ORP Ryś (1931)
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ORP Ryś was the first submarine in the Polish Navy . The Ryś ( Polish : "Lynx"), built in France, was used at the beginning of the Second World War and was subsequently interned in Sweden until 1945 .
Mission history
Pre-war period
The boat was built by At. & Ch de la Loire in Saint-Nazaire between 1927 and 1931 . The first submarine of the young Polish Navy reached the port of Gdynia on August 14, 1931 and was greeted by thousands of enthusiastic onlookers. In November, the boat brought the crew of the second Polish submarine Wilk to France. The Wilk was then escorted to Gdynia together with the gunboat General Haller . In January 1932 the boat returned to the shipyard for minor repairs and on May 1, 1932 was given the tower designation "R". As with the sister boats, the tower markings were removed on July 1, 1937. In the following years, the boat took part in several friendship visits to Scandinavian and Baltic ports. On April 1, 1936, there was a serious accident in the port of Gdynia. One of the battery cells exploded. 13 sailors were injured.
Second World War
The Polish mobilization took place on August 24, 1939. The boat was put into combat readiness, ammunitioned with 10 torpedoes , 22 sea mines and 110 grenades for the deck gun . When the war began on September 1, 1939, the Ryś ran out to patrol off the Polish coast as part of the Worek plan . The area of operation was northeast of the Hel Peninsula .
Several German minesweepers and the destroyers Wolfgang Zenker and Erich Steinbrinck were spotted on the way to the assigned sector . The next day, September 2nd, Ryś was captured by German air and surface units and attacked with a total of 26 depth charges.
On September 3, the boat laid 20 sea mines 10 nautical miles east of the Hel Peninsula.
The following night the Ryś was surrounded by German minesweepers and U-hunters and had to dive. The boat appeared unexpectedly, attacked the pursuers with artillery and was able to escape. On September 4, two torpedoes were fired at a sighted periscope . The rest of the day the boat had to dive because it was repeatedly attacked by aircraft and surface units. The attacks caused damage to the boat. During the night the base in Hel was called and the boat repaired. On September 12th the boat was ordered north off the Swedish coast.
Since further action against the far superior German forces became more and more pointless, the Ryś was interned in neutral Sweden on September 18 . During the rest of the war, the boat was moored in Vaxholm together with the Polish submarines Żbik and Sęp .
After the war
On October 5, 1945 the boat was placed under Polish command again and returned to Gdynia on October 25. On November 30th, under the command of captain marynarki J. Wierzchowski , the boat was officially re-listed on the Polish Navy ship list. Ryś was overtaken between July 1946 and February 1947 . In 1948 the equipment and armament were rebuilt according to Soviet standards. The anti-aircraft machine guns were removed and the torpedo tubes adapted to Soviet torpedoes.
The boat was placed in reserve in 1953, decommissioned on September 8, 1955, and abandoned the following year.
Commanders
- Aug. 2, 1931 - May 1933 - kapitan marynarki Edward Szystowski
- May 1933 - July 14, 1936 - kapitan marynarki Aleksander Los
- July 14, 1936 - September 18, 1939 - kapitan marynarki A. Grochowski
- Nov. 30, 1945 - Captain Marynarki J. Wierzchowski
See also
- ORP Ryś (other ships named Ryś )
literature
- Erminio Bagnasco: Submarines in World War II , Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart, 1996, ISBN 3-613-01252-9
Web links
- Ryś on uboat.net ( engl. )
- Ryś on polishnavy.pl (English)
Footnotes
- ^ "ORP" is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".
- ↑ The sources contradict each other on the relocation of the sea mines. uboat.net states that 20 mines were laid on September 3rd. polishnavy.pl ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. states that only 10 sea mines were laid on September 7th because the boat was disrupted by an enemy attack.
- ↑ The sources contradict each other on the subject of repairs. uboat.net indicates a repair in Hel. polishnavy.pl ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. describes Gdynia as a place of repair.
