanian Navy acquired M 59 and put it into service as Prezidentas Smetona . From there it came into the hands of the Soviet Navy during the occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in 1940 , before it was sunk by a German submarine or by mines in 1945 . M 68 shared a similar fate , which was sunk by a mine in 1941 after changing flags several times (including as Virsaitis in the Latvian Navy ).
See also
literature
- Siegfried Breyer: Minesweepers 1935 - Development and Use. Marine-Arsenal Volume 47, Podzun-Pallas, 2000, ISBN 3-7909-0712-X .
- Erich Gröner : The German warships 1815-1945 Volume 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speed boats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats , Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6 .
- Paul Köppen: The Wars at Sea 1914–1918. The surface forces and their technology. ES Mittler & Sohn 1930.
Web links
- Minesweeper 1916, at www.german-navy.de (English)