ORP Żuraw (ship, 1938)
 The sister ships ORP Rybitwa , Czajka , Mewa and Jaskółka 1937
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The ORP Żuraw (“crane”) was a Polish minesweeper built in 1938/39 and the last of the six Jaskółka class ships designed and manufactured in Poland . In addition to mine hunting, it was also intended as a mine layer and for submarine hunting .
After several missions, the crew sank the ship with the surrender of the Polish troops on Hela on October 2, 1939. The Germans lifted the ship, renamed it Oxhöft and used it as a test boat . After the war it was first used by the German mine clearance service . It was returned to Poland in 1946. After mine clearance tasks in the Baltic Sea, it was used as a survey ship ORP Kompas and in 1971 it was decommissioned.
Navy of the Second Polish Republic
The ship entered service early on September 1, 1939 under the command of Kapitan Marynarki Robert Kasperski. At this point in time, the ship had not yet retracted and the crew were not yet familiar with the Żuraw . On the same day they moved with the Polish fleet - consisting of the mine layer Gryf , the destroyer Wicher , the minesweepers Jaskółka , Mewa , Rybitwa , Czajka , Czapla and the Żuraw and the gunboats General Haller and Komendant Pilsudski - the base in Gdynia to to move to Hela and carry out the " Operation Rurka ". The Danzig Bay was to be protected against attacks by German ships of the line Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia with a mine barrier .
During the crossing, 33 Ju 87 dive bombers of Lehrgeschwader 1 attacked the fleet and "Operation Rurka" had to be canceled. In this attack, the Gryf , Wicher and Mewa received damage from close hits. The Mewa remained in Hela, while the five undamaged minesweepers were ordered to the naval port of Jastarnia , where they remained stationed until mid-September.
When the minesweepers next used on September 3, Żuraw and Czapla stayed in Jastarnia because their helmets had failed. There they supported the air defense. They were no longer used in further operations.
When the German air raid on the boats lying in the port of Jastarnia on September 14, their use ended. At around 10 a.m., 11 Ju 87 dive bombers of 4th / Carrier Group 186 appeared over the harbor: Rybitwa was hit by a bomb that did not explode. Czajka and Żuraw showed minor damage, while Jaskółka and Czapla were destroyed.
Then Rybitwa , Czajka and Żuraw were transferred to Hela, where they were still at the time of the surrender on October 2nd. There they were sunk by their crews.
German Navy
The Germans quickly lifted the Żuraw and incorporated it together with Westerplatte (ex Czajka ) on October 3, 1939 as Oxhöft in the 7th minesweeping flotilla that was only set up in September. At that time, the task of the flotilla was to clear the Polish mine barriers in the Gdańsk Bay.
After completing this task, she was used as a survey boat from October 17th. On July 20, 1942, he was transferred to the Sperrwaffenversuchskommando (SVK) in Kiel , where the development and testing of sea mines, detonators and clearing devices took place. There she served as a school boat. There is no information about further use or whereabouts until the end of the war. In the Navy , the Żuraw was equipped with a 20 mm anti-aircraft gun.
German mine clearance service
After the end of the war, like the other former Polish boats , the Żuraw was assigned to the 3rd Mine Clearance Division of the German Mine Clearance Service on October 15, 1945 . The task of the 3rd Mine Clearance Division, based in Copenhagen, was to clear the sea mines in Danish waters. The - meanwhile unarmed - uraw and her sister boats are not listed in the active flotillas and can be assigned to the reserve boats.
Navy of the People's Republic of Poland
In December 1945 the Polish military commission found the former Żuraw together with her sister ships in Travemünde . The four boats got their old names back and on March 12, 1946 reached the former base of Gdynia. When it was returned, the Żuraw was equipped with weapons from German stocks and now carried a total of five 20 mm anti-aircraft guns - divided into two double and one single gun. The boat kept this armament until July 1949.
In Gdynia, the Żuraw underwent an overhaul, which was the first of the four Jaskółka class boats to be completed on November 29, 1946. Two weeks later she was temporarily used as a survey ship. At the same time, from Szczecin , it cleared the coastline and sea routes of mines for which Poland was responsible. From mid-July 1947, she did this together with the other ships of the class - the Jaskółka , Mewa and Rybitwa .
When the Polish Navy was unable to acquire its own survey ship, the Żuraw took over this task permanently from August 15, 1948. In addition, she received the identification HG 11 ("okręt HydroGraficzny") and an additional deckhouse aft. With the reclassification of the other boats in the class, the Żuraw / HG 11 was also armed according to Soviet standards and now carried two 37 mm cannons in a double carriage on the forecastle.
On August 1, 1951, the crew took the officers by surprise and took the ship to Ystad, Sweden . 11 sailors asked for asylum, which they were granted. The ship returned to Poland. The returned crew members were sentenced to long prison terms. When it was renamed again in 1951, it was named Kompas . The last modernization took place from 1959 to 1963 in the Gdynia naval shipyard, in which the aft deckhouse was removed again and accommodation was installed on the foredeck and a tripod mast behind the bridge. After the renovation, it was no longer armed. With a new survey ship, the ORP Kopernik , the Kompas was taken out of service on December 31, 1971 and served as a residential ship until at least 1979 under the code BK-4 ("Barka Koszarowa"). Then the track is lost.
Remarks
- ↑ ORP is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".
- ↑ comparable to a first lieutenant at sea
- ^ Piaskowski, p. 42
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/39-08.htm#SEP , Bertke Vol. 1., p. 128, Twardowski, p. 176
- ^ Twardowski, p. 176
- ↑ Twardowski, p. 177, Bertke, vol. 1, p. 181, http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/mboote/m1-7.htm (there, however, erroneously referred to as minesweepers of the 1916 type from World War I)
- ↑ Gröner Vol. 5, p. 184
- ↑ Gröner Vol. 5, p. 117, p. 183
- ↑ Gröner, Vol. 5, p. 162, cf. Twardowski, p. 179.
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/minen/dmrl.htm
- ^ Twardowski, p. 175
- ^ Twardowski, p. 179
- ^ Twardowski, p. 175
- ↑ Twardowski, p. 175, p. 179
- ↑ Twardowski, p. 179, Gröner vol. 5, p. 194
Web links
- http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/chronik.htm , accessed on January 5, 2017
- http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/mboote/m1-7.htm , accessed on January 5, 2017
- http://www.navypedia.org/ships/poland/pl_ms.htm , accessed January 5, 2017
- http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/minen/mrdiv3-frames.htm , accessed on January 5, 2017
literature
- Marek Twardowski: The Jaskolka Class Minesweepers , in: Warships. A quarterly Journal of warship history 15 (1980), Conway Maritime Press, London, pp. 167-179, ISBN 0-85177-207-2
- Stanisław M. Piaskowski: Okręty Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1920–1946 [The Ships of the Republic of Poland 1920–1946] , Planów album, Warsaw 1996, ISBN 83-900217-2-2
- Robert Gardiner / Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the world's fighting ships 1922-1946 , Conway Maritime Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-8317-0303-2
- Michael Alfred Peszke: Poland's Navy 1918-1945 , Hippocrene Books Inc., New York 1999, ISBN 0-7818-0672-0
- Erich Gröner: The German warships 1815 - 1945, Vol. 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speed boats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6
- Erich Gröner: The German warships 1815 - 1945, Vol. 5: Auxiliary ships II: Hospital ships, accommodation ships, training ships, research vehicles , port operations vehicles , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1988, ISBN 3-7637-4804-0
- Vincent P. O'Hara: The German Fleet at war, 1939–1945 , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 2004, ISBN 978-1-61251-397-3 (eBook)
- Donald A. Bertke, Gordon Smith, Don Kindell / Naval-history.net: World War II Sea War - Volume 1: The Nazis strike first , Bertke Publications, Dayton / Ohio 2011, ISBN 978-0-578-02941-2