ORP Mewa (ship, 1935)
 ORP Mewa 1937
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The ORP Mewa (German: "Möwe") was the second of six minesweepers of the Jaskółka class of the Polish Navy and was built between 1934 and 1935. The boats of this class were also intended for use as mine layers and for submarine hunting .
The boat was put into service on October 25, 1935, damaged on the first day of the war and sunk two days later. Lifted by the Germans, the Navy first put it into service as Putzig and later as the TFA 7 torpedo intercepting boat . Returned to Poland in 1946, it remained in active service until 1960 before being retired in 1970 and scrapped in 1981.
Navy of the Second Polish Republic
The main task was to train the teams. At the beginning of the German attack on Poland, the Mewa was already on duty for a long time - at this point in time, its commander was Kapitan Marynarki Waclaw Lipkowski.
On the morning of 1 September, the Polish fleet with the minelayer left Gryf , the destroyer Wicher , the minesweepers Jaskółka , Rybitwa , Czajka , Czapla , Żuraw and Mewa and the gunboats General Haller and Komendant Pilsudski their base in Gdynia to by Hela to relocate and carry out " Operation Rurka ". The Gdańsk Bay was to be protected against German ship attacks 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 latter had to haul the Rybitwa to Hela. 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.
On September 3, several German air raids on Hela were carried out by 4./Trägergruppe 186. During the attack around 2:00 pm by 12 aircraft from this group, the mine- layer Gryf and the destroyer Wicher were targeted. Without being hit directly, the Mewa sank from the swell of the explosions. When the Polish troops surrendered on Hela on October 2, the mine sweeper was finally scuttled by his own crew.
German Navy
After the surrender of the Polish troops on Hela, the Germans first lifted and repaired the mine sweepers, which had been slightly damaged by the sinking, and then the Mewa as well . After the repair, the Navy put it into service as a Putzig .
On June 14, 1941, it was converted to a torpedo interceptor boat and renamed TFA 7 ("Torpedo Interceptor Boat Abroad") and on December 3, 1941, it was handed over to the 26th submarine flotilla in Gotenhafen. This served mainly for torpedo shooting training for submarine commanders - as a torpedo catch boat, it had to recover the fired exercise torpedoes.
At the end of the war, she and her sister ships TFA 8 (ex Rybitwa ) and TFA 11 (ex Czajka ) as well as the old torpedo boats T 139 , T 151 , T 155 , T 156 and T 198 from the First World War were once again used for service in a combat unit . Together they formed the re-established 4th Escort Flotilla from April to May 1945 and provided escort service in the Baltic Sea for the repatriation of troops and civilian population from the east as well as the Courland .
German mine clearance service
After the end of the war, like the other former Polish boats , the Mewa was assigned to the 3rd Mine Clearance Division of the German Mine Clearance Service on October 15, 1945 . The task of the 3rd Division, based in Copenhagen, was to clear the sea mines in Danish waters. The - meanwhile unarmed - Mewa 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 Mewa together with her sister ships in Travemünde . The boats got their old names back and on March 12, 1946 they reached the former base of Gdynia. There they underwent a thorough overhaul, which was completed by June 1947. When it was returned, the Mewa was equipped with weapons from German stocks and now carried seven 20 mm flak (1x1, 1x2, 1x4). The boat kept this armament until July 1949.
For a short time she served as a training ship for the naval officer school until the Blyskawica took over this task in July 1947 . They were then - contrary to the original plan to station them together with former Soviet minesweepers in Gdynia - moved to Stettin . From there, by mid-1949, they cleared the coasts and sea routes for which Poland was responsible of mines.
Reclassified from the minesweeper to the D-46 guard boat , it received new armament according to Soviet standards in July 1949 and now carried two 37 mm cannons (1x2), two 12.7 mm machine guns (1x2) and two depth charges. Until 1960, teams for anti-submarine defense were trained on it. In the last few years she served as a houseboat until the decision to finally retire in 1970 and she was scrapped in 1981.
Remarks
- ^ "ORP" is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".
- ^ Twardowski, p. 171
- ↑ comparable to a first lieutenant at sea
- ^ Piaskowski, p. 42
- ↑ Twardowski p. 175f.
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/39-08.htm#SEP , Twardowski, p. 176
- ↑ Gröner, Vol. 5, p. 162.
- ^ Twardowski, p. 177, p. 179.
- ↑ Gröner Vol. 5, p. 162, cf. http://www.forum-marinearchiv.de/smf/index.php?topic=9041.0
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/geleitflottillen.htm#Ostsee nach Hildebrand / Lohmann, Kriegsmarine 1939-1945, chap. 65, pp. 115-117
- ↑ Gröner, Vol. 5, p. 162, cf. Twardowski, p. 179.
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/minen/dmrl.htm
- ^ Twardowski, p. 179
- ^ Twardowski, p. 179
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