Rotenfels (ship, 1927)
.jpg) The second Rotenfels
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The second Rotenfels of the Deutsche Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft Hansa (DDG "Hansa"), completed in 1927, was the sixth and last new building in a series of similar motor ships that had been in service with the shipping company since 1925.
In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war, the ship managed to return to Germany.
It was the only ship in the series to survive World War II and was in service until 1966.
History of the ship
The second Rotenfels of the DDG "Hansa" actually had two namesake.
The first Rotenfels was a cargo ship of 5584 GRT of the Rheinfels class built near Tecklenborg , which was in service from 1906 to 1914. Confiscated in Calcutta in 1914 when the war broke out, it was sunk by an American submarine at the end of 1942 as the Japanese Genzan Maru after a few changes of flag and name .
For this purpose, a Rothenfels of 2957 GRT built by Dixon was in use at DDG "Hansa" from 1893 , which was renamed Jamalpur in 1904 for the Indian coastal service before it was sold in 1906 to DG "Argo" . This ship was lost as Westsee II off the Norwegian coast in January 1927 .
The DDG "Hansa" was one of the pioneers of diesel propulsion for seagoing ships with the Rolandseck , which was commissioned in 1912 . With the first post-war buildings, the shipping company did not go the way of the other major German shipping companies to equip individual ships with alternative propulsion concepts within individual series.
She ordered a series of four motor ships from various shipyards relatively late. All ships had two single-acting four-stroke diesel engines and largely identical hulls. The type ship Schwarzenfels from Deutsche Werken in Kiel , the Weissenfels supplied by Tecklenborg and the Neuenfels from AG Weser had a twin screw drive, while the slightly different motors from the Altenfels built at the Hamburg Vulkan shipyard acted on a gearbox and a screw. The four ships were accepted within two months of 1925 and proved their worth.
In the Annual Report 1926, the DDG "Hansa" reported: "After showing us good results last year supplied motor vessels, we have this year, two further boats, à 11,000 deadweight tons, with the joint-stock company" Weser "commissioned"
The Rotenfels was the second ship of this reorder and was almost identical to the sister ship Braunfels . The ship was 148.8 m in length overall and with a length of 143.8 m between the perpendiculars, 1.5 m longer than the ships in the original order. She was 18.4 m wide and had a draft of 8.33 m. The Rotenfels was measured with 7851 GRT and had a deadweight capacity of 11,040 dwt. In addition to a slightly lower depth and side height, the main difference between the two ships delivered in 1927 was the single 6-cylinder diesel engine of 4000 hp, which acted on one propeller and the ship one Speed of 12 knots. It was a double-acting two-stroke engine of the MAN type manufactured at the shipyard .
Although the motor ships proved their worth, the following two series of the shipping company were again equipped with conventional steam engines. When, after the Great Depression, the shipping company again ordered newbuildings as part of the Third Reich's first four-year plan , the Ehrenfels- class ships were procured for the main lines in the Middle East and India, but also steamships such as for the Spain-Portugal service the Rolandseck .
Mission history
The Schwarzenfels- class ships served on the main lines of the DDG "Hansa" to East India without any particular highlights. The best known ship of the class was the Schwarzenfels , which the shipping company sold to Deutsche Lufthansa in 1934 . Renamed in Schwabenland , this ship achieved great fame as a flight base and catapult ship for the airmail service to South America and participation in the demonstration flights to North America in 1936, 1937 and 1938. The German Antarctic expedition was carried out with the ship in the winter of 1938/39 .
The Rotenfels provided the much less spectacular liner service with her remaining sister ships. Leaving Cape Finisterre on August 25, 1939 , after receiving the warning message QWA 7 (danger of war, deviating from planned routes), the journey continued closer to the land. After receiving the warning message QWA 8 (camouflage the ship, start the return journey, do not walk through the canal ), entered the Spanish port of Vigo, 80 nautical miles to the south. On August 27, 1939, after receiving the warning message QWA 9 (a German port in four days; call at a neutral port if impossible), immediately set sail from Vigo, heading for the English Channel. On the 29th the Ile d 'Quessant / France was passed eight nautical miles away. Dover / Great Britain was passed on the 30th . On August 31, 1939 one day before the start of the Second World War , in Bremerhaven been run. While the master understood the warning message QWA 9 as an invitation to return home directly through the canal, others broke off the breakthrough back home and entered a neutral port. However, this was revoked with the following message QWA 10, which allowed all ships to return home.
Military service
Weissenfels in Bandar Schahpur, Iran, and Braunfels in Mormugoa, Portugal, remained of the older DDG Hansa motor ships . where they finally ended without further use by self-immersion. In addition to the Rotenfels , the Altenfels and Neuenfels were also at home; The latter was lost as an ore transporter in Narvik in April 1940. The Altenfels was also used as a transporter for bulk cargo until it was lost in an attack by Norwegian speedboats in 1943.
The Rotenfels was drafted into the Navy of the German Reich on August 16, 1940 and designated as a transporter A 21 in Antwerp for the company "Seelöwe" . On June 18, 1941, she transported troops from Stettin to Oslo as part of Operation "Blaufuchs" (attack by German troops from Northern Norway towards Murmansk ) together with the Bochum (6121 BRT, 1922) and the Mar del Plata (ex Belgian 1938, 7380 BRT). The Wolfgang LM Russ served as a security ship for the three transporters. 19 August 1941 part of the Barents Sea Convoy West also the Danube of the NDL, Sivas of the DLL (1928, 3831 GRT), the Barmbeck von Knöhr & Burchard (1929, 2446 GRT) and the motor ship Stamsund (ex Norwegian 1939, 864 BRT) belonged. The convoy was secured by the destroyers Hermann Schoemann and Karl Galster , the artillery training ship Bremse and the outpost boat VP 6113 Gote , a former trawler of the Royal Navy . An attack by the Soviet submarine D-3 went unnoticed.
On January 6, 1942, the Rotenfels used as a troop transport was returned to the DDG "Hansa". In the following years it was used for various trips in the Baltic Sea and along the Norwegian coast to transport supplies for the German troops. In January / February 1943 the ship was in Kirkenes again and in the spring of 1944 distributed a load of coal from Germany to various German bases on the Norwegian coast.
Post-war missions
After the end of the Second World War on May 8, 1945, the ship was slightly damaged in Oslo. On July 11, 1945, the ship began seven trips from Norway to Germany to repatriate German troops. From December 28, 1945, the ship also made three trips from Germany to Poland to repatriate Polish citizens. On October 2, 1946, it was delivered to Great Britain in Immingham .
In December 1947, the "Alcyone Shipping Finance Company" in London bought the ship, which then received a new 9-cylinder single-acting two-stroke diesel engine from the Sulzer Brothers in Winterthur with 4,500 hp and started up again when the Alcyone Hope . In 1951 the owner changed to "Alcyone Shipping Company".
In 1954, the Sterling Shipping Company in Nassau (Bahamas) bought the ship and renamed it Sterling Valor . The former German ship also called Hamburg under this name. In 1954, however, it was resold to the "Pioneer Shipping Company" in Hong Kong and renamed Pioneer Merchant . In 1956 the ship came to the "New Providence Shipping Company" in Hong Kong, which used it in Hamburg, among other places.
In 1962 the ship changed hands again when the "Barclays Shipping Company" in Panama acquired it and renamed it Segamat . On November 14, 1966, after 39 years of service , the former Rotenfels was sold to the "Chin Ho Fa Steel & Iron Company" in Kaohsiung , Taiwan for demolition.
The Schwarzenfels- class motor ships
| Surname | Shipyard | GRT tdw |
Launched in service |
further fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schwarzenfels (3) | German Works Kiel Building No. 180 |
7861 11.714 |
03/14/1925 07/16/1925 |
two engines on two screws, February 28, 1934 sold to Deutsche Lufthansa (conversion to a flight base and catapult ship ), in service July 25, 1934, winter 1938/39 German Antarctic Expedition , October 1939 to the Air Force , March 24, 1944 torpedoed and badly damaged sunk with gas ammunition on British orders in the Skagerrak due to makeshift repairs, December 31, 1946 |
| Weissenfels (3) | Tecklenborg building no. 400 |
7861 11,633 |
03/10/1925 08/19/1925 |
two engines on two screws, refuge in Bandar Shahpur in Iran in 1939 , there successfully sunk by its own crew during the British occupation of the port on August 25, 1941; |
|
Neuenfels (2) |
AG Weser Building No. 393 |
8115 11,714 |
April 9, 1925 August 26, 1925 |
Two engines on two screws, surprised by the German occupation in Narvik with a load of iron ore on April 10, 1940 , and torpedoed and sunk during the attack by British destroyers. two dead; |
|
Altenfels (2) |
Vulkan Hamburg building no. 684 |
8132 11,988 |
May 6, 1925 September 8, 1925 |
two motors on gearbox / one screw, attacked and sunk by two Norwegian motor torpedo boats on June 5, 1943 on a trip from Narvik to Germany with a cargo of iron ore south of Bergen , 34 dead; |
|
Braunfels (3) |
AG Weser Building No. 860 |
7844 11.040 |
3.01.1927 29.03.1927 |
a motor gear / screw, 1939 refuge in Mormugoa there on March 9, 1943, after command-British attack on there also lies Ehrenfels scuttled |
|
Rotenfels (2) |
AG Weser Building No. 861 |
7851 11,040 |
03.1927 May 13, 1927 |
a motor on gear / a screw, managed to return home through the canal in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of war, slightly damaged in Oslo at the end of the World War , repatriation trips , October 1946 to Great Britain, still in service under different names and flags, canceled from the end of 1966 |
Web links
- The Rotenfels (2) on ddghansa
- The Rotenfels (1)
- The Rothenfels
literature
- Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa - from liner service to special shipping , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1976, ISBN = 3-7822-0105-1
- Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: German merchant shipping 1919–1939. Volume 1: Chronicle and evaluation of the events in shipping and shipbuilding. Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg 1974, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .
- Reinhold Thiel: The history of the DDG Hansa. Volume 1: 1881-1918. HM Hauschild, Bremen, 2010, ISBN 3-8975-7477-2
Individual evidence
- ↑ Annual report of the Deutsche Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft “Hansa” Bremen for the 44th year of operation in the XL. Ordinary General Assembly on April 29, 1926. StA Bremen: 7, 2010-49