Nordstern (ship, 1922)

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The Nordstern , ex British Advocate , was a previously British tanker that was captured by the German navy in 1941 during World War II and used as a supply ship (so-called base tanker) until 1943.

Construction and technical data

The ship was on 9 June 1921, the hull number 682 and the name British Advocate at the shipyard of James Laing & Sons in Sunderland from the stack and in May 1922 its owner, the British Tanker Co. , delivered the tanker shipping company in the Anglo -Persian Oil Company (APOC, now BP ). It was 139.1 m long overall (134.2 m between the perpendiculars) and 17.4 m wide and had a draft of 8.50 m . It was with 6994 BRT surveyed, of which 6,549 GRT below deck, and had a carrying capacity of 10,925 dwt ( British ton ). Two steam turbines from George Clark Ltd. in Sunderland with 642 NHP gave a speed of 10 knots over one screw . The ship was equipped with radio .

APOC tanker

The British Advocate transported from 1922 until the beginning of World War II petroleum products on behalf of APOC of Abadan on the Persian Gulf to Europe, South Africa, India and Australia. After the outbreak of war, the ship drove a total of ten times in Allied convoys to Freetown ( Sierra Leone ), Gibraltar and western France for security reasons , but was also often alone in the Indian Ocean , the Mediterranean and the Black Sea .

Hijacking

On February 6, 1941, the British Advocate set out for Cape Town and Great Britain from Abadan, laden with about 9,000 tons of motor gasoline and diesel oil . On its way south, it was picked up on February 19 west of the Seychelles by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer , which was waging a trade war there , and taken possession of as a prize . The 44-person crew was taken prisoner. After repairing sabotage damage caused by the crew , the ship was released with a German prize crew on February 27 for a voyage to occupied France . It reached Bordeaux on April 29th .

Navy

There the ship was recorded on May 12th by the Kriegsmarineienststelle (KMD) Bordeaux , renamed Nordstern , subordinated to the supply department of the Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven and put into service as a so-called base tanker . The Nordstern then served to supply the naval bases in western France with machine fuels. From July 1941, the Nordstern was under the newly formed West Group of the warship association of the Kriegsmarine.

During the heavy air raids of the 8th US Air Force on Nantes and La Pallice in September 1943, the Nordstern was hit by aerial bombs in Nantes on September 25 and sunk in shallow water. It was lifted and, since the heavily damaged ship was not worth repairing, it was decommissioned as a semi-trailer at the pier of Donges in the Loire with a 15-strong civilian crew as a maintenance and security team. There it was on 24 July 1944 during the devastating bombing of the Royal Air Force at Donges at position 47 ° 18 '22 "  N , 2 ° 35' 26"  W sunk again.

After the end of the war, the wreck was lifted on August 17, 1947, first aground in shallow water on the edge of the Les Moutons sandbank in front of Saint-Michel-Chef-Chef south of the Loire estuary, and finally scrapped.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roger W. Jordan: The World's Merchant Fleets, 1939: The Particulars And Wartime Fates of 6,000 Ships . Naval Inst Press, Chatham, London 2006, ISBN 978-1-59114-959-0 , pp. 103 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed December 31, 2016]).
  2. ^ The Prisenhof Hamburg sanctioned the seizure of the ship and cargo on October 23, 1941.
  3. ^ Joseph P. Slavick: The Cruise of the German Raider Atlantis . Naval Institute Press, 2003, ISBN 1-55750-537-3 , pp. 146 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed December 31, 2016]).
  4. Supply service of the Kriegsmarine. In: Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart. Accessed December 31, 2016 .
  5. According to some British representations, the ship was initially unofficially renamed Adolf on May 1st, but this is not proven and is very unlikely.
  6. 1943 September. In: Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart. Accessed December 31, 2016 .

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